I’d had a long day driving and shopping, getting a furnace part, then heading south to the Twin Falls area where I planned to sit in warmer weather to rip out my furnace yet again to install the part. The forecast was for a winter storm in two days. Hopefully, I’d have my furnace working again and be further south to escape winter by then.
Since I was trying to fix my furnace while staying ahead of the cold, snowy weather coming, my stop in Butte, MT was going to be all business. Get gas, check. Get groceries, check. Get thermal limit switch at Rocky Mountain RV, check. They had the part in stock, at the typical markup you’d see over ordering Amazon (double price) . But when you need the part now, you pays the piper. The rest of my drive down to Twin Falls was uneventful. I was parked near Wilson Lake Reservoir, which has a pretty nice free BLM campground if you are willing to camp with other people. If you are like me and want to be on your own, there is BLM land nearby you can find camping spots on. Beware the roads, not all tracks are RV navigable – newbies should just stick with the free campground.
I got an early start on my furnace repair, doing the now familiar tear apart to get the furnace out of its place. I’ve had more issues with my furnace than any other appliance to date, if this fix didn’t work, plan B was to get my RV into a shop pronto in Twin Falls. If pronto wasn’t possible, plan C was to hightail it south into warmer climes and book an appointment there. The part I was replacing was a temperature limit switch, which made sense as the furnace was prematurely kicking off the gas before it was properly hot.
Mystery structure revealed by the drained Wilson Reservoir
Although the switch was a pain to get to, needing to reach down between the exhaust pipe and the gas valve, I did get the switch replaced with a bit of fiddling. Checking the furnace operation afterwards, I was happy to see that the furnace was operating again normally. Was this the solution to my problems? No! I’ll spoil you now and tell you that the exhaust port to the right of the limit switch had burned through its seal right by the temperature switch, likely due to a flow restriction plate having come loose inside redirecting hot air against the seal. Further speculation on my part, but I think everytime I removed the furnace, I was jiggling the loose restriction plate enough to knock it back in place, “fixing” the problem temporarily. But I wasn’t to figure this out for months, in the meanwhile my furnace was “different“, heating just fine in the dropping temperatures of the incoming storm.
Imagine this in the dark with sideways snow
I studied the weather forecasts carefully, noting that the first wave of snow was supposed to stop just west and north of me – I should be good for one more night here then I’d have to move way south to avoid some extended bad weather. As my path out was a bit dicey, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to have to be doing it in snow. Of course, the forecast was slightly off, with the snow coming slightly south and east to start blowing over me at 3am. That made a huge difference to me.
Won’t buff out
I look at the NEW forecast which now has snow all around me for the next few hours. I contemplate moving in the snow, in the dark. While I’m not liking the idea, I decide it would be better to just move now, back to the gravel access road ending that leads to this spot. If there turned out to be a ton of snow, it would be a lot easier to get out being parked in a road cul de sac rather than way down the cart path behind a rock pile. Fortunately I had been planning on moving in the morning, so nothing was outside. I just had to secure a few things inside and off I went, in the snow! I’m not seeing much of anything other than the big rock pile to my left. I avoid it, trying to find my track, now covered in snow. Suddenly I hear a crunching sound, wincing with what must be a lava rock hitting my RV. I stop and get out to inspect the damage. Sure enough, I’ve gone too far to the right, and have hit the bottom right corner of my rig with a large lava rock. I manage to back up and move over to the left enough to get out, getting past the slopy bit I was worried my worn tires were going to slide on.
The rest of the cart path back to the road was uneventful. I park it and settle down for a bit more sleep, which surprisingly I do, at least until dawn. Inspecting the damage in the early light reveals I had been lucky – any further driving forward and I’d have started taking out my door, which would have been really bad. The damage was mostly cosmetic – I’d want to fix it to seal off the RV again, but at least things were drivable in the meanwhile. The world around me was full out winter now, windy and chilly with the increasing light. We’d not had a ton of snow – I could have gotten out just fine in the morning, without damaging my rig. Sometimes you just can’t make the right call. But now I still had to deal with icy roads, as the temperature had not come up enough to melt the snow.
I headed into Twin Falls to resupply, airing up my leaking tire there too. I was definitely going tire shopping pronto down here. But first I needed to escape the winter, which meant a long days drive south was in order. I got going ASAP, expecting to drive out of the storm area pretty quickly. It was not meant to be – the higher ground to the south of me was colder, and the storm had travelled quite a ways south along my route. I ended up in a long line of traffic following a snow plow, slowing me down quite a bit. Of course I was in a hurry – I wanted to make it to Alamo, Nevada before dark to dump my tanks, then camp just a little further south at Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge. I ended up dumping my tanks under the fading light at least, but by the time I got in the campground it was proper dark. The campground in the Refuge is pretty popular, so I wasn’t expecting a lot of spaces to be available – I was happy to just find something in the dark rather than going back into Alamo to camp in their campground by the dump station.
I watched the last bit of light fade over the lake, finally relaxing now that I was in proper warmer weather again. Winter was not coming here for a while so I could rest here and figure out my tire purchase. Pahranagat is a great place, other than the highway noise. I had my nice lake view, and could go on hikes around the lake everyday. Join me next time for a some camping in familiar haunts, and tire shopping!
