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After two unforgettable weeks in Hawaii, we returned to the bus in Las Vegas. (By the way, going from the rainforest to the desert does nothing good for your skin. Ouch.) Though we had lots of great times in Vegas over the past year, I was itching to move on and start exploring elsewhere. Unfortunately, that would have to wait. The bus had been needing some attention, and it was best to get some maintenance and repairs done in the city.

The two main things we needed to deal with were a broken generator and some fried house batteries. These were not minor things. In fact, they have been hampering our lifestyle quite a bit lately. Having a working generator enables us to get “off the grid” so to speak. It allows us to park in more places, such as national parks, state parks, and any other interesting areas without RV parks. The batteries contribute to this as well, keeping the power flowing while the generator isn’t running.

The engine dude talks to Sean about the generator. I stand by and pretend like I know what’s going on. (Ok, that’s kind of a lie. Sean did a great job of explaining things, so I wasn’t exactly clueless)

We met up with our great friends Sean and Louise, who I’ve mentioned before here on The Pixel Diaries. They are full-timers as well, and Sean is great at troubleshooting bus issues. He’s been helping us out a ton lately. They accompanied us to an engine shop where the generator was worked on. I wont go into details, but what it came down to was a crack in one of the major generator components, which had to be replaced. If you’re into this type of bus geekery, check out Sean’s post, which better describes the whole scenario.

Next up on the list was new house batteries (the batteries that run the interior stuff, not the engine stuff). Sean and Louise joined us for a night at the Mainstreet Station RV park in Vegas, and Sean and Ben spent a day tackling this project. And let me tell ya… it’s not like changing a car battery. The battery bank is located in an alcove inside one of the bays, and we had to unload the whole thing. Here’s where we learned how much crap stuff we we hauling around! Yikes. They first had to remove the old batteries from their awkward location and then figure out how to get the new ones in. Mind you, each of the three house batteries weighs 175 pounds.

We had to unload an entire bay in order to access the not-so-conveniently located battery bank.

While Sean and Ben did all the grunt work (sweating, cursing, etc), I lingered around with a video camera recording the job. You can see my little vid below. We finished these projects (like how I said “we” as if I had anything to do with the repairs?) just in time to fly out again. Our next stop was New Jersey to visit my fam and then to Washington DC for Photoshop World. More to come…