Our RV Adventures

After a lot of discussion (days, months, etc.) and a bunch of procrastinatin’, Jan and I have come to decision, an epiphany, I guess.

We’re not going to travel much this year, at least not as much as we normally do. And almost certainly not up to the Escapade in Essex Junction, VT the end of July. Of course it’s always possible that we’ll dump out a new bowl of Jell-O, hopefully orange, my favorite, and decide to make the direct 2000 mile run up there in time.

But I wouldn’t bet on it.

In the last 8 years, we’ve traveled over 73,000 miles, so a little over 9,000 miles a year. But that’s kind of distorted by last year’s blowout-shortened 5,300 miles. So figuring that in, we’ve done almost 10,000 miles a year for the first seven years..

And in that time, we visited 47 of the 49 continental US states, somehow missing only Kansas and Nebraska in the middle. As far as Canada, we’ve visited the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland, missing only Manitoba.

And as far as the Canadian territories, we visited the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories, missing only Nunavut.

So, all told, not a bad record for 8 years.

Of course, we won’t stick to just bouncing back and forth between Conroe and Columbus, but will probably do a week in Gulf Shores, AL at some point, combined with a detour up to north Alabama to check in on my relatives.

And really this is all my friend Nick Russell’s fault. I told him today that all his looking for a place in Florida to spend more time off the road had infected us by remote control.

But I know our ‘hitch itch’ has not been completely scratched, not even a little bit. I doubt there’s enough Calamine Lotion for that anywhere.

Unlike the last two days, today was a nice, quiet afternoon for us, until about 3:30pm when it got really quiet, as with a loud thump, the shore power went off.. But it wasn’t us this time, but the power was out on our ring, and the adjacent ring behind the dumpsters.

When our previous shutdowns kept reoccurring, due to voltages occasionally going 1 volt over 130 volts, or 1 volt under 103, I put our Progressive EMS into bypass mode, so we weren’t popping off 2 or 3 times a day.

Here’s what we ran most of the afternoon.

I don’t have a direct meter on the L-2 voltage, but when the rear AC comes, this front voltage actually goes UP to around 109-110 volts. This reinforces my thought that there is an open or high resistance neutral in the system, probably near the panel since it affects all the sites.

After about 15 minutes, and still no shore power, I cranked up the genset and got the AC’s back on. With the temps in the high 80’s, we didn’t want to let it go too long.

And in comparison, this is the output of our genset with both AC’s running.

About 45 minutes later, the park guy came by to say the power was back on, and that they had found a blown breaker somewhere up the line.

I wonder if when they upgraded these two inner rings to 50 amp so that they could put a couple of cottages here, that they might have done it on the cheap. The new pedestals only have a 50 amp connector, with no 30 amp or 20 amp connectors.

What I’ve seen done in the past is that rather than pull new heavier wires, capable of handling 50 amps on each leg, they do it on the cheap, and just pull one new wire. This new wire, paired with the 3 wires from the original 30 line, gives them the 4 wires they need for a 50 amp circuit. But of course vastly undersized for the load.

Tomorrow’s another stay at home day, hopefully with no more power interruptions.

But I wouldn’t bet on it.

Thought for the Day:

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Today was supposed to be a nice, quiet at-home day, after our 8 hour road trip yesterday, and that’s how it started out. But that changed when Jan saw the Facebook post from Bonnie Horner’s family mentioning that they were hoping friends would drop by to visit.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Bonnie’s husband Richard passed away on Wednesday, so Jan and I had decided to wait a bit before we got in touch. But once we saw the Facebook post, we got dressed and hit the road for Pearland.

Lucky for us, today’s trip was the complete opposite of yesterday’s with the sun shining and just a few clouds, compared with pouring down rain yesterday. So with no weather or traffic slowdowns, we were there a little after 3pm.

Jan worked with Bonnie a good while back, and we’ve always gotten together over the years, and we were planning to set up a get-together for this year too when we got the news about Richard.

It was really good catching up with Bonnie and her children Jeanne, Susie, and Bob. Bonnie has several cats, so we all had a lot of cat stories to tell, talking about our pets.

After telling Bonnie we’d get back together for dinner soon, Jan and I headed out a little after 5. Since we were close, we decided to have dinner at one of our favorites, Floyd’s Cajun Seafood and Steakhouse right down the road in Friendswood.

We eaten at this location a number of times, though not near as many as the Floyd’s Cajun Seafood in Webster. But it’s all good no matter which one you visit.

I think I’ve mentioned before that the ‘Floyd’ in the name is Floyd Landry, the originator of the Landry’s seafood chain, before he sold it to Tilman Fertitta.

Jan loves the Chicken Fried Chicken here, especially the gravy that she always gets on the side. After the meal, when she was telling our waiter how much she loved the gravy, he said she wasn’t alone. And that they had changed the recipe once, thinking they would make it better. But they were immediately flooded with complaints, and quickly went back to the old recipe.

Don’t mess with success. Remember New Coke.

I had my usual Seafood Gumbo, as you can see is just loaded with shrimp,

and then an Shrimp & Oyster Po-Boy.

Big portions, and then only reason I was able to finish it was that I had not had breakfast or lunch today. So I had  plenty of room. But I was still stuffed afterwards.

Heading back on the way  home, we made a Wal-Mart stop for a few things. Pearland has grown so much in the last few years they now have three Wal-Mart’s. We don’t even recognize it any more.

Finally heading for Columbus, we decided to take a detour around Brookshire on I-10. Since the heavy rains the other day, part of US90 just west of Brookshire is flooded out, forcing all of US90’s traffic onto I-10, causing a 6 mile backup on i-10 through Brookshire and almost into Katy.

So leaving Pearland we headed down US59 for a bit and then cut west through Rosenberg and then onto SR36 which brought us back onto I-10 at Sealy, bypassing all the mess.

So, with a potty stop at the TA Oasis Truck Stop, we were home by 9:30. And after two long days in a row, we are definitely staying home tomorrow and Monday.

And maybe Tuesday, too.

Thought for the Day:

“By calling attention to a well-regulated militia for the security of the Nation, and the right of each citizen to keep and bear arms, our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy.

Although it is extremely unlikely that the fear of governmental tyranny, which gave rise to the 2nd amendment, will ever be a major danger to our Nation, the amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic military-civilian relationship, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country.

For that reason I believe the 2nd Amendment will always be important.” – John F. Kennedy

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