Blackhawk Campground Part 2

Took some pictures of the main office and sign with my HTC Thunderbolt tonight, turns out if you really hold it still it takes decent pictures at night.

Here is the train running at night. They have been at Blackhawk for 16 years! Wow! The train looks awesome at night and they can remote control everything including the train horn.

I took other pictures but they turned out blurry. While we were there we could hear the Rockford Air show. I tried to capture the planes but when I was ready for them, none would show, when I put my phone down they would go screaming by. I got one decent shot, cell phone is just too slow!

I spent 9 hours trying to use up the wood supply, I failed but we had fun trying! I started the fire at 3:30 and gave up at 12:30am. We went for a long walk and enjoyed the beautiful temps, perfection!

Here it is at 10:15pm… tiny fire ring, big fire!

At 10:15 I still had this much wood left over.

At 1:00am this is how much hot coals and ash were in the fire ring.

That’s it for tonight, errr I mean this morning!

Naomi’s Birthday, Blackhawk Campground & Super USB Wi-Fi Antenna 3

Whew, with a title like that maybe I should have written separate posts? Nah.

Happy 7th birthday Naomi!! She is such a cutie. 

Lars you can’t get a normal picture of, so you take what you can get.

This is a picture of the campground office from last year because I forgot to take one when we arrived. They got our costs confused so we have to go through the receipts today, we rented our site plus a tent site, my sister cancelled because it would be too cold but did so yesterday so we still paid for the tent site for the night. It was worth it seeing the kids though.

We are in site # 83, it’s a nice and shady site, good sized and the hookups are very well placed.

The only complaint is the dirt next to the gravel and wood patio that is rotting, you have to be careful where you walk.  For Ronda and me this isn’t a problem, the dog and kids however..

Ronda bought a “bucket” of wood (translate to tractor bucket!), I should have taken a picture of the tractor that showed up and dumped off what looked like a half face cord of wood. We burned a lot last night the the pile is smaller now. Needless to say with us leaving in the morning tomorrow we are going to have a heck of a fire going tonight!

This is the view to the left of our site.

I saw this site last night but didn’t have my cell phone with me. They are going to turn everything on tonight so I’ll take a video of it. This couple really enjoy doing this every year!

Blackhawk campground has wireless however my MacBook Pro can’t get onto them because of a poorly designed antenna system and distance. In our house and office my Mac does fine, but put a little distance to it and it is lousy at connecting to access points. My wife's Alienware laptop has no such issue so I bought the external C.Crane Super USB WiFi Antenna 3 specifically for places like this. I initially set it up at home so I could download the latest drivers and test it out.

Windows 7 found the device and automatically downloaded the drivers but the utility that came with it didn’t detect the device even though Windows 7 did and was using it. I went to the C.Crane website and downloaded their latest with the same result. I figured ok, no utility but Windows was showing me 30 wireless networks so I knew it would suffice.

We got to Blackhawk and of course my wife's laptop, connects to their wireless no problem, my Mac as usual showed too weak a signal to connect or it would connect but not get to the web. I plugged the new antenna in and it instantly found several access points. I connected and did some browsing and some work and because it was so late left the machine running over night.

This morning when I got up there was a “Please reboot for the changes to take effect”. Changes?? What changes?? It turns out Windows update had updated the antenna drivers with even newer software than was posted on the C.Crane website, unusual considering it was Windows Update that installed the initial drivers but I’m glad it did. When I rebooted this is what I was greeted with, the Ralink utility was showing the wireless networks, woohoo!

Now, before people reading this who think Apple makes the holy grail of computers keep in mind when you surround an antenna with solid aluminum it may look pretty but it will affect antenna performance. Around the house, in Starbucks or at the office it will work fine but in campgrounds with access points farther away my MacBook Pro 17 doesn’t do so hot. This new antenna is awesome and really helps.

One thing I have noticed with RV parks however is, consistent wireless quality is an issue, the ones we have been to will drop and you’ll be waiting for it to come back. This campground is no different, they have several access points and you can see somebody did a lot of work to get all of this working however the wireless network will drop consistently, they have to reboot it at times as well.

My Verizon cell phone and MiFi have zero signal here because the campground is in a valley but we do get 9 TV channels. Last year we got 1 or 2 if I remember correctly. Overall we like this park, it’s great for kids with its huge playground, the people are friendly and the sites are larger than you typically get. I’ll post more after we have taken more pictures, hopefully the train is on tonight so I can get some video too!

Have a great Saturday everybody!

RV Update – Slide Motor

I received a call from the dealer this morning, the slide motor “rig job” has been completed and they sealed a seam that I found on the roof rear cap that needed some dicor sealant. I’ll take pictures this weekend.

I also plan on adding another bracket myself with rubber bumpers so the noise level will be reduced even further. They don’t do or touch anything it seems without charging another hour for it. As it is they are hitting me up for 3 hours for this work which seems excessive to me but there's nothing I can do about it but pay them. Now that I understand the mechanism I know how to repair it and I know I can make a much better bracket. More on that after I see how it looks and works.

Have a great Wednesday!

RV Slide Motor Update

I spoke with the service manager at the dealer this morning and he told me he thought it might be a good idea to use the current motor and I agreed 100%. I did ask him to build a better more professional mount that will fit under the factory cover and to use rubber bumpers so the motor is cushioned when in use and last to seal the opening’s where the mounting bracket mounts broke off. He agreed and will talk to the tech, this should work very well going forward and make life easier for the tech who will now not have to take everything apart to make it work.

Here is how it looks now, hopefully they are able to make one that looks as good as this one performs.

Here you can see the top left of the motor has a hole as does the top right. Other than that the motor is one hundred percent functional.

We’ll see how it goes when they call me back with an update this week.   

Kathy’s Klothesline Comment Response + Digital TV & Slide Motor Update

I wanted to respond to Kathy’s comment because there simply wasn’t room in the comments section to address it. I completely understand why you would look at it from a different perspective and I respect your opinion very much.

From what I have found out it’s not just a few tight sites at this KOA, all but maybe 1 or two are too tight plus the power, water and sewer are positioned on the neighbors site so you get to get real personal with the neighbor in more ways than you’d like. Plus, I’d lay odds you aren’t telling people that your sites are large and shady when they aren’t.

I base my expectations on what I read on the campground website and whatever I can find out from people who have been there if I can find any. This KOA looks great from the entrance because you can’t see the RV section from there, you see the tent and pop-up camper sites which look huge in comparison. So we reserved their “large site with shade trees” for a premium price above the normal cost, plus the holiday premium.

So when we got there and saw the site was very narrow with one tree that provides no shade we were a bit disappointed because it didn’t live up to their own description. You’d think they would tell the truth since they knew we were coming. To be fair they were all very nice, the campground was clean and they didn’t enforce their check out time so everybody could get out without stacking up at the exit.

We probably won’t go back there, mostly because of the smell, I thought it was cows but it was horses in the wild west town / restaurant next door. The stench was horrible and the heat didn’t help it any. If the cost was more in line with the other local campgrounds we could overlook a few things but they are the most expensive place in the area and can’t compete with the likes of Sugar Shores where you can get a huge site easily 5 times larger for $10.00 less a day.

I can’t imagine what it would be like owning a campground and trying to make it what everybody likes can’t be easy but I’d lay odds that you don’t miss-represent your sites or your campground. I would love to go to your campground, tight sites or no because of the atmosphere and because of you.

Thanks for giving us your perspective!

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The Digital HD TV antenna is doing a good job of pulling in channels considering we only got 2 led’s on the signal finder. I hooked up the old digital converter box for the rear TV so Ronda can watch TV in bed. The plan is to replace the old tube TV in the back with an LCD TV so we can remove that converter box completely.

Here is the work around that the dealer did to keep the slide working for this trip. He used a steel strap, bolted it to the floor and put in a wooden wedge to keep it from moving around. The slide has never gone in and out so quiet as long as we have owned the rig. My guess is the slide motor has been loose since we bought the rig, my PDI list item asking them to make sure all slide mechanism bolts were checked was clearly ignored, shame on me for not doing so myself. Now that I know how and where everything is I’m going to stay on it as part of my maintenance .

Here the rig is again at the dealer waiting to complete repairs. I’ll update when I have one.

Happy Memorial Day

Where does Memorial Day come from? Check out this article on the history of this day of remembrance. Thank you to all our Veterans for the sacrifice, sometimes the ultimate sacrifice that continues to give us freedom and liberty.

There are so many to remember, so many who paid the price and we, because of this sacrifice can RV, work, choose our own destiny. We live in a country unlike any other and we are damn proud of our Veterans, thank you for your service.

Union, Illinois KOA Review

The Union, Illinois KOA entrance is very nice, I didn’t get a picture of the main building yet however so I’ll try tomorrow when we leave.

Campground layout

Site # 93 circled in red, you can see the power, water and sewer in the middle of each site.

Tent camping area, their sites were huge

Pop-up tent campers and tent area, again much larger than the RV sites

Mini Golf area

Our massive site # 93 with shade trees per the brochure, well one tree, no shade. What you see is the whole width of our site. Our awning over hangs the neighbors water and power hookups which are in the middle of your site instead of on  the site you’re on.

One plus, the site was very deep which made more than ample room for the Escape.

We wanted to like this place, it’s perfectly located for us to go on weekend trips. Unfortunately even if it was cheaper and the sites were larger there is a cow farm nearby and the stench from the cows during near 100f temperatures kept us inside the entire time. Ronda went on a few night walks with Loki. My left foot is still swollen from the Corporate Challenge on Thursday so I put my foot on ice last night and it’s still hurting along with my knee so I didn’t go for any walks but I wanted to.

Here are a few positive notes, the slide motor while not repaired worked perfectly with the rig job the mechanic did. With the hot temperatures we were worried about the smell that we have had to deal with in the past coming from the black tank. This morning the black tank was showing half full and there was no wind at all so there was a bit of an odor that only I noticed (that’s me, Mr. super nose) but we went to the in-laws all day and the RV sat in the 100f heat until we got back at 5:30pm, I went into the toilet room and there was no odor what so ever, how cool is that? The wind had picked up and the vents were doing their job, very cool!

This KOA has a check out time of 1:00pm, for the first time this doesn’t bother me, I don’t mind getting out of here early. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad stay but the crowding was amplified by the tiny size of the sites so it was hard to go outside without seeing your neighbor dumping his tanks just a few feet away. Couple that with $40.00 a night fees, more on holidays and this place just isn’t worth coming back to.

Tomorrow I drop the rig back off at the dealer and hopefully they are able to complete the repairs on the slide motor. Next weekend we have more birthdays and stuff so we’re planning on a weekend stay at the Blackhawk campground in Rockford.

I’ll post more tomorrow, if I have more pictures I’ll post them as well, until then have a great Memorial Day tomorrow!