It has been a few days since I last posted. We were very busy preparing for and making the move to our new coach. On Friday, I moved most of the bulky items and bins from our basement to our cargo trailer. The trailer was packed tight! In the afternoon, I made the final walkthrough inspection and signed the paperwork. We bought our new rig! I had already set up an insurance binder – our policy premium went up $380, due to the higher value of our Alpine Coach over the Gulfstream Sun Voyager. Friday night was our last night in the Sun Voyager.

On Saturday morning, we prepared to drive the Sun Voyager out of the park. We did the usual preparations, except I left the sewer hose capped off and connected to the pipe in our site. I told our neighbor from Kansas, Tom, that I would leave my water and sewer hoses here while we picked up our new (to us) coach. With everything sealed up, it wasn’t an issue.

Tom and his wife arrived last week and will spend five weeks here. They just bought a 2004 42-foot tag axle Monaco Dynasty. It’s a real beauty with only 9,000 miles on it. The story behind that coach has a great moral. The original owner bought it in preparation for retirement and travel in 2004 and he built a garage to keep it in. He was in commercial real estate and at about the same time as he bought the coach, he bought a shopping mall and began renovation. The economy turned and he spent the next 10 years completing the renovation before he could sell the mall at a profit. He only used the coach a few times. Now that he’s finally retired, he decided he was too old to safely drive a 42-foot coach  and sold it. Moral of the story: don’t wait until it’s too late.

As we were pulling the slides in, Donna felt a little emotional about saying goodbye to our Sun Voyager. I was feeling excitement about moving into our new rig, not so emotional about leaving the old one. She was happy too, but said it was like finishing a good book – you feel kind of sad when it comes to an end. We drove to the dealer’s lot, pulled up next to the Alpine Coach and parked door-to-door with a runner rug between the two to facilitate the move. We started at the back of the Gulfstream, moving our clothes from the closet. For the next four and a half hours, we were in motion. I worked my way from the back of the coach through the bathroom and finally the living room. Donna sorted and roughly organized things as I dropped them off. She moved all of the pantry, refrigerator and freezer items. Our new refrigerator/freezer has about twice the capacity of our old one.

Parked door-to-door

Around 3:15pm, it was time to light the fires on the Cummins ISL powerplant in the Alpine Coach. When I did the walkthrough on Friday, I brought a couple of the manuals home with me. I read them Friday night before we watched more Breaking Bad. The diesel engine and air ride suspension require time to warm up and pump up. There’s an idle speed control – after start-up at low idle (600 rpm), the oil pressure rises. Once oil pressure is achieved and the engine has been running for about 30 seconds, you need to raise the idle speed. The controller has an idle speed range of 600 rpm (low idle) to 800 rpm (high idle) and bumps up the idle speed in 25 rpm increments. I raised the idle to 700 rpm.

The hydraulically actuated slides on the Alpine Coach move very quickly in comparison to the Gulfstream. This makes it doubly important to be sure there are no obstructions. The slide operation has a few differences from our old coach. The ignition key needs to be in the accessory position or the engine needs to be running to operate the slides. Also, at least one jack has to be lowered before the slides will move. On our old coach, the engine would not start if the slides were out, or you could not open the slides if the engine was running.

I pulled the slides in while the engine warmed up and the air suspension came up to operating pressure. I walked around the coach and checked all of the compartment doors. When I was satisfied, it was time to move on out. I made a detour on our way back to the Sun Life RV Resort. I drove north on Ellsworth over Usery Pass. I wanted to climb the hill and feel the power! The Cummins ISL could accelerate at will anytime going up the hill. I held 50mph at half-throttle (I know, diesels aren’t throttled – it’s just a figure of speech).

Going down the other side of the pass to the Salt River, we held 45mph on the low Jake brake setting. I didn’t touch the brake pedal until we approached the stop sign at the bottom! I told Donna that I think it will be a lot less stressful and less fatiguing to drive this coach through the mountains. We turned west and climbed the hill up Power Road where we had power to spare all the way up.

Back at the RV park, I misjudged a couple of the turns and had to make them into two-point turns. The position of the driver’s seat has me sitting farther forward in this coach. I over-compensated a couple of times and started my turn-in too late. The extra three feet of wheel base compared to our old coach is noticeable. The Peak chassis has a 278″ wheelbase compared to 242″ on the Workhorse chassis we had before. Backing into our site was uneventful and fairly easy.

I hooked up the utilities, leveled the coach and put the slides out. I walked across the street and bought two gallons of drinking water and some beer. I didn’t want to use the water system in the coach for drinking, cooking or coffee until I sanitized the entire system. I think this was prudent – we didn’t know the source of the water in the coach or how long it’s been sitting in the system and it had a slightly sulfurous odor. At that point, I was done in. I opened a cold one and turned on the TV to watch football. We ordered a pizza from Fat Boy’s Pizza on the corner of Higley and University. I rate this as the best pizza I’ve ever had – tasty and the crust is just right. It’s not too thick and not too thin with a certain chewy-ness to it. Donna thinks it’s the best pizza she’s had outside of New York City.

Donna continued organizing the kitchen and bedroom until about 9pm. We sat through a couple more episodes of Breaking Bad before going to bed. I don’t think I mentioned before, but our coach was delivered with a brand new Simmons Beautyrest mattress. It’s a full-length queen size bed. Most motorhomes have short queen mattresses, 75″ instead of the full 80″ length. We like the full length. Our Gulfstrean had the short queen. Our new coach also came with a new Euro lounge chair and ottoman that I am really liking, and the induction cooktop is also brand new.

On Sunday, I woke up feeling a little sore from all of the activity the day before. I started the day by dumping the water from the fresh water tank. The tank on the Alpine Coach has a drain valve, much like the valves found on waste water tanks. This made it fast and easy to empty the tank. I sanitized the tank with bleach. The standard sanitizing solution for this job is 1/4 cup (2 oz) of bleach for 15 gallons of water. I connected a 50′ garden hose to the fill valve. I poured  two cups (16 oz) of bleach into the hose and connected the hose to the fresh water faucet and began filling. It took about 20 minutes to fill the tank. The literature I have for the coach has a discrepancy – one place states that the fresh water tank is 105 gallons, another says it’s 110 gallons. The bleach solution I added should be enough for 120 gallons.

Once the tank was full, I opened each faucet in the coach, one at a time, to run the chlorine bleach solution through all of the plumbing. I did this with the hot and cold water. An hour or so later I ran the hot water through the shower long enough to fill the hot water tank with the bleach solution. Then I watched football on TV. Three hours later, I drained the fresh water tank.

While 100+ gallons of water was draining beneath the coach, I went back to watching football. My neighbor, Tom, and his brother knocked on my door. He advised me in his Kansas drawl that I had a major leak coming from my new coach! I thanked him for telling me, then I told him what I was up to, sanitizing the system and all. He said, “Good idea. Smells kinda like a swimming pool over here.”

Unfortunately for me, the Chargers season came to a close with the loss at Denver. They had a great run at the end of the season. I can’t be sad. Things went better for new head coach, Mike McCoy, than expected. I think offensive coordinator, Ken Whisenhunt will become a head coach elsewhere next season, but the future looks bright for the San Diego Chargers.

Today, I’ll start organizing the basement and moving things out of the trailer.