A Day to Repair and Rest

We got moving early this morning and drove into Bend marveling at the snow on the ground and how bright white the mountains looked against the clear sky. The door handle on the truck was frozen and let loose a shower of ice chips as I opened the door. We took the trailer in to Jerry's RV Repair, and they were able to quickly determine that our water heater element was burned out...usually this happens when you energize it with an empty tank. We just figured we screwed this one up for the first time in this trailer and were grateful to get it fixed so easily and quickly.

Billy installs the new element

The old element... totally blown

Painted rocks decorate the counter at Jerry's RV Repair

We needed to wait before we could check in to our new campground in Bend, so we tried to see the Newberry National Volcanic Monument, but it was closed for the season. There was a significant amount of snow in the road at the locked gate. We got gas and spent some time at the Starbucks in the Fred Meyer. It's difficult to just see what we want to around town when we have the R-Pod attached... parking is problematic and backing up is tough too. I wanted to stock up on a couple of food items (milk and croissants), since our next week will be in more isolated rural areas and in Death Valley National Park.

Our Fred Meyer stop turned out to be a highlight of the day. We spent some time getting to know Kathleen, who let us join her at one of the few tables near the Starbucks in the store. Chatting with people as we travel is one of the most fun aspects of our journey for me. We ate lunch in the same area (no parking lot moves) at the Bend Mongolian BBQ.

Spicy!

After lunch we moved the R-Pod to our new campground, the Crown Villas RV Resort, and our hot water was still stone cold. Some research by Russ online and one phone call to Billy later, we had disassembled our bed to reach the hot water system underneath it and found the valves controlling water flow into the hot water tank were in the wrong position. They probably got that way when the trailer was winterized and were never reset. In a way, I feel good about it; it means that we blew the element legit not our fault. A fair amount of testing later, and both the electric and propane water heating methods are working! I'm sorry I don't have any good photos of the process, but I was occupied with the effort and didn't pull out my phone for pictures.

We're relaxing tonight and eating in, then getting up early again to move south towards Winnemucca, NV.