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I agree with John that the search function on this forum is inadequate. I have complained about it several times before. In an earlier post, Jason said that the searches are ajax based and searches are performed in real time. I am not a programmer, but I have worked with IT specialists in developing my department’s web site, and my understanding of ajax searches is that the search results are shown as you type, and the search results narrow as you continue typing. This type of auto-complete, based upon text strings within the website, is enormously powerful. You see this auto-compete in a Google search. Clearly the Oliver Forum search engine does not do this. I do want to provide a short tutorial on Google searches. Really good information HERE, and maybe too much information HERE. John provides a good suggestion But there is a better way. If you put “site:” before olivertraveltrailers.com, as in “site:olivertraveltrailers.com” you limit the search to that one domain. You can exclude hits with specific words. Suppose you search for “propane tank” but you get a lot of hits about barbeques, then you can exclude barbecues with a minus sign before the offending word. The search would be “propane tank -barbeque”or even “propane tank -barbeque -bbq”. You can use quotation marks to demand an exact match. Suppose you search for quick connect in the search “site:olivertraveltrailers.com quick connect” and you find pages with both words (or only one of the words) anywhere on the page. A search for “site:olivertraveltrailers.com “quick connect”” demands the consecutive words, in a phrase. (I hope you are not confused by the nested quotation marks; the outermost marks delimit what is going into the search field.) You can also use the Boolean Operators AND and OR in your searches. Examples: “”quick connect” AND water” “”quick connect” AND propane OR LP” You can also use asterisks as wild cards in your searches. If you go to FiberglassRV Forum, you can search the entire post, or search only the title. Searching the title can be an excellent strategy. We cannot do that with the Oliver Forum search tools, but there is a work around with the terms intitle: and allintitle: For example, “site:olivertraveltrailers.com/ lubrication intitle:jacks” finds pages with the word "lubrication" and with the word "jacks" in the title. Note that the singular jack did not work, because the title had jacks. Hope this helps.

Hello Oliver Friends, I know some of you have camping plans in Colorado in the near future. We have had a dry winter and spring, and wildfire season is off to an early start. There is a large fire burning near Durango and portions of the San Juan National Forest have been closed. A new fire began today on Buffalo Mountain in Summit County, which is an area suffering from severe beetle kill, so that fire could grow quickly. There is smoke haze west of the fires to at least were I live in the Denver foothills. I recommend you check on the area you are headed to before traveling to make sure there is not an active fire in the area or air quality issues. Here’s hoping for some rain! Alison

If we're in or headed to an area with active wildfires, we use the GeoMAC website for monitoring conditions - it's really useful. Use the main map to locate individual fires, then use the drop down menus on the upper right to zoom in. You can then use the data layer menu on the left to display all sorts of info. In particular, if you compare the fire boundary with the satellite detection layer, you can get a good idea of which way the fire is headed. For example, the 416 fire looks like it started along hwy 550 and is headed west and south. [attachment file=Screen Shot 2018-06-13 at 9.17.12 AM.png]

This is just a follow up to my original shady post. We were successful in flipping the blinds, strengthening the grip so they won't slip down so easily, and more firmly attaching them to the clips. (Please see above.) However, when widening the clips with vise grips, I cracked one of the brackets. I had, previous to tackling these tasks, sent an email to Auto-Motion, the manufacturers of the blinds. I received a phone call from one of their employees today, Vic. After I told him that I solved the problem with the blinds coming loose but had cracked one of the clips, he graciously told me that he would send a few more clips to me. He also said that I had rightly identified the problem: The clips were too narrow to firmly hold the shades. However, he gave me some information that might be helpful to other Oliver owners: He said that, if the screws holding the clips were driven in too tightly, the clips could narrow and not hold as snugly as needed. I'm not sure if this was an issue for our clips, but they WERE very firmly attached to the spacers with the screws. Anyway, I thought that I would pass this information along. I CAN say that widening them the way I did with the vise grips seemed to help: The shades seemed to need more force to pop them back into the grooves and, once in place, seemed to be more tightly affixed to the wall by the clips.

https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/dfpc/current-wildfires Thanks, we have been keeping an eye on the fire near Durango and as we get closer to heading to Ouray, we will decide if we want to go elsewhere. It looks as if 550 (Million Dollar Hwy) is shut down, not good! We will bring our 110 volt HEPA room filter, just in case we get caught in a smoky area. It scrubs the air really well and only uses 1 amp AC, so the inverter can run it pretty much forever off our 4 batteries and solar.... Smoke is an ongoing issue in the West, Montana was especially horrible last summer with deadly, off-scale levels of particulates in a few towns. Let's hope it improves this year. Buying one of these would be a good idea for those who might have to camp in these wildfire areas. I run it in our master bedroom 24/7 because I have allergies. Even with a whole house HEPA filter, this scrubs that "clean" air even better. This is my home unit, it is a little big for a full time dedicated trailer air cleaner, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BWYO3EM/ref=sspa_dk_detail_0?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B00BWYO3EM&pd_rd_wg=yLBS5&pd_rd_r=WBESFXJ4F9W6M0K9KNHY&pd_rd_w=AykPY but it flows and filters way more air than the small one: https://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-HPA100-True-Allergen-Remover/dp/B00BWYO2FW Generic HEPA filters (make sure they are real HEPA) are $20 per pair, the pre-filters are carbon treated foam and available inexpensively as "trim to fit" sheets. You can vacuum or blow off the dust from the pre-filters, or just swap them when they get filthy. The main filters should be changed about yearly if run continuously, depending on how bad the air is.... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CKB3ZDV/?coliid=I1KZCENM2ZK38M&colid=77ELCXYF0Y8I&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it Good stuff for those of us with chronic lung irritation and seasonal allergies. John Davies Spokane WA

The Yukon Territory parks are beautiful in their simplicity and consistency. $12 CAD, roughly $10 US, so almost free. Free firewood. Clean, usually big sites, often on a river, Creek, or lake. Amenities, beyond a lovely campsite, include long drop/ outhouse toilet(s), a log kitchen shelter with a wodburner stove, free firewood, and a campfire ring inscribed with a welded bead of ytg. That's it. And, often, a fresh water pump for a bucket, not RV fill, often with a boil water notice. People are nice, and usually great campers. We often find that someone has left behind extra split wood. Especially nice if you are carrying only a hatchet.. We've camped in about half of the 45 government campgrounds. Guess it means we have to keep going back. I'll try to describe some of our favorites. Sherry

Because, on another thread, GaryJona said: "The first place my wife and I went to in our first Trailer was straight to the Alcan Highway to Alaska, a great trip and be sure to be there mid July on as the Salmon start coming in, it ands to the bear watching. PS when you go if possible go up through Glacier into Canada crossing right there and do the Waterton National Park to Banff into Jasper and the Canadian Ice Fields a for sure do not miss this part. You can go straight up to the Alcan starting point just out of the west end of Jasper. Enjoy Thanks Gary" And then SeaDog said: "I think we need to start an Alaska thread. We found so many amazing, mostly empty campgrounds on our trips I’m infatuated with the Yukon. So few people, so much wildlife, and wonderful rustic campsites. I think Yukon territory sites were $10 cad last year , roughly $7.60 us. Free firewood. We were often the only ones, or just a few others, in the campgrounds." And I agreed. And since taking our Ollies to ALASKA is on several folk's bucket lists, I asked "We" to start this thread.

Search is a joke, it amazes me that it is so useless! It is about the slowest and worst I have seen on any forum, in years. It has no user settings at all and it is only accessible from the Forum main page.. 1 - Use Google and put the term olivertraveltrailers.com in front of your search term. That may get you a few results. 2 - If you know who posted the topic you are after, go to their Profile page, select Forums and browse for the result you want. 3 -COMPLAIN to the webmaster and moderators until this gets replaced with a functional search engine. John Davies Spokane WA

Hi again. I dont have all the technical jargon to fill you in but in a nutshell, Progressive(?) just said send it back. They werent a huge help otherwise. New campground though and we are okay but I think it is still bypassed maybe (husband napping or I would ask). We do have the necessary yellow tester. I will try to update ghis in the end when we find out final problem, for what it is worth.

We stayed at Cannon Beach RV. Short walk to beach and restaurants. Nice, clean park with wide space, very decent restrooms and showers. First time at campground and pleasantly surprised.

Randy, I think the longest mileage between fuel stops was around 175 miles. We stop before we are half empty, because you can't count on the next station being open or having fuel. This trip, every listed station in 37 appeared to have gas, except one in Iskut, I think. The road surface on 37 is a rougher type if pebbly aslhalt, for the most part. It's a little noisy, but this year it was in excellent condition with few potholes, frost heaves or other breaks. It's now entirely paved. Last time we drove it, there was a thirty to forty mile stretch that was gravel. (This is the Cassiar highway.) The rougher asphalt probably would affect mileage more if you drove at US highway speeds, but you won't. We got the usual 8 to 10 mpg with the Ford Triton v10. The Alcan was much rougher,with more potholes and wallows and frostheaves, but we were only on that from Whitehorse on. We really like this route. It's not heavily traveled, and very sparsely populated. It's also really beautiful. There are a number of moderate elevation changes, and a lot of stretches without much of a shoulder. I wouldn't want to drive it in winter, as our Whitehorse friends say it's often only one lane plowed, but in spring and summer, it's great. Driving up through eastern BC and Alberta , through Jasper, we see more wildlife. Bison and bear on the roads, etc. In great numbers. We also see more traffic and more competition for campgrounds. If we ever drive round trip, we'd probably go one way up and one way back, depending on fires and floods. You'd see a lot more taking different routes up and back. Sherry

As long as we're talking about seals and dust intrusion, it is good to check the seal on the wetbath vent, I found mine deteriorated after about 1.5 years (uncovered storage) and the same seal I purchased (from HD) would work to seal the basement door, with the extra.

I, for one, sure want to hear & learn all about yours & anyone else's trip to the 49th state! Last year, after Duke & I made the decision to buy an Oliver, I started reading and watching videos (thank you Reed & Karen) to learn about the RV life. One YouTube subscription I look forward to is KYD - Keep Your Daydream. The reason I mention it here is they are currently traveling to Alaska and will begin posting videos about their trip this Sunday. (6-17-18) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEhJLsShZt8McryMf_DHLZQ/featured These are exceptionally well done videos - beautiful scenery, almost professional quality editing, fun-loving & funny family &, most importantly, informative. Even Duke enjoys watching them. Their past seasons have been about the Eastern US, Mexico, NW US & Canada, & SW US. Scattered in-between are videos about their rig, storage, how to get along with your spouse, boondocking fail, mods to their tow vehicle, & so on. http://www.keepyourdaydream.com/ Enjoy! Chris

We got back last night from our latest Alaska adventure. I'm thinking about starting threads for bc campsites, Yukon campsites, Alaska state parks, etc. Would that be ok? With a link to this thread. By the end of the summer, there will be a lot of information, I'm sure. Sherry

Just ten minutes ago we had a Mama black bear and her two small cubs walk through the backyard. Those cubs sure are cute. It was nice to see that all three of them had beautiful shiny coats. Guess that the neighbor's bird feeders are keeping them well fed! Sorry - camera was not handy. Bill

John, Let's just start off with WOW! The ability of Oliver Owners to think through problems, come up with solutions and share them with others is amazing. I for one consider this the NUMBER ONE benefit of owning an Oliver. With great admiration and appreciation,

Looking at glaciers from a distance and going inside are 2 different things. If you get the chance to take a guided tour on or inside a glacier, then do it. I was the guide many years ago for a few groups in to different glaciers around the Anchorage area. Being surrounded by the Blue ice is one of the most incredible feelings that you will ever experience.