Almost Paradise . . .
We were loaded up and on our way, leaving the Sleep Inn in Montgomery, AL by about 8:30 this morning, with our ultimate destination our Condo down on Fort Morgan Rd that the family had rented for the week. But our first stop was about 20 miles south near the town of Hope Hull to visit the Alabama Safari Park.
But it’s almost 11pm and I’m dead tired after a long day of driving, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for this.
So I’ll just leave you with this photo taken from our condo balcony right about sundown.
June 4, 2009
Mojitos & Rainbows…
We left Titusville this morning about 10:45 am heading north for St. John’s RV Park in St. Augustine, FL.
Since we were traveling up US 1 instead of taking I-95, I figured that the 105 mile trip would take 3-4 hours since we were going to be driving thru traffic. But the trip was only about 2 1/2 hours. It was 4 lane all the way and the traffic was much lighter than I had expected.
St. John’s is a nice little park with concrete pads and long sites. And again, since it’s Passport America we’re only paying $15.00 a night.
After we got settled in and hooked up, we headed out for a late lunch at a place that some friends had recommended called Columbia Restaurant.
It’s located in the old town historic district and opened in 1905. It serves Spanish / Cuban food and it was really good. Jan had a breaded chicken breast dish, and I had a marinated sliced pork loin. Both delicious!
I also decided to try another mojito. I had one at a Cuban restaurant in Downtown Disney and was not impressed. Mainly because I don’t think it had any alcohol in it. A mojito is supposed to be made with rum, lime juice, soda, mint, and sugar.
I think mine had everything but the rum. I mean, no buzz, no tingle, no nuthin’.
But this one today was good. It definitely had rum in it and it made it taste better.
After a big lunch (and the mojito), a nap seemed indicated when we got back to the coach.
We had a really heavy thunderstorm while we were asleep and when we woke up we found this.
I had never seen a one like this. It was full, double rainbow. You can see the 2nd, fainter one, right above the brighter one. And they both went from horizon to horizon.
It took me two pictures to show it all so I had to paste them together.
All and all, a great day with a beautiful ending…
June 4, 2010
Draper UT…
Today we left the Rock Springs WY KOA about 9:45 heading about 190 miles south to Draper UT, which is a southern suburb of Salt Lake City.
This KOA, like other parks in the western states is just a big gravel parking lot, and we had a great view of some petroleum storage tanks. At least they weren’t BP tanks. No telling what could happen.
And, of course, every RV needs trees, so here they are. These are the only trees in the park, or anywhere around.
But at least the view in the other direction was pretty good.
As we moved down I-80 the scenery just got better and better.
A little further down the road, we started to see more and more of the snow-covered Rockies off to our left. Luckily we didn’t have to go over them, though we did crest out at over 7000 feet again.
It’s hard to see here, but there’s a big American flag flying on the top of this hill.
The view as we came down into this valley was just breathtaking.
Somewhere along here, Mister decided he liked the view better the other way. That’s his “What U Doing?’’ look.
Then as we got closer to Salt Lake City, the scenery started to change a little, more rolling green hills, less jagged rocks.
We got into Mountain Shadows RV Park in Draper UT about 2 pm and got set up. It’s a nice park, a little tight, but it does have the perfect amount of trees. Just enough to look nice and provide some shade, but not enough to block the satellite.
And the view isn’t too shabby, either.
About 5 pm we drove over to Guadalahonkys restaurant to meet Pat and Judy Benson, our friends we first met in Fairbanks AK two years ago.
Guadalahonky’s turned out to be really good. Of course it may be because we’re just getting closer to Mexico.
We’ll be here until Monday, visiting, sightseeing, getting prescriptions, working on the coach, etc.
Then we’ll be heading further south toward Show Low AZ.
Still In Prescott, AZ for our Blowout Repair
June 4, 2015
Well, Now I’m Confused . . .
Well, we didn’t hear anything new today, or at all, for that matter.
I take that back. One guy asked me to move the truck from out in from of the rig so he could back a new rig in beside us. But the truck hasn’t moved in two days, and we’ve probably had 6-8 rigs in there in that time without a problem. So I think the guy just wasn’t very good at backing a 5’ver in there. So I moved the truck into the parking area right across from us.
But when we first got here and I parked across from us, I was told to park in front of our rig to leave the spaces across from us open to park rigs. I will say that they sell a lot of rigs here, because they’re constantly shuttling rigs around, prepping them for delivery.
While I was taking the outside grab bar apart to check the bulb, I noticed that the engraved writing on the clear plastic handle was losing its embedded paint.
So I used a Sharpie permanent marker to fill in the letters. There was a lot of reflection in the photo, but to the eye it looks perfectly black.
Jan and I headed out a little after 3pm for some errands and dinner. But first I walked out to the RV Store to see if they had the #895 bulb for the grab bar, which they did.
Then it was off to Sam’s to pick up our prescriptions. We tried on Tuesday, but they didn’t have 3 of the 6 so we’re back today to try again. And this is where I got confused. Four of our prescriptions are normally under their $4 / $10 pricing. At least until now.
As they were totaling up our order, I noticed that prescriptions that were previously $10, were now $17, or $23, or even $46. When I questioned this, I was told that the $4 / $10 prescription deal was no longer in effect and hadn’t been for a couple of months But they now would match prices.
First I’d heard of this.
Figuring I’d look into it later, we decided to have dinner once again at our new favorite Chinese place, Beijing Garden. So favorite in fact, that we both had the same thing we had last time – Orange Peel Spicy Crispy Chicken Dinner.
Just as good as last time, and this time we had room to split a serving of their Green Tea Ice Cream.
Wow, this is good. Almost like a sherbet, but still creamy. And the green tea flavor really comes through. We definitely want a repeat on this.
While we were having dinner, I used my Galaxy Tab to check out the supposed $4 prescription discontinuation. And I found nothing. Both the Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club website still advertised the deal, and googling further I found no mention at all about any discontinuation. Hmmmm!
Finishing dinner, our next stop was the nearby Wal-Mart where I took a minute to ask the pharmacy there about it. And as it turns out, they didn’t know anything about it either. Hmmmm!
Getting back to the rig, I sat down to determine how much I had been overcharged. And got even more confused.
Prescriptions that had cost me only $40 total last time, now cost me $111.22. An increase of over $71. A big difference!
But when I checked the other two prescriptions that are not on the $4 deal, I.e., Jan’s Anastrozole, her breast cancer medicine, and Sumatriptan, her migraine medicine, the confusion just got worse.
The Anastrozole cost us $49.86 last time, and just $12 this time. And her Sumatriptan was $89.35 last time, but $37.66 this time, for a total savings of almost $90.
So actually I really SAVED almost $20.
So I’m still confused, but not quite as out of pocket as I thought. But I’m still going to follow up on this.
Rapid City, SD
June 4, 2017
What a Difference a Week Makes . . .
This time last week we had days in the 50-60’s and nights in the 30’s, really nice. But now we’re seeing days in the high 80’s and nights in the 60’s. Summer is here.
I called the park office this morning to extend our stay here until Saturday the 10th of June. Then I went through our schedule and updated it, pushing everything back 4 days, which still leaves us a few days of padding before we have to be back at the Colorado River TT on the 25th of June.
Later in the early afternoon I went outside to begin the change-out of the starter solenoid of our rig’s generator. When I started working on this problem, I was surprised to find that Cummins/Onan does not make the diesel engines in the generator. They’re actually 3 cylinder diesel engines made by Kubota.
Since all I had to do to swap out the solenoid was to remove the two nuts and pull it off after removing the 3 wires, and then install the new one in its place. I figured it would be easy peezy.
Wrong!
Yeah, the removal went just fine, and only took a couple of minutes.
But before I installed the new one, I wanted to check out the position of the yoke inside the starter, the part that the solenoid hooks into.
Here’s the yoke in the new starter.
And here’s the pin on the end of the solenoid that fits into the yoke.
The solenoid pin is easier to fit into the yoke if it’s pulled forward, so I used my phone to take a photo of the yoke, and here’s what I found.
I’m not sue why, but the left fork of the yoke was blackened and a little melted. So after thinking for a few minutes, my solenoid replacement had morphed into a full starter/solenoid change-out.
Still easy peezy, right? I mean it’s two bolts and off it comes, right?
Nope!
The top bolt was no problem, so after loosening it I started on the bottom one. And there things came to a halt. I could just barely feel the bottom bolt head with my fingers, and when I tried to fit my ratchet into place the handle was too long to allow it to ratchet due to hitting the frame rail.
So I tried my 12mm box end, which was short enough to move, but with the time it took me to get the box end wrench seated back on the bolt head, and the small amount I could move it, I needed a better way.
So checking Lowes.com, I found that the local store stocked a stubby 3/8 inch ratchet.
And since it was now almost 4pm, we were off to the Lowes in RC for a wrench and then on to HuHot Mongolian Grill for an early dinner.
Back at the rig, I was able to get the starter off without a lot more work and was now ready to install the new starter. I left the solenoid off because it looked like it would be a little easier to get the bolts started that hold the starter in place. And it was.
But unfortunately it also meant that I didn’t have enough clearance to get the pin on the solenoid seated in the slot of the yoke. So now the starter was going to come back out, the solenoid installed, and the starter put back on.
But since the sun was going down, that’s a chore for tomorrow.
June 4, 2018
Printheads and New Toys . . .
I hit the ground running this morning at work, pretty normal for a Monday, catching up on a lot of catalog and website updates.
Then it was on to a repair job. On my way into work, I got a text that saying that my new printhead had been delivered. It was for our LP2844 thermal printer that we use to print out the shipping labels for our UPS and USPS packages.
Recently our printer started skipping lines and missing characters, so much so that both UPS and USPS were complaining about having problems reading the barcodes. My client was just going to buy a new one for $200-$300 or so. But I said let’s try a new printhead first. And it was only $41.
The black strip in the middle is actually the thermal printhead.
The replacement was pretty easy, and it helped that there was a YouTube video, but it wasn’t as much help as I had hoped. Mainly because the hardest part, actually getting the printhead loose, was pictured like this.
A lot of help that was.
I finally figured out that not only was the view obscured, but he left out a step in the audio too, that a retaining screw had to also be removed.
The replacement would have been a lot easier if they had given a little more slack in the two data cables.
There was no reason they couldn’t have. There was plenty of room for the extra length. But finally I got it back together and hooked up.
At first I thought I had another problem because when I tested it, it was just spitting out labels willy-nilly. But at least they looked good with no missing lines. But after I ran the ‘re-gap’ setup, so it would know where the label started and stopped, it was fine.
At this point my client showed me another LP2844 that he said had the same problem. When it happened that time, he just bought a new one. So I got another printhead on order so now we’ll have a spare printer.
Now on to our new toy.
We’ve always had a problem with the volume levels when we play back TV shows recorded on our DirecTV DVR. Some levels are fine, but others are too low. And it can be different between two shows recorded right after each other, and on the same network.
I know it’s not our TV because it did it on our previous one too. DirecTV says they don’t know what the problem is, but did offer to replace our DVR. But then we’d lose all the shows and movies we have stored on it.
So I decided to order us a SoundBar like this.
It’s 25” long, perfect to fit underneath the TV and puts out 40 watts. It has 3 inputs, Audio, Optical, and Bluetooth, and comes with a remote. It had great reviews, and was a really good deal at only $75.
I could have hooked it optically directly to the DVR, but instead decided to connect it to the Optical Output on our 40” Samsung. That way it will work not only on the DVR, but also when we are using the TV with the computer.
And it works great. Now we have more that enough volume, no matter how low the source level is.
Tomorrow it’s back to sorting through stuff to go to the storage room.
Slowly but surely.
Thought for the Day:
On a recent forum, people were discussing kids being punished unfairly by teachers for disagreeing with them, and I said that it was nothing new.
When I was in 3rd grade, 1957 or so, I got a spanking, when the teacher, Mrs. Bryant, told another student that he would get lead poisoning writing on his arm with a pencil, I.e. pencil lead.
When I told her pencil lead wasn’t really lead, but carbon like charcoal, she said I was wrong, I said, “No, you’re wrong.”
That got me a spanking and 30 minutes standing in the corner. Then at the end of class, as we were leaving, she overhead me mumbling “She’s still wrong”, and I got another spanking.
I guess that was my version of Galileo’s “And yet it still moves.”
Unfortunately two spankings in one day was not my record. That would be three.
And now don’t you feel sorry for Jan for having to put up with me for almost 55 years.
