Tire Monitoring

Before leaving on our current trip I purchased a tire monitoring system made by HawksHead Systems. The monitoring system alerts you if any of the RV or towed vehicle’s tires are loosing pressure hopefully allowing you to slow to a stop before a catastrophic blowout. 

When we purchased our first Motorhome in Las Vegas years ago I was driving it home for the first time towing the Jeep behind. I had traveled about long enough to start getting bored. Remembering the CB radio I turned it on and just caught the tail end of a trucker conversation which I heard them say “… if he doesn’t notice it he’s going to have a big problem”. There wasn’t much traffic on the road at the time and I had noticed two trucks passing me. Using the CB radio I asked if they were talking about me. They said I had a rear tire going flat on the Jeep I was towing. It was half flat when I pulled over and checked. Since then I’ve been lucky and haven’t experienced another incident. 

Over the years I have looked at many systems coming to market. Only one, which the tire sensor is mounted inside tire on the wheel, appeared to be reliable.  But it was expensive and installation required all the tires to be removed and replaced adding to the cost. It also required the sensors to be replaced when the battery discharged.

All the systems I have looked at so far required replacing the sensors when the batteries ran out, at the cost of fifty dollars each or more!  In fact one of the more popular systems made changes to their system so that the older sensors were no longer compatible and the older sensors could no longer be purchased from them. If only one sensor went bad, it requiring the re-purchasing of an entire new system!!

The Hawkshead Systems uses inexpensive replaceable batteries in their sensors. The monitor is portable and uses a rechargeable battery so it doesn’t need to been installed and connected to a power source. After recharging for 8hours it will monitor for around 192 hours.

I finally installed the TPMS while we were staying in Santa Maria. It involved setting the pressure for each tire position in the monitor. Then screwing the sensor on each tire. I wanted to put some miles on the system before discussing my experience. Well we’ve gone from Santa Maria to Tucson and I love the system. I was able to check the pressure in each tire at any time in a few seconds. The Hawkshead Systems also reports tire temperature. During the testing I was able to see the tire pressure increase and to my surprise I saw the temperature raise also. The sunny side was much warmer than the shade side. In normal use you don’t need to check the tires, you just drive and if the system detects a problem it sounds an alarm.

Here is the sensor on the front tire of the motorhome.

Here is the monitor displaying the motorhome and the jeep tires. It can track up to 22 tires and pressure up to 140 pounds.

Campland on the Bay (San Diego, CA)

On Saturday, March 20th, we drove a few miles over to another RV park, Campland on the Bay.  It’s an old park well know and popular with RV’ers.  I took a few pictures but it’s not very photogenic. Kinda well worn and run down. The only advantage I saw over where we’re staying is its a lot quieter. Glad we’re not paying at least twice as much a night to stay here.

This is a water front site. The view includes about fifty yard of mud flat to the water’s edge. I guess the tide was out.

 

Balboa Park (San Diego, CA)

On Friday, March 19th, we went to check out Balboa Park. After parking we walked into an outdoor theater which turned out to be the Spreckels Organ Pavilion, featuring the world's largest outdoor pipe organ. They were reading children stories with the organ as an enhancement to the stories.

Much of the park's look and feel today is due to the development done for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition held here to commemorate the completion of the Panama Canal.

It was built using a highly ornamented Spanish Revival style, an eclectic mixture of Spanish and Latin American architecture which is richly ornamented as you see below.

 

Debbie and I were going to visit the Museum of Photographic Arts located in one of the building along El Prado, a long, wide promenade running through the center of the park.

 

We also dropped in to the Botanical Garden to take in their amazing Easter Lily Display.

After walking around Balboa Park we headed to Old Town and the Old Town Mexican Cafe. This is a wildly popular place and you have to get there early to beat the rush or in our case early for dinner and late for lunch. We were seated right away!

Inside to the left or right of the restaurant were women making the tortillas by hand on a huge and very hot griddle. Chips and salsa were brought to the table right away and our waitress brought us our drinks rather quickly. As we waited for our food, mariachis near another table were singing La Bamba and La Cucaracha. I tried the enchiladas which were amazingly delicious. The sauce was perfectly blended and went well with the pork inside the freshly made tortilla.

Tomorrow we’ll check out Campland on the Bay to see what that RV park looks like.

San Diego Zoo

Thursday the  18th Debbie and I went to the San Diego Zoo. The weather was clear and sunny and in the 70 degree range. We arrived a few minutes after they opened at 9am, ahead of the crowd.  We boarded the first tour bus and went on the tour which goes around the zoo.  After about forty-five minutes we were dropped off back at the entrance, crowd now in full bloom.  We now had an idea what we wanted to see and kind of which direction to go. I took about a million pictures but I won’t make you look through them in the blog.  We ended up at the far end of the zoo and were able to take a gondola ride back to go. Below we are coming in for a landing. 

The Zoo had an unadvertised special; Margaritas! Debbie is all smiles as she discovered the stand. We grabbed lunch in one of the “restaurants” eating outside under the umbrellas and watched parents trying to feed the kids and themselves. Times like this are when its good to be old enough to have grown kids.

After the zoo we drove out to Cabrillo National Monument. The view of San Diego and the harbor. Lots of sailboats.

 

Officers quarters and a modern light house on the point. Its good to be king.

 

Next we visit the zoo.

Santa Fe RV Park (San Diego)

Tuesday, March 16, 2010 we are parked in the Santa Fe RV Park for the week.  It’s an older park which means the navigating and parking is a little tight and about a third of the sites are occupied by permanent tenants.  It’s also one of those park with free Wi-Fi that apparently never works. We received several different excuses: “Oh, didn’t realize it wasn’t working”, “they were just working on it”, etc. I checked it each day and it never worked.  That wasn’t the only negative. The park is sandwiched in between I5 and Amway tracks. Not in the distance but right next to the park. Which makes it very noisy. On the positive side they honored our half price  club membership for the week. They had a clean pool and spa and the utilities all work as expected including the cable TV which was just a cable sticking up out of the bare dirt.

Narrow streets but plenty of room for Ty.

The freeway, I5 is just behind us. It’s elevated so we get the full effect.

Next we are going to the zoo, without kids!   2010 spring travel MAP  

 

 

Santa Maria Overnight

It is now Monday, March 15, 2010 and we are at the Santa Maria Elks for the night. Our original plan was to arrive Sunday and spend two nights. We had reservations for dinner in historic downtown Guadalupe at the Far Western Tavern. Debbie’s folks took us there a month ago and I had the best Rib Eye steak I have had in a long time. But we stayed in Morgan Hill an extra night so we could drive up to San Francisco and see the Tut exhibit with Blake, Stacey and Brad. Blake and Stacey gave us all tickets for Christmas and we were all going decide on a day we could all go together. We all planned to go the previous Sunday. Saturday night Debbie looked at the tickets. She had been telling me to look at them for a week. We discovered they were vouchers and needed to be converted to tickets. As luck would have it that Sunday was booked. Fortunately the following Sunday was available as was everyone else. We had a great time although Debbie and I thought the Tut exhibit thirty years ago was more comprehensive.

Anyway since the Far Western is closed on Monday we decided to go back to Alex’s BBQ in Shell beach. They have always had great ribs. Well its not so great any more. First there was no antipasto plate. When dinner arrived it came without the beans it used to have.  The ribs were just ok. It appears they had been boiled and then just placed briefly on the BBQ. We had to make due with paper napkins during and after the meal.  The napkins shredded and stuck to our hands and the sticky BBQ sauce. The waiter said they didn’t have any wipes. When I was done I went into the bathroom to wash my hands. Guess what, no paper towel!  It looks like Alex’s is in trouble and cutting costs. One thing for sure, we won’t be back to help them out.

The Santa Maria Elks have a very nice RV parking with 50 amp service. You can see Horizon peaking out under the Elk’s head and across the lawn.

I’m slowly catching up to the present. Soon I’ll be real time.

Tuesday morning we will be leaving here and arriving at San Diego.

MAP

We’re On Our Way (Morgan Hill, CA)

Finally with everyone’s teeth problems repaired or removed we are on our way. The first stop is a club outing in Morgan Hill just south of home.  It’s being held at the Coyote  RV Resort along Hwy 101.  Ty walks by our club placard.

Saturday a local winery provided wine tasting in the club house.

Horizon is snuggled in at Coyote RV Resort under a blue sky.

Eating is our favorite activity at outings and this one didn’t disappoint.

Next the 2nd leg of our trip; to Santa Maria.   Travel plan map HERE

Getting Ready (Concord, CA)

We had planned on leaving in February but unscheduled visits to the Dentist delayed us until March. Since we were already delayed we decided to stick around for the Caravaners March outing in Morgan Hill which is on Hwy 101 and on our way south.

Our  plans are to spend a week in San Diego then on to spend a week just south of Tucson in Green Valley where we’ll check in on Debbie’s folks who are spending the winter there.  From there we’ll head to Pahrump to check on our property. Blake and Stacey are planning on coming down during Easter vacation and we’ll show them around. Stacey is anxious to see Death Valley.  We’ll be hanging around to attend the Winnebago Southwest Regional Rally in Pahrump. Then we’ll head home where we are going to be celebrating my mom’s 90th birthday.

While we were hanging around we started to rearrange the side yard. Here it is in progress.

And here is the progress so far.

We really have a great location at the top of a hill with views front and back.  At it’s best when the rain turns the hills from gold to green.

 

Here is a look up the hill you can see a few horses the share the hill.

Look down the hill you can just see a curve of the county wide trail system.

Next we’re off. Next stop Morgan Hill.  Travel map HERE.

February Outing (Red Bluff, CA)

We went up to Durango RV Resort in Red Bluff for the February outing. A long drive from Concord, but a beautiful RV park. The park is fairly new. It has a large great room with big screen TV and comfortable leather furniture.

A lawn with fountains and paths runs down the middle of the Park.

A large pool in the back and a spa.

You can see Horizon just out side the pool fence. Fortunately no kids swimming this time of year so it was quiet.

Just north in Redding is the Sundial Bridge which crosses the Sacramento river and is also a work of art. Debbie and I went up and had look. Ops, I forgot the camera so I returned the next day to take these.

Next time we a look around the house before we hit the road.

Our route map is Here.

Busy December

NEW Follow our Route

Now you can see our route on Google Maps: Horizon Travel

Debbie’s mom is back on her feet and doing well so we are back home in Concord. We had a busy month.

Brad, number three son, had another birthday and we had a party.

Our club had a Christmas outing at The Lakes RV and Golf Course in Chowchilla. The hosts did a great job of decorating and feeding the group.

Debbie get a helping of ribs.

Now Blake, number two son, and his wife Stacey are over to open their Christmas presents early. They are going to be in Cancun for Christmas week and we wanted to make sure we had a chance to celebrate with them before they left.

Ty attacks a empty plastic bag from one of the presents.

And he folds it up cat style.

Then there was the water pump. I have noticed water accumulating off and on in the service compartment. I have tried to find a leak but had been unable to until now. It turns out the water pump seals had been leaking. Finally it stopped working entirely. I called around and the closest Camping World to us said they had two in stock. Debbie and I drove from Concord to Vacaville, about and hours drive. Unable to find one on the shelf I asked a sales person who after checking told me the two that show in inventory had been installed in MH on the lot. We then went to Alameda to a chandlery and found one there. After I replace the pump we discovered the old pump had been making a very different sound than the new one makes, so the old pump had been going out for over a year.

Now we’re on to the New Year’s Eve club outing and celebration.

We ate…

drank…

conversed…

We also played a game where everyone antes up a couple of bucks. Then roll dice and give a dollar, either to the person on you left of right or you keep it. At some point one person ends up with all the dollars. This time the last two were yours truly and a young six year old.

And the most skillful player won.