I planned ALL the details for our Thanksgiving dinner from the grocery list to the timing for each step of the meal from start to finish.  If you don’t believe me, you can read about it in this blog post from last week.  With Brian starting his vacation on the Thursday before Thanksgiving and my wanting to keep his vacation time open for us to be able to adventure, I planned to cook our Thanksgiving dinner a week early.  We agreed that this would be a great way to start his vacation and would free up vacation time to eat leftovers and have fun.

On Monday morning, I grocery shopped, getting all the ingredients that we would need for our turkey dinner.  On Tuesday, I pushed to get my “normal” weekly tasks finished so I could focus the rest of my time on cooking.  I put Tuesday’s dinner in the oven.  I was thinking about whether I should start on my Thanksgiving task list when it happened.

The power in our motorhome started going a little haywire.  Lights were dimming in and out.  The inverter display said there was an overload.  A few seconds later, the oven stopped working.  We had lost AC power to our rig.   DC power (like our lights), fueled by our house battery bank, continued to work.  Brian went outside to see about resetting the breaker at the pedestal, where we plug in our power cord.  With no luck at the pedestal, I started thinking that the park we are staying in lost power.  A quick look outside to see street lamps lit indicated this wasn’t the issue.  My next guess was a problem with our pedestal.  I called the park office, and they sent someone over right away.  He confirmed outgoing power at the pedestal.  It looked like it was on the receiving end.  Fortunately, in addition to having batteries to run the DC power, we also have a generator to charge these batteries and to run the AC side of our house.  Through the roar of the generator running, I finished cooking our dinner, and together we looked for a solution to our latest issue with our motorhome. 

Brian’s 6:00 a.m. conference call was also a wake-up call for me to get up and get going on finding a solution.  Entegra Motorhomes customer service has proven to be an incredible resource for us despite buying a five-year-old used coach.  They walked me through several things to try.  As each thing we tried failed to resolve our issue, it became clear that the repair would be beyond our ability to fix things.  I scheduled a visit with a mobile repair service.  They would be out to replace our transfer switch on Wednesday or Thursday.  An issue with receiving the part delayed their arrival until Friday. 

Meanwhile, we’ve known that the life of our batteries would be nearing an end.  We just hoped to get a few more months out of them.  But battery life problems became clearer as we were living solely off our generator and the battery bank.  It was time to buy new batteries.  We decided to replace our battery bank with the same batteries that we were removing.  At least this would prevent us from having to spend additional money retrofitting battery trays, inverters, and all the other things tied to the batteries.  We picked up new batteries on Wednesday night, and instead of celebrating Thanksgiving on Thursday as planned, we spent the day working on our home.  Brian installed the new batteries.   I did some general maintenance on the bedroom ceiling fan, replaced batteries in our smoke detector, replaced the broken handles on the outdoor shower faucet, and learned about grooming Skipper from a mobile groomer that visited us as previously scheduled.

The mobile RV repair service arrived Friday morning.  They replaced the transfer switch as planned.  But the new transfer switch didn’t resolve our problem completely.  It seems that there was also an issue with the power supply reel.  With the request for additional repairs to be made, our extended service plan company requires an inspector to verify the issues.  Further repair was delayed until today (Monday) when the inspector came to take pictures and review the issues with the repair service.  With any luck, we will have power from the pedestal restored to our rig for Thanksgiving.  And we will be thankful — thankful for having a roof over our head, electrical power to fuel our rig, and quiet from the generator not running for hours on end.  And our home-cooked turkey dinner will wait.   

P.S. We will celebrate Thanksgiving. An announcement at the park where we are staying about a potluck dinner on Thanksgiving day will provide community to share our holiday with and allow me to use some of the fresh ingredients that I purchased for our dinner.  The rest, I will keep on hand for Christmas.  And the turkey dinner that I look forward to making once a year will be delicious eventually.  And with any luck, our motorhome will be problem-free for a long time to come.