Thanksgiving in Texas

We're still at Rainbow's End in Livingston, TX. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and the campground will be serving several smoked turkeys, YUM!!! We'll all be sitting at tables of ten and everyone at each table will bring a dish to share. The folks at our table all got together over some burgers last Friday, to  coordinate who is bringing what, and also to meet each other so we're not strangers when we sit down to dinner.  We're bringing Heidi Chmura's yummy Sweet Potato Casserole and Mark Elfstrand (of Moody Radio) Family's famous Strawberry Pretzel Salad. Penny's cooking the potatoes, jello and pretzel crust right now and the HOW smells heavenly.

After some, beautiful weather, it turned cold and wet. It rained for three days, and for a while it even snowed. We were taking the HOW for its Texas Safety Inspection and dime sized snow flakes started coming down. OK that's novel and all, and now I've officially driven the HOW in the snow, but we didn't drive all the way to Houston to get soaked and freeze.

Oh well, life's an adventure, and we did buy the ticket to the ride... By early next week we should be done with all our residency stuff and we can head towards warmer and drier climes.

We want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. Please remember to thank God, our Father and the giver of all we've been blessed with.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

Here we are at last in Livingston, Texas, where we'll stay until the end of the month.  The leaves are just starting to change, like late August at home.  When we arrived 10 days ago, the forecast was for daytime temps between 60 and 80, with nights between 40 and 60.  Now it's cold and wet, with days in the 40's and nights in the 20's and 30's.  I thought we came south to enjoy the warm weather - yikes!     

 

We're staying at Rainbow's End RV Park, which is one of the Escapee campgrounds.  Escapees is the premier full-time RV'er support organization in America, with over 30,000  active members.   This campground is their national headquarters.  Their mail forwarding service is one of the largest in the country, and they will be handling ours.  They will forward our mail to whatever address we ask them to, so regardless of where we're staying we can get our mail.

These pictures are of our site.  We're at the end of a row, and there's pretty much open area, both beside and behind us.  Campground is nice.

 

This week we're going to do our residency stuff so we have a place to register vehicles and vote.  We've been seriously planning where to go next.  We're thinking, work our way south to Galveston, then up the border through Mission, El Paso and west on Interstate 10 to Arizona until mid April, then start our way back home after a full timer rally via Tennessee.  We plan to be back in Rockford before May 15th

Thanks to the lovely and vivacious Penny for her photos and authorship of this post.

We have liftoff

 We finally left Illinois. Better late than never. Although it was really windy most of the way down I-39 and I-55, it cleared up when we got into the southern part of Illinois. Our first stop was outside of St. Louis. It was already dark when we got there and we got to see the famous St. Louis Arch, gateway to the west, all lit up. As many times as I've been to St. Louis, I've never seen this iconic structure in person. I thought it'd be bigger... 

We overnighted at a local campground nearby and tried to leave early, but ran into a small problem. We always do a light-check before we hit the road, and this time Penny found a taillight on the toad that wasn't working. Fortunately it was a beautiful warm and sunny morning. Bless God for gifting me with good troubleshooting abilities and an aptitude for technology. Tracked the problem down to a loose wire on the plug. Tightened her back up and we were on our way, late, but moving none the less.

Since it was already afternoon, we decided not to drive for too long, so we made our way to a nice campground called The Landing Point in Cape Girardeau, Mo. 

The campground had laundry facilities, so we took advantage of the unscheduled free time to freshen up our skivvies. By the time we finished, it was after dark and getting cold, so we had a bite to eat and hit the hay.

In the morning, we were off again, heading southwest.  The winds had calmed and it was getting a bit warmer, which brought out A LOT more Asian Lady Beetles. We we going through corn and soybean country where these pests like to live, and with the crops all being harvested, they had nowhere to go except everywhere else, especially the HOW. By mid-afternoon we had made it to the Little Rock, Arkansas area. We stayed at a place across the river from downtown Little Rock. It was nice and warm now, so we were able to sit by the river and enjoy the night skyline.

The next day we headed south, and in a few hours were out of farm country and driving past horse and cattle ranches. We knew we were in Texas when the road kill changed from racoons to armadillos. Sure enough, we were in our new home state!

Should I Stay or Should I Go

Or shall I say we? Doesn't match the song lyrics, but there are two of us.

Anyway, when I left off last time we were being invaded by plagues of insects, enduring day after day of rain, and I had repairs and mods to make on the HOW (House On Wheels). 

The rain finally let up, and I was able to install the windshield washer pump.  That was fun because the pump is attached to the reservoir, which is attached to the coach near the bottom of the body. You can just touch the top to open and close it for filling. Mind you, you can't fill it unless you have a 30 inch funnel, but hey, maybe the guy who designed the rig had really LONG arms. (I bet it was the same guy who decided that the brake fluid reservoir and fill cap should be located so far up in the engine compartment that you can check the fluid level, but if it was low you'd have to remove the upper dashboard and defroster vents to add any.) The fun part was laying on the ground, installing the reservoir with the plague of bugs covering me like a second set of clothes. (Did I mention just how BAD those Asian Lady Beetles smell when they congregate? And did I mention THEY BITE???)

That task successfully completed, we contacted Sargent Mike's RV and Home Repair. Sargent Mike is a mobile RV repair guy. He's an institution in and around the greater Rockford, IL area. He's not only extremely competent and trustworthy, he's a great guy. We wanted Sgt. Mike to see if he could resolve our leaking slide issue. 

In the meantime the weather turned cold, real cold. It got down to the mid 20's on several nights. Our HOW is not a four-seasons rig. Four-season rigs have heated water tanks, plumbing and storage bays to keep things from freezing. Our tanks, and some of the plumbing are enclosed in a semi insulated space that runs about 15 or 20 feet between the frame-rails and under the floors. The space is fully enclosed, except for a 18X12 inch opening to the utility bay where the water pump, fresh water fill, outside shower, electrical hookups, waste dump valves, etc are located. (Probably designed by the same guy who designed...) I filled the opening with fiberglass insulation and hung a metal trouble-light with a 75 watt bulb next to the pump and pipes. Just enough to keep things from freezing. I put another of the same kind of trouble-light in the enclosed space where the 80 gallon fresh water tank feeds into the plumbing. Inside the HOW we kept the furnaces set to a minimum of 65 degrees. The heating ducts don't seem to run through the same space as the plumbing (same guy who designed...?) but we thought if the inside didn't get too cold, and we left the sink cabinets open overnight,  plus the trouble-lights, we wouldn't burst our pipes. We supplemented the gas furnaces with an electric radiator in the bedroom and bathroom at night and used a mattress pad heater (YES!). We used a small oscillating ceramic heater when we were in the living area. Still, we went through propane pretty fast. All in all we were pretty comfy.

Sgt. Mike came out and was able to get our slide fixed pretty quickly. Bless God, for Sgt. Mike!

We got everything battened down and ready to travel and went to bed to the sounds of our local pack of coyotes. Next morning I set out to check the inflation on the four tires on the toad (towed vehicle) and six tires on the HOW. Improper inflation is one of the leading causes of breakdowns and crashes in RV's. I started with the toad, and on the first tire, something didn't seem right. Turns out my trusty, big old honking', calibrated, tire gauge was missing a seal nut on the inside valve. Nice. I looked around but couldn't find it anywhere. Oh well, time to get out the spare smaller tire gauge. Toad tires checked out. No need to wrestle with a cold, stiff compressor hose yet. Put the tire gauge to the first tire on the HOW, and POW! The tire gauge exploded into pieces. Some of them shot six feet! This gauge is for bicycles and goes up to 150 PSI, ("This one goes to eleven..."). The HOW's tires only take 80 PSI. I didn't have another gauge that went over 50 PSI, but I found that I could coax the first one to work if I held the thing together with my finger and thumb. Measured five tires, all five were fine. On the sixth, when I pulled the gauge off the valve stem, the valve core stuck open and air was hissing out. I could not get it unstuck, so I put the cap on the valve and the air stopped leaking. I use high quality metal valve caps with o-rings for this very reason. I went inside the HOW and raised the front jacks to take the weight off the tire, and also so that if it went flat, the wheel wouldn't crush the tire and ruin it.

  Bein' the former Jeeper that I am, I've dealt with a lot of inflation/ de-inflation, stuck/ frozen valve stems, and lost beads. I know I've got a tire valve repair kit, but where? IN THE STUPID STORAGE SHED WITH OUR BIKES, THAT'S WHERE!!!.
OK, we're paying for roadside assistance and it covers this kind of thing, so Penny calls them up. They dispatch a guy and say he'll be there in one to three hours. It's already hours passed our departure time. And guess what? It's beginning to rain.

So the guy shows up, and he's not going to replace the valve core, he's going to replace the whole valve stem. So now the 22,000 pound fully loaded HOW has to be jacked up and the wheel taken off. I'll spare the ugly details of the whole process. Suffice to say, that when I pointed out that the tire now seemed to be leaking from the inner bead because the guy hadn't cleaned all the balancing powder off the wheel when he reseated it, he said that always happens and that if he over inflates the tire, it will seat itself after a while. Hey whaddya know, he was right. when we called him back out three rainy days later, (three days is "a while" isn't it?) and he cleaned the powder off like he should have the first time, it seated properly and stopped leaking.

With all the strange problems, delays, plagues, and now Penny coming down with a nasty cold, we started wondering if God was trying to tell us he had other plans for us. We came so close to throwing in the towel that we we put ernest money down on a small place in Belvidere, IL. Long story short, we didn't buy it, and left town.

BTW, I fabricated a DIY cold air intake that employs a high performance air filter, and won't suck water into the system when it rains. HA!

Failure to Launch

We're still in Illinois, currently at Rock Cut State Park, north of Rockford. We've been here for three weeks. The park is over 3000 acres, and has several campgrounds. We're the only ones in our campground during the week. As the cold is setting in, the animals are getting really active. I guess they want to eat as much as they can while there's still food to eat. The other night a pack of coyotes was just outside of our campsite, yipping and barking and making all kinds of noise. (Click this to link to some audio of what it sounded like.

I had another procedure to finish, and then wait for results, some additional tests, and wait for results. One doctor scared the $#!* out of us by telling us that I would explode and die if I lifted more than ten or twenty pounds, or left town, or anything more that sitting around waiting until I needed a liver transplant. That was two weeks after the doctor managing my care cleared me to lead a normal life. Travel, kayaking, the whole "Live long and prosper" thing. We were frozen in place. Stay? Go? We had to wait a week to talk to the main doctor to find out if something had changed, or was the other doctor being overly cautious.

After all that was settled we packed up the HOW, and tested out the Brake Buddy (a braking aid for the car towed (aka toad) behind the HOW), and all the electrical and mechanical connections. All systems go! Next morning, car won't start. Battery was bad. Jumped it and went to get a new one. By the time we got back to the HOW, it was too late to leave.

Next day, it poured. Day after that, it poured. Then it rained after that. Rain is a problem for the HOW because of a design flaw on certain model years of Fleetwood coaches. The manufacturer put the air intake right behind the grill, so at highway speeds in a hard rain, water gets sucked up and soaks the air filter. At best the the engine looses performance, at worse the filter collapses and the engine ingests water causing a hydro lock.  Hydro lock means new engine. Yikes! Fortunately I heard about this before, and I carry a spare in case I need to change it, but until I can retrofit it, I try not to drive in the rain.

In between showers, I was checking out the windshield washers when they quit squirting. Pump died. I pulled the failed one and set about finding a replacement. After WAY too many hours, I found a "universal" replacement. By the time I got back to... you guessed it; raining.

Since it was raining, we decided to finish some HOW-improvement projects. During the work, we noticed that the carpet on, under and next to the front slide was soaked. Slides are a mixed blessing. While they expand your living space a lot, there is much to go wrong. The seals wear out over time, but you really can't know when, until they fail.  Until we could have this looked at, we decided not to deploy the slide when it rains. When it's not, we aim a heater at the wet spots to help them dry.

When it cleared up, I went to install the replacement windshield washer fluid pump and found that it wasn't all that universal. Another hunt, another pump, this one truly a replacement, and guess what, rain.

Though all this, we've been tormented by a plague of Box Elder Bugs, Asian Lady Beetles, and flies. In case you're among the fortunate, who don't experience this twice a year display of biomass, let me describe it. 

Asian Lady Beetle
Image source: orkin.com

Asian Lady Beetles, like the more commonly known Lady Bug Beetles, are really beneficial insects. They are very effective at keeping agricultural pest populations in control, which in tern reduces the amount of pesticides needed. These little buggers are so effective that the USDA released zillions of them in Virginia and North Carolina in an effort to control aphid populations on tobacco plants. Along with the Fed, various State and local governments, as well as universities with agricultural departments also released the beetles. All these releases produced favorable results, but the beetles never reproduced, and soon died off. Ironically, in 1998, a freighter from Asia was docked in New Orleans. The ship was infested with Asian Lady Beetles. They escaped and have been spreading since.  In late Autumn, when crops are harvested, the beetles have no place to over-winter, so they move into anything they can, houses, barns, RV's... It wouldn't be so bad, but these ain't your Granny's Lady Bugs. For one thing, they bite, or pinch. Second, when threatened or squished, they release a really bad smelling yellow fluid. It's nasty! Third, there are boatloads of them per acre. 

Box Elder Bug
Image source: orkin.com

Now on to my personal favorite, the Box Elder Bug. These things serve no useful purpose that I can ascertain,  except as a pestilence.  On warm fall afternoons, the sunny side of a house, or RV, becomes covered with a living carpet of the things. It's creepy beyond belief. Fortunately, not as many of these bugs bother coming into the interior. Mostly they hide in cracks and spaces. Box Elder bugs stink too. Squish one and they let out a red fluid that stains anything and stinks.

The flies? Who knows. 

I think that'll do for today. I'll continue with the saga in the next installment.