I mentioned in yesterday’s post that Donna hiked to the bakery at Eagle Nest village. She had an interesting early morning hike. The water in the lake was glassy. She took several pictures – I like this one from a high vantage point on the trail looking north toward the village.
Glassy water with reflections of the mountains
Looking at this photo of the trail, you can see the variety of terrain in the area. There’s sage covered flatland favored by the prairie dogs, large meadows with rolling hills, pine covered mountainsides and bare peaks above the tree line.
Terrain varies
Our neighbor told me he spotted elk in the meadow across the lake from us. I’m guessing they are bedded down in the shade of the trees on the mountainside in the afternoon and come out into the meadow in the evening. I haven’t heard any bulls bugling though.
On Donna’s hike she encountered deer – a young buck and a couple of does. She also saw a flock of white pelicans on the lake, but they were too far away to capture a good photo.
Deer by the trail
After breakfast, I had work to do. The night before, while I was watching the Broncos-Panthers NFL game, our generator hour meter turned over 1,000 hours.
Generator panel inside the coach
That meant it was time for service. I like to perform preventive maintenance on a regular schedule. Onan recommends oil and filter changes every 150 hours and air and fuel filter changes every 500 hours. I had a gallon jug of Chevron Delo 400LE 15w-40 oil in the trailer and I had oil, air and fuel filters as well.
I figured it would be best to get the job done here in the park where there aren’t any rules against it. Many private RV parks prohibit working on your rig in the park. Draining the oil is easy, but removing the oil filter is always a chore. It’s hidden behind a trap door, mounted horizontally behind the generator shroud. I can’t see the filter – I have to remove it by feel. Of course, it was too tight to remove by hand. Every time I do this, I tell myself I need to buy a new oil filter wrench. The strap wrench I have is a real pain to fit into the small area where the filter is.
Onan doesn’t make it any easier with their filter design. Most oil filters are dimpled around the cap of the filter housing. This allows a cap-type filter wrench to grip it. The Onan filter is smooth – no dimples for a wrench to grip.
Cummins – Onan oil filter
I wrestled with the oil filter for half an hour before I got it off. Installing the new filter was fairly easy – again I was working blind and had to screw it on by feel. After re-installing the drain plug though, I discovered a problem. The gallon jug of oil I had in the trailer was only half full. I’d forgotten that I used it to top off the oil in our Cummins ISL diesel engine. I needed three quarts of oil for the generator, but I only had two. I carried on and changed the air filter element. The old element did its job well – the intake tract was clean as a whistle.
Old and new air filter elements
I poured the two quarts of oil into the generator, then filled the empty jug with the waste oil. After a quick clean-up, I took the waste oil to recycle and rode the Spyder to the NAPA store in Angel Fire. They didn’t have Delo 400 oil in quart containers, only gallon jugs. I thought I would be paying too much for the oil, but I didn’t have a choice. I got lucky – the gallon of Delo 400LE 15w-40 was on sale and I bought it for $14.00 including tax!
After I returned, I topped off the oil level and fired the generator to check for leaks. Job done and now we’re good for another 150 hours of run time. I didn’t change the fuel filter – I made the mistake of trying that once before and ended up with diesel fuel running down my arms all the way to my shoulders. I’ll have it done next time we have the engine serviced at Speedco.
After cleaning up, I rode my mountain bike over the same trail Donna hiked. I took a picture of the lake from the same high vantage point, but I was looking east across the lake.
View from the trail
I rode to the far side of the village and back – about four miles. The trail was fairly treacherous on a mountain bike – I had to keep a constant watch for prairie dog holes. Some of them were up to a foot in diameter – dropping a front wheel into one of these wouldn’t be fun.
I’ll end this post on a sad note. On September 6th, I lost another friend. Andy Sigler died suddenly and unexpectedly. Andy was the bass player in my friend Gerhard Rauch’s band, Backtrack. I spent many hours in Gerhard’s basement learning songs with Andy, Gerhard and the rest of the band. Andy was truly a kind and gentle person. I can’t recall one instance of him losing his temper or even getting the slightest bit angry at all. I’m glad I had the chance to meet and get to know Andy. I learned about Parrot Heads from him – he was an active member and attended many Parrot Head events. He’ll be missed by many for sure.
I need to get out and do my usual pre-road checks. We’ll kick the tires and light the fires later this morning and head over to Taos, New Mexico for a few nights.
By the way – there’s glitch in the latest WordPress update that’s not allowing e-mail notifications to go through. I’m hoping we can get it fixed soon.