Our RV Adventures

happened today.

I kept telling myself I was going to get back on my taillight or my dash light/headlights-on alarm projects, but somehow it just never happened.

I ended up spending most of the day doing a map overlay for all the Thousand Trails parks we can access. I recently found out that a number of the parks we can visit are not on the standard Thousand Trails list.

I found that I can access a park in the Florida Keys, and two more in Florida, one near Daytona Beach.

Also parks in Bar Harbor, ME, the Wisconsin Dells, and additional parks in California, Washington and Oregon. Of course some of these are Encore parks and cost us a whole $3 a day, but according to the Thousand Trails office, staying at those parks doesn’t count against our 50 free days each year, and it appears that we can stay at one of these parks for longer than our normal two weeks. Neat!

At about 5pm we headed out to meet our friend’s Al and Adrienne for dinner one last time before we leave Tucson on Sunday. And as usual we spent more time talking than eating since we didn’t say our goodbyes until after 8:30.

And with any luck we’ll be able to catch up with them again later this summer when they’ll be in Cody, WY. Hope it works out.

That’s about it for today. As I said, ‘Not Much . . .”

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Thought for the Day:

If, in the largest city in the US, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not a 24-ounce soda because 24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat…you might live in a country run by idiots.

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This morning I got back on figuring out why my dashboard gauge lights quit working. After getting some more info from American Coach on how the circuit was wired, I started tracing the wiring back and after wedging myself in between the driver’s seat and the underside of the dashboard (not an easy job, believe me), discovered that the problem is with the headlight switch. Or at least the dash light dimmer part of it.

The switch is one of those that you pull out to turn the parking lights/headlights on and then rotate the knob to dim/brighten the dash lights. I did find out that the switch is a standard truck part so a replacement would be easy to find, but getting it out looks to be a problem

I would try to spray some contact cleaner in it, but it looks to be pretty sealed up so I would probably have to remove it to do that, and then I’m right back where I started.

I’m going to look at it some more, but I’m kind of tempted to just disconnect the dash light wire plug from the switch and then short across the wires so the lights are on full bright all the time, since that’s the way I drive with it anyway.

More tomorrow.

My Priority Mail package finally showed up today that our daughter Brandi sent out on Monday. It should have gotten here yesterday, but according to the USPS tracking, it was “MisSent” (what ever that means) out of the Tucson PO yesterday and got lost.

A little before 4 Jan and I headed out to check out Brushfire BBQ. We read good online reviews about it, and it certainly smelled good when we drove by.

As we were just leaving the coach, Mike and Cheryl Sipes stopped by to say Hi and drop off a menu for the Hot Wok, a place they say is even better than Luckie’s Thai.

This means it must be fantastic, because Luckie’s is really, really good. Hopefully we’ll be able to try it before we leave here on Sunday.

And Brushfire turned out to be really,  really good, too.

If fact I think we have a new favorite BBQ place here in Tucson.

It’s as good as Famous Dave’s, a couple of bucks cheaper, and a lot closer to the fairgrounds.

Jan had the Half Rack of Baby Back Ribs with Grilled Green Beans and a loaded Baked Potato, and I had a combo plate with Sticky Ribs (St. Louis Style) and Beef Brisket, with Grilled Green Beans and Grilled Corn on the Cob.

The meat was moist, tender, and very flavorful. But even as tender as it was, it had some texture to it. I hate it when they parboil the ribs first to make them cook faster when they’re being smoked, and the meat turns out just mushy. Yeah, it does ‘fall off the bone’, but that’s because it’s been boiled to a pulp.

And the Grilled Green Beans were outstanding. As the description says, they’re cooked on the grill and come out crisp, but still tender, and delicious.

My only regret about Brushfire is that we didn’t go sooner. They only have two locations, both here in the Tucson area, so it will probably be next year before we can go back.

BUMMER!

We got home a little after 5 and I got back on the taillight problem. I got the old, ‘extra’ taillight converter out of the system and patched around, and now the rig part of the system is working fine.

But getting that part working revealed another one. I’ve apparently got a bad ground somewhere in the truck’s wiring. If I hook my test box up to the truck, the lights work fine. But if I hook the rig up to the truck, the turn signals work fine, but the left taillight doesn’t work and the right taillight is much brighter than it should be. An obvious grounding problem

I think I know where the problem is, but I finally ran out of daylight, so I’ll try to finish it up tomorrow.

I did have a couple of blog readers drop by to say Hi while I was working on the taillights, but I didn’t get their names. Sorry. But it is always nice to know people enjoy the blog.

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Thought for the Day:

“They have the guns and therefore we are for peace and for reformation through the ballot. When we have the guns then it will be through the bullet.”

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

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