I Miss Arizona . . .
Today turned out to be kind of a comedy of errors as we traveled to West Memphis, AR and Tom Sawyer RV Park. We had planned to leave about 9:00 but things started going wrong pretty early.
As I was setting up, I found the fuse had blown that powers the 12V sockets on the dashboard. So this meant that my Brake Buddy Alert Receiver and the small inverter that runs my computer weren’t working. So I went to the drawer where my 20amp fuses are supposed to be, and NO fuses at all, much less 20’s. So I can plug my laptop into the house power since we’ll be running the genset to keep things cool, but I’ll have to do without my Brake Buddy Alert.
By now it was about 10 after 9am, not too late, so I cranked up and started bringing the levelers up. While Jan was running the slide in, I turned the AC’s off and started up the genset, and since we were still on shore power, the transfer switch did its thing and we were now gen power. Then after the genset had warmed up a bit, I turned the AC’s back on.
By now the levelers should have been up, but when I checked the panel, it showed them still down. So it was outside to see what the problem was.
And boy, was it a problem.
When I backed into our site, there was one of those concrete parking lot barriers at the back of the site to keep you from going back too far. So to be sure that we had room in front of the rig to park the truck, I put my rear wheels right against the barrier and let my levelers come down right behind the barriers, clearing the barrier by over an inch.
But somehow there was enough movement in the rig during the two nights we were there that one of the leveler pads ended up under the edge of the barrier. So when I brought up the levelers, it actually picked up the concrete barrier on one side.
I didn’t know they had that much power. Down, yes. But not up.
This was what was keeping the levelers from coming all the way up. So now I had to let the levelers back down, and then crawl under the rear of the rig and maneuver that honking big piece of concrete off the pad. Getting that done, I was happy to see that my levelers now came up just fine. So after all that, by the time I got us hooked up to the truck, it was now 9:40. But at least we were on the way.
But at this point, I decided I miss Arizona. Even though it was only about 85 degrees outside, with the humidity, my shirt was now soaking wet. 10% humidity would be nice.
The trip was pretty smooth until we were about 50 miles outside West Memphis and then the road went to crap. And that included the rest areas As we were pulling out of one, there was about a 6 inch drop in the pavement just as we got on the entrance ramp back onto I-40, that shook us down to our fillings.
And as I found a few minutes later, it also popped open one of our bay doors, as I was quickly informed by passerby’s. So I had to pull over on the shoulder to close the bay door. Luckily nothing had fallen out.
Then about 5 more miles down the road, there was another big pothole that I couldn’t dodge. And this one caused the genset to shut off. It started right back up, but with our transfer switch problem, and no shore power, it wouldn’t switch over.
So again I had to pulled over, go back and lift the bed, and manually switch the transfer switch over to the genset. I’ll be glad when we’re in one place long enough to get this replaced.
We finally pulled into the Tom Sawyer RV Park a little after 3pm. I’m really glad we had reservations, because 2/3’s of the park is under water due to all the rain. In fact there was a cardboard sign taped to the big sign out on the highway that said. “No Vacancy. If you don’t have a reservation, don’t bother.”
I’ll finish up tomorrow with our great visit to Charles Vergos’ Rendezvous, one of the best BBQ places in Memphis.
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Thought for the Day:
Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box. – Italian Proverb
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