Days 130-133: The Dog Days of Summer

On Wednesday I rode 46 miles to Cave-in-Rock, IL, getting a flat tire about 4 miles short of town.  I got that fixed and rolled into town just as the off and on drizzle that I had experienced all morning turned to all out rain.  So we loaded up the bike and made a side trip to Carmi, IL (earlier in the week we had tried to find a bicycle route to Carmi, but the DOT maps didn't show any options that weren't on busy roads with no or little shoulders).  We had some mail waiting there and I planned to do a little family history research in our spare time.

Off and on rain...

...and the real deal.

We are at the city campground at Burrell Park ($20, full hookups, showers, all the wood you can burn).  We loved this park when we camped here last fall, with the free wood and warm showers (it was only $15 per night then).  But you can't control the temperature on the showers, so the hot showers aren't nearly as welcome in this heat.  But it is a nice campground, and well shaded, so it provides some relief from the weather.

Burrell Park.

We've used our time here to re-evaluate our plans for the remainder of the summer.  It seems as though we've been ahead of our intended schedule since Day 1 this year.  And lingering in the heat and humidity that we've been experiencing isn't all that appealing to us.  Our instinct is to pile on the miles and get out of this weather, but that is not an option on our planned route:  if we get far enough down the road to escape the humidity, we will be going through some very hot desert environments well before they cool down to reasonable levels.

So we spent a fair amount of time considering changing our route.  One option would have been to drive back to Missouri and head west from Jefferson City or Rolla with the intent of getting to the Rockies and the cooler temperatures at higher elevations (not to mention the more arid environment).  If we did that, we would want to swing through Boise to see friends and get caught back up on doctor visits, etc.  But that is far enough that it could put us in the mountains in mid-October, when early snow is a real possibility.  It also would mean that we would need to be in a big hurry to head south for the winter.

We looked at some other options, but they would have us hovering some place near the Rockies while we waited for the deserts of the Southwest to cool down.  And they would completely bypass Texas.

So our hope now is to stick to our planned route and to keep our pace slow enough that we reach El Paso, TX just before mid-October.  From there our forty mile per day pace would put us in San Diego about three weeks later (longer if we linger anywhere for a while, though we are concerned about the snowbirds filling up all the campgrounds at that time of year).

With our best option appearing to be soldiering on, we went into survival mode; as in trying to find a way to survive the heat and humidity, which will likely only get worse as we start heading toward the Gulf Coast in a week or so.  So we bought ourselves a high-volume 20" garage fan, something we had seen a lot of people using while we were camping in Missouri.  In addition to providing us with a much needed breeze, it works great at blowing most of the bugs away.  Lana wasn't too sure of it at first, but now she hogs a spot front and center.

Our new high volume garage fan.

Prior to that, we had spent increasingly more time in our cabin in front of the AC.  And it seems one result of running the AC so much has been that there may be a colony of mold spores trying to get established in there.  We called Camp Inn for some advice, and were told that our best bet would be to spray a lot of mold/mildew spray into the front of the AC, hoping to kill off as much of the mold as possible.  Otherwise, the only option would be to take the AC out, take it apart, scrub everything down, dry it out real good and then put everything back together.  So we've completed Option A and will monitor for signs of further mold development every now and again while we are traveling in this humid environment.  We also plan to run the AC fan on high when we aren't inside the cabin, so that it can help to dry out the interior of the AC.

Mold was trying to colonize our new air conditioner diffuser.

It has also been a time to get caught up on some chores.  One of those was replacing a damaged zipper slide on the screen door on my side of the camper.  A month or more ago we got a great tip on how to fix a zipper that no longer is able to pull the two sides of the zipper together.  The trick is to [gently] squeeze both sides of the zipper slide that straddle the zipper teeth.  The "gently" part was missing from the original instructions and I effectively destroyed one slide.  The man who makes those doors, Kevin Wilson, was kind enough to send me some free replacement slides.  Replacing mine was a simple matter of taking apart the stitching on a piece of vinyl reinforcement, slipping off the damaged slide, putting on the new slide and sewing it all back shut again.  So our screen doors once again work like new.

And we had some good news the other day.  We contacted the factory about the problem we were having with our water pump, and they suggested to rap on the water pump with a screwdriver handle before ordering a new pump.  And sure enough, that did it.  Our problem was caused by a stuck pressure valve and rapping on the pump housing got it unstuck.  That saved us about $70 in parts and untold frustration removing and replacing the pump.

Our drive to Carmi on Wednesday was in some fairly heavy rain, so it was no surprise to learn that, once again, some water had gotten in through the condensation drains of the camper's streetside door window.  We've worked with the factory on this issue for a while now, and as a result the situation has improved considerably from when we first became aware of it.  My suspicion is that what got in is water thrown up from passing vehicles combined with the slipstream created by our particular vehicle.  We were able to quickly mop up the water that got inside the cabin, so it was not a big deal.

Anyway, when Alea went into town to do laundry the other day I took it upon myself to remove the bed from the cabin, so that I could clean the cabin floor and make certain that we had no other water issues.  In doing so I found the front streetside corner of the cabin floor to be damp - much too damp to be explained by the recent rain storm.  Upon inspecting outside, I found the bungee that secures our Alcan cover (a vinyl cover that protects the camper's aluminum skin from rock dings) was sopping wet.  And a large area of the cabin floor had very significant condensation and was very damp.  I also found where the Alcan cover had prevented one of the drains of the front pass-thru from draining properly, causing a minor amount of wood staining there.

Excessive moisture in an area under our Alcan cover.

Another Camp Inn owner, Jenn Stuart, had been warning us of a similar issue that she had with 2012 camper.  In her case, it got bad enough that it was necessary to have the factory rebuild that corner of her camper.

Ours was no way near that far gone, so we put our ceramic heater to work inside to dry things out, and stuffed wads of paper towels under the Alcan cover to wick away as much moisture from the bottom of the floor as possible.  That seems to have worked very well.  

It appears that our issue is being caused by excessive exterior condensation on the camper's skin, which is the result of our need to run the air conditioner so much in this high humidity.  At present the camper is tilted slightly to the streetside and slightly nose down, so a lot of that condensation eventually finds its way to the front streetside corner, where it is held against the cabin floor by the Alcan cover.  My solution was to buy some extruded aluminum U-channel to keep the Alcan cover away from the cabin floor, thus allowing things to drain properly.

The new U-channel assures that the Alcan cover stays away from the bottom of the cabin floor.

The U-channel with the Alcan cover in place.

One thing that I had hoped to do while here in Carmi was to contact one or more third cousins from my Malone line: folks who shared direct ancestry from Absalom Malone, the first blacksmith of Crossville, IL.  In particular, I was hoping to contact Ryan Bingman, a descendant of Annie Fannie (Malone) Higginson Smith, who was Abs' only daughter to survive to adulthood.  The intent was to find someone to help shake the family tree, in the hope that someone in the family has a picture of Abs and/or any of his children.  Unfortunately, Ryan's mother, Lilleen (McElroy) Bingman, died this past Wednesday and the service was held on Friday.  So it was terrible timing for trying to connect with him.

But, out of the blue, I received a call from a slightly more distant Malone cousin, James Lumpkins (he is a third cousin, once removed).  Our common ancestor was Abs' father, James Malone, Senior.  James Lumpkins descends from Abs' youngest brother, Elijah.  I returned his call and we tried having a conversation, but the poor cell reception here made that next to impossible.  But it sounds as though he may have been researching the family history well before I started, and he may have known a man by the name of Bill Hunter, who was someone who had attempted a Malone family history about 8 or 10 years before I came along.  I'll call him again later, once we are camped somewhere with better cell reception.