no leaks in the big window!

It has been raining all day long and I just went out to check on the big window in the camper. I am happy to report that I could not find a single drop of water in or around the window! We have yet to do the hose test because of how busy and/or sick we have been but we will still do it to double check. I am so relieved!

resealing the front window

We started on the front window last night and got it out and much of the scraping/clean up done. We worked until past dark. It came out easier than I expected it to and I guess it just goes to show that the seals were really bad.

 before we started

 the window was really gooped up with silicone and other things, trying to get the leak stopped the last couple years.

 I really didn't expect the window to come out as easily as it did. We did scrape most of the gunk off before we even tried to pull it out.

got the window out and the awning off. Everything is scraped and cleaned. We were a little concerned about leaving it this way over night because of some theft in the area but we did it anyway and it was all okay. 

Many of the screws were so rusted there wasn't much left of them. 

we decided to just replace them all with new. 

The sheet metal had come off the framing in most places so we stapled it all back in place. I was surprised that there was only this little bit of water damage, that we could see. The wood has gone soft but is not peeling or falling apart. We really should replace it but it felt too daunting to me so we are ignoring it for now. 

 scraping and cleaning the window and awning

 I don't think the awning ever had any weatherizing on it and that is where the screws were rusted the worst.

finishing the last of the scraping and cleaning

 a little trick I learned somewhere (I think from Handyman Magazine) is when you have a hole that is too big or screws that are stripped out you shove a toothpick (or three) in the hole and the screw will fit in tight again. I put the toothpicks in the hole and break them off then hammer them in flat. It has been a handy trick with this project.

 putty tape put on and ready to reinstall

 All back together again and hopefully better than ever.

I sure hope the leak is taken care of now. I think there might be a leak in the middle framing of the window though and I sure don't know what to do about that. 

While we were working on the camper we went ahead and finished draining the water heater. We thought we had it drained last week but Dad called and said we should siphon the last of the water out so it doesn't freeze. We did just that and got quite a bit more water out. 

We worked on the bunk bed today too and I think we have got it fixed enough to use. All we have left with it is to put a board under the mattress. 

 Daddy grabbing Boo through the door

We threw the futon mattress up on the bunk and I think it will work out okay for a few years. She can't wait to use it next summer. 

It has been a very busy day, or two, but we got a lot done.

water heater

We drained the water heater in the camper today. That little nut sure was in there tight! I can now see why some people put a toilet valve on theirs to drain it. I think we might just do that next year.

Sorry, I turned this picture but it won't post here the right way. I think we have all the water drained out of the camper and now we just need to blow it out. I also worked on the front window a bit in preparation to remove it on Saturday. The front window is going to be a very big job since I don't think it is going to come out easily at all. I have a lot of scraping and cutting to do in order to get it out. At least the weather is supposed to be nice for a bit.

repairs and damage

We have been working on the camper again this week. I am a bit frustrated that I cannot find more information on line about how to do repairs on old campers. I can find restoration stuff and repairs on newer campers (some of which has been helpful) but not what I have wanted with the old ones. I guess because so many just aren't around anymore. The only things I have been able to find out about the Ranch El Raes is that they were manufactured mostly in Nephi, Utah from the 1960's- 1980's. The only pictures I can find are a few on complete restorations but they haven't been particularly helpful to me. It has been frustrating. I know virtually nothing about how to maintain/care and fix our camper (affectionately referred to as Motel 4) and I want to know more. We have picked a few brains and that has been helpful but mostly we have been on our own and that is why I decided to make this blog. Maybe I can find out what I need from comments on here and maybe there are others in our same boat. If nothing else, it is a way to share our journey.

I was excited to find out that my cousin has a Rancho El Rae that is only two years newer than ours and he was kind enough to let us come and check it out. We want to get our top bunk functional and so I wanted to look at his. We got some ideas and he mentioned several little helpful things and the most helpful was he introduced us to putty tape! We caulked all the windows and "stopped" some of the leaks or at least slowed them down, for now. I have though to myself that there had to be a better way but I haven't been able to find anything helpful online before now. My cousin told us the windows were not bad at all to pull out and put back so I got a bee in my bonnet and did just that. I started with one of the smaller windows because I knew it would go faster and I was more comfortable with starting small. I made a wild guess that it would take me about two hours to do it and I was right on the mark. It was harder to take out than I thought it would be though. I initially started this project on my own since my hubby was working on our truck at the time. I had to interrupt him to come help me though. The window was stuck fast and it took some deep scraping with a box cutter and some pushing and pulling to get it out. I scraped all the old seal and layers of caulk off the siding and the window, cleaned it up and put the putty tape on the frame and put it all back in. Hubby came and helped me put all the screws back in. It rained good today and there were no leaks from that window, hurray!

unfortunately we are still leaking from the big window. Luckily it seems to be staying in the track of the window and not coming down the side anymore so we have at least slowed things down with the caulk. We are hoping to fix the big window on Saturday.

you can't see it very well but there is water in the track. You can also see some of the old water damage done because this window has been leaking for a couple of years. I am worried about the rot damage. I guess we will see when we pull the window. It could be pretty ugly.

This is the second worst part of water damage to the camper, that we have found. The worst is under the bathroom sink.

This is where is was leaking the worst when we got it. Hubby had to replace two fittings and a hose.

 There are a few other spots that used to leak, and have been fixed by my dad.

The more we mess around the more damage we find but not enough to make us too nervous. I have seen pictures of much, much worse.

One of the things we have really wanted to do was get the upper bunk functioning as a bed again. It has always been broken (since Dad has owned it) but we want to see if we can get it working. The biggest problem is that the support beam by the door would not hold any weight, the screws would just come right out of the wall. I messed around and decided that they were stripped out. I had read somewhere (probably my handyman magazine) that you can break toothpicks off into the holes that are stripped out and then the screw will fasten tightly so that is what I did. Most of the holes took 3 toothpicks to fill in but once we did that the bunk held the weight of me and my daughter which is about 200 lbs.

I sure hope that takes care of it but I am not sure there isn't a bigger problem. I guess we will find out in time. The next concern I have with the bunk is that when my daughter and I were up there the hinges bulged a little bit.This picture is looking up at the bunk from the lower bunk. There is the obvious hinge on the left but there is also one on the right just before the light.

I do not know if that is normal or not. My cousin says he has never noticed his bulging when his two boys are in the top bunk but their hinges are a little different than ours. I did notice they had a board under the mattress so we are going to give that a try and see if it will divide the weight up a bit. We do not have a mattress for the top bunk but we have some foam egg crate stuff that we threw up there with the intention of making it work as a mattress but then we were concerned our daughter would pick and it and eat it. We remembered we have an old futon mattress in the basement and think we will see how that works out.

I guess we won't know for sure if the top bunk really is working until next summer but we will keep working on it in the next few weeks.

We have drained the water out of the tank and ran the pump with the taps open but we still need to blow it out with the compressor. I also realized we may need to do something with the water heater so I checked out youtube yesterday and figured out how to do that.

We checked out State Trailer Supply and decided it was a big toy store, much like Home Depot, and we could spend a lot of money there. We already have a wish list for the next year or two lol. We will have to be careful there for sure.

I would like to figure out how to hook up this old camper to city water. My cousin showed me where I am supposed to but the threading is too small and won't accept a standard hose.

I will have to look into it more and may have to replace the valve that is there. I also want to get a different hook up to where we fill the fresh water tank so we can hook a hose up to it directly and not just shove it in the open pull out. We have several projects to keep us busy in the next few weeks. I am also in debate about tarping it for the winter or just trusting that the rubber roof will be good. Decisions decisions.

Annual Family Campout

The end of July we went on our annual family campout. We stayed in an RV park which ended up being a joke and none of us were pleased with it, that may be the last time we do that. I won't go into the particulars but I sure wouldn't recommend Riverside Resort near Panguitch, Utah. It took them 3 tries to get our bill right and their webiste makes it out to be much, much nicer than it was.

It was our first real trip with the camper and we sure were glad to have it, esp for the bathroom. The only bathrooms available at the camp were way, way, way across from us and so small that we would bang our heads on the door when we pulled our drawers up and down. The men complained about how bad/dirty their bathrooms were and would actually drive 15 miles to the nearest gas station when they had to sit down. Very, very, grateful for our camper potty that trip.
Once again we noticed how much warmer it is in a camper vs a tent (even our nice spring bar) and barely needed a blanket to cover us. Boo slept all night once again, which never happens when we are in a tent. We had a nice time and were sad to see our last trip of the season over with. We are much too busy and too broke to camp anymore this year. I hope we can do it a lot more next year.

We used the stove for the first time on this trip and it worked great, though I could see it heating things up inside very quickly. We also learned to make sure our gray water needs to be open to drain on the ground because the toilet tank filled up very quickly, in just two days. At least we found a free place to dump it.

New camper roof

I am worn out today. We had a work party and we played kick ball, which was a blast even though our team got creamed good and fast. I love that we always have such a good time. When I got home we went shopping for a few things and we got to work on the camper again. We caulked every seam in the roof and then put on the rubber roof. I may regret getting the cheap stuff as it was not what I expected but I hope it will be good enough for this year at least. I was expecting something the consistency of thick paint, that I could just roll on. I was expecting this because of some videos I had watched on you tube. (LOVE youtube, it has been a lifesaver) When we opened the gallon I bought, it was the consistency of marshmallow fluff. I did not get the stuff specific for RV's because it is about $80.00 a gallon and we are beyond broke. I did some research and found some for house and building roofs that was only $30.00 a gallon so I went for it. It did not go on as smoothly as I expected and doesn't look terribly pretty but I think it will still probably work. I was extra generous with it around the seams and hopefully that will be enough. I feel more confident in it because of the fresh caulking too. We still have half a gallon of it left so I might add another coat, along the seams at least. Once again, it is not pretty but hopefully it is functional. I felt like we really needed to get it done today because the rain is coming again on Friday. I did not see any leaks in the skylights when it rained the other day but Dad insisted there is one and I did find a crack in the skylight, that I caulked up good. Kenton called me this morning and said that he washed the roof off good and there was a tiny leak in the bathroom sky light. I found where I think it might have been leaking and caulked the crap out of it and then smothered it in rubber roofing. I am glad that much is done. I was pleasantly surprised when Kenton pulled up an extra ladder and the other gallon of roofing and went to work on what he could reach from the sides. It made the work go so much faster and we were done, start to finish, in two hours. We did it all by hand with 2" foam brushes. I would have been out there a lot longer without his help.

caulking all the seams in the roof

had to get some towels up there so I wouldn't get burned. Working on a hot tin roof in 90+ weather is not the best idea.

rubber roofing is done. You sure can see the brush strokes but the paint was so thick you couldn't get an even coat. We may go back and do another coat, at least around the seams and fittings. Maybe next year we will splurge and get the good stuff. Things are coming along slowly but surely. We sure are getting excited about going camping next week.

first campout of the season

I worked hard all week alright, nearly 50 hours and I still was able to leave early on Friday.
Kenton had almost everything ready by the time I got home, I just had to finish a salad and get a few other food items packed. We pulled out and headed up the canyon. We wanted to get there early so we would have plenty of room to park. We were the first ones there and got the camper unhooked and leveled out and were heading out for a hike when we realized we were in the wrong camp ground, OH NO! After some giggling we hooked back up again and got in the right place. We pulled up where we wanted to and realized the camper was level right where we were so we didn't even unhook it from the truck. We switched the propane on and lit the fridge, just to see how it would do. We had charged it up at the house for two days before and got it nice and cold. We froze some water just to be safe and put it in there too. The water is still frozen today. Guess the fridge works better on the propane than dad thought, for one night at least.
Since we didn't unhook the camper we didn't go on the hike we had planned, and the time was getting late for it anyway, we just went for a little hike near camp. Our daughter caught sight of something and was so excited to show us.

We watched the moose for several minutes and she kept insisting there were two but we had seen it walk around and we only saw the one. When I got home I enlarged this picture and I think I finally see the second one though, I am still not 100% sure I really see it. After five or ten minutes Kenton and I finally saw it.

It is the second or third year in a row that we have seen moose at this campground but it is the first baby moose I think I have ever seen. We love the wildlife. Boo really wanted to see a bear but I am sure glad we didn't! We did see these and lots of chipmunks and ants and not one, but two, garden snakes (one of which I didn't see until it bumped my foot -shiver, shiver!). It made me even happier we were in a camper this year.

Once we had dinner we visited and relaxed. Boo started asking if she could go to bed yet. She was so excited to sleep in the camper. We were not allowed to have a fire and there were lots of little kids so everyone started going to bed about nine. We were some of the last to head to bed since we helped clean camp up for the night.

 beds are all put together and ready for us to sleep

 it was so warm we ended up on top of the sleeping bags, using only the blanket about half way through the night. The camper was much warmer than a tent though everyone commented how it was comfortable during the night.

The truck looks small next to the camper. 

Kenton fell asleep fast. Boo wriggled around for awhile but finally settled down. I laid there, and laid there, and laid there. I was tired but so wound up and stressed out (I had a rough week at work) and just couldn't relax. I did not sleep good at all. I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and I tell you I LOVED not having to wander outside and hope I wouldn't encounter one of those snakes or worse. I didn't even wake anyone up. I didn't have to put my shoes on, or a jacket, and I had very clean hands when I was done. Nighttime potty convenience is my current favorite part of the camper. 

Kenton and Boo woke up at the butt crack of dawn but were nice and let me sleep another hour. We got up, had some breakfast, visited some more and then stood around watching everyone else pack up sleeping bags, clothing bags, toys, pillows, and tents, all while chasing kids. We simply moved the wheel blocks and cinder block step, packed up our chairs, and pulled away. It was the least stressful camp out I have ever been on and I loved it! 

We were a little concerned about coming down the canyon since we had not braked down a steep road without trailer brakes. We had nothing to worry about at all. Kenton used the engine to brake most of the time and there was not any problems. 

I have decided the only thing I don't like about having a camper is parking it at our house. It is a super tight, million point turn, kind of parking, and takes forever. It was about 20 minutes today, counting Kenton trimming the bushes down. There was yelling involved and lots of frustration but we finally got it. It will get better as we practice but it will always be tight, we couldn't do it with a bigger trailer. We really need to look into covering the ditch at the second gate because then we could pull in the right way and have plenty of room to maneuver. Hopefully the city will let us get a plate for it and that we can afford it by next year. Or better yet, the city finishes covering the stupid ditches in the first place like they were supposed to do two years ago. The ditch is covered up to our house but then they ran out of money and never finished the last two blocks.

Once we got parked I began unloading while Kenton unhooked the trailer. I brought the clothes and pillows in and Kenton went to the bathroom while I cleaned out the fridge. I was done in a matter of minutes. Kenton came out to help me finish and apologized that I had to do it all myself. I just laughed at him because it was so easy and fast. I will say it again....easiest camp trip ever! Well worth the inconvenience of parking the trailer. 

camper crapper cleaning

Just finished cleaning out the camper crapper and guess what? It was easy and not bad at all. We found a place we can dump it for free and it is only about a mile from home. It is what I have been most concerned about with the camper and looking forward to the least. It was no big deal at all. I am glad it was no big deal. I am getting very anxious to go camping! We are curious to see how long the battery lasts. We were able to charge one of the two batteries but the other one won't charge so we will need to replace it soon. We still need to fill at least one of the propane tanks. There is a little bit in one but we don't know how much. We have learned how to light the water heater and camper heater and stove, though we haven't actually done any of it. I guess all we really have left to figure out is the fridge, it is a bit complicated. There is a switch under a panel in the side of the camper, the switch inside the fridge is broken. You can't see the switch, you have to feel for it. If it is switched one way it runs on the propane, switch it the other way and it runs off electric power. We need to play with it and figure out which is which. Dad says it doesn't run well on propane so I don't know how much we will actually use it. We will have to play with it and see how it goes. The last thing I am nervous about is the brakes. The trailer has brakes on it but we don't have a trailer brake switch on the truck my brother doesn't think we really need them since the camper is pretty small and the truck stops just fine with it hooked up. We did go up and down some steep roads coming home from Vegas and had no problems but at the same time we didn't have to stop while coming down a steep hill. When we come down Cottonwood Canyon in two weeks we will be very careful. Kenton plans on using the engine to brake as much as he can. He usually does anyway. My brother gave us a trailer brake switch but we haven't got it installed, don't know how to install it, and probably need some more wiring to completely install it. I can't wait until Kenton starts working so we can afford material so I can make some new curtains for the camper. We also want to get a magic mesh screen door for it. Wal Mart has them for $14.00 so that is not bad. Next week we plan on buying some rubber roof paint so we can seal up the roof and seams and see if we can get the water leak stopped. Bring on camping season! I hope we can go several times this year.

Our New Toy

 We got the trailer cleaned out good this week and scrubbed it down. All the dishes were washed and put back in and much of the other camp equipment we have was also put in. The battery is charged up and we will see how long it lasts. We may have to buy at least one, the camper came with two. The propane needs to be filled and we need to learn how to run the heater, water heater, and the fridge. The toilet tank needs to be emptied really bad so we need to do that. We think we have found a place we can dump it in draper for free, that would be good. It is all a little daunting and sometimes overwhelming.

It is almost as old as I am but seems to be in good shape for it's age. It does need some work done but it is all minor, at least that we know of. There is a water leak by the front window somewhere but Dad couldn't ever find it. He has caulked it to pieces. I think we will get some rubber roof paint and paint the crap out of it lol. We are excited about having it and will test it out the first time in about three weeks. Camping will be a bigger adventure this year.

The Adventure Begins

My Dad has had a little 1976 Rancho El Rae for about twelve years and he has hauled it all over the place. We have slept in it a few times while we have stayed with him at the farm. He recently upgraded to a bus and asked if we would like to have the little camper. We have talked about wanting a camper for years but just haven't been able to afford one, we jumped on the chance to bring this one home. We have never been around travel trailers much and don't know the first thing about them. We knew this one had some water leaks and that everything was functional but that was about all.
We went to visit my Dad in early June but really didn't know he was going to give us the camper until we got there, he had mentioned to make sure we brought the truck at least. He didn't say anything about it until the night before we were supposed to come home. We had to rush and work hard to get things ready to even pull it. Our truck had the wrong hook ups and we couldn't find the right ones that late so we had to put everything off until the morning. The morning we were leaving we found the right hookups and got them installed, we bought removable extension mirrors for the truck so we could see better. Dad was worried about a couple of the tires on the trailer so he paid for two new ones just so he knew we could make it home safely. We have never hauled anything bigger than a golf cart trailer and a car dolly, we were a bit nervous. I still haven't ever pulled any trailer, I leave that to the hubs, though I should learn one of these days. It was after 1:00 before we got on the road and it took us 11 hours to get home. It was a very long day.
When we had gotten home we had just pulled straight into the drive because we were so tired but the next day my husband decided to park it himself, while I was at work. It is a tight, tight, fit and a pain in the butt to get where we wanted it and he said it took him about a 20 point turn to do it but he got it there. (He has since improved and can do it in about a 5 point turn but he has to get within a couple inches of the house and then cram the front end of the truck into the front fence. I should take a video one day)
We are glad we got home in one peace and got it parked where we wanted it.