2023 Summer Road Trip - Headed to Michigan from Kentucky - 2023/04/23

I've got to get this one written up for future ones to make more sense, so here we go. 

I last left off this story here. We were in Kentucky for Abby and Carson's wedding. We're on our way up to Michigan for graduations, weddings, and even more stuff going on this summer. 

Everyone who had come down for the wedding was heading back up to Michigan. They're in a big passenger van and can travel pretty quickly. 

We're in the RV and go a little slower. We took an extra at a Boondockers Welcome Host who had an open field for us to park and spend the night in.  

The next morning it was off though Ohio. 

And then into Michigan! Hooray! I got the RV parked at a local friend's house who has a big field in their backyard. 

And then I was put to work! What's this nonsense? 

Well Abby just got married, and Aubrey is just about to get married too! Tyler has been working hard for many many months to transform their unfinished basement into a whole new living area. It's been a lot of work but it's getting so close to the end. I can help out by caulking the gaps in the baseboards and cabinets. 

Messy job, isn't it. 

Painting too? 

Rita, you can pay me in fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. 

These trees are in bloom right now and they look amazing, but they smell awful. Like dead fish. 

Just before we left Florida to start our big summer of travels, we noticed the fridge was not cooling very well. It's always been a battle with this fridge trying to get it cold enough. It's a typical RV fridge that can only get to about 15F in the freezer, and that's on a good day. Ice cream was never "solid" and it was a disappointing balance between keeping the freezer cold enough and not freezing everything in the fridge. 

So when it started going out, I poked around a little bit to see if it was an easy fix, but not too hard. Theresa was a little sad to pay a lot of money for a new fridge, but really happy that we'd finally have a good working residential style fridge again. 

No matter what, I couldn't get the old fridge out of the narrow RV door without pulling it apart. There's no putting this back together again. 

The little box in our slide-out that the fridge sat in. It was lined with insulation. Because this fridge was smaller than the opening, a little "platform" was built to sit it on. That's just wasted space! 

Crossing our fingers that our measurements of the opening are correct and the replacement will fit. 

The old fridge went on the curb during trash day and was picked up by a guy in a truck before they even got there. 

Our new fridge is a little wider and a little taller than the old one. The insulation needs to come out. Also, it doesn't require the same airflow like the old RV fridge did. I taped insulation across the upper opening. I'll need to do the same for the bottom also, but not quite yet. 

This new fridge is a 12V fridge versus the dual 120V/propane fridge we're replacing. As such, I need to run some new wiring to this slide-out. Luckily the DC electric panel has some free spaces for me to add things to it. It's properly fused, heavy duty wiring going underneath into the basement, through the slideout channels, and then up into the fridge cavity. The great part with this fridge is that despite being 12 cubic feet versus the old 8 cubit feet, it runs on half the energy. If we ever have a power outage, it'll be pulling a lot less electricity to keep it going. 

Mostly wired up and into place. 

It fits! Inside the cavity anyway. Gotta push it back the rest of the way and add the doors. 

Doesn't that look pretty! 

So much more room! And the freezer gets down so much lower! I've seen it hit -8F on the thermometer I've installed. And it's dual zones too! We can set the fridge temperature to one thing without the freezer interfering! 

Just one more thing to do. It needs to be wired up in the back. But these wires are pretty short. I've got to get behind the fridge to do it. How will I get out? 

That tiny little opening I suppose! 

Suck it in Joe. 

Made it! 

Now we've got to slide it back into the cavity as much as we can. Why? 

Because this is how close it's coming to the island in the center when the slide is pulled in! Yikes! We're going to start traveling with some cushioning between those, just incase it decides to move around a little when we're pulling the RV. 

But it looks great! I think we're going to be very happy with it going forward.