tbutler

Ken, Nancy and Katie Too, The US mail situation has several solutions. 1) We use a company in South Dakota, there are several, ours is MyHomeAddressInc.com (MHA) out of Emery, South Dakota. For about $250 per year they will handle your mail for you as you desire. We also pay for the cost of sending each mailing, any packaging needed and they charge 0.50 per mailing for handling. They will also give you a "home address" as the name suggests. They can register your vehicles in South Dakota and with a South Dakota drivers license (good for 5 years) you will be a resident of South Dakota. Like several other states, South Dakota has no state income tax. This more than pays for the expense of all of the above. We simply e-mail them (or you can phone their 800 number) to let them know where to send our mail and they will mail it to us. We elect to have our mail sent out once every week. We also tell them to send all our mail, they will toss out the ads and catalogs for you want. They hold our mail when we are in Canada. Many times we have them send the mail General Delivery to a U.S. Post Office along our route of travel or where we will be staying for some time. We also ask them to ship the mail via U.S. Priority Mail so it arrives in a timely manner. We have occasionally encountered a glitch (some the Post Office fault, some communications problems between us and MHA) but this has been our method of mail deliver for almost eight years now. There are other states that have similar companies that do pretty much the same thing. Among them, Texas, Florida are two that I know of. We bought a book that covered many aspects of choosing a home state for full timers. I don't have it anymore and can't remember the title but if you search the internet I'll bet you can find it or its updated successor. Look in Family Motor Coaching magazine for some of these companies. There are legal implications to changing your state of residence, be sure to consider this one carefully. 2) I believe that FMCA still has a member benefit for mail handling if that is all you want. You could maintain your residence where you are now. For some retirees there is no benefit in having a income tax free state as their retirement system requires them to pay income taxes on their retirement in their state at the time they worked. I believe the cost for this is pretty minimal. Check your membership benefits on-line or in the January issue of Family Motor Coaching. 3) I have heard some people use Mail Boxes etc. or a similar mail handling company. They won't offer any of the other services that the first category of businesses will. I have no idea what their rates are or how they handle forwarding. 4) There is an organization for Full Timers, Escapees, headquartered in Texas. You get a Texas address and their mail forwarding service if that fits your need. You can use this address for a home address also. 5) Some people have a relative or friend who will allow them to have mail sent to their address and forward it to them. Here you work out the deal with your friends. I guess if you are generous with them, they might not tire of having to sort out your mail, packaging it and sending it to you. Note: If you have your mail sent General Delivery one of the tips we got when we started was to choose a Post Office in a small town. In larger towns, only one Post Office will receive all General Delivery Mail for that town. It is the main Post Office and may be in a busy downtown not suitable for an RV. We almost always try to do this. We use the U.S. Post Office website to get the zip code for the post office, it has their address and you can get a map showing where that post office is located in the town. Hope some of this helps you. Glad you have you out there on the road with us. Enjoy the adventure.

Thanks for the information and suggestion. That your system doesn't do this is definitely indicates ours is a little too touchy. I may have to make a stop at the HWH factory in the near future to have them look at our installation. I guess I could shut the system off after leveling. It wouldn't hurt to try and find out just how inconvenient it is to keep it reasonably level. Maybe it would stay level enough that the automatic mode wouldn't be missed.

Yes, I read about your multi-state campfire. Sounds like great fun. You'll fit right in with the crowd down in "the valley." We'll plan on seeing you in the fall!

I am Tom, my wife is Louise. I'll not spend time on further introductions. If you want more information, please see our Meet a Member feature under Join FMCA on the main menu of the FMCA page. I promise you more information than you could possibly want to know. Even my friend Pipewrenchgrip said he read MOST of it!!! I have been very active on the FMCA Community the last few days. We are away from our motor home doing babysitting for my daughter and her husband. Grandson Ryan and granddaughter Kaitlyn are pretty good most of the time so I have time on my hands while they are busy. We are in Foristell, Missouri (Go Tigers!) where the temperatures are 50 degrees right now. Our motor home sits in Edinburg, Texas where the temperature is 100 degrees today! Glad we left the air conditioner set or we'd find the interior melted when we got back. Speaking of Tigers, was that a great game last night or what?? I guess that depends on your perspective. From the Missouri bench it was fantastic. Sorry Memphis fans. I'm speaking Elite Eight in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament. We'll fly Southwest Airlines back to Harlingen (about an hour East of Edinburg) tomorrow and be in our cozy home by evening. Pipewrenchgrip, Bill and Laura, will have dinner for us tomorrow evening. Sure hope I can convince them to tune the NCAA for the Mizzou game. They have been watching our rig while we are gone. This is a duty we've traded off during the winter for the last seven years. Harlingen, Edinburg, McAllen are all in extreme southern Texas in an area known as the Rio Gande Valley. You have to look at a map or drive there to really appreciate how far South these cities are. Our latitude is about equal to the southern tip of Florida. We are much further South than Yuma or San Diego. In fact, Amarillo Texas is closer to Fargo, North Dakota than it is to Brownsville, Texas! Mild winters and hot summers rule. We usually arrive about the end of October and depart for cooler climes in mid April. Our community is a close knit "family" and springtime brings the sorrow of parting. Being one of the last winter visitors to leave means saying good bye to everyone one at a time. Most of them will return but there are a few every year who we won't see for some time. We have a directory that lists all who want to be listed and use it to plan visits when we are near our friends. Enough for today, got to leave something to say in the future. Look for more information once or twice a week.

Roodriver, You should copy this to your personal statement, I had to look all over for it! Just checking to make sure my memory was good! I've put you on my list - friends that is!

Well, OK! I have thought about doing one but worry that I won't be able to keep up with it and keep it interesting. I do a weekly e-mail summary for our kids and mothers while on the road. I should be able to modify that and make it work as a framework. I'll give it a try and see how it goes. Thanks for the encouragement (always the teacher, eh?).

Roodriver, Since you love history and the roadside history stops you will love the trip through the great northwest! There are informative stops throughout the area. Plenty of Blackfoot history in Montana and Idaho. Most have room for the RV to pull out. We finally began to expedite our travel by reading the signs from the RV when we pulled up to them. Otherwise we were going to get caught by the snow! TButler

Roodriver, Regarding your query about the road North out of Yellowstone: We drove that road coming in from the North several years ago (2004 to be exact). At the time they were resurfacing it, chip seal. We had chips all over our toad and I never drove faster than 15 MPH. What a mess. That project should be done by now. Yes, the scenery is great! It is a two lane road, not too much truck traffic. One of the little surprises is a visitors center for the landslide that occurred during an earthquake that struck the area in the 1960's. The whole hillside collapsed and buried a number of campers and others. If you are interested in geology, this is a must see. You park on the parking lot (plenty of room for RV's) next to boulders larger than your RV. These came down from the mountainside on the other side of the valley. It could scare one out of the mountains if you thought about it too long! I remember reading the Readers Digest articles about this event when I was in high school. There is a nice section along the lake formed by the landslide when it blocked the stream in the valley. There are fishing spots along the drive if you are so inclined. We spent the night boondocking at a rest stop near one of the fishing spots. There wasn't much traffic on the road through the night.

Wayne, Aren't those quick disconnects great? I gave up screwing on hoses shortly after we began full timing. All my hoses are set up with quick disconnects. I use a hose splitter (Y) off the main faucet with the quarter turn on-off to control my water. One side is for fresh water and the other side has a vacuum breaker to prevent back flow and is used for tank flushing and/or washing vehicles, etc. I found a really good Y last year. Goodyear makes a nice plastic and rubber Y with large valve handles. It is more expensive than the brass ones but seems to be very durable. The old brass Y's haven't been the most durable or highest quality in my experience. The Goodyear Y and hose vacuum breakers are available at Lowe's or Home Depot. I also use brass angled shut off valves to change the direction of the water spout. I don't know who designs some of these connections but I have seen some really weird and unhandy connections for both water and sewer. I keep an adjustable pliers in my utility compartment for the difficult connection that must be screwed on/off. I also keep one in my handy tool box under the second step inside our coach entry. I can open the door to the coach, lift the step and grab the tool that I need. I only keep the most used tools in that compartment. The real tool boxes are in a basement compartment on a slide tray. Perhaps we should have a forum for tools. But enough about that...

Check out my recent posting under Class A Motorhomes. A Monaco press release indicates they have found a buyer. They might be back in business in the not too distant future. Who knows how long it will take to get everybody back on the job - or even if everybody will be back. Anyway there is hope.

Just a few ideas that we use to reduce our expenses while on the road. 1) When we are traveling from place to place doing sightseeing and exploring we simply want a place to park. For these stops we'll try to get the lowest cost campground closest to where our explorations will be. We save the fancier campgrounds for longer stays (not very frequent). When we stay longer in an area we look for a discount for a week or a month and take advantage of that break. 2) We have found some campground discount plans fit our travel style, others we just don't juse very often. We make the ones we have pay for themselves or we drop them. 3) We watch fuel prices carefully. Most truck stop chains now have on-line prices posted so you can check to see if the fuel you are buying is the best price you can get. With a 127 gallon capacity tank, we have great flexibility in where we purchase fuel. As we start a trip we look at the fuel prices across the area where we will travel. We'll try to fill up at the cheapest spot and if we need fuel where prices are higher we'll purchase only what we need to get to cheaper fuel. Translated that means that we generally fill up as we travel from the mid-west to the west or east and purchase only what we need as we travel toward the mid-west. There are exceptions to this rule and that is where the internet comes into play. 4) Always cross the border into Canada with a full tank of fuel. If it fits your travel and you have a chance and can stand the customs hassle to cross the border somewhere to get US fuel it will generally save you money. 5) Some grocery stores and Wal-Mart stores have a fuel station. You can get a fuel discount purchasing groceries at these stores or using their credit card. 6) We use several credit cards that offer cash back on fuel. One card offers 5% cash back. At $4.00 a gallon that is 20 cents a gallon discount! That can be used with the above mentioned grocery store discount to further increase savings. The best I see on the credit card market now is 2% but that would still be an 8 cent per gallon discount. Stores in Canada are more generous. Watch out for pumps that are impossible to access with your RV. 7) We eat in most of the time and pack picnic lunches when we are out and about during the day. This makes the occasional dining out more special. It is also easier to control our diet when we prepare our own meals. Nothing packs the weight on me like restaurant meals. 8) We have about 10 grocery chain discount cards. We fill out any application and end it with a do not mail message at the bottom to reduce costs for mail forwarding. The discounts with these cards are substantial with some chains and again, the fuel discounts are sometimes linked to these cards. 9) To reduce our costs for forwarding mail from our mail handler we actively reduce our mail volume by signing up for the no-mail list at dmachoice.org Stop unwanted credit card offers at optoutprescreen.com When we get advertising or catalogs we will either send back a postage paid return form requesting to be removed from the mailing list or call the 800 number and request our name be removed from the mailing list. Sign up to receive all your billings and statements on-line. You can also pay almost all bills on-line. We schedule all our regular payments to be paid automatically. Persist and you can get rid of most of this mail. 10) When it is convenient we will boondock. We follow FMCA's standards when we park. We have learned to look for quiet places to stop whenever possible but have spent many nights at interstate rest stops. There are lots of stores other than Wal-Mart that allow overnight parking. Stop and ask. If they have a big parking lot they might agree. We even got permission to park at a small strip mall in California about closing time one night on the condition that we would be gone before opening time.

I prefer charcoal and am using a small grill from Camping World. They don't have my specific model on the website but the Charcoal Tabletop Grill is very close to what we have. Priced at under $25, mine is going on year number 4. It is small and stores easily. Most campgrounds won't allow table top grills so I end up using it on the ground most of the time. The grill surface is just right for most BBQing for two people.

I'm new at this and have hit a roadblock. I would really like to add a photo of our motorhome to our signature but can't figure out how. If I go to insert image it asks for a URL. I don't have a web site to reference here. Can anyone help me with the process?

We have a 2004 Monaco Windsor. I don't have any answers for you. I assume you have consulted the manual and can't find enough information there to be helpful. I'll be watching the ideas that come in on this one because I'm sure to have a similar question, just a matter of time. One suggestion might be to contact a Monaco dealer and see if they have an inside number that might get you through to the last lone technician on the job at Monaco. Otherwise, I would guess that the answer might be to go to a dealer who has had experience with Monaco coaches and can diagnose the problem from his experience. I was able to get Monaco parts from a dealer recently. They had battery cut-off relays in stock. So some parts are still out there in the system. Since the cut-off relays have failed for me fairly frequently I got two. That should last me for four or five years.

Hello Roodriver, We are a pair of science teachers as well. I am Tom and my wife is Louise. If you haven't found us yet, we are currently featured on the Meet a Member section under the Join FMCA menu on the main board. Like you, we enjoy the back roads. We've made several runs across US 2 in ND and Montana. We're driving a 2004 Monaco Windsor. Our summers are usually spent traveling. This summer our goal is Newfoundland. Since we have a daughter and her family on the west coast that means a cross country drive is in the offing. We will leave Texas the end of April and head to Florida to try to catch a launch of the Shuttle, STS 125 and/or STS 127. Then Kentucky and a visit to my brother and his wife. From there Missouri to see family and doctors. We are planning a short trip with our 2 oldest grandsons. After we return them to their parents we'll set sail for Newfoundland. If you are going to be anywhere along that route this summer drop me a line. Perhaps we can sit down and solve the educational problems of the nation over a glass of wine (or 2).

We installed a system by Brakemaster on our coach, a 1994 Monaco Dynasty diesel, in 2002 when we went to towing four wheels down. The system is powered by air from the air brakes of the coach which operates a cylinder to actuate the brake pedal in the toad. As such, the system is strictly proportional. The harder I hit the brakes on the coach, the greater the pressure on the brakes in the toad. Our Trialblazer toad is now going on 7 years old and I just replaced the front brakes last spring (at 6 years old). The Brakemaster system certainly isn't causing excessive wear on the car brakes. A small cylinder installed under the hood provides break-away stopping for the toad. Hook-up involves attaching the actuator pedal for the brake, attaching an air hose from coach to toad. This hose also has an electric connection that indicates when the brake is active and also if the hose is attached or not. The indicator light for this is installed on the drivers panel on the left side near the transmission information panel. I wouldn't have a system that didn't have some kind of indicator to indicate proper operation. The final piece is simply a cable from the coach hitch to the plug that activates the break-away system to engage the brake on the toad. If the two vehicles are separated the cable pulls the plug and the brake on the toad engages and stays engaged. It would be possible to install the electric wire for the status light in the wiring system from coach to toad if desired. Unlike the brake in a box, this system will not activate if I am using the engine brake while descending a steep incline. I prefer this as there is no need for extra braking on a routine descent and the toad brakes will be cool as are the coach brakes if needed for extra stopping power. We had no difficulty moving this from the original coach to our present coach, a 2004 Monaco Windsor. It took the staff at Dixie RV Superstores in Louisiana less than two hours to do the whole job. We really haven't had a hitch since installing this system. My wife and I can rip the toad off the motor home in under 10 minutes even if we have the Coastline Cover Tow Car Shield on the Trailblazer. I don't know how this system compares to the US Gear system so popular above. Guess I'll have to look at that if a change is ever necessary.

We have a 2004 Monaco Windsor. Our leveling system uses the suspension air bags for all leveling. The controller is an HWH system. Automatic leveling works fine and the coach is quickly leveled after bleeding off all the air in the bags after travel. As temperature varies the bags with more air will rise more than bags with less air. As a result, the coach will become out of level. The HWH system monitors this and periodically makes corrections. What we notice is that the leveling system will go on occasional periods of inflating and deflating the air bags. It seems to over-inflate and then dump at the next check. Sometimes it will dump and then immediately inflate again. At other times we go days with no noticeable adjustment. I haven't had anyone complain to us yet but the exhausting process when dumping air from the bags is a very noisy hissing. I would hate to be parked next to us trying to sleep when the air is dumped from the system. Is there a way to stop or reduce this cycling from inflating to deflating and the accompanying noise. If this is normal for the system, is there a way to muffle the exhausting air? Even if there were a temporary way to do this, it could be workable for long term parking. It is our long term neighbors that I worry most about. I welcome all ideas.

A friend of ours always kept his black water tank flush hose hooked up to the water faucet when parked for an extended time. As is standard practice, the black tank was kept closed except to dump as it neared full. One time the water was shut off in the park. Park personnel being helpful came around and shut off the water at each of the affected coaches before the water was shut off. Our friend was not home. He wasn't at home either when they returned to turn on the water. Evidently the person who turned the water back on was different than the person who turned it off or they simply didn't remember that only one hose was on. They turned on both hoses. Since the flush hose puts water into the black water tank under pressure, there is nowhere for the water to go but up. Our friend came home to find the black water tank overflowing through the toilet. Needless to say they had some repairs to do. The moral of this story is to always disconnect the flush hose from the faucet and the black water tank. No mistakes this way!

We had a flat tire on the outside rear when at the FMCA Convention in St. Paul last year. I had the flat repaired on site and then replaced the worn tire at the local Wingfoot (Goodyear) dealer. The best I could do was to get tires about a year and a half old. So I took them (a matched pair). Two years earlier we had a blow out on the drivers front tire at highway speeds. The tire that blew had been in service for three years. Besides destroying the wheel the blown tire took the exhaust pipe off the generator and did some minor damage to the coach exterior right by the wheel. I was able to keep the coach on the highway and get it to the shoulder. Thank goodness no other vehicle was in our vicinity. The blown tire did pull me completely into the passing lane before I could get control to bring the coach back to the right shoulder. If my wife had been driving I'm not sure that she would have been able to control the coach. A driving safety course at the FMCA Convention in Redmond in 2004 was instrumental in preparing me to cope with this emergency. I heartily recommend that course when you next attend FMCA. We had been having a great deal of trouble with that pair of tires as they caused excessive vibration. A Wingfoot tire shop in California identified the problem as being out of round. As a result, I replaced both front tires and made sure that they were mounted as steer tires. The difference as explained to me is that the steer tires should be inflated to seat the bead with the tire in the horizontal position. This ensures that the wheel is centered in the tire properly. If the tires are in the vertical position the wheel will seat lower in the center of the tire as it stands. When you drive it, it will vibrate up and down as it rotates. In addition, tires are slightly out of round when manufactured. So are the wheels! Now when I have new tires mounted, they are tested for round after mounting. If they are not within .006 inches of round, they are removed and rotated on the rim to ensure that they come within this standard. I had to personally supervise this at the shop in St. Paul. They initially mounted the tires vertically and when I called them on it they corrected it. After that I watched them like a hawk, checking the instrument as the tires were tested for round. At one point I had to face down the shop supervisor who wanted me to leave the shop. I told him that I would be glad to be accompanied while in the shop if he wanted to do that but that the actions that I had seen up to that point indicated that I needed to be personally supervising this job. He walked away and left me to continue working with the installer. I have started replacing the front tires on the motor home every 2 years. The old front tires go on the rear axle and the oldest pair on the rear come off and are scrapped. Using this system, the oldest tires on the coach will be six years old when they are removed not counting their initial age when purchased. Everything I have seen and read indicates 7 years for tire age before retirement. The oldest tires are on the duals in the rear where a flat is less an emergency. Besides the advantage of keeping fresh tires on the front of the motor home, this offers the advantage of not having to put out $3000+ for a complete set of new tires in one purchase. I check tire pressure every morning before the sun hits the tires when we are driving and monitor tire temperature by feel at every stop. I purchased and installed a full Pressure Pro system for the motor home and the toad at the St. Paul Convention. It is very reassuring to have a monitoring system to alert me to any changes in pressure while driving. The only alarm so far occurred on a very hot day (100+) when we ended up in stop and go traffic after extended highway travel from a cool mountain start. The tires on the sunny side of the coach (outside rear and steer tire) exceeded the Pressure Pro factory set limits for high pressure and the alarm sounded. There was no missing the alarm, it was plenty loud. I could dismiss it but it would return after a short interval. It was somewhat distracting when driving in heavy traffic. Since tire pressure had been set correctly at the beginning of the drive I knew this was not an emergency and was not worried about tire failure. It did take some explaining to my wife as to why this was OK. As soon as we cleared the traffic and were moving again, the tires cooled and the alarm didn't sound again. We occasionally will have one sensor on the toad drop out. I have the monitor mounted on the outside wall on the drivers side of the coach. The tire that drops out is the rear tire on the opposite side of the toad. I'm sure that an antenna extension would solve this problem. Since it is intermittent I haven't resorted to the antenna boost. I do find a few pounds difference between the Pressure Pro monitors and my tire gauges. Like my wife says, "A man with a watch always knows what time it is. A man with two watches never knows what time it is." I always set tire pressure by the lowest reading gauge and allow 10% above the recommended tire pressure for the weight being carried. I thought about purchasing a set of tire monitors for a number of years. It took the above events to finally convince me that I couldn't afford not to have them. Considering cost, peace of mind and safety, tire pressure monitors are an excellent investment. The Pressure Pro system is easy to use and is completely portable if/when we ever change coaches. In addition, I can move the monitor from the coach to the toad to monitor tire pressure there when we are out for a day trip. When I check tire pressure manually it doesn't reset the pressure setting unless it is off the stem more than a minute so it is no different than taking a regular cap off the stem. If I adjust tire pressure the new pressure setting is accepted after one minute off the valve stem. It usually takes me that long or longer to adjust the pressure so this is convenient also. I have not replaced the short rubber stems on the toad and they work quite satisfactorily. If the toad had long rubber stems I would replace them.

We have a solar panel on the roof of our 2004 Monaco Windsor. It came factory installed so I can't comment on installation and connection issues other than to go out and scratch my head looking at the wiring. It is integrated into the circuitry of the coach and contributes to the 12V system. I would guess that it helps to keep the house batteries charged while we are driving. Monaco separated the house batteries from the alternator several years ago. The out put is about what the base draw of the coach is when everything that can be shut off is off. We get between 5 and 7 amps at 13.1V on a good sunny day. Our panel is 2 x 4 feet. We are heavy power users. Before the brakes are cool the TV is hot! I can't see any difference in our electric usage or battery life when we are parked, even when boondocking it doesn't seem to make much difference. I'm sure if we were to minimize our energy use it would be more noticeable.

For the record, Greenwich Mean Time hasn't been used since 1972. Apparently the writer (could it be RV Winkle?) of this software was not aware of the change. It is now called Coordinated Universal Time, UTC or sometimes UT. There are differences, GMT was based on astronomical observations taken at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. Today we take our time off the vibration of the cesium atom. For a thorough discussion of this see: http://www.answers.com/topic/coordinated-universal-time I have never seen GMT or UT given in any format other than 24 hour format, e.g. 1800 for 6:00 p.m. Another fact that escaped the software writer. In fact, that is the strength of using such a time standard. Once you know your longitude and/or local time difference then you always subtract (or add) that number to the UT to find your local time. Using UT allows people all over the earth to discuss the timing of an event (military for example) without the ambiguity of using times from different time zones. So, OK, I'm setting my controls to my time zone just as my computer is set. I had assumed the software would be written to pick up the time setting on my messages just as e-mail does. Wrong. Who writes this stuff anyway???

I'm not sure I understand the problem. Is this a motor home, a trailer or a mobile home? The latter two won't have an engine under the hood. I have never seen a room attached to a motor home that is still used as a motor home. If it is a motor home that is a piece of sculpture (not able to move any more) then that raises issues about the registration and licensing of the vehicle. If it is a mobile home or a trailer, the attached room would make more sense. It sounds to me as though MH would stand for mobile home on the title. Give us some more information and perhaps we can be of further help. What year and model of unit is this? Is it capable of being moved from its location under its own power? Do you plan to travel in this motor home if that is what it is? We park our motor home on a lot that we lease in Texas. We don't have an attached room and are gone six or seven months of the year. We have trailers and mobile homes in our park with attached rooms (we call the Texas Rooms!) so I could likely come up with some information for you by asking others.