We are set up in the Woodland RV Park in Libby, MT. This is a beautiful part of the world with conifer forests stretching as far as we can see from our pretty spot among the trees in the park. The only drawback, and it really isn’t much of a drawback, is there are close BNSF tracks and long freight trains roll through at night tooting their horns when passing the local grade crossing. It must have been a real comedian that decided trains should blow two long whistles, a short whistle and another long blast each time the train crosses a road. Here in Libby, the geography is such that the blasts sound like they are coming from a tunnel. The echoes are impressive.
Despite being in this beautiful place, we needed to perform some maintenance on the trailer and accessories before we made any plans to go anywhere. Our power cord, possible source of our electrical failure in Monument Valley a while back, needed the business end of replaced because there was a substantial gap in the cable insulation and moisture could get into the assembly. Also, the rear right corner of the trailer has some trim issues that could allow moisture into the guts of the cheesy walls.
The cord male end got treatment first. We purchased a replacement male end in Helena a couple weeks ago and I set out all the tools I needed to fix it on our RV spot’s shaded picnic table. I figured I could fix it in about 15 minutes but an hour later I was still cursing away. By the time I finished, the table was in full sun. The cord issue was ultimately resolved and when we plugged it into the power supply there was no electrical crackling noises and our in-line surge protector LEDs indicated we had fixed it correctly.
Then the nasty part began. We bought our trailer used and we did not detect an issue with the back rear corner until after we were on the road. The lower portion of the flimsy outer shell of the trailer was separating and we were worried about it. There seems to be almost nothing solid to drive fasteners into in the corners of the box and so I was obliged to create a Rube Goldberg fubar to pin it together. Remarkably, it looks like I may have fixed it using some stainless steel bolts, long sheet metal screws and some caulk to re-seal the corners. I also smeared caulk on some other trim pieces on the trailer and, hopefully, we have excluded water from the interior of our traveling home.
As usual, my estimation of how long these repairs would take was way low and it was 5:00 PM before I was done with putting away the tools and cleaning up the trash. Figuring that it was too late to start any explorations at this point, we got drunk instead. I don’t know about Peg but I took a nice but short nap before waking up to watch Steven Colbert have his way with the Republicans who seem to be having a great time explaining the gaffes they have made during their weird Republican National Convention. Tonight, Donald Trump gave a speech that highlighted the depth of his ignorance. At one time he stated he was going to take drastic action, if he is elected, to protect the LBGTQ community from death by terrorists. He also shouted some blather about building a second wall, maybe taller, along our southern border to keep those pesky Mexicans in Mexico. I’m not sure another wall will work since the clever Mexicans have figured out a myriad of techniques to climb over, tunnel under or walk through the gaps in tough terrain where the existing sheet pile wall already stands.
There are no pictures today because nobody wants to see photos of a fat guy laying on his back working underneath a fifth wheel trailer or an old guy napping.