Vega Lodge: June 3-5, 2022

 We stayed at our daughter's place in Grand Junction except for one weekend (June 3-5) of camping near Vega State Park. We had other family members meet us in Grand Junction and our grandson's were busy with summer activities like diving lessons and wilderness day camp so hanging close to our daughter's home most of the time made sense to us.

Vega State Park encompasses the Vega dam and reservoir. We didn't stay at the state park but at the nearby Vega Lodge Complex. The complex is across the street from the park/reservoir and an island of the reservoir. In addition to the lodge and cabins, the complex included a campground, which is where we stayed/camped. Our daughter's family joined us. They stayed at a neighboring site in their recently acquired, slightly used Opus OP15. The campsites were typical of an RV park where the sites are little more than a parking space and utility station. Here is the camper at the campground:

In the pictures, my daughter's family camper and their truck is to the left. While the campground wasn't anything special, the views were. Here are views of the park from our campsite and from the nearby island to the campsite. The island is visible in the first picture and our camper and campsite up on the hillside are visible in the second picture.

The Vega Dam is part of an overall irrigation system that supplies water to the part of the Colorado River Valley in the vicinity of Grand Junction. It is a Bureau of Reclamation project. The reservoir has multiple sources but the main source is Plateau Creek which is blocked by Vega Dam. One of the park volunteers said the reservoir levels would be substantially decreased by the beginning of July and reduced to just the Plateau Creek near the end of summer. One of the other creeks that supplied the reservoir is diverted towards it and makes its final descent into the reservoir via a man made waterfall as seen below.

We were only at the campground for a couple of days but they were somewhat eventful days. Our grandsons had fun playing along the shores of the reservoir and mostly had fun at the park playgrounds. I say mostly because one of them suffered a case of road rash after slipping on the rubberized flooring of one playground. We saw a couple of eagles on the shore with the viewing enhanced by the binoculars we brought along. On the evenings, some mule deer grazed along the campground hillside. But the most excitement came from discovering some issues with my daughter's recently acquired camper. Most of the issues were caused by an apparent omission to drain the camper water lines for winter storage. The water pump was cracked and all the fixtures leaked with two of them due to cracks. A quick connect fitting also leaked. Fortunately, I had tools, spare parts and the like to address the issues and at least hay bail some fixes. I had plans to make a hand washing station that uses recycled water. One of the items I had on hand was a water pump for the station so we used that to replace the cracked pump on my daughter's camper. Other water leaks were associated with the shower stall. The caulking at one of the floor-wall seams had completely separated and the shower door did not have any sealing to the door frame. Besides leaks, the camper has a combination water and cabin heating system. Since it got into the upper thirties one night the cabin heating function was engaged but failed sometime during the night. With the help of the displayed heating system error code and a multimeter we were able to narrow the issue down to a melted fuse holder. After doing some minor reconstruction of the fuse holder, the system was back up and functioning. Any explanation of why the fuse holder had melted in the first place was not apparent. After several weeks of properly addressing the issues after returning home from the Vega weekend, my son-in-law successfully stayed in the camper for a disc golf tournament during the last weekend of June.

On our ride back from the reservoir, we were delayed by around 15 minutes due to a cattle drive that used the road we were travelling on. There were four riders on horses at the front of the pack; it looked like parents and two children. At the back of the pack were two riders, a young male and female. I would guess the cattle had been travelling for several miles based on the distance we traveled in our camper from the end of the pack to the point where they entered the road. You could tell where the cattle had traveled by the amount of excrement and other bodily fluids that covered the road. The cattle took up both lanes of the road and at times to the point I wondered if they would start running into the camper but they always seemed to avoid it even though they were heading for it when they only several feet away. I rinsed the mud flaps and truck underside to remove the cattle fluids after we returned to my daughter's house.

Two of the projects we worked at my daughter's that were associated with our camper were the hand washing station I mentioned previously and internal wiring for our portable solar. The portable solar set up that came with our camper was nothing more than a port on the outside of the camper that connected directly to the batteries. As designed, this required the solar charge controller to be outside the camper along with the panels. Due to weather concerns, I thought it would be best to house the controller inside. This required rerouting the cable from the connector to the charge controller and then adding a circuit breaker and cables from the controller to the batteries. When I cut into the kitchen wall to route the cables I discovered the wall was only "one sided." The kitchen side of the wall has the usual thin plywood and behind it about one inch of foam insulation. The other side was open to the refrigerator exterior and venting so essentially that side of the wall was missing and exposed to the outside. After some jigsaw type cutting and caulking we were able to reconstruct the wall to shield it from the outside after running the cables.

Pictures of the hand washing station are shown below. The sink portion was donated by my son-in-law. My daughter's prior camper was a customized Sprinter van. The sink was available since it was no longer used with the Sprinter van. Before cutting the aluminum angle stock I did a mock up of the hand washing station to determine the length of cuts. The mock up is shown here:

The pieces of wood are just used in the mock up to get sizing and aren't used in the final design. The sink is on top, the pump is below the sink and then the filter and tank are at the bottom. My son-in-law replaced the pump I had bought for the wash station after we used the one I originally bought for the station in my daughter's camper. Here are pictures of the almost complete station. The items remaining are wiring and some internal tank baffles. I plan on buying a funnel that will be used to direct the flow from the sink outlet to the tank. These last tasks to complete the project shouldn't take too much effort. One interesting hurdle I ran into was purchasing the tank for the station. I could find tanks to purchase on-line but shipping costs were similar to the costs of the tanks. I don't have exact figures but I ended up spending $135 on the tank acquisition with about half of that for the tank & lid and half for shipping. I couldn't find a suitable tank on Amazon to take advantage of their shipping costs.

The whole reason for the hand washing station is to be able to wash my hands after using a porta-potty, vault toilet or similar without using up our fresh water and holding tanks. I am hopeful Jane is comfortable using the station also. I purchased the filter from Guzzle H2O. From what I can tell, Guzzle's main advantage for my application is their 12 volt compact UV light. The purpose of the UV light is to kill bacteria and viruses.