Evie and Her Mom RVing: More Upgrades to the RV

We were with the Escapee Boondockers for the Christmas Holidays. I think there were about 25 or 30 of us for the Christmas day potluck dinner. Lots of great food and good friendships. There were about 10 rvs parked all around with no order or planning. Every day around 3:30pm we'd get together for "cocktail hour", it's bring your own beverage and chair. We just sit around visiting and planning activities.

Sunset behind Bette's rv.

Super moon setting behind Kyra's rv.

This winter has been filled with upgrades to both Honda and Winnebago. Besides the new electric awning and propane heater, I needed to replace my towbar. The shop who installed the original towbar failed to do a complete job, I'll explain that in a minute with a picture. I stayed with Roadmaster but went with their All Terrain model. And by having a professional hitch company do the installation, Just for Towing, my new towbar looks very neat and tidy, and has a two 2' riser. The new bar has channels for the blue safety cables to fit in. I had safety chains before, now I have these nice blue covered safety cables with hooks on their ends for easier disconnection.

My new electric cable is coiled, maybe it won't get caught in the towing hitch anymore. See that small orange coiled cable resting on the hitch? That goes to the new braking system on the Honda, that's the brake-away cable.

Ok, this is where the problem with the old installation was. You can see in the picture above that I now have a 2" riser coming out of the receiver on the rv. That's because the Honda base plate is 2" higher than the hitch. The old hitch didn't have that riser. I'm lucky that the car never rode up over the towbar during any quick stops. And because the towbar was not level part of the towbar was slowly bending, sorry I didn't take any pictures of it before it was gone. I also had a surge braking system without a breakaway cable, but now have a new braking system on the Honda. Nice and tidy under the hood.

That's the braking system on the firewall with red letters, upside down.

Stay-in-play.

I thought I'd show you what the engine compartment looks like after 3 years of desert dirt roads,

and 40,000 highway miles. The mice got into the hood insulation in New Mexico.

Yesterday we left the Boondockers Christmas area and moved up the road about 8 miles to park and visit with friend Joan. That's Joan's 5th wheel and truck on the left and us on the right. This is a really nice spot. A day or two before we got here friends of Joan's, John and Phyllis were here visiting and Joan mentioned that mom and I would be here soon and John said that he reads this blog. Welcome John and Phyllis and if you want to come back here for a visit I'd love to meet you(except we'll be gone till thursday). I love meeting my readers so if any of you see me around stop on by.