New plans and a run-up to leaving

Things have been settling down now as I recover, and I can say I'm almost back to normal. As it turned out, we have had to delay our departure by only several weeks.  A lot of chores have fallen to Jan, as I can't lift too much yet.  

We usually leave here and head north to Atlanta where we see our dentist, a doctor, and have visits with friends.  With the delay, that is off the table now, and coupled with a detour right at the start to Athens, TX, just southwest of Dallas to get the braking system installed in the truck, we will be bypassing and heading north towards Buffalo.  After Buffalo, we are pretty much resuming what we had been penciling in for the last few months, out to Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, back to Colorado, and New Mexico, before we turn east and head back to Florida for the winter.

And of course in addition to the normal stuff to get ready to leave, putting the grill back in storage, picking up the chairs, bikes, rugs, satellite dish, etc, as you know there had to be a few "unexpected" issues along the way.

We have a multiplex system in our coach that controls lights, awnings, heat, basically anything you would use a switch for.  It is interesting in that each switch can be programmed to do whatever you want it to, as a computer sets the function of each.  Not that you can do any of this yourself.  A company, M&M Electronics is the expert in this field and we had them several years ago, change the functions of many switches and record the program so if we had to replace any of the system we would be able to duplicate the program.  Well, one of the switches we use all the time popped right out of its panel, and of course what complicates this a lot is the fact most of the parts and pieces for this system are no longer available, one of the disadvantages of an older coach.

The faulty switch

We called M&M and were able to order several of the switch panels, thankfully it is just the plastic part not the switch itself, so in just a few minutes we took care of that.

We got the roof rack on the new truck and I had shared how Thule which is what we had on the other truck still hasn't come up with a kit for our rack so we went with Yakima, which we were very pleased with, so together we got it mounted along with our cargo carrier and rod vault.

Jan taking care of business

Now we love our site here in Florida, we sit under awesome live oaks that are almost like a roof over us, with one big disadvantage, they are dirty, dirty trees, so each year, sometimes twice, it is necessary to go on the roof sweep, clorox, and pressure wash to remove the staining.  And of course this project fell to Jan as well.

The before, what a mess!

Swept

Pressure washed and done

Our neighbors here in the park, Harold and Debbie had to leave early to fly home, and after a few weeks Harold and their daughter, Caley came down to take their motorhome back north.  It was nice to see them and we had an impromptu get together to wish them bon voyage.

Caley, Harold, Betty, Nancy, Doug, Jack, and Jan

Of course with all the activity getting ready, Bert was caught up in the frenzy.

Hardly standing it:-)

Another important project was to get the truck wired to tow.  We waited awhile until I felt ready to do it, and as we tackled it, we found out our 4 diode kit only had 3 diodes in it, but to their credit Blue Ox overnighted a new diode to us so we could get it done.

A little nerve-racking cutting wires in here

Trying to route the wire through the engine compartment

Getting up the courage to drill into your new truck

But we got it done, and am happy to say it works like a champ.

We finally got the replacement instrument module, there was a 6-8 week lead time, to replace the one we jury-rigged last year after the explosive air leak in our dash, so we replaced that and can report no more leaks.

The new module, doesn't look like $225, does it?

Then as we were firming up our plans and routing we sat down to plan our route and load the info on our GPS and the mapping program, Co-Pilot that we began using last year.  Much to our surprise, another company bought them out and basically made it totally unusable, and removed numerous features, so with just a week to go, what were we going to do.  I will admit we're a bit anal as far as navigating goes, I have a Garmin GPS, an RV760 in front of me and Jan had Co-Pilot running on her iPad in front of her.  Well, we took a plunge and ordered another Garmin GPS, a discontinued RV770 that arrived and much to our surprise found out Garmin has improved the GPS so much over the 760, we decided to sell our 760 and go with 2 newer GPS's.  Crazy, right?  I will report back after we are on the road for awhile how happy we are with the change.

So with only a few more projects, we are planning on leaving here on Saturday, to begin our travels, after thankfully, what looks to have been just a bump in the road.