Our RV Adventures

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Today was another stay-at-home, rest-up day preparing for when all of Jan’s relatives from Illinois converge on Brandi’s house in Katy.

We’ll go into Brandi’s on Wednesday morning as everyone starts drifting in. Jan’s sister, Debbie and her husband Jim are driving in from Illinois, while their daughter Tana, her finance Curtis, and Tana’s daughter Gwen, are flying in from doing the theme park thing in the Orlando area.

But Debbie and Jim’s son Jason, his wife Laura, and their kids Avery Jane, Ella, and Annisten, along with their other daughter, Christina, have been vacationing down in the Galveston area for the last week

In fact, Brandi, Lowell, Landon, and Miss Piper met them down in Galveston yesterday for fun, sun, and the water.

Jan and I are really looking forward to seeing Debbie and her family, since it’s been over 2 years.

Tomorrow I’m going to lift up the engine cover under the bed and see if I can reach the top bolt on the hydraulic fan motor that came loose last week in Pauls Valley, OK. I bought extra nuts and washers, but I don’t know yet if I can get to it. I guess we’ll see.

I’ve also been  thinking more about my rooftop AC not cooling well while we’re on the road, but works great when we’re parked.

Here’s a drawing I made noting the location of the vents on the cover. I think the idea is that air rushing pass the side vents will create a vacuum, pulling in the air from the rear vents.

But that air is normally considered a dead space, almost a vacuum area itself. That’s why race cars can draft behind each other. And also why you see more and more semi-trailers with those foldable flaps on the rear end to smooth out the air flow. Studies show around a 5.5% increase in fuel mileage when they’re used.

So I may try adding some flaps on the sides and top of the cover to see if that helps.

I may already be a winner, or at least that’s what Publisher’s Clearing House is telling me. I entered today for the big drawing for a prize of $2,000,000 up front, $10,000 a week for life, and a new car. Nice!

The next drawing is this Friday, the 30th, so I always wait until the last minute to sign up because I get flooded with emails about the drawing. And now they’re selling a lot of other stuff besides magazines, including pretty much all the ‘As Seen On TV’ stuff, like copper pans, expandable hoses, and cleaning products.

But I might already be a winner, right?

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Although today was a travel day, it’s only about 120 miles over to Colorado River so we didn’t get up until about 7:30am, and were hitched up and pulling out of our site by 10:15.

The trip was smooth, .i.e. nothing broke down or fell off, always an sign of a good RV trip. And being Sunday morning the traffic was as light as usual.

Karma has finally mellowed enough, probably due to all our recent travels, that rather than running and hiding, or sitting on the floor between our chairs and crying, she just sleeps on the sofa.

Coming through Katy, it was good to see that the new Buc-ee’s was close to opening. When it finally does, it’s probably be our rest stop going back and forth between Lake Conroe and Colorado River

The other good thing to see was the US Rig Count on the sign as you leave Katy. It was at 933, up 6 in the last week, and up 157 since we last saw the sign on March 2nd. A good sign for gate guard jobs later this summer.

Coming into Columbus we had some sprinkles and a little rain, but it was all gone by the time we got to the park, though yesterday they got a couple of inches here.

We were parked and setting up by about 12:30 in a nice site up in the ‘A’ area, our favorite.

We had planned to stay home  tonight for some more of Jan’s version of Ree Drummond’s 7 Can Soup., but who should show up at our door but our friend Jim Dean. And we didn’t even know he and his wife Peri were here.

So we ended up going with them to Los Cabos, our favorite local Mexican restaurant.

We hadn’t seen them since late last year when we meet them a couple of times in San Antonio while we were gate guarding, so we had a lot to catch up on. Which meant that our dinner lasted most of the obligatory 3 hours that most RV get-togethers seem to last.

Hopefully it won’t be so long next time.

When I get a chance to . . . and that is a long list,  believe me. But when I get a chance I want to see if I can add some scoops or extra vents to the side of our rooftop front AC cover.

Sitting still the front 15K BTU unit has no trouble cooling the rig down even in the hottest weather. But on the road it struggles in 90+ degrees. So since it’s getting the same 120vac from the generator as shore power, the only other reason is the air flow over the condenser coil.

I suspect that the air flowing alongside the vents in the cover may be creating a suction and messing up the air that’s supposed to pull the heat from the coil. But before I change anything, I might try leaving the cover off when we travel back to Lake Conroe in two weeks, assuming it’s not going to rain.

If that makes a noticeable difference then I’ll look at adding some scoops or something to see if that helps.

Or when I get a chance to.

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