Daily Archives: May 13, 2014

Well, It’s Official. We’ve now entered the ZONE . . .

You know, the Zone.

Now that we’re within 300 miles of Elkhart, we’ve entered . . . (cue Twilight Zone music)

The Nick Russell Zone of Bad Weather ©®™

The one that follows Nick around the country, disrupting winters in Florida and Escapades in Indiana.

It’s only a matter of time before they run him out of the state.

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For the 2nd time in 7 years, we ran into an RV park where the shore power voltage was too high, i.e. above132 volts. The last time was in Montgomery AL in 2010.

The voltage here at Tom Sawyer RV Park was running about 128 volts, but every now and then it would spike up to 133, just enough to cause our Progressive EMS  to kick out. This was probably caused by AC’s on rigs around us cutting on and off. After checking the readings on my EMS, and seeing the spikes were short-term and seldom, I turned the bypass on so that the unit would stop popping the power on and off the rest of the evening.

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We headed out about 9:30 for a quick, easy run up to Sikeston, MO. A couple of hours into our trip I pulled in the Pilot at Hayti, MO on I-55N to get some diesel. Coming up to the turn in to the place I saw two entrances. The first one was labeled TRUCKS. OK, probably not me. The second was labeled AUTOS/RVS. OK, me.

Pulling in, Jan and I looked around for the RV pumps.

There were none.

So I pulled over to the right side of the pump islands to fill up there, although it would mean that I was stretching across both sets of pumps, but it wouldn’t be the first time.

New problem.

There were NO diesel pumps on the Auto pump islands.  AT ALL.

And I wasn’t the only one lost. There was another RV, and a couple of dually diesel pickups orbiting the Auto pumps with me. Luckily I didn’t get hemmed in and was able to get back to the side exit, get back out on the road, and then into the truck area.

Followed closely by my new friends, like a line of baby ducks. Luckily there were open lanes so we didn’t have to wait.

My Silverleaf computer interface said I’d used 83.9 gallons, and 85.0 gallons filled my tank. Pretty accurate.

That 85 gallons took me 779 miles for an average of 9.16 MPG. The speed control set on 55mph, and a lot of flat country with no headwinds made that possible.

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We got in the Hinton RV Park in Sikeston MO about 12:45 and got parked and set up. This is a very nice park where we stayed in 2012. It has nice long hard gravel pull-thru’s with an easy in and out.

After a nice nap, Jan and I left the rig about 4pm heading a couple of miles down the road to have dinner Lambert’s Throwed Rolls, one of our favorite places.

They have 3 locations around the country: Foley, AL, Ozark, MO, and here in Sikeston. And over the years we’ve eaten at all 3.

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Later in the evening, I went online and canceled all the Thousand Trails reservations that I made for the Lake Conroe TT and the Colorado River TT through the end of August. I did this at the time when we didn’t know how things would work out with Jan’s breast cancer situation. But now that that’s been resolved, they can go away.

Tomorrow we’ve got another fairly short run of 185 miles up to Vandalia IL to spend a few days visiting with Jan’s sister Debbie, and her family. We’re really looking forward to it.

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Thought for the Day:

"I am not young enough to know everything." – Oscar Wilde

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