And Today Makes Seven!

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:-)

Draining the full sink with the trap

Yeah, a bit disruptive:-)

Then after a last get together with our daughter Kelly and son-in-law Brian, we bid Lubbock goodbye.

First stop and second stop both in Oklahoma.  First stop was a nice full hook up, all paved overnight.  Second stop was underwhelming, a very poor KOA on Lake Eufaula, not kept up, trash around, and even our grill had old food and pans in it.  Not recommended.

A little rainbow along the way

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.

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.

Bert is pissed!

Goodbye Montana, Goodbye Idaho, Goodbye Utah, Goodbye Colorado

It's early in the year for us to be saying goodbye to the West, but it is what it is.  The smoke and fires did us in as well as the wind, dust, and heat.

Durango was a nice visit, hardly any smoke at last.  We had to move sites once which took up part of one day, and we managed to get many things done while we were there.  Jan got her hair cut, and we finally hooked up with some fresh vegetables!  We don't understand, but we have never seen any roadside stands or any fresh veg in the west except at a sporadic farmer's market.  But there is a small stand in Durango that had wonderful Olathe corn, delicious tomatoes and green beans, and we made a feast of them!

Settled in to our second site

Oh yeah!

We ran some other errands while in town and tried to tackle a small problem we have been experiencing for some time now.  We have a braking system on our truck that works off the air from our coach's brakes, and there is a small light at the driver's seat that indicates to me when the truck's brakes are applied.  When we were in Florida, we lost the light and after tearing through the whole system and replacing the switch, we found the light had burnt out:-(  But after we hit the road in the spring, we keep blowing the fuse in the truck that controls the light system.  Sometimes it will work for days and days and other times one brake application will pop the fuse.  We talked to the brake system company and they suggested a larger fuse as the run from the truck all the way to the driver's seat of the motorhome is a long way, 55' plus.  We did that and got a day out of it before it blew.  So I decided to rewire from the truck battery, install a new inline fuse holder, and new larger wire to the air actuated switch.

The switch and we replaced the bottom wire, the other wire goes to
the electrical plug at the front of the truck in which we plug our cable
into that also controls the lights on the truck when we tow

Update, it worked for a whole day and half of another until it blew again?!?!

Anyway, back to Durango.  We went up to Molas Pass, just short actually, to Andrew's Lake to take a hike around it.  It was a beautiful cool day.

We had a great time!

Went out to lunch a few more times and sure enough our time came to an end.  We had a lovely last evening and then said goodbye early the next morning.

Now we are on the move with a couple short stops along the way.  We have made our way to Lubbock now and are visiting our daughter and her husband for a few days then we will diagonal northeast up to Buffalo to see our son and fiancé.  Lots of miles:-)

I do want to mention a very cool little campground we visited in the northeast corner of New Mexico called Coyote Keeth.  It is an overnight stop, reasonably priced, 50 amp full hookup park with a kiosk to check in, and you can even make a reservation.  It has 15 pull through sites, first come, first serve, so if you have made a reservation, you pay at the kiosk and go find a site that has an orange cone, easy peasy.  

There is a real need for these quick, easy, reasonable overnight parks, and hope more of them pop up, in fact we'll let you know about another we plan to stay at in Illinois on our way north.  So now Jan and Kelly are off doing stuff and I am trying to figure out why our sink in the galley isn't draining, especially since we just replaced the drain hose.  Grrr.