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Good Morning Family and Friends! It’s been a while since the last blog update so I figured it was about time.  No, we are not traveling at this moment, but our departure date is rapidly approaching.  While we’ve been at home our goal was, and I repeat with sadness is my voice, was, to get a lot done.  But the best laid plans of mice and men oft times go astray and so it has been with us. 

Let’s begin with the continuing saga of trying to get some warranty work done on our RV.  The folks where we purchased the rig, Lazy Days of Denver, we able to get us right in and actually took care, or so they say, of most of the punch list items.  I’m heading over there in a little bit to see if they in fact did the fixes.  But the biggest item for them was a mysterious fluid leak that was occurring somewhere in the front of the RV.  This liquid was leaking out from the belly of the beast, and it seemed to me to be a bit greasy.

Ok, now how do I make a long story short here.  Let’s just say the lesson I’ve learned is to talk directly with the person who did the work vs the service manager on site.  I also was reminded of something I learned quite a while ago but have not had much of a chance to use lately.  If someone is not being as response as you would like, jump the chain and do it in writing.  Right, back to the story.  The leaking fluid was from my hydraulic system.  It seems that two lines, one that goes to the front right jack and the other that goes to the midship slide out, were leaking from where they connect to the system.  The leaking fluid (actually, you use Automatic Transmission Fluid) coated the belly, ruined all the insulation, and just made an awful mess.  My hydraulic system was 1 quart low.  So, problem found and solved, right?  Not quite.  The problem became time.  We have a hard departure date for our upcoming travels and according to the tech, if we keep an eye on the fluid level, we will be ok until we get to the Vanleigh Service Center at the end of August.  This might become a decision I regret but we are going to stay on schedule.

On to our trip.  As you may have guessed by now, I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to travel statistics and making sure I’ve got everything in writing well before we travel.  So, I can now tell you that my spreadsheet is complete, my routing via RV Trip Wizard is done, all stops are confirmed, and Sarah has put it all into our nice little travel book.  Ok, who am I kidding, the reservations were made for this trip back in January as was the RV Trip Wizard stuff.  Yes, you could say that I am a bit OCD about this stuff but, in today’s RV world, if you don’t reserve early, you will be out of luck.  There are some who travel around the country on a day-by-day basis.  They make their reservations for where they are going to stay at night on the day.  I just can’t do that.  Especially when I am putting together trips that will be between 3 and 5 thousand miles long.  One night staying in a Walmart parking lot, I can do.  But I’d really rather not.

This trip, as it sits right now, will be 57 nights long and 3,555 miles point to point.  Its really the same trip we took last summer except t his time, my brother and sister-in-law will be joining us and we will be spending almost 3 weeks at Air Venture in Oshkosh, WI.  We tried to do that last year but that sneaky little thing called COVID just messed it all up.  Its going to be nice to have travel buddies.  They stayed with us for almost a month during our Tucson trip earlier this year, and for 2 weeks of our San Antonio travel last year but this will be the first time we will be going from place to place together. 

A few other highlights of the trip are 5 days in Indiana Amish Country, and 6 days in Mackinaw City, Michigan.  This journey has lots of 1-night stops along the way so please excuse me right now if I don’t post every day.  I will do my best to at least give the days travel stats but at times that might be all.

Right now, the RV is at the Buckley SFB (Space Force Base) Famcamp.  We got it there yesterday and other than the batteries being dead, it seems that Lazy Days did ok in their repairs.  I did get the distinct feeling that they were quite glad to see me go.  That is one of the side effects of going over someone’s head.  Oh well, their problem, not mine.

Alright, this tome is long enough.  I’m going to let it sit for a bit, then reread it, add a few pictures from Buckley (epic fail on that) and get it posted.  Thank you to everyone who is following this blog.  Sarah and I really do appreciate it.