A Visit to Dreary Erie by the Lake

We drove on Monday, May 5 from the Harvest Host in Finleyville north to Erie, Pennsylvania to visit our friends and fellow Alaska traveling companions Sean and Kathy Earley. They have a new home in Summit Township, outside Erie, PA. Sean and Kathy grew up in this area and jokingly refer to their hometown as the "mistake on the lake" or "dreary Erie" due t0 the frequent gloomy weather. This Spring has been unusally cool, but despite the dreary and unpredictable weather during our visit we had a great time reconnecting and hanging out for a few days.

This is the Earley's new home in Summit Township next to an old schoolhouse Kathy's brother purchased and converted into an apartment complex for retired folks.

Across the street from their home is the old school's maintenance building that was converted into one more apartment and four storage garages. The Earley's park their Alliance here and provided us a place to "mooch dock".

Here's a local weather factoid: during the Winter months Erie, Pennsylvania is known for receiving heavy lake-effect snow, particularly from neighboring Lake Erie. This is due to the lake's shallow depth and the cold air moving over the relatively warm lake water, leading to increased moisture and snowfall. Lake-effect snow events can produce very heavy snowfall rates, sometimes exceeding several inches per hour, and can accumulate significant snow totals in a single event.

We did our share of sightseeing while at the Earley's with Sean as our driver and tour guide. Our first day was out to Presque Isle State Park, Pennsylvania’s only “seashore.” Presque Isle offers its visitors a beautiful coastline where the neck of the peninsula is attached to the mainland four miles west of downtown Erie. The park creates Presque Isle Bay, a wide and deep harbor for the city of Erie.

Misery Bay and Perry Monument History

During the War of 1812, Little Bay was the temporary home of the fleet of ships commanded by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. Six of his eleven vessels were built in Erie at the mouth of Cascade Creek. The shores and waters of Presque Isle protected the fleet during construction.

On September 10, 1813, during the Battle of Lake Erie, Commodore Perry and his men defeated the British at Put-in-Bay, near Sandusky, Ohio. Perry’s first flagship, the Lawrence, was heavily damaged during the battle, requiring him to transfer his flag to the brig Niagara. He then re-engaged and defeated the British fleet using the Niagara as his flagship.

After the battle, Perry and his men returned to Little Bay and Presque Isle Bay to repair their fleet and seek medical treatment for the wounded. They stayed in the protection of the bay because of threats of another British uprising.

During the winters of 1812-1814, many of Perry’s crew suffered from poor living conditions and the harsh winters. As legend has it, many of the crew died and their bodies were buried in the adjacent pond known as Graveyard Pond. In remembrance of their hardships during those winters, Little Bay was renamed Misery Bay by the surviving sailors.

The hull of the Lawrence, then eventually the Niagara, was sunk in Misery Bay to preserve and protect them from the weather. The Lawrence was raised during 1875, but was destroyed by fire in Philadelphia during the Centennial Exhibition of 1876. The Niagara was raised during 1912 and rebuilt for the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Lake Erie in 1913. A replica of the Niagara sails from its dock at the Erie Maritime Museum.

The Perry Monument on Crystal Point was built in 1926 to commemorate this significant battle during the War of 1812 and the valor of the sailors in Perry’s Command.

In addition to going out to eat, we also shared meals in their new home. One of our days together we visited the Pennsylvania wine country and sampled some great wines from this region. We tasted at two wineries; Mazza's and South Shore Wine Company, also owned by the Mazza family.

At South Shore we tasted in their 19th century cellar, home to an effervescent collection of bubbly bottles produced in traditional, contemporary, and experimental methods, alongside standout emerging varietals and lightheartedly sweeter selections.

At about 42º latitude this region grows different varietals and makes different blends than we are familiar with in California, but we tasted some lovely wines and purchased a few bottles for our home on wheels.

The Mazza family restored the 19th century facility and its impressive Civil-War-era stone cavern.

Our four day visit ended on Thursday, May 8 and we returned to the road beginning our travels heading west from Erie, back through Ohio and landing at East Harbor State Park. We arrived at our campsite C53 for our four day stay and during the set up Karen detected the odor of ammonia inside the RV. After doing some investigating and watching some YouTube videos, I determined we had a coolant leak in the condenser of our RV refrigerator. Unfortunately not a good problem to discover.

RV absorption refrigerator failures, primarily due to cooling unit problems, often result from leaks, overheating, or corrosion, leading to a loss of cooling and potentially dangerous ammonia leaks. These failures can be caused by the RV being off-level, external factors like high temperatures, or internal corrosion of the tubing. A strong ammonia smell or yellow residue, along with a lack of cooling, are key indicators of a failed cooling unit. 

That yellow powder below the heating unit is ammonia precipitate, the cooling refrigerant in an absorption-type RV refrigerator. This meant our unit was kaput and would need to be replaced.

This whole issue was discovered late on Friday afternoon, of course, so we would have to wait until Monday to get the actual work done.

Instead of having fun exploring Sandusky, Ohio and the surrounding area we spent the four days finding a mobile RV technician, shopping for a refrigerator replacement, removing the old refrigerator and installing the new one. We purchased a cooler to store our food and replenished the ice daily to keep our food cold. Long story short, we purchased a residential refrigerator for one quarter of the price of a new absorption refrigerator. Because of our solar system and LiFePO4 battery system upgrade I installed after we purchased our trailer, we have plenty of battery power to run the new appliance without shore power.

Saturday morning, after talking with a local RV mobile technician, was spent shopping for a replacement refrigerator. Rather than replacing with another absorption refrigerator in the neighborhood of a $6000 expense, we decided to convert to a residential instead. We found some residential size refrigerators that would fit, but still hadn't found one that Karen liked.

By 3 PM in the afternoon, we decided to head for Cleveland to at least get in another baseball game. The Cleveland Guardians were playing the Phill ies at 6:30 PM at Progressive Field. Progressive Field is an urban ballpark in the truest sense, both architecturally and aesthetically, built within the physical boundaries of three main streets in downtown Cleveland

It was Veterans Appreciation Day and I celebrated with a micro-brew, peanuts and my beautiful wife on this warm Saturday afternoon.

On Sunday we attended a local church fellowship near East Harbor called "the Chapel", then continued our search for a new refrigerator. We found one that Karen liked and would fit our space with the least amount of modifications at Best Buy in Sandusky..

Our new residential refrigerator was found at the Sandusky Best Buy. This counter-depth unit's dimension would fit our trailer, but I would need to remove our bottom storage drawer to accommodate the new height.

The problem we had to work around was it wouldn't be delivered to the store until Thursday and we had plans to leave for Michigan on Tuesday! Thankfully our salesperson was able to provide us a working option. If we would be willing to drive to the Richfield, Ohio Best Buy warehouse location, an hour away from the store, we could pick it up on Monday. Okay that will work.

So Monday morning we drove the one and half hours from camp to pick up and deliver the refrigerator to the technician's shop in Norwalk, Ohio that afternoon. From there we returned to the campground, hooked up the rig a day earlier than scheduled and drove back to the technician's repair lot to start the removal and installation at 4:30 PM in the afternoon. It was a lot of driving and a long day of running around.

Ryan, our technician, worked until 9:30 PM to get everything done. He worked on his day off so we'd be able to get back on the road Tuesday morning. He was gracious enough to let us mooch dock that night at his repair facility. We settled up the next morning and left for Michigan.

This metal strip was located at the bottom of the refrigerator exhaust chimney near the heating elements. It got hot enough to melt the metal strip and posed a fire hazard if the safety switch breaker hadn't tripped the unit off when we turned it on.

Here's my perspective on this whole event. Our old refrigerator lasted three and a half years with full-time use. These units were never designed for full-time use so we can't complain too much. We have an extended warranty for our RV that should cover all but $200 of the $5000 for the new appliance purchase plus technician expenses. We are still dealing with the warranty company but I'm hopeful we will get most of our money back less our $100 deductible.

Bottom line, Karen is happy to have a new, larger, stainless steel refrigerator with a bottom freezer drawer and side-by-side pantry style doors above. We lost only a few food items to spoilage and kept our original travel schedule intact. No reservations in Michigan had to be canceled. We thank God for His provision!