What a whirlwind. Today makes seven consecutive days of travel covering 1845 miles from Lubbock to Buffalo, NY. And if you start in Durango, 2465 miles. We don't normally do this, but we were on a mission.
The poorly draining galley sink turned into a not draining galley sink issue. I found a clean out, opened it up and tried to see what was blocking it, no joy. Finally had to go to Lowes and buy a plumber's snake, 25 feet long. Snaked it a few times through the clean out, tried it out, thought we had beaten it so filled up the sink, and.......it wouldn't drain at all! Now what? Had to carefully loosen the trap and drain the water a bit at a time, finally tried the snake again. I fed it it and out while Jan turned it, we went the whole 25 feet until we were sure we had reached our gray tank, then in and out all the way back, and yes we finally got it clear:-)
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| Draining the full sink with the trap |
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| Yeah, a bit disruptive:-) |
Then after a last get together with our daughter Kelly and son-in-law Brian, we bid Lubbock goodbye.
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| A little rainbow along the way |
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| From this angle it looks okay, not true |
Then a stop in Arkansas at a neat campground, just an overnight place, although with full hookups and paved sites, and only $30 cash, Lower White River.
The next day we went to the Indianapolis KOA, actually in Greenfield, IN east of the city, our aim here was to treat ourselves to a steak dinner at the famous St Elmo's in Indianapolis, where we had celebrated our 25th anniversary many years ago:-) Since it was a Thursday, we never gave any thought to the fact it might be difficult to get a reservation. They were fully booked. Oh well, next time... But the KOA was nice, again huge but nicely situated in shady woods with huge sites.
Then we pushed up into Illinois and found another interesting campground, Ucamp. It was a true kiosk, like a parking kiosk, with long pull throughs and concrete patios, and something we have never seen, 24 hours for your site. We pulled in at 3:30, and our receipt showed us having the site until 3:30 the next day?!?
Then a long pull up into northeast Ohio, we had a real time trying to find an open campground on a Friday night, with the season waning away. We ended up with a reservation at Willow Lake in Geneva, OH. It is a huge campground divided into 2 sections, one seasonal, and the other shorter term, daily, weekly, and even monthly. It was packed, amazed we got a site. But what a time we had getting there. After driving 350 miles we left the interstate and headed into Geneva, you have to go through the town to get to the campground, and both of our GPS's started giving us warnings, possible groundings ahead! The warning means there is a possible spot usually a very high and steep RR crossing on which you could high center, we sit quite low and with our long wheelbase, we have to be careful. We eased through town and then passed a sign warning us of the high crossing. We arrived at a ridiculously steep and high RR crossing, and had no option except to turn blindly down the only street there was, and of course by that time we had a line of cars behind us. We poked down the street okay and came out to a larger road, and then started looking for a way around. We found on Google Maps what looked like a fairly level crossing 5 miles up the road, so that's where we went, the crossing was fine, then we drove the 5 miles back, and then found yet another RR crossing that we barely managed to get over, finally into the campground.
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| Nice, once we finally got there |
The next morning after we had spent some time planning our departure route to get around the bad RR crossing, we pulled out, and turned into our first road around the crossing only to find the narrow road closed and blocked by a fire engine and utility truck!!! The only turnoff was what we thought was a subdivision, but was actually a cemetery, we crept around the cemetery and just managed to get turned around without disconnecting or falling off the tiny road into a drainage ditch, yehaw! Then the final leg, only 160 miles to Buffalo, actually North Tonawanda to a very conveniently located motel/campground that is adequate, paved pull throughs, run down, messy, but very close to our son Jason and his fiancé Joanne's home. And that is why we are here.
I should say that one of our members is quite perturbed with all the constant traveling, can't relax, can't sleep, can't eat when he wants, quite disrupted.
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| Bert is pissed! |
2 comments:
So this is an actual tip for the RV pilots of the world. IF you get high centered crossing a railroad right of way grade. Most of the R.R. tracks in America are protected by signal systems tied into an occupancy detector in the rails.
To send a signal up and down the line and turn the railroad signals to red/stop indication. Use a set of common battery jumper cables and to connect the rails to each other. This will shunt the signals to think there is a stray boxcar or something on the track ahead. Problem is the crossing arms will probably come down on your rig if it is high centered on the crossing. But this cheating of the signal system is a last resort to protect your vehicle from getting hit by a freight train. You can call 911 but by the time the crossing is isolated and relayed to the railroad dispatcher it is generally too late. The only other option is to call the railroad emergency number usually found on a post or structure near the crossing. These calls are directed to a central dispatch for each railroad. The other bad news is if you get hit by a train you will be billed for damage to the locomotive and rolling stock, grade crossing signal gear, clean up of the right of way from your rig being split in two. Technically every time you cross the tracks you are trespassing on the railroads' right of way. Be careful. Most modern locomotives are over 400,000 pounds each and trains can weigh be upward of 20 million pounds moving at 60 mph is an awesome force.
Mass x velocity squared= a big mess.
A big mess indeed! Thanks, didn't know any of that. I haven't seen that many impassable crossings, but have seen enough to wonder why they aren't fixed. I have seen them in TX, GA, and now OH. But I am sure there are hundreds? more.
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