We ended the month of June by traveling to Galveston, TX while waiting to start a series of jobs. While in Galveston we experienced our first appliance failure. On a Sunday morning our Dometic refer stopped working, so naturally no service facilities where available. I was able to confirm the control board had failed and by limiting our access to the refer we where able to keep everything frozen until Monday morning. Demontrond Motors in Texas City had us fixed up and running early Monday afternoon.
Our schedule had us following a series of jobs that was going to take us along the gulf coast to Victoria, Brownsville, Harlingen, Weslaco, McAllen, Mission then up to Del Rio, San Angelo and finally to Midland. Well, everyone knows that schedules are made to be changed. As it turned out, after we finished the project in Victoria we had to detour to Dallas on our way to Brownsville to get pre-approval on our net set of projects. Since it was only 700 miles out of our way we went.
We did learn something while on this detour. We use a Sirus Satellite Radio when traveling and enjoy it very much. During this trip we experienced weak or no signal several times and could not figure out what was wrong. After a couple of days we finally found the problem. It turns out a cat will block the signal. I have not yet been able to find an external antenna that I like so we are using the magnetic base antenna that came with the auto kit and it just sits on our dash. Well, our cats, Thelma and Louise have adapted to the RV life to the point where they enjoy riding on the dash. When they would lay on the antenna we would lose the signal.
After our detour we caught up with our crew in McAllen, TX. We spent about a week working five projects along this area of southern Texas. It turns out this is a snowbird destination in the winter so there where dozens of basically empty RV parks to choose from. We stayed at a new park in Mission, TX called Bentsen Palm RV Resort. This is a very nice, one year old RV park that like most of the others in this area caters to the winter snowbirds. They have over a hundred spots, with more being built, and we where one of three motor homes staying there. The management told us they where booked solid for their first winter. If you are ever in this part of the country check them out.
One day Joan was filling up our Jeep at a local gas station in Harlingen I heard her scream she couldn't shut off the gas pump. Since I was safely seat belted in I about killed myself trying to get out of the front seat. The tank had filled and did not shut off the nozzle. She had pulled the nozzle out and was pointing it towards the street, away from the pumps, other cars and our Jeep. Gas was shooting 10 feet down the driveway. I grabbed the nozzle from her and tried to shut it down while she ran inside. This type of pump did not have a handle to turn it on and off, when you shove the nozzle back into the slot it will shut off. Since we where now shooting gas 10 feet thru the air I didn't think it would be a good idea to shove the nozzle back into the pump. About this time Joan got inside and the attendant shut off the pump. What a mess. Joan was covered in gas and her clothes where ruined. She cleaned herself up as much as possible and we drove to a Target store next door and bought her some new clothes.
After Mission we traveled north/west to Del Rio for one night, then to San Angelo. We finished this set of projects in Midland before heading back to our favorite RV park in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
While here we scheduled a needed service appointment with Vogt RV for the following week. That night we received a call from my boss in Norman, OK and he wanted me to come work up to the office and work there for awhile. We talked him into delaying it long enough to get our service work completed.
One day while we where waiting for our service appointment I was driving on I30 when a LOUD noise and vibration came from the underside of our Jeep. I immediately stopped on the left median and crawled under the Jeep. I found our tow light wiring had come loose and had gotten wrapped around the drive shaft. Since it had been tie wrapped to the emissions return line that runs from the gas tank to the intake manifold most of that had also been torn off and was wrapped around the drive shaft. I was able to cut everything off and made and get back on the highway. When I return to the RV I called Discount Hitches, the shop Vogt RV used to install our tow bar base plate and wiring. They had me bring it in right away so they could look at it. They have been very responsive and have replaced the wiring at their expense. They have ordered the replacement tubing and canister for the emissions system and will install it when we return to Dallas.
When we showed up at Vogt RV at 8:00am for our appointment they where surprised to hear we lived in our RV, even though I had explained that to them when I called. They where also distressed that we had a fairly long list of things to get fixed. The service manager asked me to trim our list to the top 3 or 4 items and the rest would have to be done during the next appointment. I trimmed it to fix the torn slide out gasket on our bedroom slide, replace the front TV (previously diagnosed, new TV had been received) and find out why we get a sewer smell inside the coach if we do not completely dump AND rinse the black tank before traveling. The rest of the list was small stuff so we can wait. At the end of the day our TV had been replaced, a venturi vent cap was installed on the black tank and a slide out gasket had been ordered (to be installed later).
That evening we traveled up to Norman, OK so I can work in the office for a couple of months. After 10,000 miles in 9 weeks it will be nice to sit still for awhile.
Since we started our full timing journey we have found that the larger the city the harder it is to find a nice RV park. Oklahoma City was no exception. There are several parks in the OK City area but they are mostly filled up by "seasonal" or local residents. We finally found a very nice, family owned, RV park about 10 miles south/west of Norman. A-AAA RV Park is family owned and operated, close to several major roads yet very quiet and clean. It has 84 spots on 18 acres all with full 50/30 amp hookups. The spots are very large, grass and gravel and level. The family that owns the park is very friendly. We will be here for a couple of months so check back soon for more updates.