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Monday and Tuesday, July 8th and 9th, 2013
The first thing I’ve got to write about is how wonderful all the work Bill did on the air-conditioning is. We’ve had trouble with the dash air for 13 years. We’ve spent the money to take the motor home in to get it fixed but it’s never any better. We’ve spent so much money on 134A refrigerant but it never lasts. We had been buying the 12 ounce cans and out of frustration Bill just bought a 30 pound bottle. I hope this doesn’t burn a hole in the ozone layer. What we’ve always ended up doing when it’s been hot was to run the generator while driving down the road and running the basement air. This year Bill decided to really give it his best at tackling the problem. He worked on it for weeks, ordering one part after another. He replaced two refrigerant lines and the dryer receiver. We crossed our fingers and began the trip. I am delighted to say that the dash air is working wonderfully well so far. I think he did it! And will we ever need it for this trip! In addition to all this, Bill installed a roof air-conditioning unit so now we have dash air, roof air and a two compressor basement air. I shall never be hot again. We’ve been planning this trip for months and it’s now here, in fact, it got here a couple of days earlier than we had planned. We had originally thought we’d leave on Wednesday morning. Bill had the idea that if we left later in the day on Monday we’d arrive at Elko (our first stop) around 8:00 p.m. and it would be cool enough to sleep comfortably parked at Walmart. That would save us one night’s lodging. Hmmm…that wasn’t such a good idea. It was quite hot in Elko, so much so that Bill left our bed and opened a window in the living area and decided to sleep on the couch. That was comfortable until the lawn sprinklers came on and through the window. He said it was like someone squirted him with a water pistol. I think that is hilarious, however, that is probably because I was in the bed sound asleep. We’re starting with a couple little bumps in the road but what trip starts any other way. Our refrigerator broke on July 3rd. Bill started calling around and found out the part (that we’ve replaced four times now) had to be ordered from the factory. Since it was 4th of July weekend we couldn’t get it delivered and installed in time so he decided to bypass the problem and deal with it when we got to Forest City, Iowa where we’ll be stationary for a week. We’ll hope that works out. Bill was also really happy about saving quite a bit of money by changing our cellular phone service. That was done without too much thought of how it would work on the road. It worked great in Sparks but we found out very fast that the service plus the type of phone we bought has terrible coverage throughout the rest of the country. This trip is entirely too long to go without telephone coverage so we went into Walmart that first night and bought is $15 cell phone with month to month Verizon coverage. It seems to be a good workaround. We now have three cell phones with us – SmartTalk, Verizon and AT&T (which has only 1,000 minutes a year). We spent our second afternoon and night in Heyburn, Idaho on the Snake River near Twin Falls. It was about a four drive here so we’ve enjoyed relaxing this afternoon. Daisy is doing well so far although she at times doesn’t let us know when she needs to go outside and today she piddled right in front of me. What is that all about? I’m attributing it to her advancing age. She’s keeping us on our toes. We stop about every two hours to let her out when we’re driving. She used to be such a great traveler. Not so much anymore but she’s worth the trouble.
