Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope everyone is having a safe, fun, and a not too disrupted-by-the-weather holiday.  We're fine.  Had an uneventful trip over to Birmingham on Sunday.  We're here for the week to visit Dad & Anna.  They both seem to be doing well. 

Next stop is Gulf State Park (Gulf Shores), AL for the winter.  If all goes as planned, we'll move down on Sunday.  As always, that's the plan!

Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us.  Until next week, David 

Stone Mountain, GA

We've been here about a week and visiting Doug & Louise.  They seem to be doing fine.  We had a rainy travel day down to Stone Mountain last Friday and have had a beautiful week until this afternoon when the next cold front brought rain.

We've been able to do a couple of things for Doug & Louise.  We've helped clean out some old clothes and made a few of trips to Goodwill dropping off some of our stuff as well as Doug & Louise's.  Seems I've spent a lot of time waiting at the Snellville Ford dealer and Discounter Tire having the truck serviced, though.

First we go to a planned appointment on Tuesday to have the truck serviced and replace a leaky, numerously-patched, passenger-side, rear inner tire only to find out that the truck lifts are in use and won't be available until mid-afternoon.  No problem.  We wait for a phone call that finally comes late afternoon.  Can we bring the truck back in on Tuesday?  Sure.  Go back Tuesday morning.  Truck goes on the lift, oil is changed, a new tire put back on as a spare and...the lift breaks down.  About an hour and a half passes and the lift is repaired.  Truck's brought back down, released from being a hostage, and we go visiting to see Louise.

We spend about an hour a half with with Doug & Louise.  Go back to the truck, start to pull out and I switched over to the tire pressure screen and lo & behold, the passenger-side, outer rear tire has lost about 6 psi while we were in with Doug and Louise.  We run around a little bit, go out to eat with Doug, the tire continues to lose air pressure, but that seems to stop when we get to the trailer.  Get up the next morning.  Tire has stopped leaking, but we take the truck to Discount Tire to repair this second leaky tire.  They find the leak, repair it, but tell me the tire monitor is reading "funky" and to drive it a day to let the tire pressures settle down, bring it back, and they'd set the tire pressures the way I want them.  No problem. 

Tires seem to be holding pressure just fine, but the air pressures are all over the place.  We go back this morning to have the tire pressures adjusted.  Should be easy as they have a parking spot set up for "express" tire pressure check.  We pull into the spot, but there's a "situation" .  They can't find an air tool that'll put air into the rear dual tires.  (I understand the problem completely.  I can't air up the rear dual tires, either.  Best I can do is just let all the air out!)  They apologize, and we leave.  No problem.  We'll go back to Snellville Ford.  They should be able to air up the rear dual tires.  Get there, and they're happy to help.  What we're not told is that the techs can only air up the rear inner tires if they remove the outer tires.  That means they need a lift and all lifts are full (apparently, only two lifts can handle dual wheel trucks, anyway.)  There's an hour and a half wait for a lift.  Finally it's all done.  All tires are aired up.  Now we get to see which tire goes down next!  So far one afternoon has passed and all tires have stayed inflated.  We're keeping our fingers crossed!

So that's how our week has passed.  It's all good.  Our plans, and it's just that - plans - are to move over to Birmingham Sunday and visit Dad and Anna for Thanksgiving - if we can keep the tires aired up!  We plan to be at Gulf Shores by December 1st, too.  Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us.  Until next week, David

In-transit to Stone Mountain

Of course this isn't us, but it's how it feels!

We were successful is getting the trailer on Friday afternoon.  We reloaded it and took it down near Indianapolis, IN Saturday to dewinterize it and start using it.  All went well until it came time to get the antifreeze out of the shower. 

Turned on the shower head and nothing came out.  We knew water was on at the manifold, so we searched for a water cutoff valve at the shower head.  Well, visually, there's none there.  We're use to having a slide valve in the shower head.  That didn't exist.  In the navy we had a valve you could twist.  The shower head didn't have one of those, either.  We knew this.  It's a new shower head that was installed in April before leaving for Jackson.  We'd checked for all of this when we got it back in April.

We continued to play with it during the afternoon.  I kept checking it.  You know the drill - do the same thing over and over again hoping for different results.  It was clear we were missing something, but where was the valve we're missing.  I called back to Indiana Interstate Enterprises to see if they knew of a valve we were missing.  They were closed, so no help there.  Everything was working except that stinking shower head.  I called it everything but a shower head.  Finally, in a fit of frustration - we'd been at this for eight and a half hours mind you - I decided to just take the shower head off.  As I start, the shower hand rotates and water runs out.  Eight and a half stinking hours to find out it does have a shut off valve.  What appears as the handle rotating is actually a ring where the shower head attaches to the hose.  Rotate the ring and you open or shut-off the shower head.  Somebody got paid good money to develop this.  Apparently, telling purchasers about it wasn't considered important.

Next day - Sunday - was a good trip down to Cave City to ride out the polar express the east was going to experience.  We stayed four nights to let the temps rise and let snow & ice melt off the truck and trailer.  Good idea except we were going have to stay until next June to get the ice off the off-door side slides.  We had about a quarter to three-eights inch thick sheet of ice across roof of those two slides - and they're long slides.  Our trailer (and truck) looked on one side as if it was in a normal, sunny high 30s day after a light dusting of snow.  The other side looked like it was in a glacier.

Truck was easy to clear.  Drive it Walmart and park it so the iced side is in the sun.  Couldn't do that with the trailer.  Closing those slides with iced roofs would have destroyed the seals.  I tried late Wednesday afternoon (that's when the ladder finally cleared of ice and it was safe to climb) to clear ice with a hair dryer.  It worked - just sloooooooow.  This morning after the temp climbed to freezing, I got up on the roof and Donna starts handing me buckets of hot water which I poor on the top of the slides and I start scrapping ice.  Took us about an hour.  I figured we'd be there all morning.  I was surprised it went so fast.  But it worked.  Only two trailers had this issue in the campground - us and one of the work campers for the campground. 

So we're off way earlier this morning than I figured headed to Stone Mountain, GA.  We're currently sitting at the KOA in Manchester, TN for the night.  Despite being under trees, we do have satellite TV.  I guess it helps when the leaves start falling.  Hope to make it to Stone Mountain tomorrow.  Hope to survive Atlanta traffic, too.   We'll see.

Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us.  Until next week, David

Have Suitcase, Will Travel

If we don't get outta here soon...

We've finished all our doc appointments and have made our way back to the Lagrange, IN area to pick up our trailer when it's finished.  We're hoping it's finished tomorrow (Friday).  Shop hopes it's tomorrow, too.  We've viewed the trailer from a distance, and the new cargo door and paint look fine.  As of noon today, they had four (out of a total of 15) items left to finish tomorrow.  We'd like those items fixed, too.  Two of them are water leaks, so it's important they're repaired.  The other 11 items are completed.  Keep in mind that this shop - Indiana Interstate Enterprises - is working us in among other RVs that have appointments.

Like a lot of people, we're watching the weather reports of that arctic cold air that's on it's way.  The quicker we can get south and the farther south we can get, the better off we'll be.  The trailer is winterized, so we could - in a pinch - just stop at hotels that have trailer parking and spend the nights in hotels.  But if we can leave Saturday, we can at least dewinterize the trailer and begin using it before the subfreezing highs arrive.  If we have to wait until Monday (daytime high of 30), we'll just have to take it day-by day.

(side bar:  The reason dewinterizing will be hard should we leave late is that open campgrounds will not turn on fresh water during the day if the daytime highs stay below freezing.  We need to get freshwater into the trailer to use it.  If there's no opportunity to put freshwater into the freshwater tank, we're outta luck.  If we can get freshwater into the trailer, we can wait out those subfreezing daytime highs while sitting at a campground.)

Goal is to still be at Stone Mountain, GA by Thursday, the 14th.  As always, that's the plan.

Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us.  We're fine.  Everyone stay warm.  Like a colonoscopy, this too, shall pass.  David