Our RV Adventures

Jan and I decided to start our trip day with an early breakfast at Cracker Barrel. And unlike going to Cracker Barrel on a Sunday around 11am, going before 8am is a breeze. We were in and out in about 45 minutes, and Jan even came home with a moose.

Yeah, I know they call it Sven the Reindeer from Walt Disney’s Frozen.

But I’m sorry, that’s a moose

Getting back to the rig, we were hitched up and on the road by 10am. We had decided beforehand to try one of the several ‘shortcut’ routes out through the countryside this trip, instead of our normal Interstate route which racks up about 120 miles.

The ‘shortcut’ route is about 107 miles, which Google maps says is the absolute shortest route, coming down I-45 to the FM-1488 exit, and then cutting across through Magnolia, Hempstead, Bellville, and then back onto I-10 about 9 miles east of Columbus.

Delorme Street Atlas said the route would take 2 hours and 50 minutes, and that was pretty close. We pulled up at the Colorado River Thousand Trails guard shack 2 hours and 46 minutes after we left Lake Conroe.

In comparison, our normal 120 mile Interstate route takes about 2 hours and 5 – 10 minutes. Plus our gas mileage dropped from our normal ~ 8.5 mpg to about 6.2 mpg, due mainly to two factors.

First, the majority of the trip the speed limit  on these fairly narrow two lane FM roads is 50 mph. So since my Allison transmission won’t upshift into 6th gear until about 52 – 53 mph, I ended up in 5th for most the trip. Not very conducive to gas mileage.

And second, the roads were pretty curvy in places, necessitating even more slowdowns, as did the number of small towns along the way with 30 mph speed limits.

Plus I found myself a lot more tired when I got here. When we do the Interstate route, I pretty much put the speed control on 60 and just go. And except for our normal potty break around Brookshire, we never slow down until we’re at the exit for SR-71 at Columbus.

So, boiling it down, we’ll probably never go this route again. It takes longer, and uses more diesel. enough more that it overcomes the $6 in tolls I pay on the Sam Houston Tollway. And as I said, it’s more work. As I’ve mentioned before, the traffic doesn’t really bother me, especially since we’re moving on Sunday.

Now, as I was outside setting up, Janice Evans walked by and mentioned they do another ‘shortcut’ route, so I may check that one out with Dave when I get a chance.

I was looking at my trip odometer for 2015 and found we did 5345.2 miles for the year, a couple of thousand miles less from our normal mileage due to sitting in the back of an RV Repair place in Prescott, AZ for two months, waiting on our blowout repair.

We’ll probably do a good bit more than that this year since we’ll be going down to Tampa and West Palm Beach, FL, and then all the way to Essex Junction, VT, and then back to Houston. And probably a lot more.

I mentioned yesterday during my water heater repair saga that Nick and I  had run into this same problem at the Indian River Thousand Trails in Batesville, IN a few years ago.

Well, here’s the rest of the story.

“A few years ago, while we were staying at the Indian Lakes Thousand Trails in Batesville, IN, a couple parked next to Nick and Terry were having the same problem. I don’t remember if their rig had been in for repairs or what, but they also only had lukewarm water.”

From Larry Merritt

That was us. It was a new water heater that Camping World had installed. The mechanic had installed the bypass upside down. The water heater is still keeping the water hot in our 2005 Winnebago Adventurer.

I did not realize Larry and his wife were blog readers. It just goes to show you how small the RV world really is.

After dinner tonight I got on the glass replacement of my son Chris’ Galaxy S5 cellphone.

Here’s the starting point. I’ve got everything laid out and really to go.

And here you see what the playing cards are for.

I used the hair dryer to heat up the phone and the infrared thermometer to monitor the temperature. When the temp was right, I used a razor knife to slightly pry up the glass and a playing card to keep it separated as I work my way around the edge of the phone.

It actually went a lot smoother than I expected. I stopped here for the night and will pick it back up tomorrow.

ACTUAL COMPLAINTS RECEIVED BY “THOMAS COOK VACATIONS”

“I was bitten by a mosquito. The brochure did not mention mosquitoes.”

“No one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared.”

“It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair.”

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