Friday, August 16 Through Saturday, August 17, 2019
The drive to Raton, NM was uneventful until the end when Apple Maps messed up the route. The route Apple Maps showed is below in red. Go south on Second Street. Turn right on Hart, then left into a narrow alleyway. The alley entrance was constrained by two telephone poles, one on either side of the entrance. We could have fit but barely. A larger RV would have gotten hung up on the telephone poles.
We continued on to State Street, turning right and then right again on Kearney. When we reached Second Street, we turned left and began looking for the KOA. We would have known not to turn on Hart had we been able to see the KOA signage hiding behind trees.
After checking into the Raton KOA Journey and pulling into the campsite, Linda took the dogs to the dog park and I unhitched the Jeep and leveled the truck. There was about a two inch left to right difference.
The dogs did like the dog park.
Looking for someone to fix the broken water heater, while Linda was checking in, she asked the clerk about mobile RV technicians. The clerk told her about mobile RV techs who worked out of Summerlan RV Park. We decided to drive over to Summerlan to talk face to face.
Unfortunately, the techs were booked until the following Monday afternoon. The schedule didn’t allow for spending the weekend in Raton. If we come to Raton again, this RV park looks like a good place to stay. Nice park with nice people running it. It is on I-25 and likely would be noisy.
Continuing the quest to solve the water heater problem, we stopped off at Records Hardware, the Raton ACE Hardware store. The cashier pointed us to the middle of isle 4 where the multimeters were located. The $35 tool would enable basic water heater troubleshooting.
Linda often believes that the most likely cause for failures is the last person to touch something. In this case, the last people to touch the camper were Princess Craft where the camper kitchen was remodeled. Her sincere belief on the cause of the water heater failure was a wiring problem caused by the remodeling work.
Basic troubleshooting with the multimeter proved that 12 Volt power was being delivered to the water heater whenever the gas and/or electric switches were on.
Normally, I would do my “I told you so” happy dance. However, we are both stressed out by the water heater failure. Linda keeps finding and contacting mobile techs and none are available. In the areas that we are traveling, we are at the height of their busy season. We have started contacting mobile techs in areas where we will be in a week. If we schedule in advance, we have a much better chance of getting on someone’s calendar. We still don’t have an appointment though.
This KOA’s bathhouse was clean but worn. It would benefit from an update. The showers were above average. The amount of private space in each shower made moving around easy. The water pressure through the shower head was excellent. One downer. Some inconsiderate patron used up all the hand soap in the shower. No hand soap after using the toilet is not OK.
Saturday morning we went to the nearest grocery.
Based on the store’s name, Super Save Discount Foods, one might assume old rusty cans and food past its good by date. Quite the opposite. This is one of the better small town grocery stores and has variety and national brands unusual in rural environments. Great place to buy groceries.
We were leaving for our next stop at 11:00 AM, right at checkout time.
Hope to see you on the road ahead!