RENAMED!! The adventures of Chase and his 2006 Yukon XL Denali!! Follow along on my travels!

[adventurenali92]

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Truck had to stay in the shop last weekend after replacing the oil pickup tube resulted in needing a new o ring to re-seal the line that goes out to the oil cooler. Nothing crazy just inconvenient. It’s all sorted though oil pressure is still not where I’d like it to be. Think I need to clean the screen on the oil pressure sensor out, or the sensor needs to be replaced. It’s only two years old but it could be no good. That’ll have to be tabled for now.

Nali ran good down to Palm Springs yesterday. My great aunt is visiting from Vermont this week and beyond my Grammy who passed in 2019, aunt sally is the next relative Im closest with. Love her to pieces. We had originally booked my moms time shore resort in Palm Springs so I could stay here for stagecoach. Which is happening this week and I can’t go…. Sad day. Lol. Anyways when the venue owner made vaccines mandatory last year I got a refund. They lost so much money over that they had to pull the vaccine rule out. Coulda gone but oh well! Love spending time with my family! We took aunt sally to the living desert for one of the last nights of their “glow park” theme and it was rad!!

 

[adventurenali92]

More living desert glow park pics.

 

[adventurenali92]

The g scale model rail road layout is amazing! Kinda bummed it wasn’t more active still amazing!

 

[adventurenali92]

Palm canyon resort is a nice setup. Got bought out like 10 years ago by diamond resorts and now it’s owned by Hilton resorts. My mom has had ownership here since right before I was born. Many memories here in this pool setup.

 

[adventurenali92]

And then my mom has a family friend that owned a very nice restaurant in big bear. We catered quite a few events for her over the years. She has since sold the big bear restaurant but at the beginning g of the pandemic started another one down in Palm desert as that was always her dream, on el paseo drive. Very nice place. We called and she said absolutely come see us for dinner tonight! So that’s where went tonight and she and her husband rolled out the red carpet for us. Dinner and dessert were just spectacular with amazing flavors!

 

[adventurenali92]

deleted double post.

 

[adventurenali92]

And shenanigans of course! My mom wanted to touch the statue’s butt…. Apparently my phone didn’t capture Marilyn’s head lol.

 

[adventurenali92]

Well y’all, I’m Tennessee bound to visit my recently relocated sister and her family. We took off about 25 minutes behind schedule from Ontario in socal this morning. But have plenty of time on our layover at Austin before going on to Nashville. I’m spending a week her and I have concert tickets as well to see granger smith. Gonna be a blast. Mom is staying two weeks! Trucks back home but that’s necessary. Will be driving a 2002 sierra extra cab that my bro in law bought in February from his great aunt who’s husband passed recently. It’s a base model but very well kept so we shall see how it is living that 5.3 life like most of you gents haha.

 

[adventurenali92]

Weather in Austin is warm and a bit humid but pretty nice. Some turbulence headed here but nothing major. We shall see how the next hop goes from Austin to Nashville.

 

[adventurenali92]

Made it safe yesterday evening about dinner time to Nashville. Sister, bro in law, and nephew picked us up from the airport. We picked up light dinner and snacks on the way to pick my nieces up from a theater group they're taking part in. Stayed up late visiting and catching up and talking family.

Got up today late and made chocolate chip banana pancakes with the kids. Took up a little bit of the FRIENDS themed monopoly I got my sister for her bday in February as her and I are big FRIENDS fans. Went for a little walk around the neighborhood they moved to and saw a couple surrounding ones. Everything is just beautiful out here!

 

[89Suburban]

So guess who was at bear mountain this weekend putting his kids through ski lessons?! So very friendly and relaxed and he interacted with all the ski and ride school staff there yesterday and today. Really fun two days and great way to go out with a bang as this is closing weekend for bear mountain! As Jeff Goldblum would say… “MUST GO FASTER MUST GO FASTER!!”

Cool!!

 

[Tonyrodz]

Made it safe yesterday evening about dinner time to Nashville. Sister, bro in law, and nephew picked us up from the airport. We picked up light dinner and snacks on the way to pick my nieces up from a theater group they're taking part in. Stayed up late visiting and catching up and talking family.

Got up today late and made chocolate chip banana pancakes with the kids. Took up a little bit of the FRIENDS themed monopoly I got my sister for her bday in February as her and I are big FRIENDS fans. Went for a little walk around the neighborhood they moved to and saw a couple surrounding ones. Everything is just beautiful out here!

Your sis is gonna be PISSED if she knew you posted her pic here lol!

 

[adventurenali92]

Your sis is gonna be PISSED if she knew you posted her pic here lol!

She doesn’t care! We’re pretty tight and we post lotsa pics together on social media. She laughed when I posted pics from our short little Palm Springs trip a couple weeks ago.

 

[adventurenali92]

We are a country family even though we’re from California!

 

[adventurenali92]

Well life has been crazy hectic. Been home about two weeks now and work has me constantly on the go. I’m realizing I need to raise my prices up a tad bit and weed out the clients that drive me nuts and don’t wanna pay for quality detail work.

That being said it was time to haul the sea ray up from Orange County and get her summer ready. Drove down yesterday morning, filled my fuel tank at Costco in corona, and after filling my tank and then going across the center to get food, the HVAC system wouldn’t shut down even with the truck off and the key out. I freaked a bit. Grabbed food and kept the truck running to avoid the blower killing my battery. Pulled the 40amp HVAC fuse from the under hood fuse panel and that shut down the blower. Went and grabbed the boat and finished the day by bringing her up and getting a few things loaded into the boat from Dorothy’s garage that she had to be there for to open up.Thankfully today was only 75 in big bear and dry as always. Had to reschedule my detail work today so I could finish giving the boat a proper detail and then go get her in the water. But after a solid tune up before the weekend and a good bath and coat of sealant, the boat fired right up at the launch ramp and took her for a short little cruise around the west end of the lake to ensure she was running smooth. That was a nice little bit of relaxation amidst a crazy busy day. She’s all ready to go for summer.

 

[adventurenali92]

On the way to do the boat work this morning I stopped into Carquest and they had a new blower control module and wire pigtail. The replacement has a 4 pin harness going into the module where as the factory one only had a 3 pin harness. This is the module that came out of the truck.

 

[adventurenali92]

Forgot to photo the new module before i buttoned everything up. But three wires to splice together and then heat shrink was pretty simple to do. Getting to the module was pretty easy. Two 7mm bolts holding the black plastic kick panel in under the glove box, move it out of the way and then blower module is right next to where the cabin filter is mounted. Or where I cut it open and installed one hahaha. Put the 40amp fuse back into its slot in the under hood fuse box, reconnected the battery, and fired up the truck. I had the whole job done in 30 minutes in the driveway in the dark after my evening gym class haha. Climate control functions as it should again and shuts off when I hit the off button as it should. Doesn’t stay on with the truck off either which is the most important part! Good to go for the next few days. Here’s the part number for the blower control module on the Carquest box. The current GM part # for the module is 19260762. Carquest had the part for I think $87. So not too bad. Could have gotten cheaper on Amazon but I wanted to get the part swapped quickly and they had it in stock this morning so it was a no brained to just grab theirs.

Still don’t like my oil pressure even after having the pick tube and the o ring replaced a month ago. Shop said the pressure was good when they tested it. Gauge just doesn’t read where I see everyone else’s. Gotta get my tech 2 hooked up and find the data screen that shows oil pressure. I can’t find it. But I’ve seen it before. Anyways I think the screen on top of the oil pressure sensor might be clogged so this weekend I’m gonna pop that little guy off and clean it out. As well as put new brake pads on all 4 corners and dump fluid from my transfer case and put fresh fluid in.

 

[adventurenali92]

Hey y’all!! Life has been crazy hectic these last two minutes, not too much going on with the truck other than keeping it in good running shape.

So my moms boat trailer got ran into, IN HER DRIVEWAY, 8 feet away from the street…. back in November after she already had it winterized and shrink wrapped. An older gentleman with some kind of new crew cab pickup, was buying fitness equipment from the friend that lived across the street and was selling her house. Apparently he backed straight out of her driveway, into my moms driveway and directly into the front of the boat trailer. Neither my mom or I was there to witness it but thankfully the neighbor was and gave a full statement to the CHP officer that showed up to file an incident report. And she took a photo of the guys license and info. He was mortified apparently with the neighbor but when my mom and I called him to see if he was open to settling the damage without insurance he was a real jerk and tried to say he didn’t do any damage!! I was like “oh hell nah I’m about to nail this P R I C K to wall and he’s gonna pay out every penny that it takes to replace the mangled tongue that won’t properly attach to a tow hitch, the completely bent, out of shape landing gear he screwed up, the twisted axle, OH AND THE TIRES HE POPPED PULLING THE BOAT OVER THE CINDER BLOCKS SHE HAD CHOCKING THE TIRES TO KEEP IT IN PLACE!!!

Needless to say I was pretty furious. Insurance couldn’t get an adjuster up in the snow to look at it. When they finally tried in April, the only adjuster anywhere near us was in upland, which is nearly two hours drive away. He wouldn’t drive up to big bear. So I went to battle with the boat insurance company and said look “it’s been 12 years we’ve had insurance with you and you have been making money off us without a single claim!! Get this fixed or we take you to small claims court!” Finally they approved after a ton of haggling paying for a tow company(the new one in town that’s VERY GOOD at what they do) to put it on a flatbed trailer and haul it out to the marina that our long time friends own. The boat mechanic the employ is also trailer savvy and was able to fix everything right before our trip to Laughlin and lake Mojave the last week of June at the insurance company’s dime.
So fast forward to June 24th, and I’m packing my Denali up so I can head to moms and hook the boat and make sure she’s good to go. Truck battery is dead and won’t turn over…. I’m like dammit this is NOT what I need right now…. Thankfully a client I brought on last year whos quite wealthy GAVE me an awesome trickle charger/jump starter unit that was not big enough for his power stroke F250. He plopped it in my truck and said here take this off my hands it’ll work for you… sure enough the morning of the trip that little sucker fired the Nali right up. Needless to say that unit stayed in my truck the whole trip hahaha. I put a new battery in and off we went to Laughlin! Snapped these right before hitting the roads for Laughlin.

 

[adventurenali92]

Truck ran smooth all the way to Laughlin, AC blew ice cold all the way even towing the boat in 110 degrees up the grades on the I-40 and holding 70 with the boat in tow! Pulled into bullhead, fueled the boat and headed up to Katherine landing on lake Mojave. We payed for a slip for the week and we also stayed at the lodge right there at the marina, which was a circus act in itself…. More on that in a minute…
Check into our room and it’s definitely more vintage themed… but it had a full kitchen and a fridge which is what we wanted cuz neither my mom or I like to eat out every night for a week straight. So we brought tons of foood to cook for dinners as well as lunch stuff for during the day setup on a sandy beach on the lake. We then decide “it’s a little before 6pm, let’s launch the boat, run her about for a bit to make sure she’s running good as we hadn’t had her in the water yet after the dewinterization and tune up once the trailer got fixed.” The ramp isn’t busy at all, I back her down behind the Nali, plop her in the water, and of course because my mom refuses to do anything with the boat, I’m doing all the work, I’m tired from driving and hauling the boat all day, hot, and not in the mood for anything to go wrong….. boat starts to float, I hop out and go to release the front winch and let the boat off the trailer… when the latch that keeps the winch in retrieval or launch direction, just disintegrates into pieces in my hand….. “now I can’t retrieve the boat when she needs to come out of the water after the weekend for the appointment to replace a windshield piece that broke last year …..” words can not describe how angry I was at that point. My mom is almost in tears as well just because neither of us were handling stress very well at that point. I’m like “ok let’s just take a cruise on the boat after I get the truck and trailer out of the way and I’ll deal with the winch and latch later.” We ran the boat and she ran perfectly. Kept her in the water for Saturday and Sunday and we had good times with the group we were with and there were three other boats and two jet skis. Fun time for sure. Forgot to take pictures of our boat in the water lol.

 

[adventurenali92]

So Friday night we get settled after our nice little sunset boat cruise. Mom made a small and heathy but tasty dinner in the room…..
only to find we had giant water big in our room!! My mom is terrified of big bugs. This guy was on the bathroom door when I got out of the shower. And of course because the lodge and Marina sit on lake mead national forest land the hotel itself can only do what the forest service approves. Which means pest control was next to none….. we were NOT happy!!

In addition to bugs, cell service at the lodge and marina is absolutely terrible because exit sits in an odd valley, AND the only woof option at the hotel cost $15 for a week and you have to sit for it through the service that the forest service contracts out too. I paid for it, only for it to not work the entire week we were there and no one could figure out why including the managers at the customer support number they gave us to call. On top of not having unlimited day on my phone and my mom using up all our data, our phones were virtually unusable all week. By the end of Saturday on the water I was very close saying the hell with this I’m done here. But I needed to get some relax time in as I’ve been working non stop and fixing everyone else’s problems for months on end. Then Saturday afternoon hit….

As I was docking moms boat in our slip about 4pm, my mom went to step to the dock and fell…. LIKE REALLY HARD!! I was mortified. I knew she wasn’t ok… thankfully the guy on the dock ran and grabbed Marina employees as we were in the first assigned dock right next to their rental shack. They called the park rangers which are EMTs and they came down to look at her. They couldn’t tel me much which I knew would be their answer as my my dad just retired from 30 years a paramedic, firefighter, and engineer. I can’t asked him to call paramedics to check her out, and because my mom was saying he know he wasn’t going to call… at that point my attitude was “I’ve had enough of people not doing as I ask…. I’m not putting up with this clown…” so I looked him in the eye and said “if you don’t call the medics I will and in perfectly ok with making the call…. But if I do, you’re not gonna hear the end of it and I will make a formal complaint with your head park ranger…. Take your pick….” He called the EMTs… lol. EMTs came quick and didn’t see any obvious signs of unjustly so he gave me all the necessary info to be on the look out in case she had a concussion or heat stroke. Thankfully she just a small raspberry on her knee and a sore leg. She had some energy issues but other than that she was ok the rest of the trip. Monday morning came and I spent the entire day racing around bullhead trying to source a new winch assembly since the last fog wasn’t a separate piece that could be replaced. Ended up having to drill new holes in the winch mount on the trailer because the bayliner trailer doesn’t play nice with any of the other trailer equipment. But I got it squirted away and got the bait into the glass company for the windshield. The office girls there screwed up big time and we never got our window replacement. But that was the way of my worries at that point. Got some wakeboard time in behind the stingray boat that belongs to the family I live with who’s trip it was. Not the best photos of me but hey I can actually wakeboard haha.