Stargazer's Garage

From 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali The driver-side headlamp on our GMC Yukon XL Denali burnt out on the weekend. It's such a pet peeve of mine seeing cars with only one light that I went out and bought a pair of Silvania Silverstar bulbs and installed them as soon as I could. However, I also had to mutter under my breath at the GM designers who made the simple car maintenance task of changing a light bulb such a pain in the neck. Basically, on the Yukon you need to loosen the wheel liners, grille and front bumper in order to get access to the headlamps. But there was no way I was going to pay the dealership to change a light bulb for me. I originally wanted to buy Silverstar Ultra bulbs which are supposed to be 50% brighter than stock bulbs but Canadian Tire didn't have the right size (H13/9008) in stock. I had to settle for the regular Silverstars which were $10 cheaper but only 30% brighter. My initial impression of the Silverstar bulbs is that they are definitely an improvem...

Debriefing Notes: The campground was much busier this time with neighbors all along the row with us. It was nice to have other children for our kids to play with. When we arrived the power tongue jack on our Keystone Premier 31BHPR was not working. I suspect that it might be a loose ground like it was before. I'll fiddle with it more our next trip. Didn't have the manual crank with me so I just left the trailer 1" nose up. It wasn't an issue sleeping inside. Overnight temperatures were around 5 C. Bought a couple of vent opening pillows to put up at night to reduce the amount of heat loss through the ceiling in the evenings. Tried it Saturday night and the furnace seemed to run less constantly. Need to find some way to warm the 16 oz propane bottle for our table-top patio heater. With these cold temperatures, the bottle ices up quite quickly and pressure drops so much that the heater turns off even when there's still propane left. Keeping the bottle warm would...

We averaged about two gas stops per day on our road trip in the GMC Yukon XL Denali and Keystone Premier 31BHPR. We did one stop in the morning and one in the afternoon. A full tank cost just under $70 depending on where we were in the country. I took this picture while we were in Montana because they don't have such low (85.5) octane fuel where I live. It's strange to me because no vehicle I've ever seen before required anything LESS than 87 octane for optimum performance.... Even with fuel in Blaine, WA now costing nearly a dollar MORE per gallon than it did last summer, it's still cheaper than it is in Canada so traveling in the US always saves us money.

Our stop for the night on day 3 of our 2010 Road Trip was Bozeman, MT. In the late afternoon, we could see dark clouds on the horizon and we followed the outskirts of a heavy thunderstorm eastward on the I-90. The timing couldn't have been better because when we arrived in Bozeman, the clouds parted and the sun came out. We stopped at the Walmart to pick up some food and supplies (including a disposable water filter for our Keystone Premier 31BHPR) and saw that the thunderstorm had left behind some flooded streets. We stayed at Bear Canyon Campground just outside of town. We had pull-through site #4 with water, electricity, and sewer. No fire pit. The campground was pretty and the location convenient (just off the I-90) but the pull-through sites, while long, were very narrow. With a playground for the kids and an inviting pool (which we arrived too late to use), it was good for passing through on a one night stay but not for anything longer because the neighbors were too clos...

Day 3 of our 2010 Road Trip in our GMC Yukon XL Denali and Keystone Premier 31BHPR travel trailer had us traveling from Spokane, WA to Bozeman, MT, and according to Google Maps, covering a total distance of 645 km (400 miles) with an estimated 6 hours of driving. To tell the truth, this leg of the trip was the one that I was most concerned about because we were passing through the Rockies and over the Continental Divide with an elevation of 6393 feet. I've driven this route several times already in a passenger vehicle but never while pulling a trailer. I didn't know how the Denali would handle pulling the Keystone's 7600 lb GVWR for extended climbs. Our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali has a 6.2L engine with 380 HP @ 5500 rpm and 417 lb-ft torque @ 4400 rpm. The transmission is a 6-speed automatic with full-time AWD and it's never had any problems keeping up with traffic when pulling a travel trailer. I'm happy to say that it was no different in the high mountain passes. ...

We arrived in Spokane, WA, the final destination after our first full day on the road, shortly after 16:00. At Trailer Inns RV Park, the sites were the shortest we encountered during our entire road trip. The total length of our GMC Yukon XL Denali and Keystone Premier 31BHPR travel trailer is about 55' long (the ProPride 3P hitch adds an extra foot), longer than the available pull-through sites, but the manager was friendly and helpful in guiding us into our spot. This is an urban RV park but there was a nice playground for the kids to play while we setup for the night. One item of RV gear we discovered that we needed was a water filter. Living in Metro Vancouver, we were not used to the hard water we found in Spokane and luckily we had enough fresh water in our tank to last the evening. I picked up a disposable water filter at our next Walmart stop and it worked well for the rest of the trip. When we pulled in to our site, our Keystone Premier attracted attention and questi...

This is a picture of our GMC Yukon XL Denali and Keystone Premier 31BHPR travel trailer parked at the Winchester Wasteway Rest Area near Moses Lake, WA. Its name notwithstanding, we stopped here for lunch on the second day of our 2010 Road Trip. Because it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, this location was very quiet compared to the bustling Indian John Hill rest stop we made earlier in the morning. There were still people coming steadily through, but everyone seemed to be in passenger cars coming in only for a quick pit stop and zooming back on the road right away. There were not very many RVs and no tractor trailers at all. The wide open parking lot allowed us to put out the slides and have a very relaxing lunch. This is one of the great benefits of RVing and hauling around our own portable hotel room!

We pulled over for our first stop in the morning at Indian John Hill Rest Stop at about 10:00. It's was a very busy location with lots of people coming in and out but I was able to pull our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali and 35' Keystone Premier 31BHPR travel trailer into a nice central parking spot. This rest area was large with nice grassy areas, picnic tables, and plenty of tourist information. The view is very nice, too, with the Stuart mountain range in the distance. Unfortunately, there was one dog owner who didn't follow the signs and had their large dogs loose outside the designated dog area, so I couldn't let our 2-year-old play in the grass. It was too bad because he really needed to work off some energy. We're lucky all our 5 kids travel really well. We've done extended road trips in the past, including driving to... ...Washington, DC, (see Road Trip 2007 , Road Trip 2008 , Road Trip 2009 ) and we generally find that leaving not too early, having a ...

In August 2010, our family of 7 went on a road trip in our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali and 35' Keystone Premier 31BHPR travel trailer. From Vancouver, Canada, we drove over 7500 km (4650 miles) through the United States taking the I-94 East to Thunder Bay, Ontario and the I-90 West back home from Minneapolis, MN. We spent nearly 30 days on the road living out of our trailer and had an incredibly great time. However, the journey was not without its bumps (including the first night when we found ourselves in the wrong lane at the border crossing and a flat tire in North Dakota), but every "wrong turn" we encountered happened at the "best" possible time to NOT ruin our trip. Even the bent axle that forced us to spend an extra 3-days in Deer Lodge, Montana, did not put a dark shadow on our vacation, because it allowed us to explore and make a special connection to a place we had no idea existed. As a result, we saw a very beautiful part of the country that we will alwa...

It's been a busy summer for us. It's been a GREAT summer for us. We completed our longest trip ever with our travel trailer going from Vancouver to Thunder Bay, Ontario via the USA with extra stops in Minneapolis and the SPAM Museum. The trip included over 8000 km of driving through 27 days and all sorts of wonderful sights and beautiful locations as well a flat tire, a worn out tire, a bent axle, and a wheel bearing failure. It all worked out well, though, and despite all that, we're really happy with our 2010 Keystone Premier 31BH and I'm quite impressed with the way our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali performed during the entire trip. Also, I can forget the ProPride 3P hitch : it was great and I was really, REALLY happy we had it especially when we hit the 50 mph wind gusts in the Dakotas. I'm uploading some of the pictures I took along the way to my Picasa album . I'll also post up some thoughts of our RV adventures here when I can.... Most of the pictures...

I noticed a faint squeaking from the front brakes as well as a different feel on the brake pedal, so I knew I needed to get the brakes checked before we went on our road trip later this summer. I stopped at a prominent independent shop because of the celebrity-endorsed TV commercials I had seen. They told me that the front pads and rotors needed to be changed and gave me a variety of quotes comparing different qualities of parts. The cheapest were around $700 and the most expensive with OEM performance were over $1000. Concerned about towing our RV half-way across the country and through the Rockies, I opted for a slotted performance rotor and got a final quote for $1200. They also mentioned that they noticed that the front shocks were leaking but that might be covered under warranty and recommended I check to see if I was still covered. I was scheduled to get the work done later that evening but they called to tell me they couldn't get the right rotor in time. Because of what they...

Despite having one of the warmest winters in history this year, spring time temperatures have still been in the single digits. This past week we even had some wet snow. That's meant I've had to keep the winter tires on our GMC Yukon XL Denali a lot longer than normal. The forecast has finally changed and I took the opportunity today to switch back to the 20" chrome. Let's hope the weather stays warm!

Winter Rims Mounted Originally uploaded by istargazer . I put the winter tires back onto our 2007 GMC Yukon Denali XL this morning. It wasn't the ordeal it was last year, but it was snowing/hailing lightly while I was doing it. I don't know if we'll see the record snowfalls again, but the local ski hills and Whistler Mountain have all opened their season early.

These are my July fuel consumption stats for our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali. Sorry it's late. Click the thumbnail to see the full view.

I found a great iPhone/iPod Touch app at the iTunes store for keeping track of fuel consumption and automobile expenses called Road Trip. One of the best things I like about it is that I can enter either gallons or litres and whether or not I fill the tank and it will keep track of all sorts of stats and show me my fuel consumption in either mpg or L/100 km. You can then export all of this data into a spreadsheet through email. I find it easier to simply take a screenshot on my Touch and upload it here, which I plan on doing on a monthly basis from now on. This particular screen shows all the accumulative data since I first bought the Denali back in August 2008. Click the thumbnail above to see the full stats. You can see that the fuel consumption is not great. On the highway I was able to get an average of around 14 mpg, but in the city where I do most of my driving I get around 10 mpg. Such is the cost of living at the top of a mountain. You can also see that on my last fill-up I ave...

Concrete/Grandy KOA : 2 nights, Site #91   Coming back from Everett, I had the urge to get out on the road again and thought it would be nice to go for a couple of nights before the weekend. There was nothing available at Sunnyside so we took a chance calling the KOA campground in Concrete, WA . It's only about 2 hours away from our home and we had heard good things about it.... This trip started out a bit differently because the trailer was actually in storage. Since the trailer was already equipped with just about everything we needed, we thought it would be simple to just pack the clothes and food we wanted into the Denali, load up at the storage yard and leave from there. It didn't go quite that smoothly though, because that morning after stopping at the Costco in Port Coquitlam for fuel, I realized that I had forgotten the RV keys at home. Luckily, we were only 15-minutes away. In the end, we wereg only 30-minutes behind our original schedule. There was a 90-minute wait at...

I finally had our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali setup for towing and got some time on Friday to pull home our new 30-foot travel trailer--which I nicknamed "Tango Hotel." The original plan was to keep it for one night and bring it back the next day, but our schedule was so busy that instead of rushing the next day, we decided to keep the trailer for the rest of the week. It actually worked out well because we were able to sleep in the trailer for two nights. It allowed us to get familiar with how everything worked in the trailer and start to setup everything the way that we wanted. I got a chance to complete some modifications and one of the first things I did was replace the old fashioned RV thermostat with a modern digital programmable thermostat . I've got a few more mods that I want to do before we live for our first trip next week.

Our RV dealer initially installed the Tekonsha P3 brake controller under the dash to the right of the steering wheel but there's not much clearance there in our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali. With it angled up and my seat moved back a little, there was just enough room so my leg wouldn't rub against it. But I didn't like it. If there unforeseen forward movement, the Tekonsha would be firmly embedded in my shin. Besides, I couldn't see the display nor could I easily reach the manual control on the bottom of the P3. On top of that, they used the permanent bracket mount. There is no switched power in the Denali. Everything is on all the time. Even though the P3 has a built-in power-save mode, after the battery troubles I had on the Denali, I didn't want to risk it. So I removed the permanent bracket and installed the second bracket provided by Tekonsha to the left of the parking brake release and solved all my problems. It is now easy to see, easy to access, and easy to r...

I took our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali into the dealership for an oil change yesterday. With the Oil Life Remaining at 23% I didn't really need to bring it in. The owner's manual states that a message will say CHANGE OIL SOON when you need to change it, but I had some warranty issues I wanted to have checked out. So last week I made a call and setup an appointment to deal with these items: Oil change Loose driver's door panel - It seems like one of the clips would not hold the panel Clunk in rear hatch - I always thought this was normal but then I read on one of the forums that someone else had a clunk that developed into failure and warranty work Leaking washer fluid tube in the passenger wiper arm - It looks like there's a pinhole and fluid shoots all over the place Battery problems - The battery has died a couple of times since the first incident a couple of months ago. Click below to read the results of 3.5 hours of waiting a the dealership.... I'm glad to say that...