Our RV Adventures

If you have commented recently and haven’t received a reply from me, blame Jetpack. Jetpack is the WordPress add-on that runs a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff for the blog, including sending out the daily blogs to subscribers, and handling the blog comments. It looks like I got a bad update somewhere in the past, but I think it’s fixed now.

Spending about an hour this evening, I got us completely booked for our upcoming May Alabama trip, 16 nights, from the 9th through the 25th in 6 different hotels, all through Booking.com.

Glad to have it done finally. And really looking forward to the trip.

About 1 pm we met up with two former clients/now friends, and a new friend as a bonus. We were having lunch at the Rustika Cafe and Bakery over in League City.

Tricia started out as a client in the 90’s who evolved into a long-time close friend. And her sister Donna, and her daughter Alex were both past clients as well.

That’s Tricia on the right, Donna in the middle, and the new friend is Donna’s new husband Gene. And by ‘new’ they just celebrated their first anniversary early this month.

Jan had the Avocado Toast, with Scrambled Eggs,

while I got the Veggie Soup and a Texas Omelet.

And as is usual for these kinds of get-togethers, it was about two hours before we got our hugs and said our good-byes. Then for Jan and I, we headed out for our first stop at the office to drop off some orders that had come in here at the park, and then it was on the nearby Kroger’s for a few things getting home a little before 5.

A very nice day.

Karma has pretty much taken over the Chunky Yarn Quilt that Brandi made for Jan recently.

It does look pretty comfortable. So much so that Karma hisses if you try to move her.

Thought for the Day:

One of those headlines you know you probably shouldn’t read, but you just have to.

Meerkat expert cleared of assaulting monkey trainer in love spat over llama-keeper.

And then you’re kind of disappointed you did.

And Now On To Today’s Retro-Blogs.™

But since this is a leap year, you only get 3 Retro-Blogs.™ tonight.

February 29, 2012

Tuesday in Yuma . . .

Jan and I headed out about 2:30 this afternoon to solicit more door prizes for the upcoming Rally here in Yuma. We continued to work our way down the list, picking up several more door prizes, and getting a few ‘Come back tomorrows”, about par for the course.

Our daughter Brandi called about 3:30 to catch us up on Landon’s latest antics. Hopefully, we’ll be able to Skype soon since we really miss the little guy.

About 4 Jan and I headed back toward the rig, but first stopped off at the Wal-Mart right outside the fairgrounds to pick up some supplies. We’ll probably have to go again before the Rally starts since we won’t have time during the rally.

Getting home a little before 5, Jan got the groceries put away, just in time for dinner.

We decided on Texas Roadhouse, so about 5:30 the Gang of Six, along with the addition of Bob Parker and Donna Huffer, headed over there for a great meal of grilled bovine flesh. Sounds really tasty, doesn’t it?

While we were there, we got to thank the manager for his donation of several gift certificates to the rally. We try to only eat at places that help us out, and it always helps when they have really good food.

On another note, I finally got a chance to take a look at some of the numbers for our trip here from Texas.

Our best MPG was the 138-mile trip from Tucson to Gila Bend. Our Silverleaf showed 11.2 MPG. This was probably helped by the fact that during the trip we dropped from about 2500 feet down to about 700 feet along the way. It is always nice when gravity lends a hand.

Our 116-mile trip from Gila Bend to Yuma gave us about 9.5 MPG, still not bad.

And our overall MPG from Houston to Yuma was about 8.9 MPG.

Pretty good for moving 37,000 pounds down the highway at 55 MPH.

February 29, 2016

Almost, But Not Quite . . .

Jan and I started out on a walk this morning, but only ended up doing about half a mile before we both decided we didn’t really want to walk this morning.

So maybe tomorrow.

We did sit outside with our coffee after our kinda-walk, and Shirley, Karma’s previous caretaker, came over to check on her. So I hooked up the leash to Karma’s harness and took her outside . . . or tried to, anyway.

As soon as tried to take her out the door, her claws latched onto the edge and hung on for dear life. Which is kind of funny, because that’s exactly what she did when we first tried to take her inside the coach four weeks ago today when she came to live with us.

And once I got Karma outside she did like being held by Shirley, but when I put her down, she freaked and tried to run under the rig,

We’ll keep taking her out a little at a time to help her get used to it. I fastened the leash to her harness last night and let her drag it around the rig for a while with no problems, so that’s a start.

Later in the afternoon, I started back on the washer. First up was to mount the new pump to the angle stock that I had bolted across the bottom of the washer.

I had several pieces of large rubber washers to use for sound-deadening and vibration-damping. I also cut off a section of the heavy vinyl tubing to act as a spacer.

The left-hand arrow points to the vinyl spacer that I used to level out the base of the pump, and the right two arrows point to the pieces of rubber that I used for cushioning and sound deadening.

Holding everything in place, I tightened down the two large stainless steel clamps until everything was snug, but not so tight that it might damage the pump.

After I did this, I tightened down all the clamps connecting the pump hoses to the washer so now it was ready to go.

After connecting the power leads, I used a couple of tie-wraps to lock things down a little more.

So now was the big test. I turned the washer back upright, rolled it over to the sink and plugged it in. Since I couldn’t hook up the water hoses, I poured several jugs of water into the drum, set the dial to Spin, and turned it on.

And about 5 seconds later, I had water gushing into the sink until it was all gone.

It worked!   And even better, I had no leakage underneath.

At this point, I decided to wait until later to install the washer back in its hidey-hole. This turned out to be a slight mistake. Because when I did get back to it, I quickly discovered a problem.

Before I can start sliding the washer into the cabinet, I have to connect up the water hoses, and then plug the water drain hose into the drain pipe. However because I had moved the pump output around to the other side of the washer, I no longer had enough length to plug in the hose. If there was some way to plug it in after it was in the cabinet, no problem.

But now I was stuck. The local ACE hardware was already closed so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning to pick up an extension hose.

So it’s all on hold until then.