Off, with a bang!

Morning came with sunny skies and all of us on time and ready to go.  Jo, Karens friend who will be going along with us for 10 days or so showed up right on time.  Karen had already moved her coach up on the driveway and hooked up her Jeep.  And with a bit of tire inflations was ready to go the night before.  We moved up and hooked up our Jeep and we were all looking at each other 30 minutes before planned departure time.  We had found out the campground where we had a reservation for the first night out had a 4pm checkin time, and we were told it would be no problem checking in early except for a $2.00 FEE!!  Absurd, we never had experienced anything like that in all our travels.  

Jan and I ready to go!

So we didn't want to leave early, as it turned out we needn't have worried...

Our mighty caravan headed north towards Cincinnati on our first leg, a beautiful day, all of us excited to be moving.  So a little south of Cincy we stop in a rest area and do a walk around and find there is oil dripping out from under Karen's rig, and on closer inspection, not only oil, but coolant too!  Her Jeep is pretty much covered as well.  Damn!  We take a look and I see the coolant leak is minor, just a leak where a fitting goes into her reservoir.  It appears that an o-ring has disintegrated.  But I think I can fix it with some teflon tape, but we'll have to let it cool a bit so we can drain the anti-freeze down to where I can pull the fitting out.  As to the oil leak, after peering around that appears to be the oil dipstick tube has become detached from the engine.  Most of these that I've seen are held in with a o-ring type fitting where the tube's form holds it in.  Needs to cool for this also.  Karen decides to call roadside assistance, and while we wait, time for an early lunch.  After lots of calls, and conversations with Cummins, they feel it will need parts which they don't have, but can she drive it to their shop or does she need a tow?  She will have to wait until Monday morning for them to look at it.  Damn!

Jan and I tackle the coolant leak while she is on the phone.  Get that taken care of.  Then since she has decided she will have to go to Cummins I crawl under after we jack up the rear a bit so we can see if there is a way to cut down on the amount of oil she will lose getting it to their shop, and lo and behold, the oil dipstick tube is actually held in with a flare fitting that has just loosened and allowed the tube to pull free.  3 minutes of work and it is fixed!  So as it turned out we didn't have to worry about our 4pm arrival after all.  The rest of the trip to Seville, OH was uneventful, the campground quite tight, but pretty and quiet.  Toasted our adventure's beginning and had a good night.  Off to Niagara Falls!