The Coach gets out for Summer

If you don’t  remember last fall the sad sad sight of the beautiful coach getting put in the shed as the winter approached you can review here.  As it always happens the winter ends (eventually) the summer begins and the coach gets to come back out of the shed.
We took off work early morning on a Friday to pick up the coach and when we arrived a little after 8:00 at Hilmerson RV we could see the coach waiting patiently for us deep in the shed. (I had called ahead.)

The people from Hilmerson were going to drive it out of the shed, but when they tried to start it the batteries were low so they had to put the charger on it for 10 minutes or so.  You know how men and machines are so it took 3 or 4 people standing around to get the battery charged.

With all that manly brain power working on the battery problem it was only a few minutes and the coach fired right up. The Hilmerson guy then drove it over to the propane filling station where we topped of the propane tanks for the summer
Then it was time to hook up the Jeep to the Blue OX tow bar for the trip north to Brainerd where we had an appointment to have new tires put on the coach 

Before getting on Hwy 371 North we stopped to fill the diesel tank on the coach. It was a bit of a tight squeeze and Margaret was on the edge of her seat as we slipped between the pumps , but there was a foot or so to spare and soon the wallet was much lighter and the fuel tank was filled.




Lets see $3.09 a gallon for diesel and100 gallon tank………. 
The ride to Brainerd was a little less than an hour, and the coach cruised along at 60 MPH easily in the stream of  opening fishing weekend traffic towards the lakes of Northern Minnesota. The tire place was just off  Business 371 and after unhooking the jeep in the street next door we pulled the coach into the parking lot in front of one of the bays to get the tires changed.

After a bit of difficulty getting the fancy stainless hub caps off the tires were soon on the floor in the shop getting new Michelin 275/70R/22.5 XR2 “energy efficient tires” on.

Now you would think that in this day and age there would be big fancy shiny machines with gages and pressure settings and shinny fittings  to change these big ass tires, but no meet the machine Fred.

I took about 2 hours to change the tires then it was time to settle up for the tires and the price of the diesel looks like a bargain now.  Lets see $485  a tire plus installation. How many tires are on a diesel pusher again? Well at least you only have to put tires on the coach once ever 6 or seven years or so.
Finally it was time to get the jeep hooked up again for the final journey to the lake.  (I sure am getting good at this hooking up the jeep thing)

The weather was beautiful and the sun was shinning brightly when we pulled into the Lake Lot with the coach. Everything looked great after the winter. No animals had chewed the shrubs, no trees had died over the winter. Things were looking good.  Jockying the coach into its parking spot only took a couple of minutes, then we hooked up the electricity and water. Whoops! Water is squirting out of the pump house everywhere! Houston we have  a problem! The winter wasn’t quite so kind as we had hoped. Apparently there was a little water leftover in the pipes and of course when they froze the copper burst.



So the wallet gets hits for another $60 worth of plumbing parts during a trip to Walker Ace hardware. 3 hours of work later around 7:00PM that night we sat down for happy hour.
The Coach is out for the summer!