Amarillo by morning...


The drive from Palo Duro to Amarillo was brief.  We called Amarillo Ranch RV while on the Canyon E-way and they said they had a spot just right for us and to come on in.  In less than thirty minutes, and before 10 am we were checked in and getting hooked up to good power, water and sewer.  Although the sewer is hardly worth the effort for just one night we did it anyway so that we could run our showers as long as we wanted.  Now don't you 'eco folks' get your hair on fire about us using a bunch of water.  Keep in mind that using 'all we want' is still limited to a water heater that has a 12 gallon capacity.  In our bricks-and-sticks home it was not unusual for our monthly water consumption to be in the 10,000 gallon range.  With the RV we are less than one tenth that, mostly because there is no garden to water or sidewalks & driveways to hose off.  And instead of four multi-gallon per flush toilets of the house we have one marine-style that uses just ounces per flush.

A new challenge that presented itself is that one of the tires on the trailer had run itself completely bald.  There are six tires on the trailer, five of them look like the day I bought them but this one, the middle one on the drivers side, was smooth as a racing slick except for one row of tread on the outside edge.  I had been told by the factory guys that I could use the leveling jacks to pick the trailer up off the ground to change a tire, I guess I am going to have to see how that works.




 As it turns out, it works pretty darn good.  I picked up one whole side and popped that wore out tire off in no time.  By the looks of the wear pattern and highly accelerated wear, it would seem I have an alignment problem with this one wheel.  I know that some of you guys are saying; "He's got a bent axle"  or something to do with an axle, but that is not a possiblity for this trailer.  There are no axles.  Each wheel is on its own independent susupension.  So, at this moment, it is looking like the factory install of the suspension mount is not true to the line of travel.  We have a new item on our list of warranty work for the Junction City, KS factory visit.

No axles, just a big box that has a massive hunk of rubber in it that
takes the place of a traditional spring.

Amarillo had plenty of tire shops all up and down I-40, but there was only one that carried the tire I needed to match the other five tires on the trailer.  We found them and dropped the wheel off with them by just a little after 11:00 am.  Our pantry and fridge were developing echos so on the way back to the camper we took advantage of having access to Sam's Club and stopped in to stock up on supplies.

After getting everything put away we gathered up and headed back out onto the Canyon Express-way.  There is a large RV dealership, Jack Sizemore Traveland, that has an RV museum we wanted to see.  The feature attraction was a 1948 Flxible Bus converted into an RV that was used in the Robin Williams/Jeff Daniels movie "RV".   We thought that a museum at an RV dealership might be a little cheesy but we wanted to give it a look anyway.  Boy were we surprised, these folks had done a really nice job and they had some great old campers that were as original as the day they were bought or expertly restored.  But as we expected, the star of the show was the Gornike bus.


This is the interior of the bus where a fictional family of five called home.
Cyndee says she'll stick with the 5th wheel.

And to sweeten the whole deal, all these displays are not for just for looking at from behind a rope, you can go inside them look at everything from end to end.

I got a nice nostalgic surprise.  The museum had old motorcycles on display with the RVs and one in particular was special for me.  It was the first street legal motorcycle I ever had.


I could not even hazard a guess at how many hours I spent on a green, metal-flaked version of this bike, running up and down the Canadian River and its side tributaries.  Not a drop of water in any of these, just sand, clay and cliffs.

It's wicked-hot again, 106° with a 30 mph wind.  We picked up the new tire and got back to the camper.  Cyndee went inside to hide from the heat but I told her she was about to take "ride" because I would be jostling the house around by jacking up the one side to put the wheel back on.  She was good with that as long as the A/Cs stayed on.  I slipped the wheel into place and used a 4-way to spin the lug nuts on.  Then I got my trusty torque wrench out and set it for 134.5 lb/ft of torque and did a cross-pattern tightening.  That torque wrench is heavy and we debated whether it was worth carrying around.  Today, I can say it is worth it.

We're going to spend the rest of the afternoon in air conditioned comfort powered by a good connection.  We'll be moved to Borger by noon tomorrow.

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