The season we helped to build a house
We were leaving the Black Hills and headed for California. Along the way we would stop to see Ben’s family in Reno. Unknowingly, there was an event going on that his aunts, uncles, and Dad would be going to a the casinos called the Zombie crawl. We ended up staying a few more days in the town to hang out with his family and go to the event. We would also make a stop in Carson City to see his grandmother before heading to Placerville, where we would be staying the winter.
A year ago when we were in Kansas our friends had called saying that they were going to buy a piece of land and build a house to sell. Ben offered to help and so for almost a year, we had been planning to meet them there and we would all live on the property in our RVs while we built the house. We thought this was the perfect opportunity to learn about the house building process and some of the things we did not know about home ownership, as neither of us had owned our own home and we had been seriously considering getting off the road. The road to get to their property was quite a grade and as we headed up, we noticed the transmission temps getting too high. The road was narrow and winding with few opportunities to pull over and nowhere to turn around. We were driving slower trying to avoid hitting the roof of the RV on the trees and this did not help the truck in cooling itself down. What should have been a 45 minute drive, turned into well over two hours.
By chance, while we were there, we discovered that the Duramax Service Center was not far away. We knew that the truck needed some work and we thought we may be having some transmission issues, so we made an appointment to have it looked at and for an inspection. The inspection came back with a much longer list than we had expected but the transmission seemed to be okay. Knowing that the truck really needed some attention, we made an appointment to have a number of items on the list fixed by the shop. Ben would take care of some of the repairs and we would buy the parts from the shop and some of the things on the list would have to wait until the summer.
The house building plans had been delayed due to some hurtles and the the shop could not take the truck in until late January. We were doing what we could in the yard while the foundation was being poured and the initial plumbing taken care of. The weather was getting cooler and with the holidays coming, it was extending the timeline for progress on the house. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with our friends and then decided to head to the coast to visit with Ben’s family, get some projects on the truck done and celebrate Christmas. While we were there, we would get a phone call with an opportunity that would take us all over the country for the next year, we just had to determine if we could make it work financially and if we really wanted to stay on the road. This opportunity stemmed from that gig Ben had taken last minute in the Black Hills last season and we were coming to realize that the way we travel may be changing significantly.
By that time, we would be needed back for the house build. When we returned we were feeling much better about climbing the grade back to the property and more confident in the truck as we had replaced some of the transmission lines and the transmission cooler in the truck. As we climbed the grade, the transmission temps were much better than on the previous trip. We were very excited and we thought we were home free until we started to back the trailer onto the property. All of the sudden fluid started spewing out of the bottom of the truck. We stopped and popped the hood to find the power steering fluid was leaking out of somewhere. This was really bad because we only had a little bit to top it off and if we ran the system dry, not only would we loose the ability to steer and brake, we would also severely damage the components in the steering system that we had just replaced. We got the fifth wheel parked as quickly as we could, unhooked the truck and got it into a parked position. We were very worried that we had run the power-steering pump dry and once we found the problem, a loose hose on the hydrobooster, we agonized and tested the system for weeks trying to ensure there was no chewed up metal from the pump in the system.
Meanwhile Ben and I were working on cleaning up the yard and Ben was helping with what he could to build the house. We dropped the truck off to the shop and in a week they got through a long list of repairs. We were feeling good about getting back out on the road with the truck fixed.
After getting that phone call back in December, we thought we would be going on a year long trip to a bunch of different locations (8100 miles) for Ben to teach people how to drive RVs. Since then, we realized he probably did need a work camping job for the summer so we found a way to keep some of his teaching jobs and fit a work camping job in. One where one of the perks was use of the auto shop after hours and vehicle parts at cost. We thought this would be perfect since we still had some work that needed to be done on the truck and were hoping to get it done by summer.
Before we headed for his first gig in Mesquite, NV we had made plans to meet up with my Dad for a quick ski trip to Tahoe before we would be headed out on our big trip. It was February and the conditions were fantastic. I really enjoyed the time with my Dad and the feeling of getting back on my skis after a few years without skiing was exhilarating. I hadn’t realized how much I missed it. We would not get as much skiing in as we had hoped, as Tahoe would experience the biggest snow storm of the season during our visit which would shut down the roads and the resorts. It would also, complicate our departure from the area with snow delaying my Dad’s flight out and making our drive a little more tricky than we would like. However, we all got out of the snow safely and we started to make our way towards Mesquite.
