Cheticamp in Cape Breton Highlands National Park

After a night in a gravel pull-off,

Although we were right alongside the road, it was relatively quiet through the night.

Someone had some of their firewood stored over to the side of the pulloff and he came to load up a trailer at about 6am, so we got a relatively early start... Just beyond those trees was a pretty little lake with a gravel road leading down that fishermen used.

We drove a little south, then east, then north, to arrive at Cheticamp in Cape Breton Highlands National Park.

Unfortunately when we went to unhook the Jeep, we found that the tow bar cross piece had broken in the same way as it had that we found in Port aux Choix, but on the other side... The bolts were all still in place, so just the cross piece broke this time.

We aren't sure when it broke, though we are pretty sure it was between the gravel pull-off and the campground - maybe even coming out of the gravel pull-off. Very annoying... but it had not rubbed on the asphalt to shave off the longer broken end this time.

We both had noticed a welding shop in the town of Cheticamp when we came through, so we'll head there tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Dwayne wanted to test the fuses for the hydraulic jacks so he could report back to the HWH guy whether they were getting power (they aren't).

After checking the fuses, Dwayne wanted to make another attempt to get into the area where the solenoid and the master cylinder for the jacks are located.

We have a slide out Joey bed in the first compartment, and the frame for it prevented Dwayne from being able to get to the screws at the bottom of the cover to the HWH mechanics. He had to drill through the metal in two places, and remove one of the rollers for the Joey bed, so he could get the three bottom screws on the cover removed. So, now, if the support person from HWH wants him to look at anything there, we can get to it.

Current tally of issues with Miss Doozie/Jeep:

• HWH hydraulic jacks are not working - working with HWH tech in Iowa on that
• Headlights and daytime running lights are not working - we need to get under the front of the bus to test whether power is getting to them... and with the jacks not working, that is a problem. This particular campsite has a dropoff at the back of the site, so we're thinking we may either turn Miss Doozie around for long enough for us to do some testing (she is rather long for the site, so we're not sure we'd be totally out of the roadway with the back end - with her backed in, we have the part of the bus behind the tag axle hanging over open space).
• Tow bar cross-piece on Jeep is broken - planning to go to the welding shop in town tomorrow to see about getting that fixed. We also think that we need to get a hitch riser to improve the balance between the back of Miss Doozie and the Jeep.

Of course, our technical advisor, Patti's brother, Jimmy, is helping us out with all of these as much as he can from afar... we need to figure out how to get him to travel with us!

Fun fun fun! Keeps life interesting...