Monthly Archives: November 2009
It sure was Friday the 13th…
Today was not a good day, travelwise that is.
It started out pretty good, though. We pulled out of the Turkey Creek RV Park in Branson right on time at 10 am, heading for Memphis about 265 miles away.
But things went down hill fast after that. Less than a mile from the park, we encountered a steep climbing right-hand turn. I was only going about 25 mph, I mean, I was still in 3rd. The problem was that, although the turn was to the right, the road actually was banked to the left, because another road came in from the left at an angle.
As I went around the corner, this caused the coach to rock pretty far over to the left for a few seconds. And of course a lot of stuff came loose and went sliding over that way as well. What we didn’t realize was that this caused the slide to lift up from the floor slightly, just about time that one of the cat food bowls went sliding under it. And then the slide came back down, trapping the bowl underneath it.
But we didn’t know this at the time. We had other problems.
The road I had chosen (Well, the GPS had chosen…) turned out to be much more hilly than I had expected. The GPS can show you curves, but not hills. So as soon as I could find a place to pull over, I tried to find a new route.
I found another way to go that was about 40 miles longer, but didn’t appear as curvy as the original route. Luckily we had only come about 8 miles, so it wasn’t a big deal to turn around. And 30 minutes later we were passing back in front of the RV park going in the opposite direction.
Well, the new route was a little less curvy, but turned out to be just as hilly. The only real plus was that the road was better, even 4 lane in places.
But because of all the hills and curves, it was still slow going. Finally about noon we stopped for a bathroom break. Walking back thru the coach I notice that the slide was tilted back off the floor about two inches. A little hands and knees inspection reveal the culprit…the aforementioned cat food bowl.
And boy was it wedged in tight. After moving the slide in and out slightly didn’t help, Jan as finally able to break the bowl with a basin wrench. Thinking ahead, I had positioned a thick book under the slide so we could clean out the broken glass before letting the slide all the way down.
But now the book was stuck. And nothing we tried would free it. This was starting to look like an Abbott and Costello routine.
What I need was a pry bar of some sort to give me enough leverage to lift the slide slightly to free the book and then move the slide out, letting it come off the pry bar. But I just didn’t haven’t anything that big.
After spending about a hour fooling with this, we decided to wait and try to fix it when we got to Memphis…actually West Memphis, AR.
We finally pulled in the the park about 2 hours late, after dark, in fact. After we got hooked up, I unhitched the truck and drove about 10 miles over the river to a Home Depot in Memphis and bought a 3 ft long piece of 3/4 inch galvanized pipe.
Getting back to the rig, it took about 10 seconds to free the book and set the slide back in place. And all it needed was the right tool…a honkin’ big piece of steel pipe.
The slide still works just fine, so hopefully no harm done.
And hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day…
Throwed Rolls and Burnt Eagle…
Jan and I left about 10:30 for the 90 mile run to Carthage MO and Colaws RV Salvage
On our way we stopped off about 30 miles up the road in Ozark for lunch at Lambert’s about 11:15am.
Lambert’s is famous for their throwed rolls. And, yes, they do throw rolls at you. Although we’ve never eaten at this location before, we’ve eaten at the one in Foley, AL a number of times, and it’s always been great.
Jan and I both had the fried chicken. We ate until we were stuffed and still had take-home.
Leaving there we headed west to Colaws. Colaws is not just an RV surplus place. It’s also a RV junkyard, a place where old RV’s go to die.
And I really lucked out, They have golf carts that we used to drive around the lot until we found a burnt-out 1999 American Eagle, the same model as ours, but the ‘VS’ floorplan, not our ‘NS’. But since I was looking for wheel well fender flairs it didn’t matter. The parts I needed were intact.
I think it shook Jan up a little to see something that looked so much like our home burnt to a toasty crisp.
After making deal on the parts that saved me $300, Jan and I went into Carthage while waiting for the parts to be removed. I needed a 15/16 socket and Jan needed some stuff from Walmart.
About an hour later we picked up our parts and headed home. But the last 1/2 mile took us 30 minutes due to car accident right down the road from the RV park, Finally we go home about 5:30 pm.
Tomorrow we leave for Memphis on our way to visit relatives in Athens AL.
More later…
