Fuse

 So we were tooling down the Santa Monica freeway, admiring the absolutely gorgeous sunset (above), when it occurred to us that we should think about a place to stop for the night.  Our first day out had been exciting, but we're not getting any younger.  We've got to pace ourselves because just getting to California is going to take several days.  No sense getting burned out on the first day. 

We pulled into an RV park in northern Florida, ready to rest up for an early start the next morning.  We pulled just as the office was closing.  The registration clerk assured us that although the park does not have cable TV, their wifi is working properly; she added that we can drive right into the park and choose from several sites she pointed to on the brochure.

As we drove through the park and looked for a suitable (read: level) site, we sense something may not be right . . . as in, we are the ONLY campers there that night.  The clerk did not exaggerate about choosing our own site.  We could have any of them!  We picked one, leveled up the rig, hooked up the water and power, and settled in to watch TV on the internet.  Only one problem, there was no wifi.

Frank pondering our predicament

We called the office, and the night manager (really?) answered the phone, but said, unfortunately because it was after hours, they couldn't get anyone out to look at the wifi problem until the morning.  Had we been lied to?  There was no use arguing, so we decided to move to another park just two exits down the freeway.  

After we disconnected water and power, we went to retract the hydraulic levelers and nothing happened!  The levelers would not go back up.  There we were . . . stuck in an empty campground with 6 wheels, and 4 hydraulic levelers all touching the ground.  We stayed locked inside the rig, and made sure our bad-guy protection systems were functioning properly.

It was a miserable evening . . . alone in the campground, unable to move the rig, no TV and no internet.  I will leave the reader to imagine the wailing and groaning and general frustration on the inside of Pooh.  But, we did get to sleep early, and we were able to ascertain some potential repair sources using Linda's smart phone connection.

While we waited to call for help the next morning, Frank decided to poke around the electrical system, and discovered a secondary fuse box wired under the dashboard labeled "HWH Leveling System."  Could this be the source of the problem?  Well, yes it was.  He opened the box, discovered one fuse was popped out.  He replaced the fuse, and voila!  The system worked, the levelers retracted, and we were on our way again, before the campground office even opened for business that morning.

Whew ... we've had some excitement already, and we're not even 300 miles from home.  We hope things settle down for a while.

Next stop:  Houston, and a short visit with Chanda.