Distractions

Our Summer plans are disintegrating before our eyes.

We made the drive from Gunnison to Monument, on one of our worst travel days ever, to learn the news from a highly recommended technician that our AC system has a refrigerant leak. The leak, so we've been told, is the result of a shoddy repair in Forest City. But, we're reserving judgement on that, for the moment anyway.

One of the things we've learned about AC units and technicians is there are a few who do refrigerant work and most who don't. And, as luck would have it, our Monument tech was amongst the most. With a refrigerant leak, we needed to find somebody who does that type of work. With the help of our AC unit manufacturer, we found a qualified tech in Loveland, just a few miles from where our Summer Colorado adventure began in Fort Collins. Last week, we called for an appointment.

The earliest we could get in was next Monday, the 23rd. Our travel itinerary had us in northwest Montana meeting friends about that time. But, it's Summer and it's blistering hot, especially in most of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. For the health and well being of ourselves and our cats, we have to get this thing fixed. So, we took it.

The repair is expected to take two days, and that's if everything goes smoothly. With our luck, of course, it'll take longer. So, with plans to meet another couple of friends a week later in Montana, we bagged that reservation, too.

Wahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After a couple of nights in a really overpriced and quite crummy campground north of Monument, we decided to head somewhere fun while we waited. We went south to Colorado Springs and landed at Garden of the Gods Campground. We had stopped for a few days here last August after we left Gunnison. We had AC troubles then, too. So, we were thrilled to nab one of the shady spots in the iffy park. Since our last visit, the place has been purchased by a resort company with a dandy reputation. And, reports were they'd already made some notable improvements in their newly acquired park.

We nabbed one of the "Executive Premium" spots for the first few days. We enjoyed a level site with shade, plenty of space, a poolside view, wifi and cable. It was quite nice. The one drawback was this park seems to be in one of AT&T Wireless' black holes. Our iphones and air card were rendered worthless.

As soon as we realized we had considerable time to kill before our service appointment, we made a request to extend our stay. Our fancy site was not available after Sunday night. But, we were welcome to move to a "regular" back-in site for the duration of our extended stay. We made the short move Monday morning. We were pleased to find that the site had plenty of shade, which would aid our crippled AC. The real bummer was the site had no cable. The shady tree blocked our rooftop satellite. And, the park wifi decided to take a nose dive. With no TV or wifi, we were disconnected from the world.

We put up our over-the-air TV antenna and did our best. We tried to get by. Really, we did. But, the truth is, we need to be connected! So, yesterday, we decided to take matters into our own hands.

Our first stop was Camping World. We had thought about making this purchase for awhile, but we decided now was the time for us to acquire a portable satellite dish and tripod. We brought the thing home and Paul started on the "some assembly required."

It's important to note that all that has been required of us to get satellite reception to date is to park the moose with a clear shot at the southern sky and push a button. Magically, our rooftop antenna searches the sky for the right satellite and locks on. We turn on the TV and it works. Simple as that.

This portable dish exposed us to an unknown world! Suddenly, terms like Elevation and Azimuth were important. And, we didn't have a clue.

But, first, we had to connect the dish to our receiver. That was the beginning of one long wild goose chase! There's a convenient "portable satellite antenna" jack in our electrical bay. The question was where were we supposed to connect our satellite receiver? Two calls to Winnebago and an extensive search of the guts of our motorhome eventually revealed that the other end of the portable satellite antenna cable was plugged into a mislabeled jack. (Arggh!)

In the middle of this adventure, we decided we needed to rectify our wifi-less situation. So, today, we made a trip to the Verizon store and purchased a 4G mifi device to replace our aged 3G router and AT&T air card. With smoking hot wifi returned to our rolling home, we conducted extensive online research on how to point a satellite antenna. Lots of people do it, every day, so we knew we'd get it, eventually. But, we had the added challenge of a stone wall and a few trees. It wasn't the best environment for a couple of portable satellite newbies to take a shot, but we stuck with it. With the help of a nifty app, several you tube videos and a helluva lot of patience, we eventually got it. Our signal finder screen filled up with numbers over the 80s, and we had TV!

Hallelujah!

With wifi and TV, all is right with our world. But, what we're most grateful for is how these two special projects have been most welcome distractions from our ailing AC.

All will be well in our rolling home soon. Meanwhile, we're soaking up all of the wifi and satellite we can!

And, we haven't a clue how the rest of our Summer will actually shape up.