Connecticut - Day 2 - RV trouble

Totoket Valley RV Park

Friday, 2 November 2018

today's route

Last night when I took the dogs out for their bedtime walk, I noticed a lot of water around the RV and couldn’t figure out where it came from.  After I finished with the dogs, I checked the water hose and found that, for some bizarre reason, the campground’s water source, which I had plugged into the regular outlet to get water to my inside faucets and toilet, seemed to be also filling my water storage tank, and it was so full that water was running out of the tank.   So right away I turned off the campground’s water and for the night just used my now-full water storage tank and water pump.

But that really worried me – as far as I knew they weren’t supposed to be connected at all.  There are 2 separate entry points, one forward and one aft, for putting water either into the storage tank or directly into the faucets.  And they have them separated because they are separate systems, as far as I know.  

The water storage tank is under the front bench seat, and the water pump is under the rear bench seat (no reason at all for them to be separated like that, but they are), so I opened up both bench seats (tearing the cabin apart at bedtime) to be sure the water tank wasn’t leaking into the cabin (it wasn’t) and that the pump hadn’t shaken itself loose again (it hadn’t), so I was relatively comfortable using them, but this water problem absolutely has to get fixed.  

Then first thing this morning (meaning at 10:00 when all the shops open for Saturday business) I started calling and found a place that was very responsive to my concern and figured out how to work me in today, tomorrow being the tech’s day off.  Actually, they wanted me there in an hour – hour and a half at the latest.  And I’d already looked up online directions that said it’d take me an hour to drive it, which I knew meant it’d take me longer than that because I always go slower than other people.  So I had to leap up and batten things down for a highway drive and get myself dressed and the hoses and cords unplugged and race off down these unfamiliar Connecticut roads.

I did actually make it in just over an hour – necessity being the mother of additional speed – and found myself the object of a great deal of curiosity because nobody in the shop could figure out why my RV was doing what it was doing.  They tried to replicate the problem, but of course my RV acted perfectly while experts were watching.  They kept tracing the water lines, trying to figure out how on earth the feed could get crossed like that.  

What they finally came up with was that maybe the RV park’s water source was pumping at a much more powerful rate than any RV’s system is designed to take and that extra power was messing with the valve in the water pump that allowed the lines to get crossed.  I’d heard that some campgrounds had too much power in their water and months ago I’d bought an inexpensive little pressure adjuster, but it always leaked and – conservation minded as I often am – I just couldn’t stand to have all that water drip on the ground, so I stopped using it.  The shop guys sold me a better one for only $5 and told me to use it from now on.  They said to keep an eye on my water tank and, if it happened again, they could replace the valve inside my water pump that might have gotten weakened.

Really nice folks.  They encouraged me to let the dogs run around in their garage while we worked on the problem and were just nice in every way.

And they ordered new mud flaps for the ones I’m missing, so I’ll probably be going back at the end of the week to get those installed.

And then as soon as I got out of their neighborhood, I turned the wrong way on the right road and ended up on an interstate I’d never heard of going somewhere I couldn’t figure out where and doing it at very high speed.  Drivers on Connecticut roads drive very very fast.  Finally, I got off at a mall and spent quality time with the map, and then went to get back on that interstate and found out I couldn’t keep going east.  If I wanted that interstate, I had to go west which is where I’d come from. 

 I stopped again and spent more quality time with the map and decided I’d go back west to the road I’d gone the wrong way on and go back the right way.  Which I did.  And finally got back to the campground.  That detour added a full hour extra to my drive.  And I didn’t even want to be going anywhere today.  I wanted to spend several days trying to figure out what I wanted to see in CT and how long I wanted to stay in this RV park that had the 2 big drawbacks and so forth.  I didn’t get back until 4:00.  Much much later than I’d hoped.

About a half hour after I got back, the repair place called to see what was happening with my water.  Everything was fine but I had to confess I’d only been back a short time because I got lost.  But it was really nice of them to call and check, I thought.

I have to say, though, that if I have to get lost in Connecticut, I was lucky to do it in early November.  At least I had beautiful foliage to look at.  The colors seem farther advanced here than in Rhode Island because I’m now seeing whole hillsides that are yellow.