The Crystal Geyser and Appliance Woes!

This week has been hot, hot, hot!  We haven't ventured out too much, preferring to stay in our air-conditioned RV.  We got 2 weeks worth of school done this week, borrowed a dozen books from Overdrive, and did miscellaneous activities ranging from playing XBox to writing projects.  Oh!  And Jeff and the kids have been working on an exciting new project in the evenings!  I'm so excited to see how it turns out, but it's a big project that'll take some time to finish.  

One day after school, the kids and I ventured out to see the famed Crystal Geyser.  It was a bit of a drive, but I'm really glad we checked this out.  The whole way out, it's nothing but brown hillsides, brown rocks, brown roads.  And it's that way for miles.  Then, you come around the last bend and see this neon orange glowing patch of earth!  It's like something out of a science fiction movie.  Toxic spill on aisle three?  

I didn't doctor these photos--the whole area is really this orange.  When we arrived, there was another tourist there who told us that he had been out the previous week during an eruption.  He said it shot up 100 feet in the air and smelled badly of sulfur and carbon dioxide.  When we walked up to the geyser spout, it smelled to me like the tide pools at home.  We looked down into the geyser and saw it gurgling, but it didn't seem like it was going to blow any time soon.

Everything is covered in layers of sediment from years of eruptions, and there are neat designs and patterns that change as you get further away from the geyser.

Then you reach the shore of the Green River, where there is a crust of sediment and sand mixed. After that is a small strip of sand, which the girls spent a long time playing in.  The air smelled like the tide pools, and here we had some sand!  Just like being back home!  Not really, but still fun.

You can see how brown the rest the surrounding area is.  I wish I had taken a 360 degree video to show you how odd it is to have this one glowing section, with the rest of it so dead and blah.  Driving through this area the other day, Meg started singing a line from a Needtobreathe song, "In this wasteland, where I'm living..."  Haha.  It really does look like that in places.

The kids scavenged and found items that had been buried in sediment.  They found twigs, bugs, and a big piece of cardboard that someone had left behind.

I thought these might be Wilson's Snipes because those are supposed to be the kind that live here, but now that I've looked at the picture up close, I think they're probably the Common Snipe.  Meg said they wouldn't let me get close enough for a picture.  (Challenge accepted!)

----------------  Appliance Woes  ------------------

Unless you are an RV'er, this section will most likely not interest you, so feel free to skip it.  :)

A few weeks ago, we pulled out our Splendide washer/dryer combo and cleaned out the vent. The dryer hadn't been drying as well as it should, but this fixed the problem.  A few days ago, we noticed a burning smell coming from it during the wash cycle and while we were checking it out, an F10 error flashed.  (We learned that it is an F10 error by looking up the error codes online.) Anyway, we guessed that something had happened in the course of moving the unit in and out and called Splendide's customer service to see if they could offer suggestions of what to check first.  The man we spoke with was super helpful and said that the error code means that the computer in the washer isn't receiving any signal about the water levels, so it's freaking out.  He suspects that a wire came loose and is causing the smell.  He told us to take the top off and look for a discolored wire toward the back of the unit.  So that's our project for tonight!  Stay tuned...

Also this week, we noticed that our new-ish vacuum wasn't picking up like it should, and found a cracked hose in the base. I had to laugh about that because we had trouble with the hose on our last vacuum breaking repeatedly, so purposefully chose a model that has a hard plastic stem on it, with no flexible hose.  Little did we know when we bought it that the base has a small (about 8 inches when extended) hose that goes from just above the floor to the hard plastic stem.  And that's what broke.

I called Shark, and they were super nice and offered to send us a new base.  So that was good.  Not so good is the fact that they couldn't get it to us for 5 business days, and we'll be in another state by then. I had them send it to our next location, so we should be able to vacuum our floors again in 3 days time. It has already been 4 days and I feel like the RV is covered in a layer of dog fur.  I keep walking around, dragging my hands on the carpet like a vacuum, scooping up handfuls of Lucy and Sydney hair. Sigh.

So, dirty floors and dirty laundry are the name of the game this week!  I can't be upset about it since,

a.)  First world problems.
b.)  We have a drawer full of quarters and a laundry mat on-site.
c.)  It's temporary.

And this is RV life!  Like everything else, you take the bad with the good.  And honestly, there is so much good, who cares about a few inconveniences?

We've only got a few more days here (we think).  We still plan to go back to Arches, and need to do our big shopping, flush tanks, and all the RV stuff that you do before a big move.  We've all been suffering from allergies here, so everyone is looking forward to the new location.

That's all from us for now!