We found a lovely campground last weekend on the shores of Lake Ontario at Hamlin Beach State Park North West of Rochester NY

. Absolutely perfect weather with temps in the low 80s sure helped, but even so, it is a beautiful park and we can thoroughly recommend it.

Like every Aliner owner......  Ok, Like many, we have had our share of leaks. Mostly these have been around the rear dome window. It is generally less of a problem if we store the camper in the up position, and not when down with its custom cover over it. Once again recently though, we had torrential rain and a small leak. I looked very carefully at the bubble and saw that the left upper corner was showing signs of tiny cracks through the last lot of silicone that I put on there. I caulked it again with clear silicone adhesive and then put a 1/2"  aluminum angle rain deflector on that part of the roof similar to the one that I have on the front. It is held in place by one screw each side into the Aluminum frame of the roof and by silicone adhesive caulk in the area between. 

It got thoroughly tested over the last two days as we have had heavy rains for almost 48 hrs straight. It effectively deflects the rain to the sides, and there has been no leaking. I'm keeping my fingers crossed even so.

 

We added and indoor "toilet".....well, "Porta-potty" may be a better name for it. On one of our weekends last year we were at a state campground in central NY on a Friday night. We had been cautioned by other senior campers on the Thursday that they would all be pulling out on Friday morning to avoid the weekend party groups. They weren't wrong! the partying started well before sunset and went on until the wee hours of the morning. During the night Pat had to get up for a quick visit to the ladies room. I always accompany her, at least to the general vicinity. When she came out she said that there was a considerable amount of puke on the floors and stalls and one drunken girl still in there drinking and puking alternately. That was the point at which we decided to make an inside toilet of our own for future late night stops. It worked out great. We don't use water in it, but instead (on the advice of other veteran campers of our age) just line it with a plastic bag and put about three cups of unscented kitty litter in the bottom. there is no smell, a goodly amount of pee can be absorbed, and it can just be dumped in the trash in the morning. I had to raise the lid of the front compartment just a little to fit the toilet in, but it works Great! I appreciate it too.

great!

Hi folks,

I posted a question on the Aliner Owner’s list serve a few days back about a problem of the battery in our Aliner not charging. I found that all the fuses were fine, it was the battery that was not. I replaced that and now the 12v system is fine again,   but now we have another problem.

We towed the camper from Syacuse, NY to Wilmington, NC in July and when we got there found that there was an audio alarm sounding whenever we turned one of our interior 12v lights on. According to our owner’s manual this is an overload warning. Here’s the odd bit though, it is perfectly fine when we are running off the brand new battery, but the alarm sounds when we are plugged in to shore power. It seems to be just that one light that sets it off though. We can run everything else at once with no problem but the alarm sounds when we turn on the one light. It’s a 12v, 50W screw base lamp that I spliced into the system. The odd bit is that it has worked perfectly for the last couple of years, then suddenly we have this problem. More to come on this soon ……….  A solution, I hope.

Summer 2016:
We didn't do so much camping this summer due to other travels. right after I finished teaching we took the A-Liner South to Wilmington NC, stopping for a night our favorite half-way campsite Front Royal Campground. It is very reasonable at just $37/night with a hook up and we have always been comfortable there. It is not fancy, but the showers and toilets are clean and the owners try to please. We then drove on to Wilmington and had 3 nights camping in my brother-in-law's yard before packing up the camper and flying out for 5 weeks in New Zealand. We came back to pick up the camper, the last week of August and drove North again.
the drive South was "interesting". The car (2014 Subaru Forester) was loaded more heavily than usual and, even though the camper was at its normal towing weight, we had tire problems. Part of this was due to the 90+ degree heat, and part to the load and the nature of the tires. it was all too much and we had significant wear on the outer edges of the tires. We will be replacing them soon with a better quality and stiffer tire. We are also considering getting a mid sized truck with a 6 or 8 cylinder engine as the camper seems to be just a bit more than the Forester should tow and our gas mileage is only 19 on the highway.
More on this to come in the future.