Our RV Adventures

Today, actually last night started out with a heck of a thunderstorm. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt the entire coach shake, rattle, and roll just from the thunder rumbling overhead.

Here’s what the radar looked like when I got up, and it wasn’t really moving. It just sat there.

Here’s what it looked like outside the rig.

Even Jan’s bird feeder ended up under water. The ground got so soggy the pole pulled out and fell.

One side effect to all the rain was that we discovered some new leaks in the rig. Of course with the rain blowing sideways a good part of the night, it’s not really surprising. But it looks like I’ve got some more caulking to do.

About 10am I headed out to check in with a couple of clients. Then getting back home about noon, Jan and I headed back out to the Star Cinema Grill to see the movie RED again.

We really enjoyed it when we saw it the first time last week, and wanted to see it again. It seems that with all the action going on, it was sometimes hard to keep up with the dialog.

And it was still good the second time around.

Leaving the movie we stopped off at Home Depot. I’m looking for a check valve that I can install in the water line going to my water pump. Apparently the check valve inside the pump is leaking so that the onboard 100 gallon fresh water tank fills up and then leaks out of the overflow.

There’s nothing else wrong with the pump so I thought I just add a external check valve instead. I think I found one that will work, but I want to check out what kind of connectors I need first.

Leaving HD we stopped off at PETCO and then

headed home.

Getting back to the rig it had cleared up enough so that Jan and I could take our walk, but we’re supposed to have more rain tonight and tomorrow. Oh Boy!

Here’s the second part of our visit to Pennsylvania last year.

Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and more trains…

Posted on July 14, 2009

Continued from yesterday…

The indoor part of the Railroad Museum resembles a large railroad station, with multiple tracks full of trains.

This is the John Bull.  It’s a replica of the first locomotive to run on a railroad in America.

In 1831 the first railroad was built between Philadelphia and New York and the John Bull was the engine.  It’s hard to think now of how this revolutionized travel in the US.

It cut the travel time from Philadelphia to New York from 2 days by coach to 5 HOURS!.  It’s hard to do that by car now.

I saw this same locomotive last week in the Smithsonian, but wasn’t able to get close enough to read the display due to the crowds.  I was surprised to learn here that the one I had seen in the Smithsonian was the REAL John Bull, from 1831.

It ran a regular route until 1866, then traveled around the US on exhibitions until it was donated to the Smithsonian in 1884.

This beautiful example of a 2-6-0 Mogul locomotive carried silver ore on the Virginian & Truckee railroad in Nevada from 1875 to 1944.

The ’2-6-0′  type of nomenclature describes the layout of a locomotive’s wheels, and only applies to steam type locomotives.

The Mogul above has 2 small wheels up front,  6 drive wheels in the middle, and no small wheels in the rear.  Thus, it is a 2-6-0.

This locomotive #7002, dates from 1902 and was the first one in regular service to exceed 100 mph.

Note that this one is a 4-4-2, although you can just barely see the 2 wheels under the tender at the far right of the photo.

Arguably the largest locomotive ever built was the ‘Big Boy’ built for the Union Pacific to pull large coal trains up and down the Rockies out West.

Note that this one is a 4-8-8-4.  That’s a lot of wheels.

Below is a type of locomotive I’d never heard of.

This one is unusual in that it doesn’t have a boiler or generate its own steam.  It’s basically just a big thermos bottle.  It’s filled up with live steam from a stationary boiler and then operated, usually in the rail yard, until it needed to be refilled.

Outside was even better.

It was a rail yard full of more trains.  And it has a real operating roundtable, used to move locomotives in and out of the yard.

Even more locomotives…

And a rail crane used to lift derailed engines and cars back on the track.

I’ve always been fascinated by the big steam engines and this was a great chance to see them up close.

Today was our last full day in Pennsylvania so we headed into Philadelphia to see some sights.

We started off with another duck tour with Ride The Ducks.  Here we are hitting the Delaware River on our trip.

We saw Betsy Ross’ house, the site where William Penn first landed in Pennsylvania, and more.

After our tour, we had a Philly Cheesesteak from a street vendor before visiting Independence Hall,

And the Liberty Bell.

Finally, we headed home, stopping by Wal-mart on the way.

For dinner we did the smorgasbord at Miller’s again.

And then home to get ready to leave for NY tomorrow.

Thought for the Day:
"If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way." – Mark Twain

We’ve got a cold front moving in (finally) so we started getting rain last night that looks to continue for the next several days. But at least we’ve got some days in the mid-60’s coming up.

I left the rig about 9:30am to see a couple of clients in League City and Clear Lake, and then take care of some errands.

I got back about 1:15pm, and then a few minutes later, Jan and I headed out for the Chili’s up in Kemah for lunch.

Coming home around 2:30pm, we stopped off at Buc-ee’s for some tire air. I bought 4 new tires a few weeks ago and the left rear leaks about a pound or so a day.

At first, I thought it might be a leaky tire pressure monitor, so I switched the front and rear monitors. But the rear one still leaked, so Wednesday I’ll go back to Discount Tires and have them take a look at it.

That was about it for today, so I thought I’d rerun our visit to the Pennsylvania Dutch area of Pennsylvania.

Big Trains, Little Trains, and, uh, More Trains…

Posted on July 13, 2009

We’re presently at Roamer’s Retreat Campground between Gap, PA and Kinzers, PA, about 55 miles west of Philadelphia.

We’re here until Wednesday to check out Independence Hall and other Revolutionary sites in Philadelphia,  but as a bonus, we’re in some beautiful Amish / Pennsylvania Dutch countryside, with rolling farms of corn and neat homes dotting the landscape.

And I mean, you’re really got to admire a state where the town of Blue Ball, PA  is right down the road from the town of Intercourse, PA, with the town of Paradise, PA close by.

Last night, after we got in and set up, we headed out in our toad looking for a place to eat supper and came across Miller’s Smorgasbord.  Smorgasbord is the word for buffet around here.

And it was worth the stop. Really good food.

Jan woke up this morning feeling a little under the weather, so we decided to put off our Philadelphia roadtrip until tomorrow.

So, after puttering around for a while, I headed out to track down the National Toy Train Museum that I had come across a brochure for.

In getting there, I came across two other train places, The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, and the Red Caboose Motel.

When I saw the sign for the Red Caboose Motel, I was thinking maybe, you know, there was a red caboose out front, or even, the motel office is in a caboose.

But no, every room is a caboose.  They”re just not all red.

And the motel restaurant is in a old railroad dining car.

They’re painted up in the color schemes of pretty much every railroad, including some that no longer exist.

Neat!

Right next door to the Red Caboose Motel is the National Toy Train Museum.

When I was about 12 I had a large (16 ft x 6 ft) HO gauge train layout.  But then I discovered girls and the model trains kind of faded away.  Of course, it didn’t help that we moved to South America and I sold it all.

Anyway, I always enjoy seeing different layouts and model trains, so this was a real treat.

They had layouts in all the standard gauges, S, O, HO, G, etc., and some very nice layouts that were in operation.

They had model trains going back to the 1860′s all the way up to the present day.  It’s really amazing how long toy trains have been around.  I guess about as long as real trains.

After leaving the Toy Train Museum, I headed down to the Big Train Museum, or, The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, as they call it.

But more about this, tomorrow.

Tomorrow I’ll post the rest of our visit to PA.

Thought for the Day:
"Life is hard. But it’s harder if you are stupid." — John Wayne

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