CuRVWander

  My apologies to those that prefer an easy time line to follow.  My habit of writing about things in arrears with sometimes lengthy breaks between posts makes things a little harder.  Doing things in arrears is by design for personal safety reasons but the breaks are for a variety of reasons, some in my control, some not. So to recap: Depart Georgia for Texas, October 2022   Family and Civic duty at home base, Oct/Nov 2022 Thanksgiving in North Texas, Nov 2022 Major repairs in Central Kansas, December 2022 Mad dash to beat Polar Bomb descending on Kansas, December 2022 The above are five of the nine posts that make up our return to travel volunteering post COVID.  The posting prior to this one was our rush to get out of the central part of the country that was about to experience a wicked winter storm.  We made it but with less that 36 hours to spare.  The final dash south to our current location in central Texas was uneventful. We arrived Granger Lak...

  After a night in a warm building with our entire rig, truck, camper and all, we were rudely greeted by freezing cold temps and a seriously sharp wind.  At 7:00am on Saturday, December 17, 2022 the temperature is only 19 degrees F and the wind chill is an even frostier 10 degrees.  We're going to have to sit on our hands for a bit and let the temps come up enough that our water lines won't freeze within minutes of hitting the road.  We're shooting for the mid to upper 20's before raising that garage door and pointing the rig south. But we are nervously watching the forecast for the area.  If we don't get clear of Kansas now and down into the deep heart of Texas we're going to be froze in for potentially weeks.  A giant polar bomb cyclone is headed our way that will pretty much shut down two thirds of the U.S. This artic blast is due in 4 days. It took until after noon for the temps to get agreeable for travel but we were off.  Destination - Wild Horse...

Is it possible?  Are we almost done?  After eighteen days of going without an estimate of when they would be finished with our repairs, and thinking we were going to be stuck until early January, suddenly they say we'll be ready to go in a day or two.  The slow and unsure work of the ceiling repair really picked up pace once all the new panels had spent their requisite 24 hours under pressure (one at a time) to let the adhesive cure.   Taking pressure. Custom built frame and jacks to apply upward pressure  on the new 'Soft-Touch' ceiling panels. But that is a bit of oversimplification, there were a lot of steps to do both before and after the affixing of the ceiling "soft-touch" panels.  Mold abatement was done and then a coating of Kilz was applied to fend off any future spore growth.  Every panel had to be custom cut to fit the space as well as accommodate every air conditioner duct and ceiling puck light, of which there are many. And because of...

  So, here we are again, Junction City, KS, home of New Horizons, manufacturer of 5th wheels and maintenance facility.  Sadly we know this place well as we have been here three times in the past ten years prior to this visit, each averaging about a month to get our repairs done.  This time looks to be no different, with the exception that we are in freezing winter rather than scorching summer. But.... that was the purpose behind our departure from Georgia in mid-October.  We had been suffering from water intrusion that ultimately had damaged three-fifths of the ceiling of our galley/living area.  The leak was insidious, it remained hidden from view for an unknown period of time (at least a year) before a stain finally penetrated several layers of ceiling material and showed itself.  The hunt for the source of the leak commenced but no amount of caulking/re-caulking all the seams of the roof made any difference, the stain continued to expand.  And betwe...

 Hello Dallas-Ft Worth. Or to be more specific, Lake Lewisville in a Corps of Engineers campground. In preparation of our approximately 5 hour drive from Livingston, Tx to Hickory Creek, Tx (the town associated with the campground) we put away in the cargo trailer the few things we got out for our six week stay and got the cargo trailer hitched up to Pepe the night before departure. The morning of our departure the weather was cooperative and it was just a matter of disconnecting the utilities, pulling in the slides and hitching up.  The roads were essentially interstate the whole way with I-45 being what we spent most of our time on.  The one unpleasantness in this simple plan was that our route went smack-dab through the center of Dallas and its intense traffic.  Traversing the city also required a bit of a "dance", switching from I-45 N to I-30 W to I-35E N with the switch from 30 to 35E being in the middle of a bowl of spaghetti of multiple highways going in all ...