Friday, September 19. 2008
Our summer travel plans had two primary objectives – first was to be in San Diego for a wedding (previously discussed), and second was to attend the Winnebago Grand National Rally (also in a prior blog.) All of the in-between plans were to be spontaneous and subject to our whims (which is the beauty of our kind of traveling!) Our tally for this summer was about 5,800 miles traveled, 748 gallons of diesel and 7.8 miles per gallon. Last summer we did 3,000 more miles but averaged 7.7 mpg – this was a reflection of us driving 5 mph faster last summer. As you might guess, fuel prices were a depressing factor – we always had to be prepared for ‘sticker shock’ since we had no idea where the ceiling was going to be for a gallon of diesel. When in California, diesel was over $5 a gallon and for most of the rest of our trip, it hovered in the $4.60 – $4.85 range. Every fill-up was roughly a buck a gallon more than last summer – ouch! Our response to the increased fuel prices was to cut our trip short some miles, drive at 60 mph on the Interstates, and return home a month early.
Trip highlights (in no particular order) were:
– The wedding
– Getting more things repaired (I think we’re almost done for now!)
– Experiencing 112 degree heat in Gila Bend, Arizona
– Visiting The Painted Desert & Petrified Forest
– Seeing prehistoric lava on the side of the highway (I-30) in New Mexico
– The Grand Canyon Railroad tourist train and the Grand Canyon
– Spending a night in the worst RV park we’ve ever been in (Red Carpet Inn & RV Park, Walnut Iowa)
– July 4th party with the Topleys and Rohanes (and Jeff/Jennifer)
– Shooting the potato cannon at the July 4th party (John’s favorite!)
– Driving Hwy 550 from Ouray to Silverton, Colorado (if you are afraid of heights, avoid this! Narrow road, no guardrail, steep drop-offs!! Jane drove the coach!)
– The cool weather of Silverton, Colorado (9300 feet elevation)
– Running Jeep trails in the San Juan Mtns (Colorado) with Bill and Bettye
As a final fling immediately before we returned to our little ranch, we spent a few days at one of our favorite campgrounds – Davis Mountains State Park. Always nice and a good change from the hot weather. We enjoyed our summer but we were also getting anxious to return home and pick back up with the life we left three months prior. John missed his shop and tools and needed to do more bonding with them. And bonding he does!
You might recall that we bought an 18 year-old Japanese mini-truck this spring for ranch duties. While the truck was in excellent general condition, its tires were totally beyond their useful life span. So we order new tires and wheels for it – not exact replacements but fancy wheels and large ATV tires to give it better traction. With the new tires and wheels on the truck, it looked pretty plain so John decides the truck needed to be painted! The color choice took a bit of negotiation – John wanted olive drab or camouflage like a military vehicle, Jane wanted almost anything but that! A compromise was reached and the little truck will be painted Hunter Green. John is doing all the the work.
He pulled the truck into the shop and removed things in preparation for sanding, applying primer, and then the color coats. Well along in the process, John needed to back the truck out to do more wet-sanding and the truck acted like it had no clutch. After some diagnostics and asking opinions, he decided the
problem was somewhere in the clutch assembly and the transmission needed to be separated from the engine to access the parts. 2.5 hours later, John has the transmission unbolted and discovers the problem – the clutch plate has rusted to the flywheel! Apparently when washing off the drive-train to clean up the truck, enough water entered the housing to cause the rust – it’s the only theory at this point (the truck sat in the shop for three months while we were gone this summer and ran fine on our return!) Since John has the clutch parts removed, he decided this is a wonderful time to replace the parts with new even though the old parts don’t look badly worn – never a better time, he proclaims! The clutch parts arrived yesterday (after being ordered Monday) afternoon and before supper, bruised, bleeding, and sore, John had the truck back together and it even worked! Stay tuned – the next blog will feature Suzi’s (our mini-truck) new paint job. She’ll be lookin’ good!