Our RV Adventures

We walked again this morning, but for variety, we took a slightly different route this time. It was supposed to be about 1.05 miles, a little longer than yesterday’s 1.01 miles.

But for some reason Runkeeper said it was only 0.96 miles, not really a lot of difference, I guess.

Getting back to the rig, Jan and I sat outside in the shade with our coffee and cranberry nut bread. A little later, our neighbor in the Discovery behind us came out to walk her big Boxer, Joshua, a real sweetheart.

Tracy and her husband Greg (nice name!) are thinking about going full-time, so we talked a while and then I gave her a couple of my last copies of Nick Russell’s Gypsy Journal’s. Hopefully we’ll be able to talk more after Christmas.

Later in the afternoon, Jan got into baking mode, first getting her Cranberry Christmas Cake mixed and in the oven. Then she started in on her much-in-demand Sausage Balls. In fact so much in demand, she has to make six dozen so everyone gets some to take home.

You can check out both of these recipes, as well a number of others, here on Jan’s Favorite Recipes page.

About 6pm Wal-Mart said our prescriptions were ready, so I headed over that way. My first stop though was at Lowe’s to pick up the #14 x 2” screws that I will use to mount Jan’s “Oh Sh$t! Handle” that I talked about in yesterday’s blog. You can check it out here – Livingston Bound and BBQ.

Getting to Wal-Mart, I was surprised to find it wasn’t that busy, not really any more than a typical Saturday, it seemed to me. Certainly not like a Christmas Eve Eve.

Leaving Wal-Mart I made a dinner stop at the Culver’s right across the street to pick up burgers and fries for supper. Since Jan had already been cooking a lot today, supper was on me, and we both really love Culver’s Butterburgers.

After dinner, I decided to wait until after Christmas to drill the holes in the dowel rods and mount the handle. Instead I wanted to upgrade the two front 18” fluorescents by installing the LED strip lights that I’ve used before. I’ve done this several times by now, so I’ve got it down pat.

After removing the plastic cover, I removed the bulbs, and then the center ballast cover comes off by just squeezing it until it pops out of the tabs.

Then I’m left with this.

With a pair of wire cutters, I cut out all the wires except the black and white wires at the right end. Unfortunately they’re hard to see in this photo.

The black and white wires are the 12v supplying the power to the light. I don’t worry about removing the ballast since it’s not in the way.

Next it’s simply a matter of connecting the red wires on the LED strips to the black wire in the fixture, and the black wires on the LED strips to the white wire in the fixture, using wire nuts. At this point I always test the hookup. Looks good to me.

The LEDs come with a peel-off adhesive stripe that I use to mount the strips in the fixture.

Then I just reinstalled the metal cover over the center ballast, and snap the plastic cover on, and I’m done.

It now takes me less than 10 minutes to do a light, and they’re brighter than the fluorescents they replace.

And at less than $7.00 for a pair of strips, it costs less than just replacing the fluorescent tubes.

2ea Super Bright COB White LED Lights

Tomorrow Jan and I will head out about 10am, with our first stop for breakfast at the Cracker Barrel right down the Interstate, where we’ll also pick up the Cornbread Dressing and Turkey Gravy we ordered last week for our Christmas dinner tomorrow.

Then it’s off to our daughter Brandi’s down in Katy for our Christmas Eve get-together. Unfortunately our other set of kids, Chris, his wife Linda, and our granddaughter Piper are all scheduled to work tomorrow evening, so they won’t make it tomorrow night, but we’ll all be together on Christmas Day for dinner.

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Thought for the Day:

Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Except bears, they’ll kill you and eat you.

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Jan and I were up about 8:00 and on our way to Livingston by 9:00. Dennis and Carol Hill had invited us over to their place at the Escapees park there. We had been promised one of Dennis’ smoked pork butts for lunch, so we were really looking forward to it.

Although it was sunny when we left the coach, by the time we were on FM1097 after passing through Willis, we started running into a lot of fog. And although it didn’t slow us down much, it did presage a much bigger slowdown as we came into Goodrich, TX on US59, planning on turning off on FM1988.

A couple of miles before our turnoff, traffic came to a stop, and then began inch forward. When we finally got up to our turnoff, we saw that the police had US59N blocked off and was routing all traffic onto FM1988. Which then was backed up all the way over to FM146.

All 5 miles of bumper to bumper traffic. Which took us over 30 minutes to get through. It was only after we got back to the rig that we found out what happened.

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Turned Over 18 Wheeler Blocks Traffic on 59 North at FM-1988…

GOODRICH, December 22, 2015 – At around 5:15 am on December 22, 2015, an 18 wheeler hauling wood shavings was north-bound on US-59.  According to the driver, a car cut in front of him causing him to suddenly brake, then causing his rig to turn over on the slick roads.  Another 18 wheeler behind him swerved to avoid colliding and went into the center median and got stuck.  Nobody was injured.  Deputy Glen Edwards with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office was dispatched to the scene along with Trooper Chris Cain with the Texas Highway Patrol.  North-bound traffic on 59 is being rerouted to the FM-1988 overpass.  Riley Wrecker Service out of Corrigan was dispatched to clean up the mess.  At time of press (6:35 am) the mess is being cleaned up, and traffic is still being rerouted.

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But finally we got to Dennis and Carol’s about 11am, just in time to meet up with a number of other RV’ers, and dig into a lunch of Dennis’ great BBQ. Really, really good as always.

We all had a great time talking over past and future travels, including another upcoming Alaskan trip for Dennis and Carol. Jan and I also got a tour of the Class C that they’ll be taking up north this time instead of their Winnebago Journey Class A.

We finally all wound down about 3pm and Jan and I headed home, but this time without all the traffic problems.

We both want to thank Dennis and Carol for the invitation, along with the great food, and fun. Thanks again.

Coming back into Willis about 4:30 we made a stop at the Fish Pond Restaurant to pick up the Coconut Cream Pie we had ordered the other day.

We got one for our family Thanksgiving get-together, and it was so good that we wanted another one for Christmas.

Before leaving the ‘Pond’ I called the Wal-Mart Pharmacy to see if our prescriptions were ready to pick up, but since they weren’t, we just headed back to the park for the night. Along the way we saw a lot of the tornado damage left over from last week’s storm. Roofs torn off, campers turned over, and even smashed flat, it was a close call for the restaurant with damage all around.

Getting back to the rig, I checked out my latest repair project. I was redoing the mounting of Jan’s “Oh Sh$t! Handle” that previously resided right by her chair. But over a period of time, and a lot of use, she broke it completely off.

The problem was that whatever mounting system was being used to hold the handle in place fell down in the open space between the inside metal wall and the outside metal wall, leaving only two empty openings.

That’s the inside of the outer wall in the photo below.

Back in November while we were still gate guarding, I used the toothpicks and Gorilla Glue trick to provide new mounting points for my outside lighted grab bar. You can read about it here. Chore Day.

But that won’t work here because there’s nothing really there for the toothpicks to grab on to. Just the 1/16” or so internal metal wall, and nothing else. But after thinking about it for a while, I came up with a new idea. Or at least an improvement on the toothpick idea.

Why not just use one really big toothpick, i.e. a 5/8” dowel rod.

My thought was to use Gorilla Glue to fasten the end of the dowel rod to the inside of the outside wall, and also glue it around the circumference of the rod and the inner hole.

So I glued in all together yesterday afternoon and let it sit overnight

So after we got home this evening, I was going to drill pilot holes in the dowel rods and mount the handle, only to discover that the screws I had planned to use weren’t really long enough.

So there’s probably a trip to Lowe’s in my future tomorrow, when we hopefully are able to pick up our prescriptions at Wal-Mart. And while I’m at it, I’m also going to pick up some White Oak Pickling Stain to redo all the handles.

Finishing up, I mentioned in Sunday’s blog how far forward the power pedestal is on this site, and only the fact that our rig was ordered with an extra-long power cord let me hook up at all. And here’s what I’m talking about.

As I said we may be one of the few Class A’s that can park here. So this may be our go-to site every time we’re here.

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Thought for the Day:

Those of you preparing Christmas dinner for people with a lot of different food requirements will appreciate this.

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