Our RV Adventures

This is actually the blog for Wednesday, the 4th of April. I couldn’t post it due to the bad Internet service we had in Junction. Thursday’s blog will be posted later.

We left Saddleback Mountain RV Park in Balmorhea, TX a little after 10am, heading 245 miles east to Junction, TX

But before we left I checked my engine oil and found no sign of antifreeze.

So far, so good.

Just outside of Ozona, we started running into large fields of bluebonnets. I guess all the rain they had here in the Texas Hill Country had been good to the flowers. Unfortunately we didn’t have the camera upfront so we didn’t get any photos. But here’s a sample from a previous year.

We got into Junction, TX about 3pm and got checked in to the North Llano River RV Park. When we last stayed here in 2007 and 2008, it was a KOA, but now it’s just a Good Sam park.

On today’s trip, we drove 55, but had a lot more hills than yesterday, but traveling 245.5 miles using 24.4 gallons of diesel, giving us 10.1 MPG.

I’m loving this new non-leaking exhaust manifold. I’ve gained about a 15% increase in gas mileage. At this rate the new manifold will pay for itself fairly soon.

About 4pm Jan and I headed out for dinner, stopping off at the office to settle up and complain about the non-functional WiFi system. Apparently it got struck by lightning a couple of weeks ago, and Radio Shack? hasn’t been able to fix it yet.

I think I see the problem here.

We had dinner at Cooper’s BBQ just north of I-10. We had eaten here in 2010 and remembered it as being pretty good. But either our memory was faulty or it’s gotten bad, because it wasn’t very good.

So to make up for the bad meal, we make a Nick Russell Memorial Visit at the DQ on the way home for some frosty goodness. Sorry Nick.

Getting back to the rig, I discovered how sucky the Internet was here, only 1x and almost none of that. And to make things even worst, although I had 3 bars of phone service, it was impossible to make a phone call that would last more than a few seconds without dropping out.

Did I say Sucky?

We would occasionally get an email to come in, but couldn’t send anything. I could sometimes get a webpage to come up, but mostly I got nothing.

One email that did get through was from our daughter-in-law Linda, telling us that our granddaughter Piper had won a Moody Foundation Scholarship for $2000.00 a year. She graduates from high school this May and wants to be a Physician’s Assistant. She’s been interning at a local hospital for a while as part of her classes and plans to work there after graduation as she continues her education.

Then we got an email that almost stopped our breathing. There was no message, just the subject line that said “Landon being admitted to hospital”.  Nothing else.

We had talked to Brandi earlier in the day while we were on the road, and she had said that she was on the way home to pick up Landon from daycare and take him to his doctor because his daycare said he was coughing a lot and had thrown up.

We try calling Brandi several times but never had a good connection. So finally at about 9:30 we got dressed and drove down to the Valero truck stop by the Interstate.

Since we still couldn’t make a cell call, we went into the Valero and used a pay phone. Getting hold of Lowell, we found out that Landon’s visit to the doctor hadn’t improved things much, and since he was having trouble breathing, they took him to the Emergency Room where he was admitted immediately.

Lowell said he was doing much better but they were keeping him overnight. The doctor’s kind of suspects an asthma attack, but weren’t sure.

Needless to say, we didn’t sleep very well.

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Thought for the Day:

“You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is ‘never try’”. – Homer Simpson

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Today was the day, we hope.

We left Coachlight RV Park about 10:30 to take our rig back over to Rush Truck Center to hopefully finish up our repairs and get us back on the road. But on the way we pulled into the nearby Pilot station for what turned out to be 118 gallons of diesel.

And just in time too. When we got diesel, it was $4.05 ($4.03 with our Pilot Loyalty Card). But later in the day it had gone up to $4.09.

We pull into Rush’s right at 11am, got parked, and our tech, David, got right to work. It turns out that our parts had come in early, and they were ready to go.

While they were working on our coach, Jan and I decided to have one last meal at Cha Chi’s. But we weren’t going for more Mexican this time. We were going for their hamburgers.

Every time we had gone there we noticed how many customers were ordering hamburgers, not Mexican dishes. We asked our waiter and he said they’re known for their burgers, and it’s one of their best selling items. So we had to try them.

Jan had a Cheeseburger with Guacamole, and I had the Works Burger with Cheese, Hatch Green Chilies, and two pieces of thick-sliced bacon. And along with lettuce, tomato, pickles and onion, they were really, really good. It’s easy to see why they were so popular.

Getting back to Rush Truck Center about 12:30 we found David close to being done. At 12:45 we started the engine and let the air system come up to full pressure until the valve popped off, and David checked for any leaks.

I noticed the air pressure came up quicker now, and the coach came up on the airbags faster too.

After settling up the bill, we pulled the coach out of the bay and over to an area where we could hook up the toad. I also took a few minutes to add some hydraulic fluid to our PowerGear leveler reservoir. When we left the park, the levelers came all the way up, but I was still getting a “Jacks Down” alarm. This normally means the fluid level is low and some needs to be added. And so it was this time.

As far as improvements from the exhaust manifold replacement, it was certainly evident.

I now have much better low-end power and acceleration, especially from a standing start heading up hill.

But the big eye-opener was the increase in MPG. Even driving at 60 instead of my normal 55, I traveled 239.1 miles and used 24.2 gallons of diesel. That’s 9.88 miles per gallon. WOW!

That’s better than I usually get at 55. And I’m really looking forward to seeing what I get doing 55.

We got into the Saddleback RV Park at Balmorhea about 6:50pm (We lost an hour going from MDT to CDT) after a very smooth trip.

Jan fixed us a great supper of cheese and bacon quesadillas and warm cookies for dessert. Hmmm!

Sometime during the next few days I go over in more detail what I had done on the rig and why.

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Thought for the Day:

When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.

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