Posts featuring the coach.
Just a few random pictures today.
Here’s me sitting outside at our campsite, working on my laptop:
A recent addition: a little table with drink and device holders, that clips on to the zero-gravity chair:
Paladin sitting on the pull-out counter of our kitchen:
Paladin sitting in a foam box from some packaging:
Sleeping in a cardboard bed on the coach dash:
Our first RV park in California was Heritage RV Park in Corning:
Heritage RV Park map; it’s a fairly small park, with somewhat tight spaces, but nice and quiet, compared to several previous places:
Info:
Our coach and truck in our campsite:
The campground has a pool, though it’s now closed for the season:
Bocce ball… decorated as graveyards for Halloween:
An RV storage shelter made of solar panels; a clever idea:
The street outside the park has several eating options, though we didn’t partake of any of them other than the Olive Pit cafe, and Starbucks for breakfast one morning:
Weirdly, the park is through a strip mall:
The RV park had several empty sites throughout our stay (you can see our coach in the middle):
This was the first time (other than at our homestead) that we used our outdoor rug; previous sites had grass, so we couldn’t use it:
A couple of bonus pictures of Paladin:
Another bonus: Corning is known for growing olives, and has a roadside attraction of a giant green olive:
A timelapse of the coach going from Valley of the Rogue State Park in Gold Hill, Oregon to Heritage RV Park in Corning, California.
Watch out for fun hills, the California border, the border inspection station, and fueling and weighing at Love’s, plus the campgrounds at either end.
(Not fast enough? Use YouTube’s speed controls to play the video at 2x speed.)
After fueling up at Love’s, we weighed our coach and truck on a CAT scale there:
Here’s the report via their handy app:
These weights are within the acceptable ranges for this coach; the front axle rating is 16,000 lb, and the rear is 24,000 lb. This was weighing it fully loaded with our stuff, a full tank of diesel (150 gallons), 5% fresh water, and empty grey and black tanks.
I found this advice on the tire pressures:
Here’s the formulas:
Front axle weight/2 X 1.05 = Weight to look up in single wheel chart. Add 5 psi for your final inflation pressure.
Rear axle weight/2 x1.05 = Weight to look up in dual wheel chart. Add 5 psi for final pressure.
The 1.05 is used to estimate side to side weight differences that you will see when you do individual wheel weights.
And finally, do not inflate a tire less that 80% of the max side wall pressure.
So for us, our front axle weight (14,980 lb on 2021-10-29) / 2 (for each side) * 1.05 (to offset side-to-side differences) = 7,864.5 lb (for weight table).
Front tires are Michelin 315/80R22.5, rated max load 9,090 lb (for single) at max 130 psi cold, so table says 110 – 115 psi; should go with higher.
So front tires should be at least 115 psi for us. A bit higher (less than 130) is okay, but gives rougher ride.
Rear axle weight (23,220 lb on 2021-10-29) / 2 (for each side) * 1.05 (to offset side-to-side differences) = 12,190.5 lb (for weight table).
Rear tires are also Michelin 315/80R22.5, rated max load 8,270 lb (for dual) at max 130 psi cold, so table says 90 – 95 psi. But 80% of the max pressure of 130 psi is 104 psi, so that should be the minimum.
So rear tires should be at least 105 psi for us. Though when I posted about this in the iRV2 forums to check my math, there was some skepticism about the 80% rule. Still, 95 to 105 psi is within an acceptable range.
According to the tire pressure monitor, the coach tires are all currently around 115 psi, which is perfect for the front ones, and a little high for the rear, but still good:
Time to move again; we departed Valley of the Rogue State Park in Gold Hill, Oregon, and headed down I-5 into northern California, to our next stop, at Heritage RV Park in Corning, California.
Here’s a map of our route to this point, via RV Trip Wizard; we bought our coach in Kennewick, WA, and took it back to our homestead in the Portland region, then up to Mom’s place and Poulsbo RV near Seattle, then headed south via Chehalis, McMinnville, Gold Hill, and into northern California:
A closer look at a map of this leg; a 4.5 hour drive in our coach. I’ll try to remember to include a map like this for all subsequent travel days:
This was Paladin’s second journey in the coach. He didn’t seem quite as freaked out this time, though still not entirely comfortable with the experience. He spent much of the trip on the kitchen counter, where he could see out the windows from a safe space:
We always like to see and identify other motorhomes, especially other Tiffin Allegro Bus models; this one in front of us is a few years newer than ours:
Paladin:
Watching out a window:
Freeway views:
Paladin:
He ventured by my chair, experiencing the step cover:
There were a bunch of hills on this journey; here’s the Siskiyou Mountain summit:
Nice views:
Goodbye Oregon; the sign says “Oregon thanks you; come back soon”. Oregon is our domicile; we will be back, in a few months time:
Hello California; the sign says “Welcome to California”:
Agricultural inspection station; no hassle, they just asked if we have any plants or fruits, which we didn’t:
Scenic:
A stop at a Mount Shasta viewpoint for lunch:
Truck and coach at the viewpoint, with a glimpse of Shasta in the background:
Mount Shasta:
Low water level in Shasta Lake:
Paladin:
Fuel stop; we love Love’s truck stops, even easier now that we have a discount fuel card (perhaps a topic for a future post?):
Our site in the Valley of the Rogue campground had electricity and water hookups, but no sewer. So we had to be a little careful with water usage. Not as much as in the trailer in Yellowstone, as our coach has fairly large tanks (50 gallons black, 70 gallons grey, plus 90 gallons fresh water). The black tank is for our two toilets, and the grey tank is for our sinks, shower, dishwasher, and clothes washer.
We didn’t do any laundry during the week, as the washing machine uses the most water. We did run the dishwasher a couple of times, on the “eco” setting, as it doesn’t use all that much. And we went a couple of days between showers, and did them “navy” style, where we get wet, turn off the water, lather up, then rinse off.
As it happened, we didn’t need to be quite so careful, as we ended the week with only 67% of our grey tank used, and 79% of our black tank. But for the first time without a sewer hookup in this coach, we wanted to err on the cautious side:
To avoid hauling that waste water to our next campground, we stopped at the dump station on the way out:
While at the Valley of the Rogue State Park in southern Oregon, I flew my drone above the campsite. In part because it’s a fun thing to do, but also for a practical reason: to check the roof and slide toppers for branches, since we were parked amongst trees.
Here’s our campsite, with our coach and truck:
From higher up:
From this height, you can see most of the campground loop (and nice fall foliage):
A little higher to see the whole loop; not quite as bright, as starting to get into clouds (this was at just below the legal height limit for a drone):
Tilting upwards, a view of the Rogue River and the next-door campground loops, which are being used for FEMA trailers from last year’s wildfires:
Looking to the left:
The campground is right next to the I-5 freeway (as seen from the base of cloud level), which was a bit noisy at night:
Heading back down again:
Views of our coach roof, showing all the leaves. This was also my first look at our two extra solar panels, installed by Poulsbo RV:
I was particularly interested in the slide toppers, to make sure no branches were going to damage them. Though we don’t have a ladder, so it would have been difficult to remove them if there had been any:
I did fly my drone low over the toppers, which blew off most of the leaves. You can see me flying by looking at the screen:
One of the known issues with our coach when we bought it was a few of the vanity lights were not working. We asked Poulsbo RV to replace them when they did some work on the coach. They did replace a few, but missed others that were not working or intermittently flashing rather annoyingly.
So I replaced the remaining ones myself.
Firstly I looked at one they replaced, to check the polarity of the wires, since the replacement lights just have unmarked white wires… and I believe polarity matters with DC wiring. In this picture of a couple of vanity lights in the rear bathroom, the left light is an original broken one, and the right is one they replaced:
I then replaced that left one above, plus four under-cabinet lights in the kitchen. Here are a couple of the kitchen lights before replacement:
Replaced lights:
All better:
Replaced lights on the left side:
Re-attached, without the covers:
Works:
All done, with covers in place:
Electrical stuff is new to me, but being able to do it myself saves time and money. It’s good to learn new skills.
A very welcome upgrade that we recently did to our coach was to replace the main control panel in the bedroom hallway.
The old control panel that came with the coach was fine, but the mode buttons on the sides required a very firm press, and the grayscale screen looked a bit dated, and was hard to read in bright light:
Fortunately the manufacturer, Spyder Controls, now offers an updated panel for several Tiffin models, including ours.
It was an easy operation to replace it. I removed the old panel, unplugged its network cable, attached the new panel’s mount, plugged in the new panel, and snapped it in place. Here’s the new mount and the data cable:
The upgraded control panel installed; so much nicer:
A tour of the various screens of the panel, starting with the home screen, which shows the fresh, grey, and black water tank levels, the house and chassis battery levels, buttons to turn on or off the water pump, all lights, diesel or electric water heating, panel lights, and the backlight, plus mode buttons along the bottom:
Main lights screen, to turn on or off various lights in the living area, plus the lights master, that turns them all off or on (returning them to the state when last on):
Exterior lights screen:
Rear lights screen, for the bedroom, mid bath, rear bath, and bedroom ceiling fan:
Slides screen, for the bedroom slides; the front slides are controlled by switches on the driver and passenger chairs (it’s nice that it shows the floor plan, too):
Climate screen, with under-floor heating in the front and rear, plus the Aqua-Hot water heater, that can run off diesel for continuous hot water, electric for a smaller amount of hot water, and engine pre-heat for really cold days:
Locks screen, to lock or unlock the front door or basement doors:
Power screen, for the water pump, engine preheat, and generator:
Fans screen, to start or stop the ceiling fans and open or close their lids:
Shades and lifts screen, to open or close all of the living room shades, and raise or lower the living room TV and bed:
Individual shades screen, with separate controls for each of the living room shades:
Settings screen:
Screen settings screen:
Color scheme screen:
Diagnostics screen:
As you may have seen in the timelapse video, our next stop after McMinnville was Valley of the Rogue State Park near Gold Hill, Oregon.
This was our first state park, and quite a pleasant place, too. The campsite was much larger than in most private campgrounds, with lots of trees around, and a path by the Rogue River.
The only downside was that while most of the sites in this campground have full hookups, our site didn’t have sewer. So we had to watch our water usage, to avoid having to move the coach to dump the tanks. We made it, though!
Here’s our truck and coach in our campsite:
Campsite from below:
Campground info:
We were in B loop, in site B33. The inner C loop was closed, so we had even fewer neighbors than we would have in peak season:
Open space:
Rogue River:
Some barely visible ducks:
Rapids:
Riverside viewing platform:
Info signs:
