Thursday, May 29, 2014

Forest Lake

On Thursday, we left Carolina Landing in Fair Play, SC, and drove about a little over 200 miles to Forest Lake RV Resort in Advance, North Carlina.  Like Carolina Landing, Forest Lake is a Thousand Trails campground and so we get to stay here for "free" with our zone pass (except for having to pay $3/night for 50 amp).  We chose site D-7.


Forest Lake is a nicer park with more level sites to choose from.  It also has 2 swimming pools!  Some of the other amenities like the shuffleboard and tennis courts were not in the best of shape; but it appears to have a nice miniature golf course.  It also has a small fishing lake (more like a big pond).


The walking bridge across the lake was closed and the docks were not very sturdy.  I think they are the original docks from when the park was built in the early 70's.  :)


On Friday, we walked for about an hour that morning and had planned on going to the RCR Racing Museum and garage.  After we walked, I got a shower but when Chuck got in to take his shower the hot water would not work.  He had to take a cold shower.  Brrrr!!

We began checking everything we could think of to try to narrow the problem down.  First thing we did was turn the breaker switch to the hot water heater off.  We checked around the hot water heater, under the motorhome, and under the sinks and there were no leaks anywhere.  The cold water on all the faucets would work, but we could not get any water out of the hot side of the faucets.  We tried turning the hot water heater bypass value off and on.  When the valve was on (bypassing the hot water heater), we could get cold water out of both sides of the faucets.  When the valve was off (like it normally is), we could only get water out of the cold side of the faucet.

We tried draining the hot water heater thinking maybe some corrosion had built up and was blocking the water lines but the water came out emptied out of the hot water heater perfectly clear.  And still no hot water when we filled it back up.  Hmmmm.....

We looked up some nearby RV repair services and found Kamperz RV Service, a mobile RV repair service that had excellent reviews on www.rvservicereviews.com. While we waited for them to arrive, we kept trying to figure out what else might be the problem.  We decided to drain the hot water heater again.  Unfortunately, Chuck forgot to release the pressure on the pressure relief valve first so we both got soaked with cold water.  Cooled us off for a little while anyways!  :)

While we "patiently" waited for Kamperz RV Service to arrive, we watched the clouds...


...and this little wren hopping around near us...


...until he flew away.


Later that afternoon, Kampers RV Service arrived, and within about 45 minutes he had the problem figured out and solved.  The check valve on the hot water bypass had gone bad and was blocking the hot water from coming out of the hot water heater.  The bypass valve is used for when you are winterizing your motorhome with RV antifreeze.  He removed the bypass valve altogether so the hot water would flow out of the hot water heater again.  We didn't need the bypass valve anyways because since we live in our motorhome all the time, we don't winterize it.  Yeah!  We have hot water again!!

After all the fun with the hot water heater, we decided to try some Lexington-style barbecue since we were just a few miles from Lexington, North Carolina, where this style of barbecue originated.  We went to Tar Heel Q just a couple of miles from the campground.  The barbecue is served "chopped" or "sliced" and if you get a sandwich, they put the cole slaw on top of the barbecue in the sandwich.  It was pretty good barbecue.  Sorry, I forgot to make a picture of our meal before we ate it (again).  But I got a picture of their sign!  :)


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