MOTORHOME MAINTENANCE - 2016 Winnebago View Screen Door Latch - Compass - Spring Cleaning and BEAR!

RSV has stricken it's ugly head in our household. (Respiratory Syncytial Virus) 

Ten days ago I hauled Steve's butt into the ER because he was so sick and he said it's like nothing he's ever felt before. His blood pressure was up and he was feeling absolutely miserable. His head and chest were tight with congestion and he was having a hard time breathing in between gasps of coughing fits. After a myriad of tests, they came back with the results that he has RSV! The doctor said that it will get worse before it gets better. And that I should probably be prepared to come down with it too. It takes about 2 weeks to get past the worst of the symptoms and another two weeks to totally resolve. They really know what they were talking about.

Ugh is all I can say. 

We spent ten days in our jammies, eating soup and juice, dosing on vitamin C and D. Round the clock Mucinex for the mucus and night time/daytime cold meds as appropriate. Luckily, neither of us entered into the pneumonia phase.

So during these 10 days that we have been home and recuperating... This is some of the stuff that's been going on around us. Of course, prevents us from going camping! 

We had an awful ice storm roll on through. It coated all of our windows with sheets of ice. In a way, it was kind of pretty.

All of the tender young buds starting to come out on the trees were glazed and icy. Everything was coated and the smaller branches were snapping off. Huge branches were breaking off when the winds kicked up. Those are in danger of taking down power lines and causing real damage.

There were power outages all over Wisconsin. We were fortunate to not have anything happen here in our town. We did have our Bluetti power station ready as a backup power source. 

Fortunately, the next two days of weather after the storm were warm enough to melt off the ice. We didn't go anywhere, we weren't feeling good anyhow. So that storm came and went...

~~~~~~~~~~

~~~NOTE THIS LATCH REPLACEMENT TOOK PLACE BEFORE WE GOT SICK~~~

We mentioned in our last blog about our lever for the latch on the screen door had broken on our motorhome. The exact match of the new lever had arrived and we decided to take care of replacing the temporary one that we had on there.

It's a pretty specific lever that is made to catch the latch so both doors open together simultaneously. If the screen portion is closed, and the main door is now swung shut, this special latch will connect the two together. That way, the next time you go to open the door, the screen door will again open simultaneously. Otherwise you are opening and closing two separate doors... Get my drift? 

So we needed the exact one that would line up and work with what we already had. The temporary one would catch but it would not work in the simultaneous mode.

We had looked all over at every RV parts outlet as well as Amazon and E-trailer and Camping World.  Even the Winnebago factory did not have them in stock. I guess they've been discontinued everywhere? 

But we did manage to find one with an exact match!! It was at this place called "RV Go Parts"

link to: RV GO PARTS

We ordered it and had it shipped to a place we were stopping while on our vacation. Then we didn't end up stopping there, so it got forwarded with our children back to us from their trip through Oklahoma. 

Now that we had it in our hot little hands, it was time to replace it and put everything back to the way it should be.

In this photo you can see that the temporary lever went in an upwards motion, and the original lever went in a downwards motion.

Steve screwed the new lever into place. It's nice that they make slotted adjustable holes so you can adjust it to perfectly catch in the door jamb as needed. Too far and it would not unlock when you open the main door. Not far enough and it wouldn't catch at all.

He also adjusted the height of the latching device on the main door. Now it would catch perfectly each time as the main door swings shut.

TAHHH-DAHHHH!

He also restored our little barrel lock on the far right. With the temporary latch he had to remove our barrel lock to make more room on the door frame. Now he can put the barrel lock back where it was. 

We really like that particular modification and have added one on all of our RVs over the years. That sliding barrel lever allows us to add an extra sense of security when we have the main door open, but the screen door closed for fresh air within the motorhome. It also prevents any sassy little dog from leaping against the screen door and possibly popping it open!

We can just push the slider over to reach in and release it when we want to from the outside, but nobody else really knows it's there. 

From the inside, we can lock it if we are going to lay down and take a nap and we still want fresh air coming in through the screen door.

From the outside, we can just push the slider over and reach up inside and unlatch it. This is really great if we are out in the campsite, or maybe chatting with neighbors. 

The first time we ever installed one was after we had been sitting just a few campsites away with all of our friends and family at their campsite. It turns out some kids from the beach area had gone up into the campground and went from camper to camper, going inside of each one! (They later said they were looking for cigarettes or beer!!!!) One of our relatives saw them and chased them down back to their parents at the beach. The little criminals were like 10 or 12 years old and didn't seem too worried about getting caught.  And their parents didn't seem too concerned either. Geesh! We threatened to call the police, but they said their kids didn't take anything so "what of it"??? Then they packed up and left the beach.

Now--- back to the door:

Speaking of a sassy puppy possibly pushing open the door, we also added this fancy grill on the bottom portion of our screen door. Some of the RV grills available are just standard looking with a punched out metal grid. Not too pretty. But I really, really liked this one!

Believe it or not, we found it at Camping World. It was on sale too. I think you can find them in other RV places as well. I just thought they were a lot prettier than the standard extruded metal kind that you normally see. 

Another little thing we added to the motorhome this week was an actual compass. We had been using the digital one on my phone app, and it really isn't all that accurate. There are some times we want to know what direction we are facing when we are driving through and choosing campsites. We try to face our rig to the West if we can, so our passenger side with the refrigerator is facing to the north and out of the sun. Also our Starlink needs to face to the North so that's another reason to know what direction we are parking at --- and where we get a good open view of the sky.

Steve found this pretty one that attaches with a suction cup to the windshield. The only problem is we have accordion pleated shades that expand and retract across the windshield on slider rails. If we just stuck this compass with the suction cup, it would get in the way of the pleated shades.

There's no battery and no light on this compass, but it is made with a reflective quality to the bezel that kind of illuminates it just from daylight.

We looked around various spots to stick it. Finally we came up with the idea of attaching it right to the dash over on the driver's side. Steve can see it easily and we used a hunk of sticky gooey "nano tape" to fasten it right to the surface of the dash.

While we were out there in the motor home parked in the driveway, I decided that the motorhome needed a good cleaning up after our trip. I could smell faint reminiscent scent of campfires long passed. 

I removed all of the bedding and the quilts and even the throw pillows. Nick's little doggie bed went out for a trip through the washer and dryer as well.

The floors were pretty dirty, so I gave them a good sweeping. Then it was time to get out the Swiffer Wet Jet and really give the floors a scrub.  Even with just that small space, I used two pads and half a bottle of cleaner!! 

It smelled a lot better now.

Load by load, I finished up all of the quilts and sheets and blankets. Even all four of the throw pillows. Everything was done and fresh again.

Steve helped me carry it all out and make the bed. I hung up all of the newly washed towels in the bathroom, and reloaded the dish towels for the kitchen.  Now we are ready to roll as soon as the weather cooperates! 

In the meantime, we are content with just watching the wildlife in our own backyard.

These yearling youngsters are wandering around our neighborhood the past few weeks. Their mamas have kicked them away in preparation for having new fawns this spring. They don't quite know what to do, so they gather in our backyard and try lapping up all of the fallen bird seed, as well as nibbling off all the tender buds of our bushes, cedars, ivy and anything else they can find! We have fencing corraling all of our tender young trees and bushes and shrubbery.

Just about every evening, they wander in and hang out underneath our bird feeders. They lick up anything they find on the ground. Then they hop the fence to go next door and see if there's any apples on the ground underneath the neighbor's tree. They paw at the snow until they unearth any left over apples.

Nick enjoys watching them and is quite excited about their arrival each evening. He gives them a very sound scolding from behind the safety of our own glass windows or his fenced in potty yard. Of course, we would never let him chase after them because they would kick him in the head!

After that, this past week we have had torrential rain! It melted almost all of the snow. We did get a significant amount of ponding in our backyard, like we do every spring.

We glance out from time to time and see ducks floating around. Steve puts a pumping device out in the middle of the biggest pond and redirects the water to some of our underground drainage pipes.  From there, it flows out to the curb and gutter in front of the house.

He gets very busy moving the pump from place to place. He puts on his rubber boots and gets himself out there right in the puddles. He's kind of fanatical about it, and eventually he gets all of the water levels down and the yard dries out.

This is an every year occurrence because we are so low to the water table of Lake Michigan a half a mile away.

Because of the excess water in the yard, we get a variety of wildlife wandering on through. Some like the water, others try to avoid it and walk around it. There's generally a flock or two of turkeys that run between the nature preserve behind us, and cut through our yard to get to a field across the road.

Every year, a pair of sandhill cranes show up. They gracefully wade around our backyard, looking for goodies and dipping their heads down into the water from time to time. Not sure exactly what they are finding. But they are enjoying themselves. 

Every now and then they'll flap their wings up and down in their little mating ritual. They make the most god-awful racket of a squawking noise during the process. Then they disappear for a few weeks and then they come back later usually with a baby walking alongside of them. Did you know a baby sandhill crane is called a "colt"?

We really enjoy watching them carefully walking around through the water. They hang out for a while and then they move on either further into town, or back out through the nature preserve behind us. 

We are seeing a lot more bird activity, and a few nests are being reconstructed for the upcoming spring egg laying. This one is up in the crabapple tree, and we will probably see Mr and Mrs Robin tending the nest very soon.

A few of the huge pileated woodpeckers are back. They hang out poking in the holes of our decaying pine tree. So I'm assuming there are bugs in there. They also perch up here in the cottonwood tree and watch what's going on. They can gobble down a suet block in less than an hour. So we only put out one suet block a day. They chase all of the other birds away from it so they can gobble it up. These birds are so huge they are about the size of a chicken!!!

Various neighbors have been giving reports of movement on their security cameras. BEAR!!! So far he's only been in our yard once. He yanked the bird feeder down off the cable but didn't destroy it. Now we are taking the bird feeders in every night, and putting them back out in the morning.

I kind of feel sorry for him. The bears wake up and there's really nothing to eat in the woods. Nothing is growing yet. So they come into town and terrorize the houses looking for garbage or bird feeders to fill their tummies.

The thing is, they are getting too used to people and coming in to forage around when careless folks leave their trash out. We have even been getting warnings to not put out the city collection garbage bags until the morning of pickup. Some folks put them out the night before and that's an open invitation for a "bear buffet" up and down the street!


As the weather has warmed up, we had a nice family Easter gathering at our house. The Easter Bunny even made his appearance! (reluctantly)

So far this spring, in Wisconsin, we have had one nice day to come and sit out on the front porch. We enjoyed a little beverage after dinner and the sunshine streaming across the porch made us squint a bit in this photo.  This photo was taken 2 days before the RSV hit. First Steve, then me.

And thank you for all of you who have asked me about our dear friend Rosie. She is holding her own right now, but has been in and out of ICU several times. She is still hospitalized for the past three and a half weeks. We are hoping she will rally and gain strength and be home soon. All prayers are appreciated.

We sent her yellow tulips for friendship,

and they brightened her day.

Here's the video that goes along with portions of today's blog:

Please stay tuned and hold on tight until we get out camping again. In the meantime, we have a couple household projects we're going to work on. 

Day 3 - WINTER GETAWAY - Into Arkansas and Stop For SEVEN days!

It would have been nice to stay at Hawn State Park in Missouri, but they had cold weather scheduled for the next 3 or 4 days.  We decided it was best to pull up stakes and head on further south. This time we took back roads and enjoyed some more of the scenery. We are really not "interstate type" people. We needed to work our way down into the next state of Arkansas. It took a little longer with the back roads, but we really enjoyed ourselves. 

We crossed into Arkansas at 1:15 p.m.

We fueled up at $3.49 a gallon for diesel and our fuel mileage was much better this day at 12.5 miles per gallon then the previous day dealing with all the headwinds. 

The terrain suddenly changed from the hilly pine studded Ozarks into some flat flat land again. We were crossing agriculture areas with many viaducts for drainage as well as probably irrigation water in the summer. Some of the fields appeared to have grown cotton because there was some around the edges. Some of it was snow, but there were actual cotton bolls clinging to the spindly stick plants.

Either they just had a lot of rain, or this is from the melting snow from the week before. Many of the fields were flooded and not ready for spring planting, for sure.

We didn't bother to make a breakfast this morning, instead we have learned that we like drinking these protein drinks. The vanilla is my favorite flavor. To me the chocolate tastes like fake malted milk balls, and the strawberry reminds me of the Nestle Quik mix when we were kids. We would heap spoonfuls of that into milk. Ugh.

We worked our way along back roads and rural country highways. We zigged and zagged a bit but that was okay. We didn't need to do a direct straight line. We kind of knew where we were going and where we wanted to end up for the night. 

We called ahead to Craighead Forest County Park in Jonesboro, Arkansas. We left a message on the voicemail that we would be pulling in and we were hoping to get one of our favorite sites, either 39 or 41. We had stayed here 2 years ago and enjoyed it so much that we even stayed an extra week! 

Here's the deal. You can get a site with electric and water for only $25 a night. But... If you are a senior citizen, you get it for only $15 a night! Then the icing on the cake is if you pay for 6 nights, you get the 7th night free!!!! 

This is a lovely park on the south end of town. It's huge! It has all different areas of various activities each situated on a different peninsula that juts out into the large pond / lake in the middle of the park. One Peninsula has camping, one Peninsula has picnicking, one Peninsula has sports like baseball diamond and soccer fields, one has children's playground equipment etc. --- you get the idea. Here is an overview map:

There's even a section for dogs to do dock diving into the water! And then a fenced off area around there so your dog doesn't keep swimming out into the lake. LOL 

Around the edges of the park are other activities such as horseback riding, ATV riding, and mountain bike trails that crisscross all throughout the park. 

There are paved bicycle paths that are along a fitness trail that rings the entire lake. At various stops there is gym equipment to use to gauge your cardio workout as you go along the trails. There are walking paths that twist along the shoreline as well as deep into the woods. 

There's just about something for everybody here!

Here is a link to their website:

https://www.jonesboroar.gov/197/Craighead-Forest-Park

Here is a link to my blog post where I reviewed the campground and all of the facilities from 2 years ago:

https://kareninthewoods-kareninthewoods.blogspot.com/2024/02/campground-review-craighead-forest.html?m=1

Now that we are past all that information, we will get back to us in real time.  

We pulled in and spoke to the wonderful hosts Carron and Martin. They put us up on our favorite site number 39. We can pull into the site nose first and still leave our trailer attached. It is our "garage" with all of our gear and our bicycles. Of course, we took up the deal for only $15 a night for seniors, and paid for six nights to get the seventh night free. That comes out to $12.85 a night. Pretty good deal for electric and water (dump station nearby).

Yay!!! Seven nights to relax in one spot, and not be packing up and heading down the road each day. We pulled in nose first to take advantage of the beautiful views from all three sides of our motorhome. 

There were a few crusty spots of snow here and there, but the temperature was reaching up to 70°. Yep you heard me, 70°!!! 

We opened up the windows and let all of the fresh air in. In no time at all we were set up on our campsite and relaxing for the rest of the afternoon.

Steve said it was time for a little reward, and he grabbed his adult beverage to imbibe a bit. He deserves it after all of his driving. I just do the navigating. This sure looks like a guy who is relaxing, doesn't it?

I opted to pull off my socks and go barefoot. Yep! Barefoot in February. You sure can tell we are from Wisconsin. People around us are bundled up with heavy jackets and hats and sweaters. But not us...  

Nick joined me on the bed to stretch out a little bit and relax, while he looked out the windows at the ducks and the geese and the swans out on the lake.

We had one little mishap with the windy conditions the day before with our screen door. There's this crazy little plastic latch handle that cracked. It's a handle that not only can release the screen door to get in and out, it also holds the screen door tightly fastened to the main door as you open or shut it. That way both doors stay together...

Well, at one point the wind grabbed the door out of Steve's hand and this little plastic handle snapped right off. Bummer!

With Steve being Steve, you should know he's going to attempt to fix it. So he took out his drill and his tiniest drill bit. He very carefully drilled the hole in one side and then very carefully drilled one on the corresponding other side. Now he cut a piece of heavy duty paper clip to snip off a 1-inch section to go in between the two.  

All we needed was some super glue... But guess what? When I removed anything last Fall that could freeze, I happened to take our Gorilla super glue out of our bin of supplies. That was one thing that I really didn't think of to put back in before this trip. Oh bummer! Now we will have to wait until we can get some glue to finish his repair project. Sorry Steve, I goofed up. 

But it's okay, we also have this barrel catch we had installed on the inside of our screen door last year. It can hold the screen door closed when we have the main door open. It will do for now, it just does not bind the screen door to the main door to be swung in unison. 

The barrel catch is there for a very good reason. We put it there because it can keep the dog from ever accidentally pushing on the screen door and popping it open. Also we can leave the screen door shut and latched if we lay down to take a nap and we want fresh air blowing through the motorhome. 

It is easily accessible from the outside by sliding the little black slider access door and reaching in to latch or unlatch the barrel catch. See? It doesn't even keep Steve out.

The more I thought of it, I'm thinking his glue idea will probably work. But let's hedge the bet and go ahead and look about ordering a new latching handle. I looked around online and there are plenty of plastic ones of all various models and styles. None of them were the exact same match. But I did happen to find one that was made out of metal! Can you believe it? It may not be exactly the right fit, although the measurements look pretty close. I'm sure we can kind of adapt what we have and what comes along with this new one. 

This is the first time I've ever attempted to order from Amazon and have it delivered to either a box or a counter store. When the item arrives, they hold it for you until you get there in 7 days at the counter store. If I was able to have it shipped to a box you only have 3 days to pick it up. (Remember, we are here for 7 days).

It shipped quickly overnight and was already in Jonesboro at the counter at a phone store for pickup the very next day. We may attempt to ride our bicycles there to pick it up today. It's only 3 miles away but there are a lot of busy roads to cross or ride along the edge. We are more of the "quiet side road type" bicycle people. We're looking at Google maps to see what we can find and maybe we'll work out an alternate route to get there. Otherwise, we can pick it up in 7 days when we leave the park. 

In the meantime, we will enjoy this beautiful view from the windows and the sunshine and the warm temperatures. We might get some rain tomorrow. But that's okay, it will melt the rest of the snow and it will be perfectly fine to curl up inside and catch up on a couple videos and blogs.

Even though we are here for 7 days, 

I will try to write a blog each day

 and make it as interesting as I can.

Here's the YouTube that goes along with today's blog:

189 miles travel today 

 764 miles so far