Our RV Adventures

Yesterday afternoon when we got back from dinner, I noticed that I had some fluid leaking down from under the engine, but since it was getting dark I decided to wait until this morning to take a look at it.

Turned out to be the hydraulic fan motor that came loose about a month ago while we were in Pauls Valley, OK visiting our son-in-law Lowell’s parents.

The nuts on the two bolts that hold the hydraulic motor to the bracket had come loose, letting the motor just flail around. I was able to replace the bottom nut but cannot reach the top one. Spartan said to use an 7/16-14 nut, a serrated lock washer and two flat washers. Well, all the local hardware store had was a self-locking nut and no serrated washers that would fit.

But it looks like the self-locking nut didn’t stay locked, and although it wasn’t completely loose like last time, but it was loose enough to wiggle slightly. So using my cheater pipe I really tightened it back down.

Once we’re in Athens I’ll try to get the right nuts and washers. But what I really need to do is figure out how to replace the top nut too. It looks like I need a short guy with really long arms. Actually sounds like a chimp.

We really like this park, which is laid out around several fishing lakes. Very scenic.

Very nice, and it’s Passport American too.

We were pulling out of our site here at Poche’s Fish-N-Camp by 10am, but it took almost 15 minutes to get out of the park due to the really atrocious roads. They were just repaved a couple of years ago. But now they look like this.

The reason for this is that they just spread dirt over the old pavement , and then paved on top of that.  And the above is the result.

The dirt washes out underneath and then the pavement collapses, especially under heavy weights like RV’s.

And unfortunately this seems to be the same thing that they’re getting ready to do at the Lake Conroe Thousand Trails. When we left they were spreading dirt out on the roads, and we were told they were going to repave.

If so, I expect the newly paved roads at Lake Conroe to look exactly like the ones at Poche’s in a couple of years. If you don’t dig down to a firm base, lay down a gravel bed, and then pave over that, it will never hold up.

Our 240 mile trip was pretty uneventful, with only the usual mess going through Baton Rouge, and a few minutes of heavy rain as we crossed into Alabama. Our AC’s kept the coach nice and cool, so I think I can declare the problem fixed, and my deflector vanes on the roof AC cover a success.

We pulled into Payne’s RV Park about 3pm, paid our $20 Passport America fee and got parked in our 50amp FHU site. Nice!

About 4pm we headed out to have dinner at Sonny’s BBQ, about 15 miles away.  We’ve been eating at Sonny’s for a long time. In fact as I reminded Jan, the Sonny’s BBQ in the Titusville, FL area was where we went a number of times while we were dating. So we’ve been eating at one for more than 50 years!

Scary thought.

As with our other long-time favorite places, we went with our usuals. Jan got the large sliced pork sandwich, with fries and BBQ beans,

while I got my favorite Pork 3 Ways Platter with Ribs, Pulled Pork, Sliced Pork, BBQ Beans and Corn on the Cob. And I had leftovers.

Kimberly, our server, took great care of us and never let my iced tea glass get empty.

Great Service.

Tomorrow’s a short travel day, only about 190 miles up to the Capitol City RV Park in Montgomery for a couple of days where we’ll catch up with friends we haven’t seen a while.

ghdghg

With a 300+ mile trip in front of us today, we were up about 6:30am and pulling out of our site at Colorado River a little before 9, with our first stop right down the road at the
Colorado County Oil Co to fill up with diesel at $2.14 a gallon for 122 gallons.

Jan had followed me in the truck, so we hitched up while we were filling up, and were on our way about 9:30. We would have probably left even earlier, but it’s a fine line between leaving early and leaving so early that we run into Houston traffic since we were going through downtown Houston and out the other side.

But apparently we timed it just fine because we held 60mph all the way through town except for a couple of short slowdowns. Coming out the other side and into Baytown we made a breakfast stop at the Buc-ee’s there.

After stocking up on both breakfast and sweet kolaches and a couple of their great Orange Cranberry muffins we were back on the road with our next planned stop at the rest area as we entered Louisiana.

Since it was under reconstruction last year when we came through, I checked the state website which said it was now open. They were WRONG.

It wasn’t even close. In fact it was completely torn up, but we found a nearby pullout for our potty break.

We took the Breaux Bridge exit and pulled into the Poche’s Fish ‘N Camp RV Park about 4pm. After getting everything set up except for satellite we headed out to have dinner at Pont Breaux (nee Mulate’s).

Under the Mulate’s name, we’ve eaten here for more than 30 years until the family sold it in 2011 after their mother, the founder, died.

Jan got a cup of Seafood Gumbo, and an order of Crab Cakes with Remoulade Sauce,

while I got my usual bowl of Seafood Gumbo

which comes with potato salad and bread.

And of course we couldn’t leave with finishing up with their bread pudding with whiskey sauce, and a cup of Community Club coffee with Chicory.

A great meal.

On the rig AC front, it turns out that my recent air deflector install really worked after all. And it was working the other day too. Or at least it would have if we hadn’t been streaming 95° air right into the coach.

Turns out the dash air vent had popped off the Recirculate setting so just hot air was coming in. Now I always keep those vents turned off on my side anyway, and Jan just had hers on her feet so she really didn’t notice it at the time either.

We did discover the problem on our trip over from Lake Conroe this past Sunday and turned it off, but then the generator stopped when we got too low on diesel, so we never got to see it that was the problem.

But having it turned off today fixed the problem and we were cool the whole way.

Tomorrow we’ve got about a 240 mile run to Theodore, AL, so not quite as long a day.

Nice.

“Government always pays above-average prices for below-average work.” 

   adfasdfasdf