Happy New Year

To one and all. Nicky and Keith had what looked like a great NYE dance, the Spurs beat the Celtics 120-111, Betty and Bill spent NYE in Roanoke on their way home from Nashville, Walt Crowder got out of the hospital and is doing better, and we went to bed before midnight. How 'old' is that?

And the saga continues. When one of the ladies who went to the basketball game with Nancy and Marjorie met them here at the house, she announced our passenger rear tire on the car was flat. Too late to do anything about it, it will stay that way until Wednesday. 

Nothing much else going on. Just want to wish all of our family, friends, acquaintances, and our country the best, most prosperous, healthy New Year, and that all your desires, dreams and inclinations come true. 

Arrived in Schertz

We left Texarkana at precisely 9AM CST. The GPS started telling us to go ways we just knew were incorrect. Turns out that when we upgraded the software the settings changed to Car, not RV, which we quickly changed. The nice thing was instead of taking us on interstates, which would have taken us west to Dallas, then south, it took us southwest on rural highways the entire way all the way to Austin. We were only on the interstate for 61 miles of our 405 mile trip. The views were nicer, the time flew by, and it was more relaxing than the interstate.

Our joy at having no problems with the engine ended while still in the campground. We filled up last night, and we had the same problem with our fuel filters as before. Very unusual for it to happen once, let alone twice. Will have to fix that before we continue our travels.

Finally, we stopped at a Texas institution, Buc-ees. It is a texas-size fuel/department store. It has 120 fuel pumps and everything from clothing to nuts, kitchen items, foods, deli, and more! We fuelled up there and it was only $2.49 a gallon! The only negative was it took about 20 minutes to fuel as the pumps were the smaller size used in cars, not the larger size used by big rigs/trucks.

We arrived in Schertz around 5 PM to find Mom, Marjorie, and Ron waiting for us outside in the light rain. After backing in the driveway and setting up, we came inside to find Philly cheesesteaks and root beer waiting for us. We sat down to eat and watched the Eagles outplay the Redskins, then watched the Vikings hand the Eagles a playoff spot next weekend.

Anyway, that's it for tonight. Tomorrow Nancy & I will celebrate by sleeping as late as we want, then she is going to a girl's night out to the San Antonio Spurs game.

Texarkana, TX

Left Lebanon Tennessee this morning at 10:15 CST. Tried to make a reservation before we left at the KOA in Little Rock, Arkansas but they were full. No other campgrounds in the area were able to accommodate our size rig, so we decided that we would not stop in Arkansas but go on to Texarkana, Texas. We found a nice place, Shady Pines RV Park, called for a reservation, and drove 513 miles. Arrived at 7:50pm CST. A beautiful, albeit small, RV park, only 40 sites. Beautifully landscaped, all sites are concrete pads, paved roads, beautiful office/Lodge. It rated a 4.7 of 5 out of more than 1200 reviews. Would definitely stay here again. 

The weather this trip has been in the upper 20s to low 30s at night everywhere we stopped, and tonight will be no exception. Hopefully the rain they are calling for will pass by tonight leaving our drive tomorrow clear.

Our plans are to drive the remaining 425 miles tomorrow and arrive in Schertz a day early, using the extra time to relax and visit. 

Problem resolved

I woke at 7:45am this morning to discover I had missed two calls from Cummins in Knoxville, TN. Called them right back and set up an appointment for 1 pm, so we quickly closed up the RV and headed out. We left Wytheville at 9am, drove 178 miles and arrived at 12:30. They took us in, evaluated the problem, and said the diagnosis code indicated a problem with our fuel filters. I was asked if we had recently filled our fuel tank. Responding in the affirmative, they strongly suggested the fuel had water and or contaminants in it which clogged our filters, especially since we had driven over 300 miles prior to fueling without a problem. Happily, that seemed to fix the problem. What a treat to drive without needing to put on your flashers because your vehicle is moving too slowly.

We left Cummins at 5:30 pm and decided to stick to our goal of 350 miles a day. We drove another 160 miles toward Nashville and arrived at the Nashville East KOA at 9pm Eastern, 8pm Central. Set up, and went right to bed. Going to sleep as soon as Blue Bloods is over. Treating ourselves tomorrow by leaving at 10am Central. Next stop, Little Rock Arkansas. 

Our first day

We started off the day right. After filling up with propane, we were on the road at 9:15am. Then things went sour. We had imported our trip itinerary to our RV GPS, but when it imported it made some of our route changes as destinations. We crossed over the Francis Scott Key bridge near Baltimore since we can't drive our rv thru the Harbor tunnel. Five miles over the bridge the GPS starts issuing directions to make turns. After 30 or 40 minutes, and not finding 95 South, it had us about to go back over the bridge in the direction we had come.

Well, after correcting that debacle, we were on our way. Traffic was heavier than expected around Washington. We thought it would be lighter since the government is shut down. But we continued on. After 300 miles we stopped for fuel and something to eat. By then it was 2:15pm. 

No sooner did we leave filled up and the check engine light came on. I checked the oil and topped it off but that wasn't the problem. After several stops to try to figure out what might be wrong, we consulted with our son Brian, an excellent mechanic. He advised that as long as the light was steady we could continue to drive. And so we did, for another 150 miles. The only problem was we couldn't go faster than 55 MPH because of whatever is the problem. And going up hills (there are plenty of them in Virginia) we could only go 35 at times. Needless to say, this slowed our progress considerably!

But here we are, at the Wytheville, VA, KOA. We finally arrived at 8:50 pm, just as the winds started from the impending storm. Temperatures are expected to drop below freezing so we aren't allowed to connect our water lines. Rain started at 10 pm, and flash flooding is on the schedule for tomorrow so we may stay here for the whole day and leave on Saturday. We'll have to see what happens. 

Tried to schedule an appointment for our engine with Cummins but have to wait for a call back. Found out a dealership 1-1/2 hours back was opened till 11 pm. If we only knew.Oh well!

Our winter move, 2018

We are now getting ready to set out on the road again for the winter, which is set to start on Thursday. Spent the last two weeks running around getting our 6 month and annual medical stuff completed, and the past two days tossing stuff we accumulated, shredding papers, repacking, etc. Boring stuff. 

We have been going to the Monroeville winery once or twice a week to meet with friends but haven't done near as much dancing as we would have liked. We spent Christmas Eve with Mark's family, Christmas day with Nancy's family, and Wednesday doing some final items and spending some time with Jim, Nancy's brother-in-law. Her sister, his wife, passed away the day after Christmas last year suddenly, and this will be the first anniversary of that event.

Speaking of which, Nancy has had three family members pass this month alone. They say that happens most frequently in December, so I guess this proves the point.

Anyway, made our final rounds saying good-bye, giving out presents and meeting friends, packing and rearranging, and are now ready to leave. Our only major concern is the major winter storm moving East and right through our path.

Starting up again

Well, here we are getting ready to move to our next campground. This one, Old Cedar in Monroeville, NJ, extended the season for seasonals, so we stayed the extra 3 weeks. But what a dismal summer! It only rained twice, once for 45 days, again for 32 (just kidding, but it DID rain a lot, most of the time).

The good thing is we got to meet some great people this summer (you know who you are). We didn't get much dancing done as we expected. Nancy got sick for a while (better now), or it was just too darned hot and muggy when it wasn't raining. How much you ask? At one place it was so humid that Mark slipped on his derriere from the condensation on the dance floor.

Referring to our leveler problem reported on June 7th, the passenger front leveler stopped working at Ruff Dale. We were on a hill with the leveler on the downhill side so we had to prop the RV with logs and boards.

When we got to Old Cedar, we tried to buy a new one from Lippert Components, who bought out the company that manufactured our leveler. Sure, they had plenty on hand, but wouldn't sell us one as they were saving their supply for those who were still under warranty. So we bought one online. When we replaced it (and tossed the old one), the control touch pad, where you expand/retract the leveler stopped working. Another call to Lippert who diagnosed and said we needed a new touch pad. Ordered, received, did not resolve the problem; the new one wouldn't power on either. More calls, more diagnosis over 3-1/2 months and finally spoke to a representative who knew what he was talking about. Diagnosed the problem as a port on the leveler control panel in the basement of the RV. He sent us a new control panel and another touchpad. For free, thank goodness. The cost for both would have been close to $1,000. Received them 3 weeks later, installed the control panel, and voila! Everything works. So we probably threw out a perfectly good leveler in the beginning, and am now trying to get Lippert to refund us for sending their original replacement back. In the midst of this, we had to replace two house batteries. We were lucky with them. Ours were the original ones and lasted ten years. We're told they normally last 3-6 years.

Recently, Mark took a job at Amazon for something to do. Wound up as a sorter/stacker four nights a week for 4 hours each,  but got bored, so he left.

So here we are now, packing/arranging things for our move and getting ready to start up dancing again tonight. 

More later.