EVERY time I wash the truck or trailer it rains!  This time it's freezing rain.  We may be staying put for a while at Harold and Tess's.

We'll keep you posted :)

Pulling out of last night's camp site this morning I knew something was not quite right.  I got out and looked around the trailer in the cold winter rain and did not see anything wrong, so we trekked on to our destination some 300 miles away.  All along I just knew there was something different.  The gas mileage was a little worse off by about 1 1/2 mpg and things just sounded and felt a little off.  I blew the poorer mileage off because of rather stiff north west headwinds and hilly countryside.  I just couldn't put my finger on it until we arrived at out destination, pulled up onto a relatively level concrete pad and Wendy says " wow, this right side really needs to come up" during our leveling process.  We looked around and indeed the left side was quite a bit higher than the right.  Then we started looking around and found one of the suspension parts was different than the other side.  We remember someone driving from Florida to last year's Oliver rally had experienced a failure of the suspension on one side and remember the effort it took to remedy the situation.  We're in Wetumka, OK and immediately thought "well, who's going to help us out here, in the middle of nowhere?"  First reach out was to Oliver via a service ticket followed by a phone call shortly afterwards to Oliver's service department.  Hannah is an Angel!!!!  We thought this problem was going to be a nightmare.  Hannah calmly told us she had seen this problem on occasion and told us that an axle part had flipped over and the fix was to lower the nose to the ground and it would flip back.  Keeping Hannah on the phone we tried the suggested action to no avail.  Rats!  She said try jacking up the nose instead.  We did.  The axle part was starting to move and Hannah warned us of a loud snap.  And the snap was loud, and the trailer shook, and the trailer was level again!!!!!!!!!  YAY HANNAH!!!!!!!!!!  We had hit a very large bump in the road on the way to our previous stop; big enough to scrape the flap under the bumper of our tow vehicle.  We are very thankful it was an easy fix.

Supposed to look like this.

"Shackle flip" they call it.  I called it something else.......

We took off from AR for OK and probably should have waited a while longer.  We canceled our visit to the ice cream shop as it snowed very hard on that part of the state.  We took  a more southern route to Harold and Tess's but didn't know what to expect there.  The roads were fine until we got to their turnoff.  We took a 1 mile trip down this snow covered gravel and muddy  road.

Yikes....should we try this next hill?  It was pretty muddy in the turn and quite a climb around the bend.  No place to turn around!  Maintained a steady speed and did not step much on the gas pedal as we made the short climb.  Success!!!

You can probably see the muddy tracks at the start of the climb.  They probably had 4 wheel drive...we didn't!  But we made it :)

Keeping our rig somewhat clean was NOT a success :(

Things were all fixed on the trailer yesterday around 2PM so we decided to stay put for the night at the Oliver campground since it was a 4 to 5 hour journey to Tunica.  We figured to just leave in the morning and shave off a day from our visit there.  Well......at 0230 I was awakened to intermittent lights around the inside of the trailer and our furnace going on and off as if we had electrical issues.  The furnace started blowing cold air and finally shut itself down a few minutes later.  Then it would not come back on...grrr!!!  Not to worry, we have an electric space heater we pulled out of the basement and survived the night.  25 degree temps are not all that bad so no ice jams this time.  Service ticket submitted right away but, of  course, it's Friday night and Oliver is closed on weekends.  So we'll wait to see them Monday and cut out our trip to Tunica and head over to friends in Oklahoma instead....of course that will take us right by the "worlds tallest ice cream" station again :)  Good plan!!!!!!
After much internet research I found the thermostat to be the culprit and will not attempt a simple fix as Oliver's service department needs to know what happened.  We are only the second retrofit for this air-conditioner and the new thermostat has a design flaw they need to be aware of for other's future retrofits.

This on/off switch moves the metal arm away from a contact to open the circuit and shut off the furnace.  The on position allows the metal arm to return and make contact with a post behind it.  The flaw is in the switch being too hard to operate and I'm not going to bust it. Period.  How it worked in the shop is beyond my comprehension and I'll let Oliver come up with the fix.  Someone on the web camphored the edge of the switch to allow contact in the on position so they won't have to put so much force on it.  A $30 thermostat is going to delay us a couple more days.  On the bright side the campsite is free to us and then there's ice cream involved!!! :)

Or something like that.  We're still in Hohenwald staying at Meriweather's Retreat, a bed and breakfast owned and operated by the best hostess this side of the Mississippi... Melissa.  We left this afternoon to pick up "Bessie" at the mother ship, but a minor problem arose with the maintenance and kind, sweet, Melissa took us back in on a moments notice...free of charge!  What a blessing!  We're scheduled to pick up Bessie sometime tomorrow morning and will leave from there bound for Tunica, MS.  More to follow....with pictures :)

Years ago Wendy's nephews were tasked by their teachers to create a flat Stanley, a hand drawn and cutout caricature, to give out or mail to friends and family.  The purpose was to have the recipients photograph and catalog places Flat Stanley visited and Thomas and John would give a report to their teachers and classmates.  That was 15 to 20 years ago.  I can't locate any pictures of Flat Stanley but I do have a picture of the home he retired to.

This past Christmas Wen's sister Connie, their mother, hosted our annual gathering and we exchanged our gifts via a white elephant exchange.  This fellow oversaw the event and we were allowed to carry him around the country with us on our adventures this year.  Connie called and suggested we carry BP (Blanco Pachyderm....get it? :) ) and take an occasional picture with him in it.  So, whenever you see BP in the corner of a picture you will know what's going on :) 

We are in Hohenwald, TN to get our annual maintenance done, yes it's been a year, to our trailer.  We happened upon this organization and learned it is a sanctuary for retired elephants from various zoos and circuses. They are sent to a 5000 acre parcel of land to "retire", away from human contact, and enjoy the rest of their lives in the wild.  Pretty cool!!!  It's a couple of miles from Hohenwald and not open to the public.  Several live cameras are running 24/7 and can be viewed at ​https://elephants.com/

Seems I made this mistake once before with the oil filler cap as noted back in my September 2021 post.  This time with the coolant tank cap...grrr!  And just minutes before we were to leave on our next 9 month adventure.  I was in luck this time when I noted a single "clunk" as it disappeared into the dark, cavernous engine pit.  A few minutes of searching produced my prized cap and we were on our way to Lake Hartwell, SC, where we holed up for the next 3 days.

Back into the cold weather...

Wendy and I are starting out tomorrow on a new and much anticipated adventure for the next 9+ months!  We'll start with the replacement of our obnoxiously loud air conditioner at the mother ship in Tennessee, then on to Tunica Mississippi, then to southern Texas and on to the Q!  Quartzsite, Arizona.  The Q hosts 10's of thousands of RV's, travel trailers, and campers of all sorts, during January and February of each year.  We've met quite a few people who plan to meet there and play a little music, burn a few burgers, and tell some "war stories" around the campfire.  We hope the weather cooperates and can enjoy the desert southwest.  It's in the middle of desert country...no amenities provided... just sand, cacti, poisonous critters, and hopefully, a ton of fun.  After that...we don't know.  To catch up on the past few weeks here are a few photos. 

This is a photo of a block of enamel about to be shaped by a machine controlled by computer, wirelessly, into a cap for Wendy's tooth.  The whole process was mesmerizing and fascinating to watch!  The end result was a great success.

On the way back to SC we stopped at a B&B in Bluefield, WV.  It was an historic building that Woodrow Wilson, JFK, a few Nobel Peace Prize recipients, and of course us, have visited :) 

We enjoyed a very tasty breakfast and sat next to friends of Wendy's cousin, Don, who used to live a couple of streets away from them on Seabrook Island.  We didn't know them before our encounter at our breakfast table.  Small world :)

Jane and Jim ( I'm relying on 3 week old memory cells...so I'm probably wrong) were very interesting and fun to be with.

Gwyn and Veston's family are such a blessing to us :) 

Just for the record, Jayce did not catch the shrimp!

Yes, that's a lot of rice...you can't go wrong with too much rice at a Japanese steak house!

I wish I'd taken a few pictures of our visit with Joseph, Robert and Vickie at a cornhole tournament we were invited to... next time, I hope.

This may have been one of the worst scoring golf outings we have experienced but one of the best times we've had on a golf course :)  Jim's thumbs up is, for sure, about the hot dog I had to buy for betting he couldn't make a virtually impossible putt.. I was wrong in my assumption!