Our RV Adventures

Jan and I started out on a walk this morning, but only ended up doing about a half a mile before we both decided we didn’t really want to walk this morning.

So maybe tomorrow.

We did sit outside with our coffee after our kinda-walk, and Shirley, Karma’s previous caretaker, came over to check on her. So I hooked up the leash to Karma’s harness and took her outside . . . or tried to, anyway.

As soon as tried to take her out the door, her claws latched onto the edge and hung on for dear life. Which is kind of funny, because that’s exactly what she did when we first tried to take her inside the coach four weeks ago today when she came to live with us.

And once I got Karma outside she did like being held by Shirley, but when I put her down, she freaked and tried to run under the rig,

We’ll keep taking her out a little at a time to help her get used to it. I fastened the leash to her harness last night and let her drag it around the rig for a while with no problems, so that’s a start.

Later in the afternoon I started back on the washer. First up was to mount the new pump to the angle stock that I had bolted across the bottom of the washer.

I had several pieces of large rubber washers to use for sound-deadening and vibration-damping. I also cut off a section of the heavy vinyl tubing to act as a spacer.

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The left hand arrow points to the vinyl spacer that I used to level out the base of the pump, and the right two arrows point to the pieces of rubber that I used for cushioning and sound deadening.

Holding everything in place, I tightened down the two large stainless steel clamps until everything was snug, but not so tight that it might damage the pump.

After I did this, I tightened down all the clamps connecting the pump hoses to the washer so now it was ready to go.

After connecting the power leads, I used a couple of tie-wraps to lock things down a little more.

So now was the big test. I turned the washer back upright and rolled it over to the sink and plugged it in. Since I couldn’t hook up the water hoses, I poured several jugs of water into the drum, set the dial to Spin, and turned it on.

And about 5 seconds later, I had water gushing into the sink until it was all gone.

It worked!   And even better, I had no leakage underneath.

At this point I decided to wait until later to install the washer back in its hidey-hole. This turned out to be a slight mistake. Because when I did get back to it, I quickly discovered a problem.

Before I can start sliding the washer into the cabinet, I have to connect up the water hoses, and then plug the water drain hose into the drain pipe. But because I had moved the pump output around to the other side of the washer, I no longer had enough length to plug in the hose. If there was some way to plug it in after it was in the cabinet, no problem.

But now I was stuck. The local ACE hardware was already closed so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning to pick up a an extension hose.

So it’s all on hold until then.

“A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.” – the late Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court Justice.

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Today was another of our semi-monthly  travels, from the Lake Conroe Thousand Trails all the way to the other side of Texas, well, the other side of Houston anyway, to the Colorado River Thousand Trails in Columbus, TX..

But first up this morning we did our usual pre-travel breakfast at the Conroe Cracker Barrel, but a little different this time, because we were joined by our soon-to-be-ex next door neighbors, Brett and Frankie O’Neal. They’re heading for Florida on Tuesday so we probably won’t run into them again for a while, but we’re looking forward to it when it does happen.

Getting back to the park about 9:45, we were hooked up and moving out by 10:30. One nice thing about the side-by-side sites in the ‘F’ section is that most of them are long enough to allow us to hitch the toad before we pull out, saving us time since we don’t have to stop again at the front of the park to hook up.

Our trip today was a lot less windy than last time, at least the first part of it. It seemed that the further west we got, the windy  it got, especially the last 20 miles or so.

About 15 miles out from our Columbus exit, we stopped off at the Oasis Truck Stop for coffee and a potty break. Coming back out, I did my usual walk-around and discovered we had a problem. The front of the truck was covered in oil, as well as a lot was scattered over the back of the rig.

After looking things over through the oily mess, I couldn’t see anything obviously  wrong, so I decided to proceed on Colorado River, keeping a close eye on my gauges. I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary on the trip, with all my gauges showing normal.

And it was the same on the last 20 miles too. My oil pressure was good, turbo pressure was good, water temp was fine, everything was fine. And the engine started right and sounded normal too.

So after I get the washer finished, I’ll dig out the pressure washer and clean things up a bit to make it a little easier to see what’s wrong. Of course the first thing I’ll check is the breather tube, and then go from there.

I’ve seen this occasionally in the past when using the PacBrake exhaust brake a lot in mountainous areas, and you get some blow-by coming out, but nothing like this amount, and I wasn’t even using the PacBrake today at all.

We got into the Colorado River Thousand Trails a little after 1pm, and found ourselves greeted by our friends Jim and Perri Dean as we waited at the gate for the ranger to check us in. They were hoping to see Karma but she hadn’t come out of hiding yet, so maybe next time.

As it turns out, we ended up in the ‘A’ section, right across the street from where Karma lived before we adopted here, So it will be interesting to take her back to visit and see how she reacts. I’ve got a harness for her now so it should be pretty safe.

For dinner tonight Jan heated up our leftover fajitas from last night’s visit to El Bosque, still delicious.

I didn’t do anything on the washer today except roll it back and forth in the rig when we traveled. But I’ll be back on it tomorrow.

Thought for the Day:

One of those headlines you know you probably shouldn’t read, but you just have to.

Meerkat expert cleared of assaulting monkey trainer in love spat over llama-keeper.

And then you’re kind of disappointed you did.

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