Change of Plans!

We were planning to leave Saturday for the Jojoba Hills Escapees RV park in Aguanga, CA, but they close early on Saturdays...we didn't want to pressure ourselves into having to leave at 5:30 in the morning to get there in time with having to fuel up.....so now we are waiting till Monday to go....
More time to explore!  BUT--it's going to be in the mid 90's this weekend...phooey! I would say that would be pool time, but when the pool feels like bath water, it's not very refreshing! I used to be a competitive swimmer, so I prefer cooler water to swim in...maybe we'll go find a lake somewhere, or head to the mountains, you never know! Canyon Lake, anyone?

This morning we tried to install our Tire Traker tire pressure monitoring system. What the heck is that and why the heck do we need it, you ask? Well, have you ever seen photos of motor home tires that blew up on the highway or a tow car tire that blew or got punctured? The amount of damage that would be incurred before you'd have a clue there was a problem is HUGE! I've been really worried about our Honda CRV having a tire go flat or run over something..you could go MILES before you might know there was problem, by then the damage to the wheel rim and undercarriage of the car or motorhome would be thousands of dollars for repairs. By having a tire pressure monitoring system, you have a baseline tire pressure on a monitor right on the dash. An alarm goes off if the tire pressure drops below a certain point...There are a couple of them out there, the most well known is probably the Pressure Pro tire system...but it does not have replaceable batteries. When the battery for the sensor dies for that particular system, you have to buy new sensors at fifty bucks a pop. When the battery dies on the Tire Traker system, you can replace just the watch style batteries. At any rate, we researched both of them and decided to go with the Tire Traker system.

sensor on the car tire

The manual was a little confusing, at least to us. We tried reading both the "quick start" manual and the full manual, but after pressing buttons one too many times, we were in the wrong "mode" and the unit wasn't giving us the information we needed. I usually jump right in and start pushing buttons before reading everything first, but that's because all those written instructions were confusing. So we REALLY had the unit bollixed up! (Isn't that a great word--bollixed?  The WORD even sounds confusing.) I decided to call the company, and I sure am glad I did! The gentleman (Larry?) walked me through the entire procedure, straightening me and the monitor out. Within a matter of minutes, we had the motor home and the car all integrated and info coming into the monitor--all tires except for one inner rear tire on the motor home. We apparently have one valve stem that is sticking when you go to insert and screw on the sensor. Air kept coming OUT when it should have shut off once the sensor was fully screwed into the valve stem. Wouldn't you know, that's one tire where we really need the sensor to work. We'll have to have the valve stem looked at  in the near future to see what's wrong. We tried screwing two different sensors in the valve stem and both continued to let air escape, so we're pretty sure it's the extended valve stem on the tire itself. We'll have to wait to get to a tire shop to see about having that valve stem replaced. For now, we'll check it often as we stop and refuel.

motor home tire sensor

So, the tires are all set except for that one inside rear on the motor home....We'll see you on packing and cleanup day Sunday...last day at Palm Creek is tomorrow......(sniff, sniff!) I'm actually going to miss this place in a way....it's started to feel like home..guess it took us that long (a month and a half) to have it feel like our home......