Another Bi-weekly Update

This is our last full week here on the gulf coast for this season.  We're doing well, had a visit & dinner with Steve & Susan.  And then, today, we said goodbye to an old friend.

Despite being advertised as an ultra-low sulfur, bio-diesel compliant vehicle, our 2009 F450 had shown (expensively) that it wasn't as compliant as we were led to believe.  However, it has served us well.  We'd even had one dealer ask us why we were getting rid of such a nice truck.  After I told him my long story, he shook his head in empathy and noted that he knew several people with over-the-road HDTs (18-wheeler tractors) with the same issues.  Well, today we picked up it's replacement.

Seeking a replacement was fun, but purchasing another truck and fearing that we were making a bad decision weighted heavily on me.  We wanted better seats, and I dearly craved the 360 degree camera system that Ford was putting on the 2017 model Superduty trucks.   That 360 degree camera system came on a Ford.  And Donna liked Ford's Platinum seats the best of all she got a chance to sit in.  But we'd been "fooled" by Ford once.  If you've ever been in the military, you know the term "heavy duty, military grade..." doesn't impress you all that much, either.   And what if we hated the new truck?  And we won't go into how the new Ford pickup beds are 2 inches higher which - potentially - could mean major adjustments will need to be made to our trailer's suspension.   Well, we took a chance and ordered/purchased another Ford.

There'll be more about our new truck in a later post.  This post is us saying goodbye to a friend that took us around the US twice with a 5th wheel in tow.  We'd retired with it.  We'd learned to tow a 5th wheel trailer with it.  We'd begun to learn to back up a 5th wheel trailer with it.  We'd even struggled to hitch and unhitch our trailer with it until a friend told us our hitch was installed incorrectly.  It was strange to say goodbye to it.  Even stranger to be making a u-turn this afternoon and realize we were following it as the dealer's mechanics were giving it a shakedown run before putting it on the used truck lot.  Strange to see it without South Dakota plates.  I'm gonna miss the notoriety of having a F450, too.  But what's done is done.

If all goes well, we'll leave Alabama's gulf coast next week.  Stops in Tallahassee and Mount Dora are planned before we head back north.  As always that's the plan...until it changes.

Thanks for dropping by.  Hope everyone is enjoying this warm winter and for our California friends, staying afloat!  Later, David