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Boise to Ely, NV
2008.03.16
Ian takes his position for the trip.
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Ian takes his position for the trip.
1
The Jeep tires are pumped up to 40 psi to roll easier and keep the wear to the middle. Usually I keep the pressure between 20-26 psi. The Jeep is really on it's toes.
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The Jeep tires are pumped up to 40 psi to roll easier and keep the wear to the middle. Usually I keep the pressure between 20-26 psi. The Jeep is really on it's toes.
2
Ready to roll.
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Ready to roll.
3
Ian and dinner on the road.
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Ian and dinner on the road.
4
The towed brake system.
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The towed brake system.
5
The breakaway switch. Could this be the source of the false signals?
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The breakaway switch. Could this be the source of the false signals?
6
The tow connection.
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The tow connection.
7
The toad.
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The toad.
8
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First leg of this trip, Boise to Ely, Nevada. 441 miles. We passed through Wells, NV on the way here and I'm wishing I had topped off the gas tank there as gas there was $3.17 a gallon... about 30 cents a gallon less than in Ely. I've kept the speed way down with the motorhome this trip, setting the speed control at 65 mph. We are the slowest thing on the road but the mpg rating is somewhere around 7, which is really good for this motorhome with the car in tow behind it. My normal balls-to-the-wall speed habits would have us at about 5.5 mpg. With gas approaching $4 a gallon and the amount of driving we have to do in the next 3 months, I'm backing off the gas pedal a bit and have pumped the Jeep tires up to 40 psi when towing.
We had a good start yesterday until we just passed Mountain Home, ID (about 75 miles out) when we discovered our passports had been forgotten at home. We circled back and parked the motorhome in Mountain Home, jumped in the Jeep and made the round trip back home. We lost about a half day, but still managed to get to Ely by the end of the day.
Between Wells and Ely we got a message from the towed brake system that the emergency breakaway system had been activated, which would normally mean the Jeep had detached from the motorhome and was now hurtling down the freeway on it's own. A check on the rear camera showed it was still there and we had not felt the brakes activated. We stopped and had dinner while I reset the system and checked everything. My guess is it's a bad breakaway switch causing the message. Since then we have seen the message come up a couple times with all the related whooping and ringing of audible alarms. We just hit the ignore button for now and drive on.
We've seen a fair amount of snow falling but the roads are mostly clear. Ely is cold and the furnace is running non-stop. We're mostly packed for Mexico weather, so we'll be glad to get closer to sea level and further south.
Note: We started the trip on Saturday the 15th, so we pulled into Ely on the evening of the 15th. We'll be in Las Vegas the evening of the 16th and Anehiem, CA the evening of the 17th. I'll get back on track here on the 17th.
