Our RV Adventures

And Dressing!

I put in a call to Gary, the service manager at Big Wheel RV. a couple of days ago, but still haven’t heard back from him about our refrigerator problem. I can’t imagine why he doesn’t want to talk to me.

Blog reader Dale Pace and her husband Terry related a very similar encounter at Big Wheel to ours.

Towed in to Big Wheel last year, their Tiffin needed a new serpentine belt. First off Big Wheel told them they also needed a new alternator because of the ‘drag’ when they tried to turn the alternator pulley by hand, and even said it was probably the ‘drag’ that shredded the belt.

When Terry checked with Freightliner, they were told the alternator will not ‘free-wheel’ under any circumstances. so they insisted that Big Wheel just replace the belt. And a year later it’s still doing fine.

And to make matters worse, Big Wheel couldn’t figure out how to replace the belt the right way, so they had to cut a hole in the bedroom closet floor to get to it. And you don’t need to do this to replace the belt.

By then the SM (Gary?) told them they had much bigger problems anyway, since the coach had lost ALL power. When Jerry ask them if they had hit the ‘disconnect’ by the door, he was told they would never fool with any ‘unknown’ switch.

Terry then reached in the doorway, pressed the switch, and what do you know, the coach suddenly had power again.

Then later, Big Wheel dropped the jacks, and hearing a loud hiss, said that the coach had a MASSIVE air leak and needed to be repaired,

Of course every coach I’m aware of dumps the airbags when you drop the jacks, hence the loud hiss of air.

So I guess I should feel better that it wasn’t just me.

About  3pm Jan and I headed out for an early dinner, and since it was Thursday, Cracker Barrel’s Turkey and Dressing was on the menu. For Jan, anyway.

I had planned to have the Beef Pot Roast Campfire Meal again,

but it’s come and gone, so I went with the new Fried Chicken Eggs Benedict dinner.

With Fried Chicken pieces, fried eggs, and topped with a Pimento Cheese Hollandaise sauce, along with a side of red skin potatoes and red peppers casserole, it was really good. Of course we’ve never had anything bad at CB.

Moving on, our next stop was the nearby Sam’s Club for a prescription and a couple of other things. We split our prescriptions between Wal-Mart and Sam’s due to different prices. The prescription we got at Sam’s for $10 with my Business membership card would be $78.42 at the Wal-Mart right next door.

Our next stop was Sam’s gas pumps to fill up our truck. The place was pretty busy, I guess, due to the incoming storm, but we only had to wait for one car to finish up in front of us.

Next up was the next door Wal-Mart for another prescription and some more stuff. Like the Sam’s, the bottled water shelves were stripped, but at the Wal-Mart they emptied the bread shelves too.

What ‘s kind of strange is that the booze shelves were still fully stocked.

Where are these people’s priorities? Don’t they know a storm’s coming?

I want to thank the number of people who have emailed us, concerned that a hurricane is coming our way.

First off, we’re not really worried since we’re 90 miles from the Gulf Coast, and about 250 miles from where Harvey is supposed to come ashore. Now, are we going to get wind and rain? Almost certainly, due to the fact that we will be on the dirty (wet) side of the storm.

But we’re parked in one of the highest points in the park, so I’m not worried about flooding. Although some of the lower areas here may have problems, depending on the amount of rain we actually do get here.

I did however change our upcoming travel schedule. Originally we were supposed to leave here Sunday, in the middle of the high winds and rain, and move over to Colorado River, but I’ve extended our stay here until Wednesday when things should have quieted down.

I’ve got mine. Why don’t you have yours?

Big Lake Tragedy

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Today was another travel day, with Jan and I heading down to the Clear Lake area for a client visit for me, a Chris and Linda visit for Jan, and a King Food lunch for all of us.

So we were out the door by 9:45 and heading through downtown Houston a little bit later. We were mostly past the rush hour traffic, and luckily encountered no accidents, so we pulled into the King Food parking lot right at 11am and found Chris and Linda, our son and daughter-in-law waiting for us.

And after our usual delicious lunch, Jan headed home to spend the afternoon at Chris’, while I drove over to my client’s to spend the afternoon there.

I’ve spent the last few days telecommuting in to the office computers using TeamViewer, but there are some things better/easier done in person. I’m still trying to unravel some of this installation, which is really squirrelly in many places.

In fact one of the things I’m trying to straighten out is the mail program, aptly named SquirrelMail. And so it goes.

I picked up Jan about 3:45 and headed back up to Conroe. All things considered, the traffic wasn’t too bad, even getting through downtown Houston. Then coming out the north side of town, we took the 610 loop east for a couple of miles until we got on the Hardy Toll Road. Then it was 70 mph all the way up before it dumps back on i-45, passed the heaviest going-home traffic, and about 20 miles from the park.

Along the way we had decided to stop and have dinner at the Cane’s Chicken Fingers in Conroe before heading back to the rig.

Cane’s has become pretty much our favorite chicken place since we first tried them in 2014 when we were on a gate near Bryan/College Station. Always really good.

Coming home we made a stop at a nearby O’Reilly’s for some hookup wire and then a convenience store for some $700+ Million Powerball Tickets.

They’re really made a lot of progress on the park paving, with all of the entrance way done,

and down pass the Activity Center and the new large parking area.

What I haven’t seen yet is any paving on the actual site roads, which is where it’s really needed in places. Hopefully they’re not stopping with just prettying up the entrance.

And even the new sites are progressing fairly well.

Though I don’t think they’ll be ‘done by August’ as was initially said.

Brandi originally had Landon’s birthday party scheduled for this Saturday at an outdoor entertainment center, but cancelled it due to the possible oncoming bad weather. But since the main attraction is a big waterslide, the kids probably wouldn’t mind.

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