Crisis Averted: How A Stranger Saved Quinn’s Birthday

Last year it was a Father’s Day breakdown on the way to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon from a missing radiator cap that almost derailed us 3 days into our trip. This year, trouble came only hours in. What could have been a total fiasco actually turned into a cascading set of circumstances that led to a truly memorable birthday for Quinn, and an example for all of us about how God sometimes sends us angels in the form of strangers. This is the story of our angel, Fred.

The story starts with our refrigerator. One of the key selling points of our new RV is residential sized refrigerator/freezer combo. With a family of 6 on the road, this thing is clutch. Allison spent days stocking our food supply before the trip, and by the time we departed at 1pm on Tuesday, the fridge and freezer held well over a thousand dollars in fresh and frozen foods to last us for weeks. The typical RV refrigerator can run off of electrical when you’re connected to shore power, and then switches over to liquid propane power when you’re unplugged and either driving or staying in a location without hookups (referred to as “dry camping” or “boondocking”). While the upside of the residential refrigerator is storage capacity, the downside is it runs exclusively off of electrical. Our RV has two 6V house batteries to power an inverter that runs the refrigerator when you’re disconnected. Since I knew we’d be spending some time in national park campgrounds that seldom have power hookups, I even had solar panels installed on the roof the week before we left to charge the house batteries and make sure we’d have ample power to run the refrigerator and not need to worry about it. Putting solar on a RV isn’t cheap, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

It took about five hours for us to make our way up to Lassen Volcanic National Park, and we went straight to the Manzanita Lake campground to get setup for the first night of our journey. It felt great to be back on the road and out in the parks again, and the we were prepared to dry camp in the park at Lassen for a couple nights. We settled in, played catch with the frisbee and softball, grilled up carne asada tacos, and made a campfire to roast some s’mores. As night fell, I headed into the RV to pour Allison a glass of rosé.

As I opened the refrigerator, I could immediately tell it wasn’t running. It wasn’t nearly cool enough, and the light in the refrigerator wasn’t coming on. Sometimes these things are a simple fix, and I opened the exterior cabinet that house the inverter. The inverter was clearly on and I could see that the house batteries we’re fully charged, but there on the panel, the output read very clearly “0W”. The refrigerator wasn’t drawing power from the inverter at all, and the “battery power” indicator light that lets you know you’re drawing on the house batteries (versus shore power or generator power) remained unlit. There’s only three buttons on the control panel, and since I had no idea what any of them did, I did the logical thing and started pushing all of them in random sequences. The panel cycled through numbers and indicators, which may as well have been greek hieroglyphics. I had absolutely no idea what any of it meant. I went to the solar control panel and tried the same thing to no avail. Clearly I wasn’t going to be able to fumble my way to a solve, so I went to my method of last resort – I pulled out the manuals for both.

I first tried just flipping to the “troubleshooting” section of the manuals. The inverter manual spoke of a “fault indicator light”, but mentioned nothing about what to do if the fault indicator light is not lit, but the damn thing still isn’t working. After trying to glean the solve from the skimming the manuals, I ended up reading both manual cover to cover while sitting in the stairwell of the RV entry. I could hear Allison and the kids enjoying the fire and the s’mores outside, but my frustration was mounting as I tried everything to get the inverter going again. I pulled off panels to reveal circuit boards and wiring, having no clue what I was looking at. I tried pushing circuit break reset buttons, and flipping all of the breaks in the coach. Nothing.

After well over 90 minutes of troubleshooting, I had gotten nowhere. The refrigerator was still not running, and it was now after 10pm, and the entire campground was falling silent as families retired for the evening. While I could run the generator to power the refrigerator, campgrounds have “quiet hours” that prohibit generator operation, typically after 8-10pm depending on the site. Even if we were “that guy” and fired up the generator after quiet hours and pissed everyone in the campground off, we still weren’t going to be able to run it over night. I knew we needed to find a campsite with power hookups for the night.

I hate admitting defeat. It’s rare that I get to this point, but after you’ve spent almost two hours exhausting every possible solution you can think of, sometimes you’ve just gotta call it. At 10:15pm, I told Allison “we’ve gotta go”. We had no cell reception, and couldn’t look up where we’d even go, but we knew we were about 60 miles from Redding, and we’d just have to head the direction and hope to find an RV park we can pull into after hours. Our neighbors must have loved the commotion we made as we packed up our campsite in the dark and fired up the RV, but in minutes, we were on the road.

We left Lassen, and after about half hour of driving in the pitch black down the mountain, I saw the KOA RV park in Shingletown that we passed on the way into the park. We pulled into the KOA at 11pm, where we lucked into the last and only spot big enough to hold us. With a 30amp hookup, the site would do the trick to get the refrigerator online again, and I went to bed exhausted, and resolved to figure out a plan the next morning.

The next morning, we talked to the guy at the office at the KOA and asked if he knew of any mobile RV techs in the area. He said there’s a great guy named Fred who lives in his neighborhood a few miles away, and if I could reach him before he left for the day, I might luck into having him come by. He offered to dial him up on the office phone. A woman answered, “Hello?” I wasn’t expecting to have been calling him on his home phone, but I asked for Fred. The woman was super sweet and told me that Fred was tied up at the moment, but if I left her my number, she’d pass it along to him. I left him my mobile number, not confident that I’d hear back from him, and resolved to start working down the list of other options.

My next step was to call the dealer, Happy Daze in Livermore. I ended up getting connected with the tech who did the solar install who told me he had no idea why the solar installation would have impacted the inverter, but maybe he didn’t hook the inverter up properly after he installed the solar controller? No shit, bro. He clearly wasn’t going to be any help, and I knew I needed someone to diagnose it in person.

My plan was to hit the phones to find either a mobile RV tech or a shop in Redding that could figure out what was going on. This proved more difficult than I initially anticipated, with the difficulty exacerbated by the fact that cell service was ​terrible​ in Shingletown. I felt like the guy in the Verizon commercial; “​Can you hear me now?​” Only apparently that dude took Verizon’s rural NorCal coverage with him when he bolted for Sprint, because no, they couldn’t hear me now. There are few things more frustrating than trying to explain yourself several times on the phone to different people only to find they can’t hear you.

I finally found one spot in the RV park where I could get coverage. I stood there and started dialing for dollars with mobile RV techs. I got ahold of three different people, all of which told me they were booked solid until mid or late-July. Apparently the PG&E Campfire fires had hit the region hard, and there were a ton of RVs and motorhomes needing work. The last guy I tried told me he moved out of the state, but gave me the phone number of local guy who he’d recommend named Fred. I tried Fred again, and this time got a busy signal. Things weren’t looking up for me.

It was almost 11am now, and I started getting worried we weren’t going to be able to get it resolved today. On top of it all, it was ​Quinn’s birthday​, and I had a pit in my stomach thinking we were going to spend the day driving around trying to find a shop to fix the inverter. I knew I had to get it fixed today, and decided I’d just bite the bullet and drive back down to the other Happy Daze location in West Sacramento. We were 130 miles away from West Sac, but I was out of options to get this resolved today. I called Happy Daze in Livermore and told them they needed to get me into their West Sacramento service center immediately.

The thought of having to spend several hours on Quinn’s birthday driving to an RV shop only to wait for them to fix it and then drive back to Lassen was terrible, and Allison and I figured we’d be better off if I drove them all back to Manzanita Lake at the entrance of Lassen where they could spend the day. Bear in mind, Lassen has no cell service, and I’d just be dropping Allison and the kids off with a backpack of food and water and be like “Well, hopefully I’ll get this fixed and meet you at back at the campsite around dinner time?” It wasn’t a great plan, but it was the best we had at the moment.

We left the KOA and headed toward Lassen. We’d only been driving for a few minutes when my phone rang. I was shocked I even had one bar of service to get the call, and immediately pulled over in the turnout a couple miles ahead to take the call. It was Fred calling me back. I explained the situation to him, and told him we had just left the KOA and were on the road back to Lassen. He asked how long we’d be driving, and when I told him just a few minutes, he drilled down even further. I answered a few of his question about my surroundings, and he said “I’m pretty sure you’re right by my house. Come on by and we’ll see if we can get your squared away.” He told me the street we’d be turning left on, and we set out. Turns out the street was literally 500 feet from where we had pulled out, and we were in his driveway in less than 60 seconds, before he even had time to make it out there to open the gate.

Fred was the nicest guy, and when I explained the predicament, he expressed his own disappointment with the RV industry in general. ​“It’s obvious you spent a pretty penny on this thing, and it’s just a shame we don’t do a good enough job as an industry making sure you’re taken care of when you head out to make memories on a trip like this one. We’ll see what I can do to get you setup and on your way.”​

After testing the inverter, Fred confirmed the house batteries were fully charged, and there was DC power coming from the batteries into the inverter, but for some reason the inverter wasn’t converting to AC and powering the refrigerator. He tinkered with it for a while, and then tried the one thing I didn’t think to try…he unplugged the telecom cable running from the inverter to the remote control panel into the RV and then plugged it back in.

It doesn’t make any sense why this would work, but it did. The inverter fired up and started powering the refrigerator. Fred’s working theory was that Happy Daze hadn’t “reset” the inverter properly after installing the solar to ensure that it was working, and reconnecting the communication cable provided the reset it needed. We were back up and running, and Fred could have easily just sent us on our way. Instead though, he spent the next half hour walking me through the various tools I would need to get to diagnose situations like this one, and how to use them. He recommended a voltmeter, a GFCI receptacle tester, and an AC fluke meter to round out my toolkit and help me to diagnose electrical issues. “If you’re going to own one of these [a motorhome] and take it out on the road, you basically have to become your own repair technician.” I’m pretty handy as it is, but the time spent with Fred on how to use electrical diagnostic tools was all new to me, and much appreciated.

Fred had already saved the day at that point, and we were about to make our way out and head back to Lassen when he asked, “So who’s got the birthday today?” Quinn raised his hand, and with a huge grin, Fred motioned to me and Allison to come with him out of earshot of the kids to talk to us. “​You guys want to take the birthday boy kayaking on the Manzanita Lake this evening? I’ve got nine kayaks over there, and we’d love to take you guys out and celebrate. If you’re up for it, I’ll go check in with Dana [his wife] and see if 6pm works?​”

We were floored by the gesture, and didn’t skip a beat. Allison chimed in with, “​Uh, YES! We’d love it!​” Kayak rentals down at Lake Manzanita were suspended due to coronavirus, and the only way to get on the lake was with personal kayaks and rowboats. It was one of those moments where you’re thinking, “​Hmmmm…what’s the catch here? This seems too good to be true​.” A while back, we adopted the family mantra “Just Say Yes” from our good friends the Gallos, and we just went with it!

We met Fred and Dana down at Lake Manzanita at 5:45pm, and spent over an hour on the water with them. The kids had the best time, and we kayaked all the way across the lake and back. Fred coached them all on how proper kayaking technique, and Quinn was thrilled he even got his own kayak! He was amazing out there too, and led the pack across the lake. The water was like glass, with only 3 or 4 other boats and kayaks out there with us. The view of Mount Lassen from the lake was breathtaking, the temperature ideal, and the evening truly perfect. Quinn was on cloud nine, and was so happy the whole time.