# 153 Hurricane /St George Utah Sand Hollow state park

Our next stop was called Sand hollow State Park in Utah. It was near the town called St. George. There were a couple of reasons why we are here. One is it was about 2 hours away and two there was a Cummins dealer there where I had made an appointment to look at the overheating.

St George had a Honda dealer and I had hoped that that would be the solution to the starter that wasn't working on my Honda generator.

Sand creek is a really pretty place it's a planned Reservoir.

These places aren’t really built for recreation but as infrastructure for water collection and or hydroelectric.

Sure, we damn up a nice creek or river or stream. But it creates a reservoir of water to serve the community during dry times. But then they build campgrounds on the edge of it and they make it very available for water use so there's all kinds of boating and fun and ATV stuff and people come here to have a blast. We were staying on what kind of seems like the full hookup asphalt kind of fancy pants side.

We looked and there was another campground around on the other side of the lake that was more like gravel and sand parking. You had a very short hop right to the lake access and a big old beach. I guess they would trade fancy for convenience for you can be right on the water. It was also kind of a restaurant down there that you could go to like I was Jimmy Buffett mindset.

We settled into our campsite and as usual, we don't get a lot done that first day but we enjoyed having some civilization and a full hookup.

The next morning, I went to the Cummins dealer to have my truck looked at and the name of the place was Hummel Automotive. They were referred to me by the guy up at Cedar City.

I was sitting out there in the parking lot kind of waiting. I was there first thing in the morning and a fella came out who I figured was a worker bee. In a short amount of time, I realized he was the owner of the company. He was the coolest guy ever. At first, I had him figured for just a 50 + mechanic kind of guy just getting by. When I realized he was the owner of the kind of felt like he kind of tricked me a little bit. Shame on me for being so judgy.

I told him that I wanted him to test the truck to help him figure out why it's overheating. The real challenge is the truck never overheats under no load. It doesn't even overheat with the camper unless you're pulling a big hill. His business was within a few miles from our campground. I know I’m on the clock and I didn't mind but we went by and picked up the camper. We hooked up and I started riding around and we tried to find a big hill. It didn't overheat. I was a little freaked out because I'm on the clock and I can't get it to overheat. I told him many times just trying to back up slowly up a small hill in a while it would overheat. I found a turnaround spot and there was a pretty sloped dirt driveway going up a hill. I did like a three-point turn and backed into the hill and with it, in reverse, I started backing up the hill slowly but at this point, you have to understand it's really under a tremendous load. Sure enough, it's started going to 180 200 210 and pretty soon overheating into the red.

He had his computer machine hooked up to it the whole time and he said now we're getting somewhere. He had looked for an indication that the high-speed fan clutch had kicked in as it should have and did not.

The computer said that it had kicked in but it clearly had not and he said I think this is the problem.

Well, I'm glad to hear it but I reminded him that I had paid a rather sizable some six months ago for a brand new fan clutch in Montana. We dropped the camper back off at Sand Hollow and I took the truck to him for analysis the next morning. He spent kind of the rest of the day trying to work on the warranty issue. It required the Dodge dealer in St. George to be willing to do it. It required me to get documentation from the place of Montana and I email him. Everything came together sometime in the afternoon and we made an arrangement for me to be there first thing the next morning.

On the way home I had gone by the Honda dealer and they looked at my Honda generator. They took it apart partially and said that there was a bit of a delay of a week is before they could do anything with it meaning they had to order the part and that was just not good to hear. I had them kind of just give it to me in pieces because I knew it had to be taken it back apart at the very next place.

I went in the next day armed with my bicycle and the laptop. I had kind of figured while they were working on the truck I could be on the laptop or go for a bike ride.

They got to work and everything went pretty smoothly. Around noon or so and they were done with the bigger part of the fan clutch issue then he said while we're in here it looks like your water pumps bad so he did that too. At the end of the day, I ended up owing him around $300 or something. Just to review a new fan clutch is 800 at least as that's what I paid Montana and that's was avoided as it was under warranty.

He also tried to discuss with me what might be the problem with the throttle position sensor.

He and other people had tried to help me understand it was most likely a wiring problem. He said that it uses a redundant 5-volt signal and that they have to match. And the computer sees one at 5 volts and one at 4.3 and it says we have a problem here and it throws a check engine code. You fall into limp home mode which makes it impossible for you to accelerate more than about 5 miles an hour.

As I mentioned in a previous post it's pretty hard to deal with this when you're on the interstate.

At this point, we had been at Sand Hollow for a couple of days. Mr. Hummel was finished and we talked about the throttle sensor. He said he didn’t have time to take on chasing a wiring problem. Since I mentioned I was an electrician he felt confident If I looked at the connector I might find some melted wires and solve it myself.

I do have to go back one day to tell a funny story of me and India and our hike. We left out of the campground one evening about an hour before dusk. We looked at maybe just going towards the lake and then there was of a dam at the end of the lake. On the left side would be water at only maybe 5 feet down but on the right side after about the width of one lane of a road was about a hundred-foot sloping hill made out of rip rap rock. I guess what I'm saying is it’s a little intimidating. We started our leisurely walk across the dam and I think what happens is it looks like just a hop and a skip it turns into probably 2 miles. Once we were about halfway we faced the same old annoying problem. If we go back now it's just as far as if we just keep ongoing. Of course, there's the thrill of finishing what you started. Miss India was getting tired. I imagine she got a little frustrated with me because I'm always getting us into these things. You got to finish up, but we were both worn out by the time we got back to the camper.

At the very end of this dam, there was the restaurant. I mentioned and that the only way you could get back down to the level ground was you just had to walk back all the way down a very rather long and winding road. Now it's dark and that's okay but we are kind of tired. It was a good little hike but I'm afraid India was wanting to kill me by the time we got back.

That was our visit to Sand Hollow