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| The morning after the night of Oct 26 |
The first sense of trouble was an abrupt awakening at 2am - something was wrong! It seemed the water was not flowing as it normally did and because of the rapid drop in temperature (It was 80 degrees on Monday! Seriously!) our first reaction was that the water lines had frozen - a thought that sends shear panic into an RV dweller! So a midst much shuffling around to get our feet on the ground in proper order and get lights on we discovered that not only did we not have water we did not have electricity! Discovering that you don't have electricity in an RV is a bit of task because so many of the lights and systems in the coach run off the battery. Top that off with the confusion that ensues from "waking from deep sleep" and you have a total break down of any sense of logic and reasoning power! But we managed to pull ourselves together, turn up the furnace, open all the cupboard doors and crawl back into bed assuming that this would be short lived and we had done all that we could to correct the situation.
Wrong! We awakened at first daylight to discover that we had to push about 10 inches of snow off the steps to get the door open so we could take inventory of the havoc that Old Man Winter had left behind. I don't think there was a tree in the RV park that had not lost a branch or two including the one just outside our home that had ever-so-gently deposited a hug branch on the top of our RV. ( Luckily I had insisted that Randy go the storage shed on Monday night to retrieve the snow shovel - a task that had been met with a bit a resistance I might add! ) We still did not have electricity and with a clearer mind we figured out the pipes had not frozen we just didn't have water. The RV Park is on a well and when there is no electricity the pump doesn't pump!
I called my boss and told him I needed to stay home and monitor the water lines, etc until the power came back on just to make sure we didn't have any undetected leaks. (Randy had to go into work to pump tanks that had already been scheduled) At that point I really thought I would be on my way in a couple hours! Not so! As the day wore on the power remained off and keeping the trailer warm so we didn't freeze became a balancing act. This isn't normally a problem the battery is recharged when we are plugged or the solar charger on the roof is not covered with 10 inches of snow. By the time Randy got back mid-afternoon the situation looked bleak. Northern Colorado was hit hard and thousands of homes were without power!
With the batteries seriously strained, Randy decided to hook the truck up to the trailer to recharge so we could keep the trailer heated. We didn't have a generator and there were none to be purchased within the immediate area - so we discovered after multiple calls! Oh well, no worries - the batteries were recharged and we had heat and the ability to cook and bottled water to drink - surely they would get the power on before long and things would return to normal! (A side note - did you know that a 9oz bottle of water is enough to flush an RV toilet! Just useful knowledge that I pass on to anyone that wants to store it in their memory!) So we hunkered down for the night - set the furnace on a temp low enough so it wouldn't run continually but high enough to keep the place reasonably warm and crawled into bed after a warm bowl of soup.
Thankfully we had decided to set the car in front of the trailer and have the jumper cables handy just in case the power didn't come back on in time. (The diesel truck makes a lot of noise in the middle of the night!) An RV is equipped with all sorts of warning alarms for when any major system fails and let me tell you - they do work! Around mid-night there were beeps and lights flashing and once again we experienced "mind-fog" as we scrambled to figure out what was wrong now. Check the propane! No it was burning fine. Battery! Yup! Our charge had only lasted four hours so Randy had to get dressed and trudge out into the night to hook up the car. The Corolla idled for the next five hours so we could keep the heat on. It was 17 degrees outside - burr!
Thursday morning the power was still out and after taking repeated turns cranking our lithium radio we learned that several thousand households were still out of power and the prognosis for getting power back on was bleak. We needed to find a generator! After another round of phone calls we finally located one in Longmont, CO, 50 miles down the interstate, at the Camping World store. Randy made a fast trip to Longmont and I stayed home to keep "the car running"!
Funny thing happened when I tried to call into work - my cell phone works on a hands-free Bluetooth connection when it is in the car. So here I am sitting in the trailer trying to figure out what was wrong with the cell phone when it suddenly dawned on me that with the car running just outside the trailer the Bluetooth connection was over riding the cell phone and I was connecting to the call but the speaker was in the car. Hopefully my boss didn't hear too many of my expletives of frustration regarding the non-functioning of my cell phone.
Randy returned around noon with our shiney new - bright yellow generator, carefully read the instructions, got the oil and gas into it and was 2 minutes from pulling the rip cord when I noticed that the power was back on! Wouldn't you know it! But at least we now are a little more prepared for the next go around. And being a full-time RVer in Colorado you can bet there will be a next time. (Now the only problem is that we have a generator full of gas and need to run it for 4-5 hours to break it in and the campground doesn't allow generators to be run when they have electricity! I wonder what it takes to apply for a temporary variance?)
The bottom line is that we survived the first storm and are anxiously awaiting the day when these new "Snowbirds" can spread our wings and drive south ahead of the wrath of Old Man Winter.
