Kansas and Water Heaters

April 12, 2011

Sunset at El Dorado State park, El Dorado KS

In the middle of our Fort Supply stay our water heater quit working. John thought it was the circuit card but wasn’t sure. We talked with Excel and then Atwood who made the heater and it is still under warranty. They suggested a dealer just outside of Wichita KS on our way, Flint Hills RV in Andover. Made a 1pm appointment on Monday. This meant we needed to be on the road around 8 am. Whooa........we are not morning people anymore?!! Well it couldn’t be avoided we had to set the alarm clock -yuck. We did get up and off in record time. Three plus hours later we arrived. The drive was nice and we enjoyed the Kansas countryside, looking more like our familiar midwest.

Our site in Big Oak

We hung around until about 2 and they decided it was the circuit board that John thought was the culprit, first they didn’t think they had one but after a little more investigation they found one and even called and got all the warranty issues done so we were out the door and headed to El Dorado State park about 30 miles east of the dealer.

El Dorado is a very nice park on a reservoir. It has, are you ready for this--1010 campsites. It is a very large park with lots of different campgrounds, everything from FHU prime sites to primitive sites. We decided on the water/electric Big Oak campground in the Walnut River area. We chose a site on the water, this is a small lake like area on the back side of the dam - not the reservoir. It was a beautiful site and we decided maybe we would stay 2 days. Well that was not to be.

Another view of the campground

As we got set up, John was checking the hot water heater and guess what? Yep it was doing the same thing and definitely not working. John called the dealer and they wanted us back early in the morning. So just one night in the park and another morning we have to get up early - bummer. We made it up and were at the dealer by 8:30 am this morning. They spent another hour diagnosing the problem but they did not have the part on hand to fix it. They even called several dealers on our way home to see if anyone had the part but no luck, they did say they ordered a part and should have it by noon tomorrow. These people had really gone out of the way to try and find a solution for us so John decided we would stay another night and have them fix it tomorrow afternoon. The service guy thinks it won’t take long once he has the part. Luckily we can be a little flexible as long as we get to Cedar Rapids on Sunday. So now we are at a park (USI RV park) in Wichita for the night. Since it stays light until 7, almost 8 now we will get it fixed and if it isn’t too late we will try to get to Lee’s Summit MO tomorrow night. If not we will just stop somewhere along the way. One of the things you truly learn in this lifestyle is flexibility. The best part of this solution is we get to sleep in tomorrow morning!!

Pulled up by our twin!

I want to mention too that at El Dorado we found our twin. In one of the campgrounds we had to drive through to get to ours we came upon and Excel that looks to be a 2010 RSO, identical to ours and to make it stranger the tow vehicle is a Dodge Ram 3500 DW, not sure of the year but must be close to ours as it looks almost identical. We hoped they would be outside but no luck however on the way out of the park today we stopped to take a photo of our twin. We think they have good taste. :)