Two Days of Driving and Still in Texas.

Two days of driving and we are still in the state of  Texas.  Okay, so we only drive four hours a day, but in eight hours of driving you can cross most states and then some.  And we are not even close to crossing the wide part of the state.  That would be El Paso to Orange, Tx on I-10 at a little over 12 hours in perfect traffic through San Antonio and Houston,,, not likely.

It's September the seventeenth 2016 and our goal for the day is Texarkana.  Literally, as far as you can go on TX-82 and still be in Texas.  Since we were going to end our day in a little more populated area we searched for a park last night and have called ahead to be sure there is space available.  We'll be staying at Shady Pines RV Park on the southwest side of Texarkana.  It will be our first privately owned campground since Bartlesville, Ok back in mid July.

We were pleasantly surprised upon our arrival at Shady Pines.  The park appeared to be almost new and looked to have been designed by someone that knew what RV'ing was all about.  The roads were wide, the sites were level and comfortably spaced.  The park had trees but they were strategically planted so as not to interfere with getting in or out when fully mature.  There was a very nice small lake for catch-and-release fishing and there was a grand meeting room that was custom built for accommodating rallies.  All the utilities were great plus they had a strong WiFi signal.

Shady Pines is well done.  Great sites - wide, level, easy in-easy out.  All driving surfaces paved.

Big Rigs welcome at Shady Pines.

We're a little road weary after several weeks of packing up, moving and setting up again every day or two.  We are going to get the air conditioners going and call it a day.  Put on a little mindless TV to nap in front of until it's bedtime.

After sleeping in the next morning both of us are not exactly ginned up to get on the road.  And this campground is so inviting there is no motivation to leave.  The beauty of full timing is that we can choose to extend our stay, if space is available.  And since it is, we are.

We do have some pressure to press on though.  Our daughter's family is moving soon.  They have a contract on the one they are selling and the one they are buying.  Things are starting to happen, packing has commenced and movers have been contracted.  They need us there by move day to take care of the grand baby while they do the juggling act of a double closing.

EVERYTHING is getting boxed up for the move.

Sticking with the theme of being lazy for today, we are not really in the mood to do any meal preparation.  On the way into the park we saw something that caught our attention.  It was a sign that said; "Oak Creek Amish Furniture and Pantry".  Cyndee wanted to go there to look at the furniture no matter what but we were both curious about the pantry part.  It turned out to be a great find.

The pantry had all kinds of staple foods such as flours made from a variety of grains and nuts, a huge variety of fresh made jams and jellies plus fresh made sausages and cheeses.  We picked out a few flavors of cheese a couple sausage blends and some of the freshest crackers we have ever had and went back to the camper and nibbled on what were essentially horderves the rest of the day.

The pantry at Oak Creek Amish Furniture.

Outside of the Amish furniture store we did no exploring in the Texarkana area.  Just hung out at the campground and nibbled.  We also knew we would be in another populated area tomorrow so we did a little online research for campgrounds and have one picked out to call once we are on the road in the morning.

Eastward Ho!

It's September 16, 2016 and we are slides in, wheels down.  We are departing Borger, Tx and getting on TX-287.  This road will angle us to the south and east, eventually paralleling the Texas, Oklahoma border.  We don't have a solid idea of where we will end up for the night, we're going to drive for about 4 hours and see where it gets us.

For us, TX-287 is the road of our life.  Towns like Clarendon, Memphis, Childress, Chilicothe, and Vernon are little more than wide spots in the road that don't even earn a mental note for the average traveler.  But for those of us that made the pilgrimage to Dallas over and over again from our youth in the back seats of our parent's 1950's-something land yachts to our young adult years in our college student "rides", these towns marked the progress towards our goal.  We knew where we would stop for gas.  We knew where the bathrooms were.  Remember, there was a time when there was not a fast food chain store every mile with a shiny bathroom.  You had to be really careful or you could end up in a place that would give you tetanus just by looking in.

But today instead of following TX-287 all the way into Dallas we are going turn due east on TX-82 just a short ways outside of Wichita Falls.  As we make the transition to TX-82 we are approaching 4 hours of drive time so we are going to look for a place to set up housekeeping for the night.  Henrietta is the first town we come to and as is so typical for small Texas towns, they have a city park (Hapgood Park) with a couple strips of pull thru sites with full hookups.  This is really, really nice.  We wish Borger's city park was set up so well.

RV campground is alongside the Hapgood Park ball fields.

There is one oddity about this campground's layout, the utilities are set way forward on the site.  We had to pull so far forward that the bedroom was hanging out into the road a little bit.  The truck had to be disconnected and brought around and parked behind trailer.  But this got us in position so that all of our cables and hoses would reach without multiple extensions.

Wide open spaces.  Odd parking arrangement with rig-forward position.

We took advantage of the remaining daylight and went to have a look at our host town.  Henrietta has a classic town square with the county courthouse set in the middle.  Clay County came into being in 1857 when it was separated from Cooke County.  Henrietta is one of the oldest settled communities in north-central Texas.

Clay County Courthouse

In 1860 Henrietta represented the far western edge of Anglo expansion in north-central Texas. Native Americans remained a viable threat for current and future residents. Throughout the early 1860's it was essentially under continuous attacks from local tribes.  The town was eventually abandoned just before the Civil War and there were no permanent settlers again until 1870.  A post office opened in 1874 and the railroad came to town in 1882 and that solidified Henrietta's existence.

As we have criss-crossed the country the past few years we have enjoyed a cavalcade of murals.  Most celebrate a community's history and Henrietta is no different.  Although I think that at just 3100 residents it is more mural per capita than anywhere we have been.

There were many mural's to choose from but we liked this one because it had all the cattle brands.

We went old-school for dinner and ate at the Dairy Queen.  This place was probably built in the 1950's and as best we could tell it had never been remodeled.  And based on the looks we got from people coming in while we were eating, they knew we weren't from there.

After dinner we needed to find someplace to get fuel.  That's another thing about towing only four hours a day.  Big Gulp, the truck, uses about 35 gallons of diesel in that amount of time and with a 50 gallon tank it means that if we start each day with a full tank we do not have to find a station with big rig isles.  And that also gives us the ability to shop for price.  Tonight we found a place place called The Pecan Shed.  Wow, what a cool place.

The Pecan Shed

 In addition to having decent priced diesel fuel, this place has pecans any way you can think of.  Plus a fudge shop, plus a sandwich shop, plus jams and jellies and Texas-themed curios.  I had my way with all the samples they had sitting out everywhere and Cyndee found a few curios items that she could not live without.

Everything pecan and Texas curios at the Pecan Shed

So now we are fueled up and filled up.  We'll get a night's rest and be ready for our next leg of the journey tomorrow.

Borger, Again

September the eleventh of 2016 and we are headed south through the wheat fields of Kansas.  The further south we get the fewer plowed fields we see and the more pump jacks that come into sight.  Farm land is giving way to ranch land that is overlaid with oil wells, tank batteries and natural gas compressor stations.  Texas is in our sights.

Speaking of farm land.  I think I mentioned it in a post earlier in the spring but, everywhere we have been across the south and into the plains, there has been massive amounts of hay bailed up and stacked in fields.  The rain and temperature has pretty much been perfect in the spring and early summer that almost everybody seems to have gotten in two harvests.  The surplus looks so big I don't think they will be able to give it all away.  But hold that thought, this becomes a big deal in early 2017.

The distance between Dodge City, KS and Borger, TX is just right.  We like to keep our driving time to around 4 hours.  That keeps us unhurried in the morning and gets us where we are going in time to get in on something to do.  Plus, we are driving during prime business time, if something should happen then we have services available to us and time to do something about it without it being late at night.  Although, our concerns about catastrophic tire failure are much diminished with our recent upgrade in wheels and tires.  Today's destination is just three and a half hours away, perfect.

Our little home town is an oil town and its history is the history of oil.  The town has risen and fallen with each oil boom and bust.  But in the 60+ years I have been around I have noticed that the rise of the town is never quite as high as the rise in oil and the depth of the fall of the town seems to be deeper than the fall of oil.  So the more time that goes by, the greater the net loss of the town.  Neighborhoods are shabbier with not one of them ever going through a "revitalization" phase.  Businesses seem to be hanging on by their fingernails with no real money to reinvest or modernize.  There is a new, state of the art hospital and Walmart just completed building a brand new super center.  While this is great, they both abandoned buildings that nobody is inclined to re-purpose.  The old hospital has already been razed with nothing left but a bare lot.  The former Walmart building is nothing but an eyesore.

In the old, main part of town there are a number of abandoned buildings, two of which are large multi-story hotels from the heydays (1930's).  Both have been long overdue for demolition and one is finally getting it.  When we were in town in early July work was just beginning to strip the building down to bare bones so that the rest could be knocked down.  Much progress has been made between then and our return this September.

July 2016

September 2016

 The photo on the left is from when we were in town around the first of July.  Photo on the right was taken on our return trip in early September.  The photo below is from September also.  It shows the back of the building and the faint remains of the original signage, "Hotel Black", that had been covered for the last several decades while Phillips 66 was using the building as an office complex.  Being built in the era that it was, this place was chock-full of asbestos.  So the demolition was way more complicated and expensive than meets the eye.

Faint remnants of original signage, "Hotel Black", ca 1930.

It won't be long before it is just another bare lot but that is better than being a derelict building infested by God knows what.

Since we are in town for only a few nights we are choosing to stay in the city's park, Huber, and forego full hookups.  Plus, the heat has diminished somewhat and we can manage by running only one air conditioner at a time.

Our favorite spot at Huber Park.  We get morning shade but full, blazing sun the rest of the day.

One of our must-do's when we hit town is to have a meal at Lorene's Mexican Kitchen.  It is waayyy off our eating plan but we, well, mostly John can't resist.  He has to have a chile relleno.  They are unlike a relleno we have been able to get anywhere else in the country.  In fact Lorene's has ruined us, we don't enjoy rellenos fixed any way except Lorene's way.

Chile Relleno in top of photo.  This stuff is a heart attack
on a plate but we just can't lay off of it.

So a couple days of checking in with John's mom and brief  encounters with old friends and we are pulling in the slides and raising the jacks.  Time to start moving east.

The Proof is in the Paint - And Another Old West Cow Town

It's Monday (Aug 29th, 2016) and New Horizons is making good on fixing the bad paint job.  They got us in first thing, we should be out of here in a few days.  And that's good because we got a call from our Daughter saying that their house in the Grant Park section of Atlanta is going on the market and it looks like a quick sale.  The market is pretty hot in north Georgia and they are looking to get in on it and make a move out to the northern suburbs.  We are planning a route that will get us back to Georgia in time to help with the move.

We will drop back down through the Texas Panhandle and check in with John's mom one more time and then take less traveled roads south and east to Atlanta.  The quick, straight shot would be to take TX 287 to I-20 and just go, but that is a boring road trip.

But first we have one more stop in Kansas.  We are going to play a little bit and hit an old west tourist hot spot, Dodge City.  The paint job on the blow out repairs looks right this time and after nearly three weeks of being in a parking lot or metal building we are not dilly-dallying about getting packed up to go.  But getting a campground to stay in has been a bit of a challenge.  Options aren't too great and the one park, a private one, that has the hook ups we want and roads big enough for us to get through is run by one person that by all appearances is suffering from burn-out.  She might get us in, she might not.  We'll just have to show up and see.

Gunsmoke RV Park is on the western edge of Dodge City.  We wheeled in about three and a half hours after leaving Junction City.  The place was not exactly packed full, the high season was over.  It's September now and school is back in session with summer vacationers having all returned to their routines.  It's just us and a few other "senior" RV'ers.  But that didn't keep our campground manager from making us wait to check in.  I guess that putting incoming calls on hold was not an option because she took about five of them before acknowledging we were even there.  Eventually we got checked in.

Below is a picture of the pool from Gunsmoke RV Park's web site.  I can assure you it looked nothing like this.  There was no water in the pool and the deck around the pool was way more run down with lots of leaf litter and wind blown trash.

We pretty much had our choice of spots and were easily able to find a pull-thru with trees positioned away from our satellite dish.  Utilities are solid but we sure hope it does not rain because these dirt roads and grass sites will turn into a mud hole.

After setting up we drove around Dodge City a little to get the lay of the land and scope out what we want to do tomorrow.  Like all the other Kansas towns I've written about the last three weeks, this one is a cow town too.  But it is not as old as the others.  The first building to occupy the area known as the city today was not until 1871 and things didn't start forming up as an actual town until another year later.  But it came along early enough to be in the middle of the Indian Wars and have famous  old west characters such as Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and Doc Holliday.

After our first night outside of a factory parking lot we were enjoying the smell of grass and not having to turn our rig over to somebody at the crack of dawn.  But we want to get to town and catch the first trolley tour of the day.

It's a brisk morning, the summer heat has finally broken.  At least for this morning.  The enclosed trolley is perfect for our 90 minute narrated tour.  Our driver/narrator wound his way through the old part of the town and went all the way out to Fort Dodge and then to the stock yards.

Just for the tourists they keep a pasture stocked with Longhorns.

Having grown up in the panhandle of Texas we were all too familiar with feed
lots, but listening to other occupants on our trolley it was clear that this was a revelation to many.

 Back in town, the city has recreated the old main street of 1870's Dodge City.  It was closed for the season now but just a couple weeks earlier it was open with a fully functioning mercantile shop, ice cream parlor, cigar shop and the setting for quick-draw gunfights.  The only thing open now is the tall building on the far left, Boot Hill Museum (and gift shop).

Cyndee is not going to let a gift shop get by without being shopped so in we went where we were able to find a sew-on patch for our travel blanket.  We've been fairly consistent with finding patches and our blanket is getting pretty full.  Cyndee's sewing machine is a little worse for the wear after working on those thick patches.  She's going to have to start sewing them by hand because the machine just isn't getting it done anymore.

This picture of our travel blanket was taken in 2014.
It is practically solid with patches now.  Trying to decide if putting
patches on other side is an option.

In 1929, at the new city hall, a statue of a cowboy was erected to honor what all the cowboys had done to make Dodge City what it had become.  By 2012 it was in need of restoration and there was a fund raising campaign that was successful and restoration was completed in 2015.

Inscription on bronze plate:
On the Ashes of  My Campfire this City is Built.

 The location of the cowboy statue is atop the original boot hill that has so famously been portrayed in countless movies and TV shows.

The Mueller-Schmidt House, 1881
Listed on the register of National Historic Places

The Mueller-Schmidt house is a house of distinction being built atop a hill with a bird's-eye view of Dodge City.  It is the sole remaining 19th century structure on its original site.  As well it should be with 23 in thick limestone walls.  The original builder/owner, Mueller, was a successful boot maker in town and eventually invested in other businesses in town and three cattle ranches.  But a blizzard in 1886 wiped out his entire herd of 75,000 cattle and he had to return to boot making to make ends meet.  Unfortunately there were three disastrous fires in downtown Dodge City and he threw in the towel and returned to St. Louis in 1890.  The house was sold to Schmidt in 1891 and remained in possession of family until 1965 when it was sold to Ford County.  The Ford County Historical Society is the curator of the house that is now on the National Register of Historical Places.

While on our trolley tour we noticed a number of classic and muscle cars as well as a couple of hot rods passing by us as we were making our pass by Fort Dodge.  Shortly after our trolley returned we decided to drive out to Fort Dodge and take a closer look at the fort and see if there was something going on with the cars.

To our delight there was a car show in progress and admission was free.  Just our kind of activity.  The cars were assembled on what I took to be the old parade grounds of the fort.  It was an open, grassy area surrounded by large limestone block buildings from the 1870's up to the late 20th century.

This A/C Cobra was not even in the show.  Somebody just drove it in to attend the show.

Fort Dodge parade grounds covered in classics

There was plenty of customization to go along with impeccable restoration.

We have enjoyed Dodge City but probably would have gotten more out of it if everything had not been closed for the season.  Oh well, good reason to come again.

We are going to drop down into Texas tomorrow and begin our journey to Georgia so we can help our daughter's family move to their new house.

Abilene, KS - something to do.

A few posts back, when we arrived at the New Horizons factory I mentioned that we had fellow RV'ers here getting service work done.  One couple we saw quite a bit of and spent time with, trading information on things to do and places to go in the area.  Plus, he was an ex-military pilot turned contract pilot for the military as well as an aerial fire fighter, going all over the world fighting fires with water bomber airplanes.

Water Bomber in Action

His wife, a full-blood Navajo and a real hoot to be around came knocking early Sunday morning (it's August 28, 2016) to ask if we would join them for dinner at an historic hotel in, of all places, Abilene.  Well sure, we wouldn't miss a chance at hearing some of his flying stories and being around her effervescent personality.  So we will be starting and finishing our day in Abilene.

By the way, you should see this guy's rig.  It is my dream setup - a New Horizons 5th wheel pulled by a Volvo tractor modified for RV'ing and a ramp/lift with a Smart Car across the deck between cab and trailer.

Big boy toys, gotta love it.

But back to our Abilene excursion.  We headed out on what is to be another scorching hot day.  It's only about 25 minutes away and the exit to town is the one before the Russell Stover candy factory, thank God.  My wallet and waistline can't take another trip to the candy factory outlet store.

If you read one of my earlier posts about our trip to Salina, KS, I had said in that post that Salina was briefly known as a cow town until the business moved down the road a couple of years later.  Well, Abilene is the "down the road".  Abilene was picked as the terminus of the Chisholm Trail from 1867 to 1871 and became the largest stockyard west of Kansas City.  With this status it also became known as one of the wildest towns in the west.

Town Marshal Tom "Bear River" Smith was initially successful policing Abilene, often using only his bare hands.  He survived two assassination attempts during his tenure.  However, he was murdered and decapitated on November 2, 1870.  Smith wounded one of his two attackers during the shootout preceding his death, and both suspects received life in prison for the offense.  He was replaced by Wild Bill Hickok in April 1871.  Hickok's time in the job was short.  While the marshal was standing off a crowd during a street brawl, gambler Phil Coe took two shots at Hickok, who returned fire, killing Coe.  But Hickok then accidentally shot his friend and deputy, Mike Williams, who was coming to his aid.  Hickok lost his job two months later in December.

But rail lines were built further south and it was no longer necessary to drive cattle all the way to Abilene.  The community shrank to a size just large enough to support the surrounding farms and ranches with nothing much special happening until the 1950's when a native son became the President of the United States.  This is the home of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Eisenhower was not born in Abilene, his family moved from Denison, Tx when he was a small boy and Ike lived all his school years in Abilene, graduating high school here in 1909.  The Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene is the burial place for the President, his wife Mamie and their first born son Doud.

Like most towns in the old west, trains were crucial to their existence.  And like virtually all the towns of the old west, trains have become of little concern with the advent of the automobile and extensive highway systems.  Rail lines have been ripped up or abandoned and a few have taken on a second life as a tourist attraction.  Such is the case in Abilene.  They have an excursion train with a limited schedule that makes about a two hour loop through the countryside.

Or, if the train schedule doesn't work for you then you can try out the Silver Flyer Railbus.  It's an old school bus that has been fitted with rail wheels but the cool part is that the bus will take the rail line to a neighboring community, retract the rail wheels, get off the tracks and then take you on a tour around the town's old homes and shops.  It then gets back on the rail and returns to Abilene.

Despite being the home of a presidential library, excursion train and awesome chocolate factory, Abilene is still a small, dusty plains town.  You can pretty much stand on Main Street and see from one end of the town to the other.

This is almost the whole of the town, well, the business district.

We are not staying in Abilene and meeting our friends for dinner.  Instead we are heading back to Junction City to shower off the hot day and put on some fresh clothes.  We'll meet our friends at New Horizons base camp and drive back to Abilene for our dinner at the Brookville Hotel.

This hotel and dining room date back to the days of cattle drives, Indian raids and buffalo hunts.  In fact, Buffalo Bill was a patron.  The hotel stopped taking guests in 1972 but the dining room is still going strong at about 90,000 guests a year.  People don't come here for the variety on the menu because you get your choice of chicken or chicken.  There is no menu, the only thing you get asked what you want is your drink.  Other than that they start bringing out huge plates of chicken and sides, family style.  And if by some miracle you eat all of something they bring out, just ask for more.

Our table was on the far right, next to the window.

The hotel was bordered by shops and at one time a bank.  The bank went out of business and the hotel expanded into the space.  In fact, the dining room we were in was known as the vault because of its former life as a bank.

We enjoyed our meal and it was made even better by our company.  After eating we were allowed to go upstairs and tour the old hotel.  The rooms had many of the original furnishings and decorations, which were pretty opulent.  Not what I expected from a dusty cow town of the old west.

The sun is going down and we are getting a slight break in the heat.  I'll take it.  We're heading back to the camper and will do some preparation for getting moved into the paint bay tomorrow.  Hopefully they will get it right this time and we can be on our way.

Killing Time

It's late August, 2016 and we are spending another weekend in the parking lot "campground" of the New Horizons RV factory.  A first attempt at painting the repaired skirting and fender damaged by a double blow-out did not turn out so well.  We are hanging around so they can take another crack at it next week.  So for now we will mostly stay in to avoid the heat.  But staying in doesn't mean in our camper, we're going back to Salina to catch a movie and have supper at a sit-down restaurant.

The only problem is that we have to go past that chocolate factory again and I just couldn't keep Big Gulp from taking the exit.  We were able to restrain ourselves a little better and only walked out with nine pounds of chocolate this time.

Something else we took note of was that we go right past Abilene, KS on our way to Salina.  In fact, the Russell Stover candy factory's address is Abilene.  We made tentative plans to explore Abilene tomorrow, Sunday.

Salina's growth/present day construction has spread the town south of the original downtown.  To get to the (only) mall where the movie theater is you have to take I-135 S off of I-70.  About 5 or 6 miles down is the exit for the mall and big name retail such as Walmart, Dick's Sporting Goods, Hobby Lobby, etc. as well as name-brand restaurants like Red Lobster, Applebee's, Olive Garden, Chili's, and my favorite, Sonic Drive-In, plus many more.

Salina's Cinemaplex at the mall.

The movies available at the time of our visit were a bit outside our preference.  We settled on The Secret Life of Pets and called it good.  Once we exited the theater it was about 9 pm and we had to hustle to the Chili's occupying a lot on the corner of the mall property to get supper in before their 10 pm closing time.

Being out at this time of evening is a bit unusual for us.  For the last three years we have mostly been in remote locations that are great distances to places with nightlife.  Our day has pretty much been over when the sun goes down.  Tonight we are out on the town like real adults and dog-gone-it we are ready to be home and in bed.  It's a sad state of affairs, we don't want to be ready to be home but our body clocks have re-set to the routine of a volunteer camp host - early to bed, early to rise.

Back at the camper it is a little before midnight before turning in.  We'll set out to explore Abilene tomorrow after a leisurely morning.

Pretty boring post, I know.  But sitting out this repair work is exactly that.  We're trying to make the best of it.

Body Work and a Re-Shod

August 22, 2017 has finally come.  Our scheduled appointment for getting body damage repaired by a pair of blowouts that happened just as we began our summer trip in June has arrived.  The explosive ruptures took out ten feet of fender and 16 feet of skirting on the galley slide-out.

1st blowout

2nd blowout an hour later.

This is a prime example of my discussion of being flexible as a fulltimer in a previous post.  Junction City, or Kansas for that matter, were never on our radar when we left Georgia this spring.  After a pass through Texas to see family we were going to go to Wyoming and the Dakotas to enjoy Devils Tower, Custer State Park and Mt. Rushmore.  Instead, here we are in the windswept wheat fields of Kansas alongside Interstate 70 in a little town adjacent to the Army's Fort Riley.

 Fort Riley is huge, covering 10's, probably 100's of thousands of acres.  Its population is much greater than that of surrounding communities and home to at least one Calvary division.  The pictures on either side are views that can be seen from a location alongside I-70 and represent a tiny fraction of the entire fort.  We got the chance to watch helicopters doing what we interpreted as training exercises on a couple of occasions.  Pretty impressive.  Civilians can also get access to the inside of the fort where they have museums and memorials that are pretty good.  There is a section of officer housing from the 1800's that had Gen George Custer as a resident and it can be toured.

But back to the reason for our being here, New Horizons is the manufacturer of our 5th wheel coach.  Their specialty is custom built 5th wheels, they have no dealers, there is no showroom and there are no floor plans.  If you buy a New Horizons you start by saying how long a rig you want, how many slide-outs and their location and then arrange all the creature comforts (galley, living, entertainment center, bathroom(s), etc) as you want and then they build it.

New Horizons factory front entrance.

Not surprising, they cater heavily to the fulltimer crowd.  Their rigs are rugged-built for continuous use in a wide variety of climates.  This ruggedness and the quality they put in their finishing touches are what got our attention.  When we decided to go with New Horizons we were a little different than their customary clients in that we were not interested in building a humongous rig in excess of 40' in length.  We wanted a relatively short rig so that we would have more options in regards to fitting into campgrounds.  Our goal was to stay at 35' or 36'.  This is still too big for some older campgrounds like CCC built National Forest or National Park campgrounds that have not been updated but we knew that this was the minimum length that would accommodate the living space and floor plan we wanted.  Another requirement I had was three axles.  I wanted as much weight capacity as possible, ultimately hoping that the axles and tires would be lightly loaded.  But we soon found out that our axle count and rig length were not compatible.  It seems that there is not enough room under the rig for both three axles and waste water tanks in anything shorter than 37'.   The triple axle was more important to me than length so we bumped our length up to 37' and took a hit on size and weight (at about 600 lbs per foot).  Actually, axles is a misnomer.  We have six independent suspension wheels built by a company named MORryde.

Photo of our frame and suspension being built.  Each wheel is mounted on an independent suspension "box".
Get a load of the size of the frame.  Practically no flexing at all. 

 Another plus about New Horizons knowing the fulltimer so well is that their repair facility is set up for people that have no home other than their RV.  They have a nicely appointed lounge to hang out in during the day while your rig is being worked on and then they make the rig livable by the end of each day so you can stay in it at night.  They provide connections to water and electricity so other than being in a parking lot it is a good set up.

Staying overnight in factory parking lot with hookups.

 There is a catch though, these guys start work early.  You have to be up and out of your rig by 7:00 am because they come knocking to take your coach into the service facility.

Every morning by 7:00 am the rig has to be ready to move - utilities disconnected, slides in, antennas down, doors locked in travel position, just as if you were hitching up and heading down the road.  Every afternoon at 3:00 you put it back again.

 The work on our rig started fairly quick.  In addition to the body work we also needed some odds and ends done.  A couple of slide seals had failed and a fluted column on the interior of a slide needed to be re-anchored as well as a bellows seal on the inside of a slide.  But the body work would have to wait a couple days as there was another rig in the paint bay that was taking longer than expected to complete.

In the customer lounge we met and visited with other couples that were in for repairs or to do their three-day inspection/training/pick-up of their new rigs.  Some of the people in for repairs had been there going on a month!  But that was not a surprise, our last visit lasted almost three weeks and another couple that was there was going on three months.  That is definitely not the norm.  They had a catastrophic failure of their roof and the rig had to be "decapitated" and replaced in its entirety.  There is a lot of stuff on the roof of one of these rigs - at least two A/Cs, at least two powered roof vents, antennas, skylights, a multitude of ceiling mounted interior lighting and all the associated wiring.  Thank goodness our work is just some skirting and a fender, they don't have to get into the actual body of the rig.

As nice as the customer lounge and company is, after a couple of days it got old.  We decided to get out and explore central Kansas a little more.  Last time we made it over to the Wizard of Oz Museum, this time we are going to go the other direction, west, and see what we can see.  First stop, Salina, KS.  It was the nearest town with a Sam's Club and we needed to do our once per month run to this big box store to restock a lot of our household goods.

It's only 45 minutes straight across on I-70 to Salina, but wait, what's this?  About half-way to Salina, just off the highway in the middle of a wheat field there is a giant Russell Stover candy factory, and it has an outlet store!!  Big Gulp instinctively knew to take the exit, I had nothing to do with it!

Exit 272 off of I-70 sits a Russell Stover candy factory.
The outlet store is under the roof that is jutting out from the middle of  the building.

 Less than an hour later we were walking out with about 12 pounds of "Bloopers" chocolates.  They were irregular chocolates that had been packaged in plain white boxes marked with a general description of what might be in the box. These chocolates may have been irregular in appearance but there was nothing irregular about their taste.  Just in the remaining 20 minutes between Russell Stover and Salina I had more than my year's allotment of chocolate and sugar.  The next time I unbutton my pants I don't know if they will button back up.

These plain white boxes contain the "Bloopers".
There is a back room to the outlet store and it is nothing but huge stacks of these white boxes.

Salina has a storied history, as most of the plains towns do.  Theirs is one that began in 1858 as a trading post catering to local Indian tribes and settlers and prospectors heading west.  Just after the Civil War the railroad came to town and they were briefly known as a cow town.  But the cow business moved down the road in a couple of years and the economic engine that rules to this day took hold, wheat farming.

Giant grain elevators are scattered all over the old town district.

The old town of Salina is quaint.

With touristing done and groceries in hand we head back to Junction City.  The rig should be returned to its spot for the night and we'll make it livable - get it level, put out the slides and deploy the satellite dish.

After a couple of days we get a spot inside so that they can start taping off and prepping for paint.  All the skirting, fender and trim had been replaced while outside but the prep for painting needs to be done indoors to minimize the ill effects of wind.

We've been moved inside for painting preparation.

All taped off and ready for base coat.

Now that we are getting painted the routine is a little different.  Each coat needs time to cure so there will be no pulling us out of the maintenance bay at the end of each day.  Instead, we will be staying inside for the next two or three days.  The pluses are that we can occupy our rig all day (that means sleeping in is an option) and it is in the shade.  The minuses are that there is the noise of the work all day and when they close up the building for the night it gets really hot.  We can run our A/C but its exhaust just adds to the heat in the building.  By morning the heat will take your breath away as you step out of the camper.  And of course there is no deploying of the satellite, so it is DVD's or nothing in regards to TV.

Our "camping spot" for the next few days.

If you have been reading this blog you know that I have been whining about the blow-outs we had in early June and my subsequent research of the kind of tires we have.  That research yielded some pretty disturbing information.  It seems that the Goodyear Marathon is infamous for having blow-outs.  I didn't learn it until it was too late but if I had kept those tires and sent them back to the factory, Goodyear probably would have paid for my damage repair.  That's water under the bridge now.  I have to figure out what to do going forward.

Staying with these Goodyear Marathons is not an option and switching to another brand in the same size does not look promising.  This particular tire is an ST (special trailer) and has a speed rating of 65 mph.  The same is true of all brands in this size and nobody makes a light truck tire in this size so there is no option to switch out to something with an untroubled history.  I can hear you now, saying; ""why don't you just get a different size tire and be done with it?".  Well, I wish I could.

Remember earlier in this post my discussion about rig length and just barely enough room for three axles?  If I pick an LT (light truck) tire with the proper load rating its outside diameter will be larger than the existing tires.  The tires are so close together now with the existing size that there is not enough space to go up in tire size without them rubbing each other.  What to do?  The service manager and I have been exploring possibilities over this past week and we may have a solution.

It's not cheap, it will entail discarding of all my existing tires and wheels (all seven of them) and replacing with a commercial 17.5" dia wheel and tire.  Even though I will be going from a 16" wheel to a 17.5" wheel, the outside diameter of the tire is exactly the same as my existing tires.  But these tires are speed rated at 75 mph and have at least 1,000 pounds more load capacity per tire than my existing tires, with no bad history.  All I have to do is write a check for $5,000.00.  Yikes!

I'm not about to head out down the road with a knot in my stomach while waiting for the sound of the next tire ripping everything to shreds, so write the check I did.

Here she is all freshly shod with big wheels and short tires.

It's Friday and everything is not quite finished yet.  When they delivered the rig out of the paint bay as ready-to-go today I was disappointed to find that the body work where the fender meets the skirting was pretty awful.  The bondo used to smooth out the fit between the fender and the skirting had some serious shrink voids and unevenness.  I showed the service manager and he did not blink an eye.  He said we'll fix it first thing Monday.  So here we are for the weekend.