Where there's smoke, there's fire......

I will honestly admit that my biggest fear about living in an RV is fire.  Although a fairly small incident, that fear was realized for us today.

Several weeks ago the circuit breaker for the microwave/convection oven in our rolling home tripped to the off position and couldn't be reset.  Thinking at the time that we might have a problem with the oven, I moved the power cord to a different outlet in the kitchen.  The oven worked just fine.

Since the problem occurred on a dedicated circuit, I thought that the issue would probably be easy to resolve.  Well, not so fast Bubba.

Nothing seemed to remedy the problem, so I purchased a new circuit breaker.  It wasn't the breaker.

It was time to call out Dandy Don, the local RV repair dude.  All kidding aside, he is a very experienced fellow.  Don arrived this morning and proceeded to systematically check out each and every ac branch in our rig.

He immediately found four loose neutral connections at the main box, but continued his search, knowing very well that these problems tend to cascade within an electrical system.  He managed to isolate the problem to the single line for the oven and checked out the possibility that someone put a screw into the power line when constructing the trailer.

He found nothing else that caused any concern and reconnected the power for final check out.  Well, after about a minute the breaker tripped again.  It was at that point that we all began to smell burning plastic.  Don saw a little smoke coming from a low wall junction box under the kitchen sink and I went outside to look under the long slide on the utility side of our trailer.

Dense black smoke and flames were rolling out from under the kitchen slide...looks like we found the short circuit!  The fire was still small and easily extinguished, having burned only the plastic junction box, rubber boot and some undercoat material on the bottom of the slide.

Don picked up a few repair items at the local hardware store and made the final repair quickly.  A final system check gave us confidence that all was well...finally.

Left as it was, this could have been a real disaster when we began travels late next week.  The hard short circuit and fire was caused when Don moved the ac line from the power outlet to the junction box.  Movement of our RV our even putting the slide in or out could very well have caused that fire down the road when we weren't keeping a close eye on everything.  This was a timely repair for sure.

As noted, we are making preparations for upcoming travel.  Although our destination is only 300 miles up the road from Port Orford, we are looking forward to getting back under way.  For a number of reasons we have stayed in one location for a year, and it's time to move on for a while.

Juanita has been storing away inside items while I proceeded to rearrange and store everything in our three basement areas.  I pulled out the ground rod for our ham radio system today and stored the Traeger wood pellet grill in a space provided by park owners Tim and Cindy.  The Green Mountain Davy Crockett pellet grill will accompany us on our journey.

I have also been making exterior cosmetic repairs, with some success in places and not so much in others.  Most of the vinyl decals on our rig are beginning to fade, split and peel and will need to be removed soon.  I plan to begin that process after we return to Port Orford in several months.  Needless to say, I am not looking forward to that particular exercise.

Because of our busy schedule I haven't had an opportunity to put together photographs or videos.  Hopefully I will have plenty of time for that after we arrive in Long Beach, WA.

If events provide additional fodder for the blog, you will hear from us before we head north.  If not, we'll see y'all down the road........................................

We're still around....I think!

OK, I know.  It has been far too long since I have posted to the blog.  We have really been busy doing mostly nothing worth writing about.  There have been a few highlights during the past several weeks, however, so here I am.

The big news of the day is that my dear wifey has officially reached the golden years and was able to drop very expensive health care for the much more affordable Medicare and supplemental insurance. We will celebrate with a nice dinner this evening at Edgewaters in Bandon.

While attending her monthly meeting at the Quilters Corner yesterday, Juanita was presented with a nice gift that I had purchased at the shop the previous day.  She was completely surprised and I got a lot of positive reviews as a wonderful husband from the ladies in the group.

We enjoyed a short visit by two long time travel friends last Thursday.  Tom and Ruth were able to spend a couple of hours with us on their way out to Tennessee.  They were fortunate to pass through the area just prior to a big spring storm that hit the area this weekend.

The cold storm brought 3.26" of rain to the park and, finally, a little snow to the mountains of Oregon and California.  Better late than never I guess.

Back at the beginning of the year I set out a goal to lose 20# before seeing my doctor again in April.  The scale revealed that I accomplished that and a little more yesterday morning.  I'm not doing anything special in this effort, other than pushing myself away from the plate sooner rather than later. It works!

I won't give weekly or even monthly updates about my weight reduction program but will certainly let you know when I reach my next goal.  I expect to drop 20# more by my birthday in September and, hopefully, another 15# by the end of the year.  If I do all that, I will be too buff to believe.  Well, I can always dream anyway!

We are starting to make travel preparations and will be leaving Port Orford on May 1.  After spending a few days in Newport, Oregon, we are scheduled to arrive in Long Beach, Washington on May 6 for a two month visit.  While there, we look forward to seeing old friends, visiting interesting new places and seeing a couple of Juanita's relatives who live in the area.

During a break in the weather several days ago, I took the Gopro Hero camera out for some exercise at nearby Cape Blanco State Park.  It took several hours to process the video clips, but I am slowly getting more comfortable with Adobe's Premiere Pro proccessing system.  I hope to get a few more aerial videos soon as well.

I hope to get a couple more blog posts made before our departure, but no promises.