We went to bed last night with a 20% chance of rain in the overnight weather forecast.  We are not sure when the rain started, but around 5:00 AM the skies opened up and it rained hard for an hour.  We are camped on somewhat higher ground with good grass sites and red rock roads, so the water drained away and we did not have flooding or muddy site/road issues.  This was not the case in other CAM-PLEX RV parks, as I discovered while walking to the 9:45 AM International Area (INTO) meeting.  My timing was bad, and I walked the 3/4 mile to the Wyoming Center in a downpour that included pea-size hail.  My raincoat and small umbrella were no match for the rain, and there was not a golf cart or shuttle (school) bus to be found anywhere.  In the end it was just water, and clothes eventually dry out.  Always looking for the learning experience in any situation, I resolved that we would purchase serious wet weather gear when we had the chance.

Linda remained in the coach to make sandwiches for lunch as we planned to meet up with Louise Stuart and Craig Davis after the 11:30 seminars.  We went to the Nostalgic Look Back at the Early Coaches of FMCA, moderated by Mike Middaugh, F3456.  Mike is yet another member of the Great Lakes Converted Coaches chapter that we also belong to.  Mike was joined by several other vintage converted coach owners who shared photographs of buses from the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s, some of them buses they had owned.

We then walked over to Louise and Craig’s motorhome, a very nice 38′ Monaco Dynasty.  We had our respective lunches and a great chat as we got to know fellow members of our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter.  The service tech from HWH showed up around 2 PM to fix their slideout, so we took that as our cue to return to the vendor area in search of more knowledge and solutions to problems.

After some further discussion with the folks from A-1 Water Treatment we decided to purchase one of their water softeners with attached pre-filter.  It was both heavy enough and bulky enough that we arranged to have them deliver it to our coach after the vendor area closed today.

We then stopped at the WiFiRanger booth and purchased a WiFi Ranger Mobile Titanium (WFR-MT) and optional AC power supply.  (The Titanium version is identical in functionality to the standard version except for a metal case in place of a plastic one, and a 5-year warranty instead of a 1-year warranty.)  The WFR-M/MT device mounts outside the coach and combines a WiFi “booster” (transceiver) and a WiFi router.  The booster communicates with available Wi-Fi signals that can serve as on-ramps to the Internet.  These signals originate somewhere beyond our coach and are paid for, and controlled by, someone other than us. These can be public/open (unsecured) or private/closed (secured).  Use of a secured signal requires the correct authorization (password).  Public/open networks are, by definition, free to use as you do not need a password to connect to them.  Secured networks may be free, such as at some businesses, or there may be a charge, as in airports, and some hotels and campgrounds.  There is an extensive system of public/open WiFi access points available at the CAM-PLEX, sponsored by WiFiRanger.  It has been very good around the Wyoming Center, but varies out in the Boxelder RV Park.  The booster allows us to receive this weak signal, use it, and send a suitably strong signal back.  It does not, however, guarantee on-demand, robust access, as this is also a function of how many other stations are trying to access the system at the same time.

The router section of the WFR-MT generates a secure, local network that we control.  Although it is generated on the outside of the bus, it should be strong enough inside and around the coach to allow us to use our devices wherever we want around our campsite (within reason).  We won’t know this for sure until we hook it up, of course, but the device has been used and well reviewed by other travelers, including Technomadia.  Being a full-fledged router, it not only allows multiple WiFi devices to securely connect to the Internet (via the external WiFi source), but should allow them to securely communicate with each other.  (BTW:  Technomadia has the definitive book on mobile connectivity.  http://www.technomadia.comor Amazon.com)

I plan to mount the WFR to the cable entrance weatherhead with zip ties if it will work.  The device has an Ethernet cable that plugs into a POE (Power Over Ethernet) power supply.  The front cable entrance weatherhead opens into the cabinet behind/above the drivers head where a 19″ CRT TV was once housed.  It comes with a DC power adapter, but we purchased the AC power adapter as there is already AC power in this cabinet that is supplied from the inverter subpanel.

Our Verizon 4G/LTE MiFi 5510L Jetpack device does essentially the same thing as the WiFi-M, except it communicates with Verizon cell phone towers instead of external WiFi sources.  We will be using the Wi-Fi Ranger when possible, and the Verizon 5510L otherwise (assuming it has a usable signal).  This means we could have two different WiFi networks running simultaneously.  The upside to this is that we could have multiple devices accessing the Internet through different pipelines, resulting in faster data transfer.  The downside to this is that devices on one network can’t communicate with devices on the other one.  (We could solve that problem with a WiFi Ranger GO.)  Although interference between the networks is possible, it is unlikely.

We needed an additional length of hose to hook up the new water softener when it arrived, so Linda picked up a 10′ long food grade hose from the Camco booth.  She then returned to the coach to straighten it up for a visit later from Louise & Craig while I went off to the Great Lakes Area Motorcoach Association (GLAMA) gathering at 3:15 PM.

I attended the Great Lakes Area Motorcoach Association (area) meeting in the late afternoon.  The main items of interest at the GLAMA meeting were the upcoming GLAMARAMA in mid-September 2013 and the 2014 GLAMARAMA planned for next June.  Both rallies will be at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds in Goshen, IN.  After that the intention is to move it around through Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Ontario (Canada), perhaps doing two consecutive years in each state/province.

On the walk back to the coach I had a long, technical conversation with Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint in Edwardsburg, Michigan regarding how to remove and reinstall the broken searchlight on the front roof while minimizing damage to the paint.  Michele’s shop did the roof repair and repaint on our coach, and she always has a good sense about how to approach something like this.  She talked me through the best way to approach it, and after considering the process carefully, I decided to defer an actual repair until we can get the coach back to her shop.

Louise & Craig came by around 5:30 PM and we continued our conversation over snacks and some Red Ass Wine from the Prairie Berry Winery in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  The new water softener got delivered just as they showed up, so hookup was deferred until later.  We put out the Blue Diamond Wasabi Soy almonds, and I think they caught Louise by surprise.  (Sorry Louise.  We really should warn folks about these.  If you like almonds, and you like spicy, you will find these addictive.)