June 3, 2009 – Day 6
A Gas Leak?
Our family was happy to get to sleep finally around 10pm after a long day of exciting activities the night before. Around 7 am however our Propane Gas Sensor went off, waking all of us up first thing in the morning. We had anticipated sleeping in a little bit. This was definitely not a good sign.
A Gas alarm is not the way you want to be awakened in the morning. We frantically ran around to check where the leak was. We ran outside and turned off the gas valve but it kept going off! We went from stove to water heater, checked inside and outside for the source of the leak. I remembered this having happened once before before realizing what the problem really was. For some reason the batteries to our motorhome were not being charged while we were driving the previous 3 days thus causing the RV batteries to go dead. This caused the propane gas emergency detector to go off and wake us all up. It goes off when it is not receiving power to warn us that it will soon no longer function. Although it was a relief, I had wondered why the batteries were not charging… this meant that I would have to take the RV in for some electrical repairs… after all how are we to blog and post information online without our solar panels or engine charging the batteries?
After a morning breakfast with friends, our family headed off for West Edmonton Mall. Our first stop was at the Fantasyland Hotel which was where we were going to spend one night. After being crammed into a 31 foot RV we have decided to try to find a hotel room to catch up on updating our blogs and other online media. While our room was not yet available we checked out bags at the front so that we could head on into the mall to enjoy all it had to offer. As the world’s second largest mall there was definitely lots to see and do.
Electrical Problems
While the rest of my family got a head start on the mall, I made arrangements to have the much needed repairs done to our RV’s electrical system. Power is needed to charge our GPS Video Camera, GPS Data Logger, 3 iPods, 2 cell phones, a Garmin Nuvi navigational GPS, Digital Camera and 3 laptops (not to mention the all too important curling iron and blow dryers for the ladies). When I arrived I was advised that we would need to leave our RV overnight which worked perfectly considering we had a hotel room for the night… the only problem was that we didn’t take everything we needed into our hotel. At least we had the basics.
West Edmonton Mall – View Video
By the time I arrived back at West Edmonton Mall around noon the rest of the family had been well underway in exploring the second largest shopping mall in the world. I met up with them after lunch and the kids were ready to go to the much anticipated World Waterpark! They could see through the large glass window the wave pool, twisting slides and the ever so scary near vertical drop slide. They wanted to get in on the action of the waterpark and they didn’t want to wait around any longer.
It was the perfect activity for our six kids to get out all of their energy. While it was a little more challenging keeping keeping on top of our 1 year old who wanted to run around and did slip and fall on two occasions, the other kids took to the water like fish. Amongst all of the fun I had a hard time to find quiet area for a radio interview that had been arranged earlier in the week. It was a fun place with lots of excitement going on.
Fantasyland Hotel
A true surprise and treat for the kids was in the evening when we checked into the Fantasyland Hotel. The kids were not expecting the fun atmosphere of the theme rooms. We went up the Polynesian themed elevator to the Western themed floor number 7. Inside the room our kids (especially the boys) were delighted to see the charging cowboy on the wall, to hop into the jail cell bunk-bed, to see cattle horns and log paneling on the walls.