Tag Archives: Gillette SD

2013_07_07 (Sun) A Day Of Transition

Today was our last day at the CAM-PLEX in Gillette, Wyoming. John & Cheryl pulled out at 6:15 AM, so we did not get to see them off. We had a leisurely morning prepping the rig for travel, and pulled out of the Boxelder RV Park around 10:15. Our destination was Peter D’s Campground in Sheridan, Wyoming, where would be joining nine other rigs (16 people) for a two week Habitat For Humanity RV Care-A-Vanner build coordinated through the HFH BOF of The Escapees RV Club.

The 103 mile drive was “high plains scenic”, and the first glimpse of the Bighorn Mountains was exciting. The terrain was rolling and some of the grades were steep, albeit not steep enough to require special signage. The last 30 miles of the trip one of the pyrometer gauges (Left) started exhibiting a new behavior. On downhill grades, both pyros drop to the bottom of the gauge (300 deg F) as the engine is using very little fuel and getting lots of cooling. As I started up the next grade, the “R” pyro would instantly start to rise as the engine burned more furl, but the “L” pyro would sit on 300 for 3 – 10 seconds and then jump up to and indicate a temperature close to the “R”. (Note: the left pyro has always indicated about 150 – 200 deg F less than the right one.)

We arrived at Peter D’s RV Park around 12:30 PM. Peter D’s is easily accessed from I-90. It is not a fancy place, but it is nice with clean restrooms/showers and laundry room. The sites are a bit narrow, but they are all pull-through with full hookups and 20/30/50 amp power. Out site was close to level and long enough for our bus and car.

I was a little concerned about the pyro readings, so I e-mailed my mobile mechanic and three fellow bus nuts, to see if they had any suggestions.

Before we left Gillette, Nick Russell gave us a bundle of latest issue of The Gypsy Journal to distribute during our travels, so we dropped off copies at the campground office.

Our HFH RV CAV / SKP HFH BOF team gathered at Jack & Shirley Krohn’s Airstream Sovereign trailer at 3:30 PM for the initial team orientation, led by Steven Gullette. We were joined by Matt, the Executive Director of the Sheridan HFH affiliate, and Brian, the construction supervisor for our builds. We learned that we would be working on two different houses, both within a mile of Peter D’s. We had a late addition to the team, so we will have 11 rigs and 18 people.

Our HFH RV CAV / SKP BOF team opening dinner.

We gathered at the Krohn’s again at 5:00 PM for the pot-luck welcome social. Matt brought a grill and the meat and team members brought side dishes. A bit to our surprise, there were several things we could eat (besides the dish we brought). We were barely finished eating when a thunderstorm blew in and we had to gather up our stuff, head back to our rigs, and secure them against the coming storm. At that point we hunkered down for the evening.

BTW: The Rescue Tape holding the two halves of the roof-mounted searchlight worked just fine at highway speeds.

2013_07_06 (Sat) Our Last Full Day In Gillette

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We went on a snipe hunt this morning. Nick Russell had mentioned a Gillette Farmers Market in his blog post, so Linda looked it up and got the address. Because of the way we eat, Farmers Markets are a real bonus for us when we can get to them. We skipped breakfast and drove to the location, and found … nothing. Nada. Not a farmer (or market) in sight. Surely Nick wouldn’t lead us astray? He and Terry said they were headed there themselves. Out came the smartphones (both of them) and we started Googling away. Ahhh, the market starts on July 20th. This was Just another example of the emotional roller coaster of extended/full-time RVing. But roller coasters are exciting, and the unexpectedness keeps you on your toes, presenting opportunities for problem-solving and unplanned discoveries.

One of our favorite statues in downtown Gillette, WY

We decided to drive to downtown Gillette and walk around. It was still early, and a holiday weekend, so the shops were not open yet and Main Street was deserted. Downtown Gillette has a nice collection of bronze statues that we enjoyed viewing as we strolled main street. We discovered the 311 Restaurant and studied the menu in the window. If we were going to dine out, this looked the place to go. We passed a bakery/coffee shop that was closed, although their signs suggested that they should be open. Someone else must have had the same impression, and more than once. A 3″ square sticky note was pasted on the window over the “hours of operation” sign that said “Is this place ever open when it says it will be?” Honest, I could not make that up.

When we got back to the bus we had a late breakfast. I continued working at my computer while Linda went for a walk. The sun was bright on the passenger side of the coach, so when Linda got back we deployed the awnings on that side. At some point John and Cheryl came over and we sat in the shade and had a nice long chat. I say “at some point” because I rarely know what time it is unless I look at clock or the shadow of our coach.

Being as it was our last night in Gillette, we decided to go to the 311 Restaurant for dinner. Thunderstorms were forecast for later, but the weather outside our window looked fine, so we left the awnings out and the windows and roof vents open. We started to back our car out of our site around 4:30 PM when Linda saw a large flash of cloud-to-ground lightning directly north of the RV Park. I opened The Weather Channel app on my smartphone and pulled up the current radar. There was a large cell to the north that appeared to be moving east and an even larger cell to the southwest that appeared to be moving northeast towards Gillette with strong winds and hail indicted. Rather than close everything up, we decided to cancel our dinner out plans and eat at home. This sort of flexibility is a necessary part of this lifestyle.

It was still early, so I resumed my photo organizing, and started selecting images to include with each blog post. Linda made the pasta salad that she is contributing to the HFH pot-luck welcome social tomorrow at the HFH affiliate ReStore in Sheridan. With that done, she started preparing African yam and kale soup, only to discover that the (organic) yam she bought was rotten to the core.

Plan B. Although not a whole-food, we keep a few prepared things on hand for just such situations, or when Linda doesn’t feel like cooking (it happens, but not often). The Amy’s brand has a particularly good selection of canned and frozen items, including soups, chili, and the best vegan pizza we have ever had. (The roasted vegetable, which has caramelized onions, but doesn’t even have vegan “cheese”. Vegan or not, this is a fabulous pizza.) They also have “fake” substitutes for traditional dishes. Other companies, such as Morningstar, Dr. Praeger’s, etc. produce similar products, and one of our favorites is “riblets” in Bar-B-Que sauce. The sauce is one of the best I’ve had (it’s sweet, naturally). The riblet has the texture of pork, and a reasonable facsimile of the taste, which I retain in memory to some degree. Riblets and Bush’s vegetarian baked beans; quick, easy, and tasty, with plenty of protein (for those of you who are concerned about the nutritional balance of our meals).

As we finished dinner the storms thickened and intensified all around us. We were treated to quite a lightning show for some time before the rain started. The rain began gently so we left the windows open to enjoy the sound and the cool air. (We have awning style windows that open out from the bottom, so they tolerate a certain amount of rain.) The rain gradually, but steadily, increased to the point we had to close up and turn on the air-conditioners.

Every time we have had a 30% chance of a storm in Gillette, we have gotten a storm. It appears that the 30% forecast means the storm will only be 30% as strong as the worst storm you can imagine.

We had fresh strawberries and sweet red wine and then turned in for the night.

2013_06_18 (Tue) Early Arrival

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Upon our arrival at the CAM-PLEX in Gillette, Wyoming yesterday we quickly discovered that we did not have a usable WiFi signal so Linda Googled coffee shops and we found one with free WiFi. This morning we headed off early to City Brew for some coffee, bagels, and Internet connectivity. Alas, no bagels, so I had Raspberry strudel sticks (which were probably not vegan). We couldn’t connect to City Brew’s WiFi, but the adjacent Qdoba restaurant had a strong signal and no customers as they were not open yet. We mentioned that we were not able to connect and when City Brew reset their wireless router it worked fine. Linda caught up on our banking and entered receipts into Quicken while I updated Passwords Plus. I then tried to log in to our website (The Phase Place = www.omnibus-mi.us), which is a WordPress installation running on iPage servers, and discovered that I had not specifically recorded the username and password in Passwords Plus. I also realized that I had probably not updated the contact e-mail address with iPage since bfay@twmi.rr.com was shut down in May. Soooo…. I logged in to the iPage control panel and opened a new support ticket to get these issue resolved.

Our neighborhood – Boxelder, Lot 2, 7th St.

With our online business taken care of for the moment, we headed down the street to the HealthStyles Market to get some Daiya cheese for our dinner “cheeseburgers”. We received a 20% off coupon in our FMCA welcome bag, but didn’t have it with us, so we deferred other shopping for later in the week. What a nice surprise to find an organic market, with some of the vegan products we like, here in the heart of cattle country. The FMCA materials don’t even list grocery stores; instead they list “meat markets”. Yikes!

Because we both have personal and business need for Internet access, we stopped at the local Cellular Plus (Verizon retailer) outlet and purchased a Novatel Jetpack MiFi 5510L 4G/LTE Mobile WiFi hotspot device and added it to our existing Verizon “share everything” plan. This device creates a secure (private) relatively short-range WiFi network which will allow us to connect any/all of our WiFi capable devices together and to the Internet via our Verizon data service, as long as we have a usable Verizon signal. It’s a 4G/LTE device that is backwards compatible to 3G/EVDO, and supports IPv6 addressing in addition to IPv4. Many of its functions are accessible throughout the small device screen and buttons, but the full functionality is easily accessed through a web interface via a connected device.

By the time we returned to the coach it was lunchtime. After a light lunch we decided to deploy the large patio awning. We apparently failed to put the manual for the new Zip Dee Awnings on board, but still had the manual for the old ones. Design changes have been minor in the last 20+ years, and I was familiar with the changes, so though we could figure it out. We weren’t able to open it very far due to the close spacing of RVs in the campground and the fact that our neighbors had slide-outs (as most of the RVs here do). The manual indicated that partial deployment was possible and acceptable, but we could not get the rafter (upper) arms to latch onto the roller tube. Our new Zip Dee awnings are very nice, with a translucent fabric that allows some light through so the interior doesn’t get too dark. They are manual awnings, however, and deploying/retracting the patio awning requires a step ladder because our coach is so tall and the latches are out of reach.

We left the patio awning in what we felt was a secure position and walked over to the CAM-PLEX offices to take care of our camping arrangements for the 4 nights between the two rallies. On the way we stopped and visited with the owners of four vintage Flxible bus conversions that were on display in front of the Wyoming Center. Three of the owners were Great Lakes Converted Coaches members, and the 4th one was the son of a member. Bruce brought sample copies of the February 2013 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine, and said he would bring some over for the owners.

The folks at the CAM-PLEX office were very helpful and gave us our parking placard for the Windmill RV Park. This park is smaller than Boxelder. Most of the sites are 30 A electric, but some are 50 A FU. We were told we could move there on Sunday morning the 23rd at 10 AM as specific sites were first come, first served.

By the time we got back to our coach a predicted storm was building to the west and moving our way. With 50+ MPH wind gusts expected, we decided to retract all of our awnings and close up the windows and roof vents. Thick clouds, a cool air mass, and strong winds kept temperatures inside very comfortable. I went for stroll around the campground to take photographs of the clouds. I then came inside and preceded to nap through storm!

After dinner we finally turned on our new MiFi device and connected our phones, tablets, and computers. We spent quite a while trying to set up the computers on the network so they could see each other and share files, and appeared to have it working, only to have it not work and not be able to get back to where they did. It was not essential that we be able to do this, so we let it go for now. Since we now had functioning Internet access I checked the iPage support ticket and found that they had responded. I followed their directions and once again have administrative access to my WordPress installation and have updated my contact e-mails for iPage.

2013_06_17 (Mon) On The Way To FMCA

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We were up early for breakfast and prepped ourselves for travel with showers and a shave (Bruce). I looked through my e-mail for our FMCA Rally registration confirmation but couldn’t find it. Linda called the FMCA headquarters to see if we needed it (we didn’t) and inquire about any specific arrival instructions (there weren’t any). We then went through our departure routine. We dumped the waste tanks, topped off the fresh water tank, disconnected/stowed the hoses, hooked up the car, and straightened up interior. We filled out our FMCA toad hang tag and emergency locator card and placed our entrance placard in the lower outside corner of the lower DS window. The last thing we disconnect and stow is the electrical power shoreline.

We pulled out of our site at the 3 Flags RV Park at 9:35 AM. We had estimated a 2.5 hour drive to the CAM-PLEX in Gillette, Wyoming, and pulled up to the entrance at 11:55 AM. Access to the facility was easy from the I-90 exit for Garner Lake Road and a short drive to the west entrance. We were surprised by the lack of FMCA specific signage, which we have seen at past rallies, but it wasn’t really necessary at the CAM-PLEX. The parking crew was well organized and got us directly to the holding area and in line for the “Family 50 Amp” parking area. We quickly had enough coaches and were led to our camping area by a golf cart. We got to the Boxelder RV Park area and were able to pull through into our site with the car still attached. We then had to quickly unhook and move the car as other RVs would soon be backing into the spots behind us. We ended up in site F-20 with full hookups and 50 A power! FMCA always designates parking areas at rallies by Lot and Street numbers. We were on 7^th Street in FMCA Lot 2.

We then went through our arrival routine. While Linda set up the interior, I plugged in the electric & reset the “AC in” parameter on the Magnum 4024 inverter/charger to 30A (the default setting) to take full advantage of the available 50A service. I turned on all needed circuit breakers and then connected water and sewer lines. We then opened all of the awnings except for the patio awning, for which it appeared we might not have sufficient room. Our campsite made ready, we met and chatted with adjacent motorhome owners. Not knowing where it was, we snagged a golf cart ride to the nearest info booth, dropped off our emergency locator card. The booth wasn’t that far away so we walked back to our coach. I took a photo with my phone and e-mailed (or texted) it to our kids. By then it was mid-afternoon and a bit warm, so we (me, at least) took naps. We then went for a walk, found Pat & Vicky Lintner’s coach, and visited for a while. Pat and Vicky are fellow members of the Great Lakes Converted Coaches Chapter and Pat is our National Director, representing us at Governing Board meetings. (Linda is the treasurer of this chapter.) We then walked over to the buildings to scope out the route and location. Upon return to the coach we had dinner. We then drove to Home Depot to get a small fan and some reflective insulation for the skylights as it was expected to be hot here the next two days. The overnight lows, however, were forecast for the 50’s most nights.