20250404 Electrical Gremlins and Yard Work

20250404 Gremlins and Yard Work

Gremlins lurk here.

It was a comfortable night in Los Altos.  After having his morning coffee, Ben got to work figuring out why there was no power to the RV.  He had plugged into a heavy 50A 240V cord that had previously been used to charge Eileen and Tony’s electric vehicles, but that had been disconnected when they had a new Tesla wall charger directly wired into the garage.  So Ben coiled up and put that cord away, and plugged into a 20A 120v outlet in the garage shared with a sprinkler timer.  That solved getting power to the RV, which wasn’t absolutely necessary since there had been plenty of sunshine to keep our batteries charged with solar, but it does preserve our LP supply not to have to use it to run the furnace overnight or to cook with.

Janet got to work picking up a lot of pine, palm and other yard litter, as well as weeding the front yard and driveway.  The organic recycling bin had just been emptied before we set up the RV in the driveway, and Janet managed to fill an entire 52gal bin with debris she had cleaned up.  She also noticed that Eileen’s boys were working on some sort of electrical project in the kitchen.  Since Ben has had experience with wiring in our own house projects and remodels, he went to investigate.  

Eileen had several items that were needing to get fixed.  The first was that several undercounted lights were out.  Her boys had disassembled one of the fixtures and they were puzzling over why it wasn’t working.  They were trying to upgrade by replacing the small fluorescent tubes with LEDs, but couldn’t figure out why one wasn’t turning on.  Ben determined the problem was a worn-out starter. 

There was also a GFCI receptacle on one wall that was dead, and half the outlets around the kitchen were also not working.  After pulling the GFCI partially out of the wall to check with a voltmeter, the circuit supplying it was not energized.  

Eileen’s house is quite old, with part of the electrical system dating to the 1960s.  The service panels are situated outside the house with one from the 1960's and a newer one dating to the 1980's.  Unfortunately, none of the circuits on the older panel were labeled, and on a newer panel on an addition to the back of the house, only a handful of circuits were labeled, with more than half of the label missing altogether.  So Ben sent the boys to Home Depot to buy replacement fluorescent starters matching the ones removed from the undercounted fixtures, a replacement GFCI outlet since these often do wear out and fail, and an inductive circuit tracer to find the faulty circuit.  

CSI Los Altos team with new circuit tracer

We then had to test each outlet in the house and find the circuit on the circuit breaker panels to map out what was wired to what circuits.  Unfortunately, because the circuit tracer can only feed signal back to the breakers on energized circuits, the tester couldn’t tell which circuit was feeding the dead GFCI.  That was a lot of work with Eileen and Coby inside the house and Ben and Brevan outside at the breaker panels communicating by phone.  Once the mapping was done, we treated ourselves to lunch at In-N-Out Burgers.  

Even after mapping out all the outlets in the house, there were inexplicably dozens of circuits that didn’t correlate with any outlets.  Now some are likely directly wired appliances like the ovens, but that still left at least a dozen suspect circuits.  Direct inspection revealed a 30A 240V breaker on the old panel that had failed and needed replacing, but was so old that you really couldn’t find a replacement on the internet, let alone Home Depot.  Ben bypassed that circuit breaker (don’t tell L&I!) just to see if either side of that circuit fed the dead GFCI, and neither did, so that breaker and its wires were left as found originally.  

Then testing the output of each breaker directly with a VOM revealed one half of a double breaker on the new panel that was not energized, even though on its exterior, it appeared normal and not tripped.  But after toggling the switch, it would not reset and was clearly broken. That was a real surprise because in mapping out all the other circuits in the house, all of the outlets in the front part of the house were mapped to the old panel, and none to the new panel.  When Ben temporarily bypassed that bad breaker, the GFCI still was not energized.  This was baffling.  

Ben then pulled the GFCI completely out of the wall and discovered that the wires had been reversed such that the line inputs had been fed into the GFCI’s downstream posts instead of to the line in posts.  This would explain the absence of voltage with the breaker bypassed.  So Ben corrected this and restored the circuit to life by bypassing the bad breaker half by tying into an adjacent breaker that wasn’t assigned to anything on the residual label on the panel or anything we found testing all the outlets in the house.  It’s possible it’s connected to something like a dishwasher or garbage disposal, which would be wired directly, but as a temporary fix until a replacement for the failed double circuit breaker could be found, it was safe.

We are steadily whittling down our Costco rotisserie chicken and made ziti arrabbiata with green beans for dinner.  There are leftovers that will be another meal, and one chicken breast left, which will most likely end up as sandwiches.  

We are planning on getting together tomorrow with Ben’s brother Dave, who lives nearby, to go for a hike somewhere, and then get everyone together for dinner at a favorite Chinese restaurant in the area, Chef Chu’s, which Ben first encountered during an engineering internship with Hewlett Packard during his college years.  

20250403 Chico to the Chinese Embassy in San Francisco

We had a comfortable night’s rest at Chico Rice, and Sammy came by to see us off as we broke camp and headed south.  

We thought we might have found cheap diesel on the Gas Buddy App in Dunnigan, but it turned out to be too good to be true.  While it was 50 cents less expensive per gallon, it turned out to be B20 biodiesel, which is 20% biodiesel. Our Sprinter can only take No.2 diesel and no more than B5 or 5% biodiesel.  We will just have to get used to paying more for diesel in California.  

We stopped at a Planet Fitness in Vacaville, where we took showers and refilled our drinking water containers.  It’s handy to have a Planet Fitness membership when traveling by RV over long distances and durations.  

Our next stop was the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairview.  Although they now charge $8 for the museum and factory tour, they have a huge store and restaurant gift shop, and in the back, they have a room full of discounted candies.   Who says a mutant double jelly bean can’t live a fulfilling life as a belly flop? 

From Fairview, it was a straight shot to Los Altos.  Fortunately, we only encountered traffic in a few places like Hayward, and managed to arrive at Ben’s sister’s Los Altos home before 1 p.m.  Ben saw that it would take an hour to get to the Chinese Embassy in San Francisco, and although he thought he had read earlier that it was open until 4:30 p.m., a quick check on the internet showed it closed at 2:30 p.m.  We decided to take a gamble and see if we could deliver our Chinese Visa applications today, which would allow us to return back a day earlier to deal with filing taxes and upcoming appointments.  

Thankfully, people in the Bay Area are not afraid to drive fast.  We unhitched the Bronco and flew with the traffic along Hwy 101 into San Francisco like the wind.  We were largely off the rush hour traffic but did encounter one major slow down just before dropping down into the Civic Center.  The Chinese Embassy is just a block from Japantown where they have a large public parking garage so we were able to park there for $4/hr (bargain compared to $16/hr in Seattle’s downtown).  

We got in the door at 1:55 p.m.  There was a line at the windows for accepting Visa applications but they had 4 windows staffed and we got up to one of the windows at 2:10 p.m.  We had seen several other people have problems with their applications like missing photocopies of their passport pages or copies of prior Chinese visas, but Ben had been extra paranoid in reading about the documentation requirements and had color copies of all passport ID pages, proof of residency, and old China visas from our 2006 trip.  The gal behind the counter carefully went through double-checking each item and then handed us receipts for picking up and paying for the Visas next Tuesday.  We had a total of 3 visa applications submitted. We were out the door before the 2:30 closing time and very happy to have accomplished that.  

We did hit more traffic leaving the city, but while we hit multiple rolling slow downs, it was nothing compared to the worse traffic we have encountered in Vancouver, BC, and Seattle.  

After getting back to Eileen’s place, we set up camp in their driveway and had a late lunch of chicken sandwiches with the Costco roast chicken.  

Eileen and Brevan got home from work and got ready to go to their kickboxing gym workout.  We got to do some laundry and unloaded 11 computers to be donated to Tony’s nonprofit.

We made a trip to the Apple Park visitor center, which is on the campus of the Apple headquarters building shaped like a giant flying saucer.  Ben had broken an earpiece on his AirPods and picked up replacements while Janet got to order a replacement screen protector glass, which got cracked during this trip when it slid off the Bronco’s dashboard and onto the pavement.  That will get shipped to our home for later installation at an Apple Store closer to home.

When we got back, we finished our laundry and watched some TV with Eileen while Brevan and Coby were doing some fantasy footballing.  Ben got to drink some homemade beer that Tony had brewed using a kit that he had received from his son Alex for Christmas.  It was quite good, but Eileen complains it takes up a lot of space in the refrigerator, so Ben will drink enough to make space for the razor clams we gave them.

Ben made ramen with Costco rotisserie chicken for dinner in the RV.  Now that the China visa applications have been filed, we relax and think of things to do and see over the weekend.  

20250402 Medford, OR to Chico, CA

20250402 Medford, OR to Chico, CA

We had a very quiet and restful night at the Edenvale Winery and would recommend it as a well-positioned Harvest Host location for driving between Washington and California.  We were back on the road by 9 a.m.  

The RV had to pull the Bronco up Siskiyou Summit, which at 4310’ is the highest elevation along I-5.  We had no trouble, but did have to stay in the slow lane climbing the steepest part at 47 mph @ 2900 rpm.  We did end up passing a number of semis during the hill climb, but fortunately, traffic was very light and the weather was favorable.  It was in the 40’s as we ascended and the roads were bare.  At the summit, there was a bit of snow on the far edge of the shoulder, but we didn’t encounter any ice on the roadway.  For all but the steepest climbs where shoulder driving was permitted for semis, we were able to tool along at the speed limit.

The weather cleared up remarkably as we descended into California past Lake Shasta, which was remarkably filled.  We have seen the entire marina high and dry in the past.  Today, the water was near the high water mark around the lake.  

We made a refueling stop at the Costco in Redding.  This was fortunately visible from the freeway off-ramp, so it was very easy to find.  It is also a very large warehouse and we were able to park the RV and Bronco in the outskirts of the parking lot near the gas pumps.  The diesel was $4.599/gal, which was far more expensive than in Oregon, but the cheapest diesel within 100 miles.  We picked up a Costco chicken and artisan rolls for dinner and hot dogs for lunch.  It was in the mid-60’s and sunny in Redding.

Our next stop was the Olive Pit in Corning, which is another favorite stop of ours because they have so many different types of stuffed olives that you can sample for free.  We did have to buy a few jars both to have for ourselves and to give as gifts.  

We arrived at our next Harvest Host site, Chico Rice, at 3 p.m.  This was visible from I-5 and is a several-acre site with numerous grain bins and a building where they process and polish organic rice.  It is surrounded by floodable fields for growing rice.  Normally, they would be planting this time of year, but it has been unseasonably wet, so they have delayed planting by a couple of weeks.  We picked up an 18# bag of organic sushi rice for $30.  We went for a nice walk around the fields with one of the owner’s dogs, a very nice golden retriever named Sammy.  We were the only Harvest Host campers on-site.  We got out all our wet clamming gear and set it out in the sun and light wind to dry off before storing it for the rest of the trip. 

They had a small menagerie behind one of the equipment sheds with goats, chickens and ducks. Sammy was with us and when he ran up to the fence, one of the goat got startled and turned to run, but then suddenly turned stuff and fainted onto its side. One of those fainting goats for real. 

20250401 Tuesday, April 1, 2025 Tillamook to Medford, OR

20250401 Tuesday, April 1, 2025 Tillamook to Medford, OR

Voorhees Mansion, Eden Valley Winery

 Medford OR

We were able to get on the road at 8 a.m. from the Blue Heron Cheese Company.  It was quiet enough in the parking lot, although there was a security light in the parking lot that required us to put up the front window covers to shut out the light.

The drive from Tillamook to Salem was quite scenic, mostly following winding streams and meadows until we got into some mountainous areas where the road continued to wind and twist.  It was fortunate that there wasn’t much traffic going our direction.  Ben only had to pull over twice to let other traffic pass on the 2-lane highways.  We did start out with sunny skies with broken cloud cover, but heavy clouds eventually pushed in and it then began raining pretty heavily.  Our batteries were able to recharge to 98% on solar while we were driving.  

We made a refueling stop at a Shell station in Salem.  A Coca-Cola delivery truck blocked our exit for a while, but this gave Ben time to use the bathroom, make a cup of coffee, and do a Duolingo lesson.  

The RV certainly got a workout pulling the Bronco uphill in the mountainous terrain and passes.  We were able to easily keep up with most semis on the road, but did end up slowing down to 45 mph on the steepest and longest grades in the mountain passes where the fully loaded semis were on the shoulders driving at 25 mph.  On the steepest and longest climbs, the trip computer showed 6.6 mpg fuel consumption.  But on the downhill legs, it shows 99 mpg.  There were no issues with braking or stability, but it was raining really hard at times so we sometimes drove a little below the speed limit, although for the most part, we were able to comfortably maintain the speed limit.

We got email notifications that some of our Dairy Queen points were going to expire soon, so we pulled off I-5 in Cottage Grove to find the Dairy Queen that the Freeway sign had indicated.  It turns out it was clear at the south end of town, but we got a tour of Cottage Grove’s old Hwy 99 historic area.  The Dairy Queen was really old, but looked like it had a large parking lot.  However, after pulling in, it turned out not to be a single parking lot but two parking lots connected by the drive-through, so we were stuck.  We had to unhitch the Bronco so we could turn the rig around and then rehitch the Bronco.  That was a bit of a hassle for a free Blizzard treat.  We did also have some chicken tender meals while we were at it.

We made a second refueling stop in Medford at the Central Point Costco, but didn’t go into the warehouse.  We arrived at the Eden Valley Winery Harvest Host site at 4:30 and checked in at the wine tasting room.  Janet tried a few reds before settling on a glass of their pear sparkling wine, while Ben did a flight of their own red wines.  Their 2016 Pinot Noir was his favorite, although their 2013 Claret was also quite tasty.  There were several wines produced during years when there were significant wildfires with ash fall and smoke.  This did impact the wines, most notably in their notes. 

We met another Harvest Host couple at the Wine Tasting room from Bend, Oregon, John and Margot, who had arrived in a 1-ton Dodge dually with a nice Arctic Fox truck camper.  They were towing an empty vehicle trailer.  It turns out they have a Suzuki Samurai that is getting modified nearby, changing out its differentials so it can run on giant 33” wheels.  They use it to do 2-track touring and have been around Moab and plenty of places in eastern Oregon.  Ben was quite interested in those adventures.  John also has an original Toyota FJ in his vehicle stable.  It turns out both Ben and John enjoy watching some of the same YouTube channels on off-road adventures and misadventures.  Margot is a nurse and was actually working at the Seattle VA in the Spinal Cord Injury Unit during the late 1980s, so there’s a good chance Ben might have crossed paths with her doing SCI consults during his several residency rotations there, although neither of us had any recollections of such.  During the pandemic, Margo was stationed as a school nurse on the Aviano Naval Air Station in Italy.  

We had egg noodles with canned chicken breast, cream of mushroom, and green bean casserole for dinner.  

20250331 Monday, March 31, 2025 Cape Disappointment to Tillamook

20250331 Monday, March 31, 2025 Cape Disappointment to Tillamook

The Blue Heron French Cheese Company

Harvest Host site, Tillamook, OR

We hit the beach one last time this morning.  It was raining, but there wasn’t much wind.  The rain did have a tendency to wash away clam shows, but the lack of wind kept the waves from finishing the job, so many clam shows and residual shows were still visible. The rain did seem to make the clams go deeper, so we had to frequently plunge more than once to get to the clam at the very bottom of the hole.  But with some effort, we did get our limits.  After processing our limits, we hit the dump station again to empty the black and grey tanks and top off the fresh water.  We had run the generator on the main LP tank since our auxiliary was empty.  

We then headed back into Long Beach one last time to fill up the LP tanks before heading south into Oregon.  We made a refueling stop at Fred Meyer’s in Warrington where diesel was $3.69/gal.  Most places we have driven by have been selling diesel for over $4/gal.  We also stopped at the Warrrington Costco to have lunch with Costco samplers and hot dogs.  

We arrived in Tillamook around 5 p.m. and were able to tour the Tillamook Creamery, where we cheese samplers, and then checked in at the Blue Heron French Cheese Company, a Harvest Host site.  There were 6 other rigs already in their parking area, so this is a very popular Harvest Host site.  There was fortunately plenty of space in their huge, nicely graveled parking lot.  

Driving around in the sun today did get our batteries above 95% by the time the sun started setting.  They had discharged to about 55% this morning. 

We were hoping to find a TV broadcast signal in Tillamook, but alas, there were none.  But there is a cell phone signal, so we access the internet for browsing and streaming.  

Tomorrow, we hope to make significant progress towards California and will plan on driving nearly 300 miles to Medford, Oregon.  There is a winery there which is also a Harvest Host site.  The Costco near Medford also has diesel, but we will probably need to find another place to refuel near Salem on the way there.  

20250330 Sunday, March 30, 2025 Cape Disappointment Day 4

20250330 Sunday, March 30, 2025 Cape Disappointment Day 4

Bag 'O Razor Clams

The razor clam dig tide was later this morning, so we didn’t need to use headlamps to look for clams.  In stark contrast to the previous several days, today, there was no wind and the tide was further out, revealing a sandbar out in front of the B campground loop, where most people were looking for clams.  Ben wondered if the sandbar might actually make the clams deeper, so he wandered back over to the north end of the beach where we have found most of our clams in the past, and sure enough, there were actual clam shows there that made it easy to find our limits.  We could actually be a little picky about trying to dig up only the larger shows, and we did end up with some larger clams today.  

We ran the generator while cleaning and putting up the clams, but the generator started shuddering before actually shutting down.  Ben wondered if maybe the oil level was a bit low because the dipstick showed it to be at the lower end of normal.  That would have to be addressed later in the day.  We got the clams put up and then broke camp because our site was reserved by someone else in advance through the State Parks reservation system, but we only had to move from the north loop to the south loop of the same campground B.  We did take the RV to the dump station because the fresh water was down to less than 1/4 tank, and dumped the black and grey tanks, as well as refilling the fresh water.  There were lots of RV’s and trailers using the dump station as people were headed home after their weekend camping trip.  

We got the RV set up in the new site, and then headed into town to find an internet signal and do our Duolingo lessons. Ben also had to do further research on the generator because the RV didn’t have a manual for the generator in its document binder.  

We had lunch at McDonald’s, which only cost us $15 for two.  Not a great meal, but certainly the cheapest lunch we’ve had in Long Beach by a long shot.  While there, Ben did download the manual for the generator and saw that it burns between 1.6 and 3.3# of LP per hour, depending on the load.  Since it’s running off a 20# portable tank, that could mean anywhere from 6 to 10 hours, and since we have been running it about 2-3 hours a day, the tank could be empty.  

When we got back to the RV and checked the tank, it did feel like it could be empty.  That was an easier solution than any other sort of malfunction.  But the manual also said the generator was due for its first oil change at 20 hrs.  So Ben did pick up motor oil while we were in Long Beach and did an oil change at the campsite.  

The generator then ran just fine off the main LP tank supply.  We were not able to refill the portable LP tank in town because the LP places were all closed on Sunday.  We will make a stop tomorrow to refill the portable LP tank after we leave the campground and start our trip south.

20250329 Saturday, March 29, 2025 Cape Disappointment Day 3

20250329 Saturday, March 29, 2025

By the Wind Sailor jellyfish (Velelle velella) skeletons

carried by wind onto the beach by the tens of thousands.

We got up and donned our headlamps at 6 a.m. to hit the beach.  The winds had eased to under 25 mph and the rain had ceased, but there was dense cloud cover and it was very dark on the beach.  We used our headlamps in conjunction with some LED work lights to try to spot some clam shows.  Ben did get one to appear after pounding, but it wasn’t until after daylight arrived that we were able to spot any other clam shows.  Pounding didn’t yield many other shows, so despite this being a daylight tide, the tide was turning around as daylight made it possible to see the beach.  We called it quits at 8 a.m. as the tide chased us up the beach. We had managed to find a total of 18 clams today.  We got those cleaned and put up in the freezer, and then drove to the ranger hut to see if we still needed to relocate.  

Someone had changed their reservation on our site so we could stay another night, but tomorrow we will still have to relocate.  Fortunately, there is another very similar site nearby that we can move to that is still close to the beach.  

We then took the Bronco into Long Beach to do our Duolingo lessons online and find lunch. Ben checked out Denis Ace Hardware in Long Beach, which is a pretty amazing store with huge outdoors gear and clothing departments, as well as pet gear.  It was like combining an Ace Hardware with a Tractor Supply Company or Cenex Farm Supply, and Holiday Sports stores. 

We decided to check out a Mexican place for lunch. The first place we tried had rave reviews for its Pozole soup, but it was closed for the season.  The next choice was El Compadre, which looked like a local family-owned restaurant.  The restaurant was quite large, clean, and decently decorated. The service was prompt and attentive, but the food was uninspired, and not particularly generous portions for the price, which for a two-item combination was $20 per person.  We each had a leftover chimichanga to take home to the RV for dinner tonight.  It’s too bad there isn’t a Dairy Queen in town with the same $7 Meal Deal (3 chicken strips, fries, drink, and sundae).  

The sun came out for a bit in the afternoon, so we walked around the campground loops, including a closed loop.  There were a few huge rocky outcroppings in the middle of the closed loop, and a sign board which explained that these were actually seamounts which had been offshore at the turn of the 19th century, but after the Columbia River jetty was built, sand from the Columbia River deposited to the south of the jetty, filling in and burying a lot of the coastline.  But the story doesn’t end there, because after the Columbia River had multiple dams constructed for hydroelectric and irrigation uses, sand is getting trapped behind the dams, and the beaches are receding again, so someday in the remote future, these outcroppings may again become seamounts.

Seamount now stranded in the Campground

After a nap, Ben walked from the campground to the jetty, which is about 1.75 miles.  The tide was going out and uncharacteristically, there was very little wind.  This made the tide waves much more predictable, but he still didn’t see any clam shows during his walk.  Despite the lack of wind, the surf coming in off the Pacific remains quite impressive, particularly around the end of the jetty where 15-20’ tall waves were breaking.  

Breakers on the South Jetty

Lost Crab Pot buried in the sand.

We had leftover chimichangas supplemented with a new camp concoction made with pinto beans and stovetop stuffing.  Necessity is the mother of culinary invention. 

Tomorrow the low tide is closer to 8 a.m., so we may not need to use headlamps to get to the beach.  We’re hoping for less wind and more clams tomorrow.