Today was a quiet, easy one. Just lunch at Walk-Ons once again, and then home.
And it seems we’ve both already picked out our go-to dishes after only 3 visits here.
Jan got her usual Tuscan Chicken with a Side Salad,
while I got a cup of the Chicken & Sausage Gumbo
and the Avery Island Salad.
With Blackened Jumbo Shrimp, Granny Smith Apples, Candied Pecans, Bacon, Bleu Cheese Crumbles, and a Pepper Jelly Vinaigrette, it’s probably the best salad I’ve ever had.
Last time we were here the gumbo was Duck & Sausage, but I guess they ran out of ducks, because now it’s just plain Chicken. Though as I said, I couldn’t really taste the Duck.
And I’m not sure I would know what duck tastes like anyway.
Finishing up we were back home by 2:30.
Then while Jan watered her plants and swept the patio, I planted the Flag Spotlight and plugged it in using one of my computer controlled switches like this.
Not only can I control the light from Alexa and a phone app, but I can also set a schedule so that the spotlight comes on at 8pm, a little before sundown, and goes off at 6:30, a little after sunrise.
Later, after it was good and dark, I went outside and aimed the light a little better.
And this is what it looks like.
Thought for the Day:
Who Knew That Windmills Could Produce Both Power And Light?
June 3, 2009
Last Day in Titusville…
Today was our last full day in Titusville.
Tomorrow morning we’ll head about 100 miles north to St. Augustine, spending 3-4 days there. Then it’s on to Savannah, GA.
Today we went to lunch at the New Peking Buffet with our new friends, Allen and Jan. After that, Allen and I worked on my engine AC belt problem.
I’m going to try leaving the engine AC off on the trip to St. Augustine tomorrow to see if the belt stays on when it is not powering the AC. I may do this for the trip to Savannah too.
We will still have AC on the trip. I’ll just start up the diesel generator before we leave and run the two rooftop ACs just like we were plugged in. The generator only uses about a gallon an hour so it’s not a big additional cost.
Luckily, the fix I did to the rear rooftop AC a couple of days ago is still working fine.
Well, I almost washed Mister again in the clothes washer. I don’t know what he sees in it, but every time I turn my back with the washer door open, in he goes.
Mister in Washer…Again
We’ve been getting a number of comments about our Roller Coaster picture being spread across the Internet, as I mentioned yesterday. I guess this is our 15 minutes of fame.
More from St. Augustine tomorrow…
June 3, 2010
Poison Spiders and a Broken Record…
Well, today started out less than spectacularly, but it got better fairly soon.
We left Fort Caspar Campground in Casper WY a little before 9 am heading for Rock Springs, WY about 230 miles away. And then it went downhill very quickly.
We should have known something was wrong when we ended up on Poison Spider Rd.
No, really.
Due to a map glitch, Margaret, our GPS system, could not route us on SR 220 like she should have. Instead she routed us on CR 201 and then on CR 319 which is also known as the Oregon Trail Rd.
And, yes, CR 201 is also called Poison Spider Rd as it leaves town. And it runs right by Poison Spider High School. Whose motto according the sign out front is”Caught in a Web of Learning”.
You can’t make this stuff up!
After starting out OK, CR 201 became a gravel road. But before we could get too worried, it became pavement again, and all was well with the world.
Until it skipped gravel road this time and went straight to dirt.
But I rationalized that in only two miles we would be turning onto CR 319, which just HAD to be a better road, right?
I mean, it’s also called Oregon Trail Rd. It’s got two names, it’s got to be a good road, right?
Of course, when we got there, that’s not what we found. What we found was an even narrower, even rougher dirt road.
I think it was called the Oregon Trail because it was the original one, complete with wagon ruts.
No way was I going any further. I spent about 10 minutes trying to figure what went wrong. Turns out that the GPS program wouldn’t route me on the right road, SR 220, because it couldn’t. No matter what I did, the program would not allow any route on SR 220.
I ran into this once before, when coming back from Memphis to north Alabama on US 72. No matter what I did the program would not let us on US 72.
Once I figured out what was wrong, the solution was simply. Turn around and go back to Casper and then back out on SR 220.
Easier said than done, however. I needed to turn around, but there was no room. And I couldn’t back up because, unlike towing a trailer, you can’t back up while towing a vehicle with a tow bar, at least very far.
So, I had to break my perfect record. I had to unhitch the truck so I could turn the rig around in the opposite direction. It’s been a point of pride that I’ve never got in a situation where I had to unhitch to get out of it.
Until today.
After unhitching it took about 30 seconds to get turned around. After hitching back up we drove back into Casper and out of town on 220. Then, once I was past the dead spot on the map, every thing went smoothly.
Leaving Casper, we started climbing up into the beginning of the Rockies, finally peaking out above 7300 feet. We crossed the Continental Divide 4 times today and saw some spectacular scenery.
We’ve seen a lot of these open fences along the roads in Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming. They’re snow fences, set up to keep the blowing snow drifts off the highways as much as possible.
We also see these crossing gates with no train tracks around. They’re set up to keep cars off the highways after they close the roads for bad weather, usually snow or ice, or both. They’re normally near exits so you have a place to go to get off the road, but I did see one out in the middle of nowhere.
About noon we stopped in Rawlins, WY to have lunch. We had planned to eat at another Sanford’s Grub and Pub like we did in Casper. And we even found a parking place right downtown only a block away from the restaurant.
But when we got to Sanford’s, it was closed. We asked a trio of Wyoming Highway Patrol officers, who also found the place closed, where they suggested and they said Square Shooters Eating House, right up the street. So that’s where we went.
The place is decorated in Western Dead Animal motif, and the salad bar is a chuck wagon, so we weren’t sure what to expect. But it turned out to be very good.
Jan had the Roast Turkey and Dressing with Mashed Potatoes, and I had the Chicken Fried Chicken with Fries, and we both had the homemade Chicken Noodle Soup. All of it really good.
Leaving town we came across another one of the painted mascots that we’ve seen in other towns, a Pronghorn Antelope.
We seen a lot of others, like bears, moose, pelicans, and mermaids.
We got into the KOA in Rock Springs, WY about 3:30 pm and got set up. About 4:30 we headed out to get some supper and pick up some fuses. We ended up at Village Inn, a family restaurant chain we’ve eaten at several times before. Their Wisconsin Cheese soup is delicious.
Tomorrow we’re headed for Draper UT to visit some friends.
More then…
BTW our GPS system is called Margaret after the little girl in the Dennis the Menace comics. Whenever you take a turn she doesn’t like, she just nags and nags, and won’t shut up.
June 3, 2011
Lumberjacking . . .
We’re leaving here tomorrow, heading about 236 miles north along I-5 to Weed, CA. We’ll be there for 3 nights checking out the Mt. Shasta area, and getting into worse weather.
We’ll start to run into colder, wetter weather as we head north. The Crater Lake, OR area where we’ll be later next week is still having temps in the 20’s and 30’s so we’ll have to break out the winter clothes.
The Thousand Trails park here at Lake Minden is scenic with lots of trees and grass which makes Mister happy. but unfortunately, no sewer hookups, which makes me unhappy. It also had a lot of rabbits and squirrels, which makes Jan happy. So it’s easy to see who loses here.
Oh yeah, there’s a lake too.
Jan and I had talked about going to a movie this afternoon but that lost out to a nap. What started out as a nice sunny day gradually clouded over and started threatening rain, so a nap was well in order.
Finally about 4:30 we drove into Yuba City for dinner and a Wal-Mart run. But I did take a quick detour to look at the shortest route my mapping program found to get me to I-5 tomorrow. I’m glad I did.
Because of a couple of climbing turns over a high dike separating the rice fields, and a narrow paved road that suddenly degenerated into an even narrower gravel one, I decided to drive an extra 14 miles of better road.
Since it was about 5 pm when we got into Yuba City, we decided to go ahead and eat dinner at, where else, but Lumberjack’s Restaurant, the same place we ate last night, and the same place we’ve eaten 3 of the last 4 nights here. And we had the same Chicken Fried Steak we had before.
What can I say? It’s really good.
After dinner we headed over to the Wal-Mart Supercenter a couple of miles away. Jan had a small list of things she hadn’t been able to find during our last two Wal-Mart visits because they weren’t Supercenters.
Coming home and getting near the park, we again saw these strange-looking trees we had wondered about. I thought that maybe they were grafted, and at the park guard house I found out I was right.
It turns out the trees are English Walnuts, but the lower trunks are Black Walnuts. The English Walnut has a milder taste and is more popular, but the Black Walnut has a stronger root system. So they graft English Walnuts on Black Walnuts for the best of both. So now we know.
We’ll probably pull out of our site tomorrow morning about 9:30, dump and hookup, and try to be on the road by 10. We’ll see.
June 3, 2012
A lot of fun, but not very relaxing . . .
Well, trip day started off with a bang, or maybe just a ssssss! When the sun came up Wednesday morning, I found I had a flat tire on our truck. Bummer! It had been fine when I drove to the rig at midnight to turn in the logs, and my tire pressure alarm had never gone off, but flat it was. So after Jan came on duty at 7am I got it changed before getting a few hours of sleep before we left.
Our replacement gate guard, Kay Runyon, showed up right on time at 2pm, and after getting her briefed, Jan and I headed for Houston about about 2:45pm. We were going back to our old home for a couple of days for our granddaughter Piper’s High School Graduation Thursday night.
Since we knew we wouldn’t be eating supper until about 8pm, we stopped off at the McDonald’s in Pleasanton for a quick bite, and then it was back on the road. Our first bathroom break was at the Buc-ee’s at the Luling exit on I-10, one of our favorite stops. This place just keeps getting bigger. To give you some idea how big, they’re installing ANOTHER 40 gas pumps to keep up with demand. And this Buc-ee’s is not the biggest one.
We got into Webster, TX about 8pm just in time to meet Chris, Linda, Piper, and Linda’s sister Ingrid for dinner at Mario’s Flying Pizza. It was really good to see everyone again, and after a good meal and great company, Jan and I headed down the road a few blocks to check into our room at the Comfort Suites Hotel. Our son-in-law Lowell’s mother, Sonja, works for Choice Hotels in Oklahoma and was nice enough to get us a Friends and Family Discount there. Thanks, Sonja.
Jan and I were up early the next morning for another busy day. I dropped off my flat tire at a nearby Discount Tires, and then Brandi picked us up at 9am for Landon’s first trip to the Houston Zoo.
He’s all ready to go.
He really liked the giraffes.
So much so, he tried to ride this one.
And of course, what’s a day at the zoo without ice cream?
After a fun, but exhausting time for all concerned, and right before the rain started, we headed back down to the Clear Lake area for a late lunch at one of our favorite places, Monterey’s Little Mexico, for some of their great Chicken Tortilla Soup.
It was pouring down rain when we left the restaurant which didn’t bode well for tonight’s graduation ceremony, which was supposed to be outside in the football stadium. Hopefully it will work out.
Getting back to our room, Jan and I both had showers, and then luckily, had time for a nap, before meeting everyone at Clear Springs High School to catch a shuttle bus to Clear Creek High School for Piper’s graduation. And Clear Creek High is where Piper’s father, Chris, graduated from too.
Luckily the weather had cleared up and the graduation went off outside as scheduled.
Piper swore later she wasn’t crying, but there seemed to be a awful lot of tearing up, like here,
and here.
Finally the big moment.
And then it’s over.
The proud graduate.
After hugs all around, Piper headed out to party with some friends, and the rest of us headed out to Denny’s for a late supper.
Finally it was back to the hotel before another early morning the next day. I dropped the truck off at Discount Tires to get the repaired tire mounted while we met everyone for breakfast at the Egg and I, one of our favorite breakfast places. They have a great hazelnut coffee.
Here’s Landon clowning around with Uncle Chris.
And whatever’s going on here between Landon and Jan, Landon’s not having any part of it.
And it was good to see that Miss Piper hadn’t partied so hardy that she wasn’t bright eyed and ready to go the next morning.
And after a great breakfast together, we said our goodbyes and got in our last hugs, Jan and I got ready to head back to gate guarding. We had a few errands, and then a couple of stops for food to take back with us. BBQ from Rudy’s and Chinese food from King Food, and then it was back on the road.
We got back to our gate about 5:30, and after giving our thanks to Kay, got back into the routine, with Jan taking her usual 6-11pm shift, while I went to bed for a few hours before coming on from 11pm to 7am.
We had a great time, but in a way it was good to be back here just to get some rest. We were certainly on the go there.
June 3, 2013
It’s Always Something . . .
I had planned to work my water filter / drinking fountain replacement project today, but another project came to the forefront.
When I was getting us ready for our trip from Likely, CA to Bend,OR last Friday, I noticed a problem. After I had disconnected the shore water and turned on the water pump. I noticed the pump was pulsing on and off, and water was running back out of the shore water inlet connector. Turning off the pump stopped the water running out, so I put it on my mental list to look at later.
Getting into Bend and getting set up, I turned on the water pump again before I hooked up the shore water, and this time the pump did not run and no water ran out. So I finished setting up with no other problems.
But later that night when I took my shower, the water pressure was really sucky. So the next morning I took a look at the problem. Although the pressure coming out of the faucet didn’t seem too bad, it did seem better at the neighboring sites.
I then called the park ranger and ask him to send someone out to take a look at the problem. A maintenance guy showed up a little while later and found that the underground valve wasn’t turned on all the way. So I was hoping that this would fix the problem. But my late night shower told me different. So I was thinking I had a coach problem, but I would have to wait until today to call American Coach.
Calling them this morning, the support guy confirmed what I had wondered about, the check valve on the water input. If it’s not working right, it can let water leak back out, and restrict the water coming in. He told me the check valve is actually part of the inlet connector itself, and is easily replaced.
It only took me about 5 minutes to get the old valve out, but before I worried about replacing it I wanted to be sure it was the problem. So I headed down to the local hardware store and got a adapter that would let me hook up the water back into the coach. Here’s what I got.
The one on the left is the test adapter without a check valve, and the one on the right is the old one.
I quickly installed the new one and went back inside to check the shower flow, and bask in the glory of a job well-done.
Oops!
Although the shower flow might be marginally better, it’s still not as good as when I’m using the pump, and in fact, even when using shore water, turning on the pump makes it better.
So it’s back to square one. I had good water pressure in Likely, so what ever happened, happened in between here and there. Tomorrow it’s back on the phone to American Coach.
Also tomorrow, a movie and dinner is on the horizon. We’ll see.
June 3, 2015
The Rest Of The Story . . .
as Paul Harvey would say.
After being told by the service manager yesterday that the insurance company was dragging their feet in approving the last couple of items on our repair, I found out that wasn’t the case. As it turns out, everything had already been approved. But apparently it just hadn’t filtered down to the people that needed to know here.
So it looks like we’re on track with the repairs, and just waiting for the airbag and windshield to come in. The only problem that might come up is if they want to start working on it Friday. We’ve already been told that they will have to pull our rig into the shop to replace the windshield and the airbag. I figure the service department doesn’t work on the weekends, and we’ve spent enough time in motel rooms lately without adding a couple of extra days. So hopefully they’ll wait to start on Monday.
They said it would take a couple of days to replace the windshield, and that’s about what it took to replace one last year in Elkhart. But then I remember when I had one replaced in 2009 after we got back from Alaska. The guy came out to our RV site, and with two helpers, had the old one out and the new one installed in about 20 minutes.
I mentioned a couple of days ago that after they had repaired the shredded wiring while we were gone to Illinois, that the grab bar didn’t light up. Although it was working before we left Las Vegas, I figured it was probably a bad bulb.
But when I tried to check it out, I found the top screw on the bracket was stuck and when I tried to remove it, it just wallowed out the slot. So I picked up a screw extractor at True Value and got it out.
And I found that the bulb was bad. But so was the socket. When I hooked up my voltmeter to the connector, I got no voltage reading as I toggled the switch. So today I took the panel off and found the problem.
There was only wire going to the center switch. So it’s not going to work very well. I then used my ohmmeter function to determine that the remaining wire ran from the switch to the center contact on the bulb socket. So I’ll have to get the repair place to take a look at it.
For dinner tonight we had Tomato and Sweet Basil Bisque and Grilled Cheese. For the bisque, we tried a couple of cans of this Campbell’s Slow Kettle soups.
When we were at Sam’s Club the other day we came across a 4 pack of these and for $3.91, decided to give them a try.
And they were really, really good. As good as anything I’ve ever had in a restaurant. Well worth the 98 cents each. We’ll pick up more when we go back to pick up our prescriptions tomorrow.
June 3, 2016
It’s Always Something . . . Again
For us at least, the weather has really been nice here for the last two days. With temps in the high 70’s/low 80’s, and night temps in the high 60’s, it’s been almost perfect.
Once again, the morning and early afternoon was consumed by website work, this time by two different sites, trying to iron out some small fiddly bits, and one bigger one.
I had mentioned before about setting up a MySQL database on one website, and that I was having trouble getting it to work. Well, after talking with Godaddy today I confirmed what I was beginning to think.
I can’t get it to work, because it won’t work that way, Or at least the way I always done it before. Godaddy handles PHP code differently from what I’m used to, so I’ll have to come at the problem from a different direction.
Later in the afternoon, our Sharp Convection Oven – Microwave developed a problem. The door won’t open. When you push the button it feels like it’s not connected to anything and nothing happens.
Our 17 year old Sharp has been a workhorse and this is the first problem we’ve ever had with it. Apparently this is a somewhat common problem, and repair parts to fix it are only about $18, but first I’ll have to figure out how to get the door open. Hopefully I’ll find something online to help out. But it’ll have to wait until we’re back at Lake Conroe on Sunday. It’s always something.
About 3pm we decided to drive into our daughter Brandi’s in Katy to pick up our Amazon packages. We were going to pick them up tomorrow on our way back from Clear Lake, but one of the packages was the new memory for Barbara Spade’s laptop and I wanted to be able to run MemTest86 on the new memory before I give it back to Barbara Saturday evening.
So we combined the trip with meeting Brandi, Lowell, and Landon for dinner at Little V Vietnamese Bistro, one of our all-time favorite places.
Their Shaking Beef with Vermicelli Bowl can’t be beat.
![Little V's Shaking Beef Vermicelli_thumb[1]](https://ourrvadventures.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Little-Vs-Shaking-Beef-Vermicelli_thumb1.png "Little V's Shaking Beef Vermicelli_thumb[1]")
After a great get-together we got back home about 7pm and I got the new memory installed in Barbara’s laptop and set it up to run MemTest86 all night. I’m not expecting any problems with the new memory, but it helps to be sure.
One of the things that came in today was my new Shurflo RV Water Pump. Another job for Lake Conroe.
![Shurflo RV Water Pump_thumb[1]](https://ourrvadventures.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Shurflo-RV-Water-Pump_thumb1.png "Shurflo RV Water Pump_thumb[1]")
Tomorrow is something Jan and I have been looking forward to for a while, especially since we decided not to travel as much this year, meaning we would be here for this.
Jan and I are driving down to Seabrook to attend a NASA/Taft Broadcasting Employee Reunion at T-Bone Tom’s. Taft was the NASA contractor that I worked for on the Shuttle program at Johnson Space Center from1978 to 1987.
The last time Jan and I meet up with a lot of these people was another reunion in 2007 before we started RV’ing. And a few of them I’ve bumped into in the last couple of years. But some of them I haven’t seen since 1987. So it will be interesting to see how old they’ve all gotten.
June 3, 2017
Pancakes and Soup . . .
This morning seemed to be a good time for breakfast, so we headed into RC about 11:30.
Based on a recommendation of blog reader Jeannine Sheridan we decided on Cambell Street Café. And yes, that’s the way it’s really spelled. And that’s how the street name is spelled.
But when you try to Google the place, it changes your spelling to ‘Campbell’, and every review spells it ‘Campbell’ also.
But however it is spelled, it was really, really good, with giant portions. And as a bonus, good coffee and great service.
Jan had two eggs, scrambled dry, with extra crispy bacon, hash browns, and a biscuit.
I went with their pancakes, eggs, and Polish sausage.
Jan and I both ate on the pancakes and didn’t come close to finishing them.
As we were leaving we mentioned to the owner? and our waitress that we were RV’ers and another RV’er had recommended the place. We said that they were having their RV worked on for a month or so, and had eaten here a number of times.
Both said they remembered them, and our waitress said she had waited on them a lot. So I guess Jeannine and her family made a good impression.
Coming home we made a Wal-Mart stop before getting back to the rig about 2pm. At this point I guess I was still a little washed out from my headache yesterday, so, putting off working on the generator solenoid, I took a nap.
But later I did pull the new solenoid off the new starter to be ready to tackle it tomorrow..
In a follow-up to my travails with my Verizon MiFi and the data speed throttling, I recently mentioned that after my MiFi had throttled back at 10GB, I had switched over to hotspotting my S8+. And that while I had used up the 10Gb on the MiFi in just seven days, it took me almost three weeks to get to the 10GB limit on my S8+.
And now I’m at almost 20GB on my phone, but I’m still not being throttled. And my MiFi is still throttled, and I guess it will be until June 8th when my account resets.
We’ve been recording the Torchwood marathon on BBCA since 4am Friday morning, and it finally finished up at 6pm this evening, so now we’ve got all 37+ hours of the series. Looking forward to binge-watching it in the near future.
But right now we’ve been catching up on a couple of series that we had recorded and saved, Motive and Murder in the First. Somewhere along the line we had missed one or more of the last few episodes of both series, So we’ve streamed the missing episodes from the Internet filling in the blanks, and then watched the ones we still have recorded. We’ve finished with Murder in the First, so now we’re working on Motive.
Jan slow-cooked a big batch of her Chicken Vegetable Soup so that’s what we had for dinner. Really good, as usual.
Tomorrow, back on the solenoid?
June 3, 2022
A Busy Three Days . . .
It’s been a busy three days.
Wednesday we were in Birmingham getting together with old friends, Bill and Carol Alverson.
Bill and I worked as Broadcast Engineers at several radio and TV stations here in Birmingham back in the mid-70’s, and we always get together when we’re back in the area. And it’s always fun.
Then yesterday, we moved down to Montgomery and get together with Fred and Susan Springall
About 6pm we headed over to the home of our long-time friends Fred and Susan Springall. Fred and I worked together in the mid-70’s when we were both with Storer Cable here in Montgomery, which later became TCI, which later became 3 or 4 other companies along the way.
Susan prepared a delicious Lasagna dinner with salad and garlic bread, one of our favorites. And we spent the rest of the evening talking about anything and everything.
Fun!
Then today we met one of Jan’s former co-workers, Kathy Wilkes, also from when we lived here in Montgomery, until we moved out to Houston in December 1978.
And as in the past we met at the Longhorn Steakhouse up in Prattville, near where Kathy lives.
As I just reminded Jan the other day, it’s been almost 44 years since we moved out to Houston, and we’re still getting together with friends from back in the day.
Tomorrow we head down to Gulf Shores to meet up with the rest of the family, Jan’s sister’s group coming down from Illinois, and our group coming over from Texas.
Really looking forward to it.
I’ve got some more things to post that went on the last few days, but it’s getting late so I’ll catch up later.
