I will put these days together in a blog post since they were both pretty much travel days and I don’t have any photos!
As previously mentioned I was worried about having enough diesel to get to a fill up. I figured I would get as far as I could and then call AAA to bring some more. However there was another issue that we noticed when arriving in the park. Our hitch was making a horrendous noise. We have an Equal-izer 1000 hitch. We are told they are supposed to make some noise when turning. We did hear that when we first got it and I greased it up pretty good so the noises when turning sharp in a campground were minimal. According to literature, by greasing what I did would counteract any sway control the hitch would provide. I don’t have an issue with sway before or after greasing so that did not matter.
On the way to the park we heard no noise from the hitch but we were only making gradual turns. When we got to the campground and made tighter turns it sounded like metal gouging metal! Terrible. Prior to hitchup I checked some of the nuts on the hitch and they appeared to be a bit loose so I tightened them up and greased the HECK out of that hitch. Result, no noise. I am happy for now.
We started on the downhill and oddly enough the fuel gauge did not move much. We comfortably made it to Klamath Falls and fueled up there. We also got some groceries and headed toward the ultimate destination, Reno. Actually more like Lake Tahoe but I could not find anywhere to stay and not being familiar made it harder to find something. Crater Lake NP to Reno is a longish haul, 308 miles. A bit more than we want to do in a day on this trip, except the first and last legs. I decided to go to Susanville and we could spend the night there. That was only 222 or 257. Why the difference? Choice of routes.
Once you get to 299E you get to choose if you go down State Route 139 directly to Susanville OR head east to Alturas then south on 395. The latter route is longer but might have been the better choice. Here is why.
139 is an OK route for a single vehicle, it requires a lot of concentration with a trailer. The worst part is the last hill into Susanville. About 4 miles of 6% grade that is pretty curvy. A lot of braking, engine braking with tow/haul mode and a lot of turning. I don’t think it was the worst downgrade I have ever been on with a trailer. That title goes to old route 66 just east of Oatman, AZ. Roxie’s worst are the New Priest Grade near Groveland, CA. She also does not like CA 180 down from Kings Canyon NP. We made it down as we always do but shortly after that we got a check engine light!! Great! Something else to worry about.
After we setup the trailer at the local RV park, did some laundry and I stopped at the O’Reilly auto parts. I asked them if they rented the OBD II code readers. They said no but if I went to the oil changers down the street they would do it for free. OK. Now a project for tomorrow. We had a dinner at Lassen Steaks and a nice conversation with the owner of the establishment.
The next day we stopped at the Oil Changers to get the code read. The technician cheerfully came out, read the code and erased the code. It turned out to be some innocuous code related to the downhill. I felt MUCH better. I gave the tech a bit of cash and told him to help buy lunch for everyone that day. We hooked up and headed to Reno. A nice easy 395 drive. We ended up at the Boomtown KOA for 3 nights, at least that was the plan…
