Our RV Adventures

We headed out for our lunch at Schafer’s Coastal Grille over in Clear Lake Shores about 12:30. We just ate here a few weeks back, but decided it was time again.

Jan started out with a Side Salad,

and then moved on to the Keto Shrimp Tacos.

The ‘Keto’ part means that instead of Taco Shells, it’s cradled in scooped-out Avocados.

I got my usual Wedge Salad, my 2nd favorite one. Saltgrass is a little better, but only by a little.

Then like last time, I got the Filet Bites appetizer as my entree.

And of course, you can’t beat the view from the patio.

Finishing up, and on our way back to our area, we made a Kroger’s stop at the big one on SH96, before hitting up Wal-Mart for our weekly visit.

We had thought we were going to be getting together with some friends this afternoon, but that fell through when they had car trouble.

Before we left for Schafer’s this afternoon, I decided to check out the Eclipse Glasses that came with my Celestron Camera Filter Kit.

When you are not looking at the sun while wearing glasses, everything is absolutely black. But when I looked at the sun, I saw an orange ball about the size of a pea at arm’s length, a lot smaller than you would expect.

Then this afternoon, about 5pm, I decided to try the camera filter part of the kit. So after taping the filter over my cell phone camera lens, this is what I saw at 1X.

It’s fuzzy because there was a slight overcast masking the sun a little.

And here is 10x.

10X is the limit of my optical lenses, so I decided to try 100X, which is my S21 Ultra’s maximum digital zoom.

And I was really surprised to see this.

Sunspots.

Amazing!

I’m not sure why this shot is so clear and the other ones fuzzy, but it works.

Since the 100X setting doesn’t show the entire disk, I’ll experiment with backing down the magnification to 75X or so. But it looks like I should be able to get some great shots on Eclipse Day.

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Thought For The Day:

They had to do a ‘study’ to figure this out. Really?

Study find squeezing stress balls not as effective as punching someone in the face.

And Now On To Today’s Retro-Blogs.™

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March 23, 2009

Scavenger hunt…

Today Jan and I  did a scenic tour of Baldwin County pawn shops on a scavenger hunt.

And the prize was…

A new…er, used VCR.  The one in our coach died a couple of days ago and so far we’ve been unable to find a replacement.

The only ones I’ve found still on sale are DVD/VCR combos that are too big to fit in our overhead cabinet. So I had the bright idea to check out pawn shops. So off we went. And found ZIP.

Apparently, pawn shops got out of the VCR business a good while ago, so no luck there. So I’ll have to figure something else out.

Next time, maybe a tour of Baldwin County flea markets?

After our tour Jan and I went back to Lulu’s for dinner.  Just had to split another Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding.  Mmmmmmm!

Yesterday was Garbage Day, except here they don’t pick up. Instead, we drop it off.

There have been a few parks we’ve stayed at that have garbage cans at each site, but most have dumpsters somewhere.

The ones here are convenient for dropping off our garbage on the way out, and we’ve never found them overflowing as we have in some parks.

Tomorrow we’re going to take the Ft. Morgan ferry over to Dauphin Island, see Bellingrath Gardens, and then come back the long, scenic way thru Mobile, Daphne, and Fairhope.

Road Trip!

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March 23, 2010

Eau de toilette – part deux…

Well, we didn’t get started out today until about 1pm.

We had heard about a chocolate factory tour (with free samples!) here in Las Vegas.

So a little Googling sent us to Ethel M’s Chocolate Factory and Cactus Garden.

They have a self-guided tour of the plant where you can watch the candy being made.

It turns out that Ethel M Chocolates was started by the founder of Mars Candy after he retired from running the company. He wanted a custom candy manufacturer to make small batches of candy by hand using high-quality ingredients.

And they take their chocolate very seriously. Just look at these signs posted around the factory.

I had never seen how chocolate is grown so this was interesting.

The pod at the top is a cocoa pod which contains the cocoa beans on the bottom left.

And finally, we came to the most important part.

THE FREE SAMPLES!

Then it was on to the Cactus Garden that was on the grounds of the Chocolate Factory. Not exactly sure why a chocolate factory would have a Cactus Garden, but it was interesting.

Leaving the factory we drove over to Camping World so I could check on getting another pedestal base for our toilet.

Turns out that I can buy a new toilet for almost $100 less than I can buy a new pedestal. So we drove over to Vegas Trailer Supply to just buy a new one. I’m tired of fooling with this one.

Getting it back to the rig, we were hungry, so we drove over to Buffet Asia to try out another Chinese buffet. It was slightly better than the one last night, but not by much.

After this, we headed home and I got started putting the new toilet, well, trying to, anyway.

It turns out that, although this was the same model toilet from the same manufacturer, they had decided to completely change the base mount where it fastens to the floor.

So I’ll have to try again tomorrow after getting some more screws.

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March 23, 2012

Nothing so far . . .

No mousies were found in any of my traps this morning, so maybe I’ve finally thinned out the herd.

About 11am, the park host lady showed up with a Priority Mail package from our daughter Brandi. Really glad it came before we have to leave on Sunday. The box contained our mail, and at the bottom, a nice surprise – a couple of boxes of Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies. Hmmm!

Later Jan fixed us a great lunch of cheddar cheese and bacon quesadillas, using the Oscar Meyer Pre-Cooked Bacon. Really good.

And of course, a few Thin Mints for dessert.

A little after 1pm, Tom and Barb Westerfield pulled out of the fairgrounds, and headed for Las Cruces for a few days. We’ll be there on Sunday too, so maybe we’ll be able to get together for dinner.

After Tom and Barb left, I worked outside for a while around the rig. I cleaned the rig windshield and then adjusted the new wipers I installed recently, so they’ll track better. Then I caulked around the bottom of a couple of windows to see if I can eliminate the stains that come down from there.

Lastly I tidied up a couple of bays and washed them out. That was about it because it was pretty hot out in that sun.

After a short nap to rest up, Jan and I headed out a little after 5pm for dinner and some shopping.

Jan had been wanting to eat at Red Robin for a while, so we first headed up just north of downtown to the Tucson Mall area. Red Robin is another of our favorite burger chains, and their burgers come with all-you-can-eat steak fries as well.

Jan always gets the Mushroom Cheese, and I usually go for the Burn’in Love Burger with jalapenos and chipotle mayo.

Leaving Red Robin, we stopped off at the Sam’s Club a couple of miles away for kitty litter and a few other things before getting back home about 8pm.

Tomorrow’s our last full day here in Tucson. Time to move on

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March 23, 2013

Shirts and Shower Curtains . . .

Today turned out to be pretty much a stay-at-home day. Something that it seems we don’t do often enough.

I think Jan pretty much read most of the day. It looks like I’ve got her hooked on one of my favorite authors, Saxon Andrew. Saxon has 5 different science fiction series, with anywhere from 4 to 7 books in each series for a total of 20 books, all of them excellent.

A friend turned me on to Saxon, who I guess you could say writes in the Golden Age style, with rousing space battles and amazing inventions that save the day at the last moment.

I, on the other hand, worked on some projects, some around the rig, and some website stuff.

I never heard back from the Blue Ox people about getting my Aventa tow bar serviced, so I guess I’ll have to try and catch them at another rally, or maybe visit their factory in Pender, NE later this year.

About 4:30 this afternoon, we lost power again. And just like yesterday, our 30 amp breaker wasn’t popped. And resetting it just in case did nothing. The outlet was just dead.

I think today we probably were drawing too much power. Jan had just taken a shower, so the water heater was running, plus she was using the microwave for supper and the AC was running.

I had called the RV office this morning and reported yesterday’s problem, but no one ever came out to fix it. So today I was still using the outlet for the empty site behind us. And now that one was dead too.

So I pulled a little more power cord out and connected us to the outlet of the site beside us. I told Jan that I had enough cord length to reach 5 other outlets before we would no longer have power to the rig. So she can blow the breaker a few more times before we’re out of luck.

I now think that the problem is that there is another circuit breaker in the line somewhere, which is blowing before the 30 amp breaker in the outlet box at the site. And having two breakers in series like this is against every electrical code I’ve seen.

I’ve got to go down to the RV office tomorrow and re-up for another week, so I’ll ask them then.

Finishing up, for you Big Bang Theory fans, I came across this website called SheldonShirts.com. It tells you where you can buy pretty much all the shirts that the characters wear on the show, and even things like Sheldon’s Clothing Folding Board that he used to fold his laundry, and of course Sheldon and Leonard’s Periodic Table shower curtain.

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March 23, 2014

They sent the wrong %#@$*%^ parts . . .

We were promised heavy rain and thunderstorms, but except for a few minutes of light sprinkles, it didn’t show up. That made it a little easier to get back on my slide problem. So about noon I headed outside to give it another shot.

The first thing I did was to release the motor brake so I can move the slide manually. You just pull it down until it clicks. This brake is what keeps the slide retracted while we’re traveling.

This is how the slide can be moved manually.

After a lot of trial and error, I managed to get the shear pin holes in the shaft and spur gear lined up and was then able to use a pin punch to knock out the rest of the pin.

So now all I needed to do was hammer in the replacement pin, and I was all done, right?

WRONG!!

They sent the wrong %#@$*%^ pins!

When I first looked at the pins that American Coach sent me, they did look a little big. But I figured once I got the old one out, the new one would fit. But it was definitely too big.

About this time, Janice Evans showed up with a breakfast casserole for us to have tomorrow morning before we leave to go back to the Colorado River Thousand Trails for another two weeks. Thanks, Janice.

Since we were heading out about 1:30 for Wal-Mart, I decided to check the Tractor Supply Store that’s right down the Interstate. So after dropping Jan off to get her hair cut, I drove down there to see what they had.

But unfortunately, they didn’t have exactly what I needed. I found a close one, but it’s a little small and may not be strong enough. I did check to see if they had any bolts that looked like they could work, but didn’t find anything. The pin is only 9/64” and I couldn’t find any Grade 8 or Grade 5 bolts that small.

Getting back to Jan, we picked up some stuff there, and then we drove across the street to have dinner at Culver’s, one of our favorite places.

We’ve eaten at a number of Culver’s. but never in this area. It’s always been up in the IN/IL area. Didn’t realize that they were spreading down here. But we’re glad to see them.

Jan had a Mushroom and Cheddar Butterburger, and I had a double Bacon Cheese Deluxe Butterburger. Really, really good.

On the way home we made a quick stop at the Lane Bryant store in the Outlet Mall. Back home I installed the new pin, but I’ll be surprised if it works.

While I was doing this, Lynette and Gregg McHenry dropped off a jar of hot sauce he’d made.. Later I tasted it and it was really, really good. Thanks, Gregg and Lynette.

Depending on how long it takes to get the slide in tomorrow morning, we hope to head out around 10am, but we’ll see how it goes.

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March 23, 2015

Convenience Can Be Expensive . . .

There’s joy in the Oilpatch tonight. For the first time in months, the rig count actually went up this week. By ONE whole rig. But, hey, it’s something.

A little after 12 I went down to register and pay at the Countryside RV Park office. The ‘resort fee’ TT members pay at Encore parks has gone up from $3 to $4 this year, but still not bad at all, especially since it doesn’t count against our 50 free TT days.

Finishing up at the office, I drove up to the Wal-Mart SuperCenter on Apache Trail to pick up some antifreeze for the truck. My radiator has a small leak that I’m pretty sure I can fix, but it’s toward the bottom of my list since all I have to do is add a little coolant every couple of weeks or so.

I’ve normally just grabbed a jug of the pre-mixed 50-50 type, which goes for about $10.50 a jug. But a jug of the old-fashioned concentrate type caught my eye, and then the price difference caught my eye too.

As I said, a gallon of 50-50 costs $10.50, but a gallon of full strength, I.e. twice as much, costs $12.50, only $2 more. Convenience isn’t cheap.

While I was there, I checked out their sewing department, and found just what I needed for my solar screen project. It’s a black crochet thread, the perfect size for what I need.

About 4:30 we made the 20 minute journey over to the Famous Dave’s BBQ at SanTan Village, just at the other end of the block from the Grimaldi’s Pizzeria where Jan and I had dinner last night.

We walked out of there happy and stuffed with BBQ, and enough left over to take home. Always good.

If tomorrow morning is like this morning, I.e. not much wind, I plan on putting a first coat of gray paint on the rig bumper that my son Chris repaired a month or so ago. Apache Junction is pretty much the first place we’ve been that hasn’t been windy.

We’ll see how it goes.

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March 23, 2016

Smoking . . .

We didn’t walk this morning, knowing we’d get our walking in this afternoon at Wal-Mart. And since it was pretty windy, we didn’t set outside either.

Later in the afternoon, I went back outside to take a look at my truck’s AC condenser fan problem. I was planning on getting a new 50amp cartridge fuse this afternoon, but I wanted to see if that was going to fix the problem, at least temporarily until I can replace the fan.

So I looked over the other fuses, hoping to find another 50 amp that I could borrow to test things out. And going down the row, I came across a 50 amp for the Power Seats.

Wait, I don’t have Power Seats, so that one was available. So I plugged it into the fan position and tried it out. And it did work, although the fan was still grinding walnuts, as before.

So I thought I’d give it a better test when we go out this afternoon. But what I found then was that besides the noise, after a few minutes, a very pungent burning smell appeared, making me think it might start smoking and burst into flames at any minute. So the fuse comes out until I can replace the fan.

But the AC will still work anyway. I just have to be careful using it idling or at low speeds, which is when the condenser fan actually comes into play.

Jan and I headed out for dinner and shopping, with dinner being at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Conroe. It’s been a while since we’ve had some good hot wings, which for me means Mango Habanero, their 3rd hottest, because I like the sweetness, and a side of Blazin’, which is their hottest.

While we were there, and after we finished eating, I spent some time updating a bunch of apps on my Galaxy S5. The 4G in that area runs about 50 Mps, a lot quicker than here at the park. Just wish I had taken my Galaxy Tab with me too.

One of our blog readers asked about how I map out our walking paths at the parks. I use Google Maps Satellite View and then the Measure Distance function.

If you right-click on the map where you want your walk to begin, a white dot appears on the map. Then you just left-click following your path on the map, using smaller segments as you work your way around the curves.

The white box at the bottom of the map keeps a running total of the distance. The route shown above, totals 5,258 ft., but actually is about 1.03 miles according to Runkeeper. Close enough for our walking.

I mentioned last week that I tried to refill one of my Touch Free Soap Dispenser empties because of the high, $8 – $15, cost of the store-bought refills.

I popped the lid of the empty off and poured in the liquid soap, happy that the Softsoap refill only cost $1.98. But I was kind of disappointed when, rather than coming out as a foam as before, it came out more as a thick liquid with a few marble-size bubbles. But hey, it worked.

Then blog reader Joe Green suggested I try diluting the Softsoap. so I poured half of it back into the original container, and then topped off the refill with hot water and shook it.

And that did the trick. Now when we use the dispenser, we get a perfect handful of foaming soap.

So now I’m even happier since a refill will only cost me $0.98 rather than $1.98.

Tomorrow afternoon Jan and I are driving over to the Escapees Park in Livingston to have dinner with Dennis Hill and his wife, Carol. He said he’s smoking a butt.

I certainly hope that has more to do with pork, rather than cigarettes. But knowing Dennis, you can never be sure.

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March 23, 2017

It’s Dead, Jim . . . Again

I was up at about 8am this morning to see off our temporary next-door neighbors Chris and Charles Yust on their trip back to San Angelo, TX

Just goes to show you how much I like them that I would get up that early.

But they didn’t even get out of the Voyager RV Resort without a problem. While they were hitching up their Trailblazer in the designated area on the road leaving the park, a Winnebago Tour came by with the door awning still out, scratching the side of their rig. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to get a tag number.

Not a good start to their journey.

We had planned to go over to the Fairgrounds for the Pet Parade and Chili Cook-off starting at 11am, and the Closing Ceremonies at 3. But as the morning wore on, Jan developed an upset stomach so we passed it by. In fact we ended up not leaving the rig at all for the day.

Hopefully, she’ll feel better tomorrow.

The last couple of parks we’ve stayed at  I’ve noticed that my Cradlepoint CTR350 Wi-Fi router and Verizon AirCard were taking longer and longer to connect. Then this morning sometime between 7:40 (the last email) and 8:15 (when I noticed the Internet was down) the Cradlepoint died. In fact it no longer even showed up on my list of available Wi-Fi signals.

I originally had a CTR500 that I bought in 2008 which lasted until July  2015 when it went ports up. In trying to replace it, I found that Cradlepoint was no longer in the AirCard router business. So while I was looking around for a replacement, our friend Janna Clark came through with a CTR350 from her box of old, outdated electronics. And that 350 worked fine until this morning.

Looking things over, and after cycling the router power several times with no improvement,  I then plugged the AirCard directly into the computer, dialed in, and found I could get on the Internet with no problem, so it wasn’t the AirCard.

Next up was to do a full reset on the router, taking it back to the factory settings. At this point, I logged into the router directly and set it up once again. I was now happy to see the router showing up on my Wi-Fi list.

Thinking I had fixed the problem, I unplugged the AirCard from the computer and plugged it into the router. But rather than the problem now being fixed, the Wi-Fi signal disappeared from the list. And when I unplugged the AirCard, the Wi-Fi signal came back. And the signal came and went every time I repeated the sequence.

Ok, that’s weird.

So my next thought was maybe it was actually a power supply problem, with the added load of the AirCard lowering the voltage. But my VOM showed 5.13 volts unloaded and 5.03 volts under load.

So no problem there.

At this point, I figured “It’s Dead, Jim” and started to look for a replacement. Amazon had a new 350 that was about $150, more than it cost originally. But a used, like new one, was available for $20, so I put my order in and had it sent to the Santa Fe RV Park in Apache Junction where we’ll be starting this Saturday.

Of course, the AirCard still works directly on the computer, we just don’t have Wi-Fi in the coach for our Kindles and Galaxy Tab. But we can hotspot my phone for these if need be.

With the rally over, tomorrow will be a fix-it day with several projects on the menu.

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March 23, 2018

Well, It Was Fun While It Lasted . . .

Which Was About 10 minutes.

I spent a good while last night working on a client’s laptop, trying to get her Gmail account synced to the Outlook 2016 part of her Office 365 program. I had already spent Tuesday afternoon working on the machine remotely through TeamViewer, but I just couldn’t get it to work.

Normally this is pretty simple. Just set the Gmail account for IMAP and Let Secure Access. Then go into Outlook 2016, click on Add Account and off you go. But it just wouldn’t work. It actually wouldn’t let me enter all the account parameters like Server Ports, encryption, Secure Password Authentication, etc. So after going around in circles for a while, I told them to drop it off at the office so I could work on it 1 on 1.

So last night it took a while to research but I came across a posting talking about problems with the very latest version of Outlook 2016, and it listed a fix, a back door, so to speak, that let me get to the full setup. And at that point, it just took a few more minutes until it was done.

I got a call from Brock’s Car Care about 11:30 saying our truck was repaired and ready to go. Apparently, the electrical switches on the new (used) transfer case were defective, but they didn’t check this, since they didn’t know about the Tow Mode.

So they took the switches out of the broken case and put them into the replacement. And now everything worked.

Leaving work about 3:30 I drove over to Chris’ to pick him up so he could drive me back over to Brock’s to get my truck and head home. There was no new charge so I got in the truck, ready to go. But first, of course, I had to check out the tow mode. And this time it worked perfectly. YAY!

I made it down FM 528 about 1.5 miles toward I-45 and decided things were going so well that I would stop at the convenience store and get a Mega Millions ticket for tonight’s $421 million drawing, but before I could turn in, I heard a ‘DING’, and looking down I saw my Oil Pressure gauge sitting on ZERO.

Not this again.

Since I changed out the oil filter back at the beginning of February, I’ve not seen the oil pressure problem again . . .  until today.

Since I didn’t want to take a chance with the engine, I called for a tow back to Brock’s, called my son Chris to be sure I could use the truck again, and called Brock’s to tell them about the problem and that I was on the way back.

By the time I got towed back to Brock’s they had closed, so I took an Uber over to Chris’ to get his truck and finally head home.

I’m hoping that maybe Brocks bumped against the oil pressure sensor cable and loosened it. Or it could just be bad luck that the oil sensor or the oil pump died at the same time as everything else.

But either way, since Brock’s is closed on weekends I won’t know anything until Monday at the earliest.

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March 23, 2019

A Week Lost, Now Found . . .

After a quiet morning talking over our upcoming trip, I went outside about 1 pm to clean the oil off the back of the rig, and then do the wheels if I had time. I had stopped by the storage room on the way home from work on Friday and picked up my pressure washer to do the job. I had bought a gallon of Mean Green Cleaner/Degreaser at WalMart the other day just for this job.

They don’t explain why Mean Green Degreaser is purple.

I wanted something that would be safe on painted surfaces, and yet still cut the oil coating the rear of the coach, and this stuff seemed to do the job. I ran it through my Karcher pressure washer,

first soaking the entire area down and then letting it percolate for a while. Previously I had modified the washer solution pickup by adding a longer hose so I could pull directly from a jug of cleaner, instead of constantly refilling the small tank.

After spraying down the entire area and waiting a bit, I put on the high-power nozzle and was able to just wash all the caked-on gunk with no problem. On a roll, I opened the engine compartment doors and repeated the procedure.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any before and after photos, so you’ll just have to use your imagination on how good it looks. In fact overall, except for a few scrapes, our 20-year-old “Beauty” still looks pretty good. The only real problem is where the clear coat is coming off in places, making it look like it‘s peeling after being sunburnt.

Next, I started in our aluminum wheels, using Busch’s Aluminum Wash,

the best stuff I’ve found. They will take a wheel that looks like this,

and make it look like this, though somehow I didn’t get a before and after on the same wheels.

Add a little ‘Tire Wet and it looks really good.

We had originally planned to do our test drive tomorrow until I realized that I had found a lost week. For some reason, I thought that next weekend was April 5th, 6th, 7th, when we’re going up to Kingsland to get together with the whole family at our son Chris’. So we’ll put it off until next weekend.

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March 23, 2020

A People-Person Call . . .

Tomorrow morning Jan and I have our annual doctor checkup appointments. I was wondering if they were still on, since we didn’t get the usual robocalls confirming our appointments. So I put in a call to the office and talked to them.

When I asked about our appointments, the lady went off for a couple of minutes and came back and told me that they were only doing Tele-Health appointments using FaceTime. When I reminded her that these were our annual checkups that involved a lot of blood draws and peeing in a jar, she again went off for a couple of more minutes. This time when she came back, she said ‘OK’, and that we could come in for our 8am appointment as long as we were feeling OK.

Jan was also supposed to get her yearly mammogram tomorrow afternoon at 1;30 and we got a robocall this morning confirming it. But then this afternoon I got a people-person call asking if Jan could come in at 9am tomorrow morning instead. When I told her Jan had another appointment at that time, she rescheduled her for 7:30am Thursday.

Yikes! That’s two days this week I have to get up way too early. But since it’s for my Sweetie, it’s OK.

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March 23, 2021

Jonsin For Bravocado . . .

Jan was jonsin’ for her Bravocado Toast at Snooze, so we left for Webster about 1pm. And though it rained earlier this morning, it was sunny and in the high 70’s by the time we got there so we sat outside on their patio.

I got my usual 3 Egg Classic with eggs over medium, bacon, fruit, and an English Muffin.

After lunch, we made a quick stop at the nearby UPS store to drop off an Amazon return. Just walk in, give them the open bag, show them the QR return code on my phone, and they give me a receipt.

Quick and easy.

Coming home, we made a quick stop at our storeroom to drop off some stuff, and then a Cowboy Coffee stop so we could sit out on the patio and enjoy it.

Several readers have asked about my AC repair. Well, so far, so good.

It’s running just fine, and just in time too, since even though we’re getting temps the in 50’s/60’s at night, it’s running into the high 70’s/low 80’s in the daytime.

And no, I still don’t know what caused the problem with the Control Box. The AC stopped working but then we got a cold snap and didn’t need it for a few days. And then when I took the cover off days later, and was just looking up at the Control Box, all of a sudden there was a bright flash and a sharp ‘Crack’ from inside the plastic box. And then smoke started coming out.

And of course, when the magic smoke escapes, that’s all she wrote.

So I’m still not sure what caused the circuit to wait a week to short out with me just looking at it, and more importantly, how it drew enough current to burn through a 10 gauge wire without popping the breaker.

Sometimes it’s just one of those things.

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March 23, 2022

Planning . . .

I mentioned the other day that we have had two Holland America Alaskan Cruises canceled in the last 18 months or so, one in August 2020 and the other one in May 2021, both succumbing to the WuFlu

When we started thinking about rebooking this year, we realized that we really didn’t have a big need to revisit places along the cruise, ones like Ketchikan, Sitka, Juneau, Skagway, etc. We saw all these on our previous HAL cruise in May 1998.

What we really wanted to do was revisit our old haunts in Fairbanks, North Pole, Denali, Talkeetna, etc., places where we lived and visited there during our five-month work-camping gig in 2008. Plus adding a few new ones like Soldotna and Homer.

So we’ve decided to just fly up to Fairbanks around the middle of August, and then rent a car for two weeks or so. Then after spending about a week there, head south hitting all our other spots along the way. And then fly home from Anchorage.

So now we’re making a list of places we want to visit, things we want to see, and places we want to eat at. Especially the ‘eat at’ part.

We had also talked about taking an overnight detour down to Alyeska to spend one night at the Alyeska Resort there. We stayed there one night on our 1998 cruise, and really enjoyed the great restaurant at the top of the mountain, which you get to by taking the ski-lift to the top.

Back then we took the lift to the top in the early afternoon to make a reservation for that evening. At that time it was sunny and beautiful out, with one of the servers putting up the umbrellas for diners on the patio.

But when we came back up about 5 hours later for dinner, it looked like this.

And this was the middle of May.

But all these plans went out the window when we checked and found that a room for one night this coming August is $599.

No thanks.

Tomorrow we’re meeting up with the Alvin Opry Bunch at the P.F. Chang’s by Baybrook Mall. Jan and I have never been there so we’re looking forward to trying it out, as well as seeing old friends.

I forgot to mention in yesterday’s blog the flamingo that Debi brought along for Jan when we met up at the Golden Corral in Conroe.

It’s only about a foot tall, so it will have to be an inside flamingo until it grows up enough to be released into the wild to live outside with the rest of the flamboyance.

Thanks a lot, Debi.

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March 23, 2023

Wirklich Gutes Deutsches Essen . . .

Or

Really Good German Food.

Jan and I were on our way this morning a little after 8am, heading for Fredericksburg about 6 hours away, counting our 3 stops.

Since our Jeep’s still in the shop, and not wanting to stress Old Faithful (313,000+ miles) we rented a car, a 2023 Toyota Corolla. Pretty nice so far.

Jennifer, our office manager and Karma-sitter, sent over this photo of her making herself right at home.

Our first stop was at the Buc-ee’s up in Katy, a little over an hour away. The second one was at the Buc-ee’s in Luling, another 90 minutes along. (Are you sensing a pattern here?)

One thing I found interesting was this ad board at both Buc-ee’s locations.

Might need to rethink my vocation choices.

Our last stop was at the US87 exit from I-10 at the Love’s Travel Center. This is only about 30 minutes from Fredericksburg, but keeps us from running to the restroom as soon as we get there.

And in the next couple of years, we’ll be able to make this a 3 Buc-ee’s trip, since they’re going to be building one at that exit too.

We got into Fredericksburg about 1:45pm, right on schedule. And our first stop was at Der Lindenbaum for lunch, actually the real reason for our visit here.

Our daughter-in-law Linda’s mother was born in Germany and said that Der Lindenbaum’s (The Linden Tree) was the best German food she’s had since moving to the States. And we never had anything better when we made our Germany/Austria visit in 2019.

And as with most places we like, we have our favorites. We started off with an order of their fresh-baked German Marble Rye Bread.

Then Jan gets the JagarSchnitzel.

JagarSchnitzel is a crispy breaded pork chop, covered in Wild Mushroom Brown Gravy, along with German Potato Salad, and, of course, their delicious Red Cabbage.

Jan said it was fork-tender.

I got the Bürgermeister Plate, with Polish Sausage, Bratwurst, and Knackwurst, along with Sauerkraut and German Potato Salad.

Of course, I had to add an order of the Red Cabbage to my lunch too.