Our RV Adventures

I was getting ready to order a micro SD card for my new phone, but then I realized I already had one.

Readers will remember when I got the new dashcam for the truck when we were gate guarding down in south Texas, and had trouble with it. That trouble turned out to be caused by my use of a particular brand of SD card. So I retired the first one and ordered another one of a different brand and it’s worked fine ever since.

So yesterday I ‘unretired’ that card and plugged it into the slot on the S8+ and it works fine. And I saved some money.

One reader asked what that sauce was that came with my Outback pork chops.

It’s called Creole Marmalade and it really goes well with pork, or anything actually. In fact Jan always orders a side of it for her Alice Springs Chicken.

As far as what it is, it’s just Orange Marmalade with some horseradish mixed in to give it some kick.  Not real hot, just spicy good. Try it next time.

We left the rig a little before 4:30 heading up to Palmdale to meet Maurice and Judy Kunkel at the Antelope Valley Mall’s Chili’s.  We had met at a couple of past rallies, but this was our first time to get to spend any time together.

Jan went with her favorite, the Margarita Chicken, which Judy also got.

Maurice got the new Chili’s Fiery Pepper Chicken Crispers,

while I got my favorite, the Grilled Chicken Caribbean Salad.

Maurice spent time in Thailand as an Air Force weatherman (like our good friend Al Cox), and likes spicy food. But he was kind of disappointed with the heat of these ‘Fiery Pepper Crispers’. He gave me a bite, and I agreed. ‘Fiery’ is in no way an apt description. More ‘Medium-Hot’, or maybe ‘Lukewarm’.

Everyone seemed to really hit it off, with Maurice and I both at the same Air Force Base at the same time, him in the AF and me with the DOD. We had a great time and a lot of laughs trading stories of our adventures.

And as is usual when RV’er’s get together, we spent the obligatory 3 hours over dinner,  actually about 3-1/2 hours. Really I think the only reason we called it a night is that our butts were getting numb.

Hopefully we’ll cross paths again soon.

Tomorrow we’re heading down to LA, and in particular Yorba Linda, to have lunch at Esther’s Taco House. We were told about this place years ago by a late good friend and we checked it when we were first in the area in 2008. And we’ve gone back a number of times, including taking our friends Nick and Terry Russell back in 2011.

Loving the cool weather. It went down to 44° last night and only up to 71 today, but still sunny and nice.

“A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business.” ― A.A. Milne

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We both slept in this morning after a somewhat long and exhausting trip and setup yesterday.

We’re really looking forward to moving into cooler weather. Although it was in the mid-80’s here in Acton yesterday, we’re looking at much cooler temps in the next week, with highs in the low 70’s and lows in the high 40’s/low 50’s. And up in Bend, OR where we’ll be this time next week, it’s 50’s/30’s. Nice.

In Rapid City, SD where we’ll be in about a month, it’s snowing right now!

Sometime this morning, between around 8:30am and 12:30pm PT this blog was down with a 503 error. When I got up about 11, I called Godaddy who said it was a server problem and should be back up it an hour or so. And it was.

I’m still very happy with my new Samsung Galaxy S8+. The most obvious thing is how much faster it is than my old Galaxy S5. Of course, the 3 years that have elapsed since I got my S5 is a lifetime in cellphone years.

I’ve got it mostly set up now with the apps I want arranged the way I want, but I’m still slowly working my way through the 214 page manual that I downloaded yesterday. There’s a lot of new stuff to figure out.

I did get a System Update for the S8+ last night, as well as one for my Galaxy Tab 4 tablet, but nothing for the S5. I guess it’s officially orphaned now.

About 2pm I went outside to get the coach leveled. Yesterday I had just dumped the airbags to see if we were level enough that way. But although we were level front to rear, side to side was a different story.

So I got the pads out of the bay, slid them under the rig, then came inside, cranked up the engine and leveled us. Now we don’t walk down the rig leaning sideways.

We had a couple of long mountain climbs on the way over here from Vegas so I was curious about what effect it had on our mpg. Turns out, not a lot.

We did 254 miles and used 31.2 gallons for an mpg of 8.14. Only a little down from our usual 8.5 or so. I guess that 17 mile downhill run really helped. Looking at the instantaneous MPG on our Silverleaf Computer Display showed 272.5 MPG, the maximum it will display. This was just basically coasting downhill.

At the same time the Cumulative MPG was showing almost 25 MPG. But of course it all levels out and we were seeing 8.1 when we got here.

In a blog a few days ago I mentioned California’s new 12¢ per gallon tax increase on gasoline. I thought it had gone into effect immediately, but blog reader Maurice Kunkel, who lives in the area, said it doesn’t go into effect until July.

That makes the gas prices I see here in the Palmdale area even worse, with prices already going as high as $3.19. So now another 12¢?

WOW!

So far neither of the other parties in our recent fender-benders in the Phoenix area have tried to file a claim against my insurance and I doubt that at this point they will.

When I spit-rubbed the paint off the first guy’s wheel well, he had nothing to claim, and although there was no blame assigned and no ticket issued when the lady cut me off in the rig, I think the officer made it pretty clear to her that it was her fault. Or at least he talked to her a lot longer than he talked to me after I showed him the photos I had taken.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I could no longer reply to comments from within the blog control panel, but only from the blog page itself. Which is a pain because I usually try to reply to people both in the comment section and also back to them via email.

One thing funny was that the problem only occurred using Google Chrome, but worked fine under Internet Explorer. And on my laptop both browsers worked fine. But I got a notice from Godaddy last evening that they had installed the latest WordPress update software on my blog. And reading over the list of fixes, I noticed mention of Chrome. And when I went and checked, the problem is fixed. Nice.

About 4:30 Jan and I headed out to have dinner up in Palmdale. Our first thought was Red Robin for burgers, but it turned out to be inside the Antelope Valley Mall which seemed like too much trouble. So our second choice was a nearby Outback Steakhouse.

Outback has always been one of our favorites, and we used to eat at the one in Webster, TX near our house all the time. In fact back in the 90’s our daughter Brandi worked there as both a server and a bartender while she was in school. It was always funny to go there for dinner and be able to order her around.

But strange as it may seem, we almost never get steaks there, but have other long-time favorites.

We both started with their really good salads.

Then Jan got her usual Alice Springs Chicken.

The reason the top looks a little messy is that it comes with bacon as well as the cheese and mushrooms, but it’s not done enough for Jan so she pulls it off and gives to me.

Outback is one of the few places you can get really juicy grilled pork chops, and I’ve been getting them for years.

Still great.

Not sure what’s on the schedule yet for tomorrow. Time will tell.

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