I never really closed out the last trip. It was somewhat uneventful, but we left Little Rock on Wednesday afternoon, and headed home to Victoria via Canton, TX. Canton is the scheduled location of the “Texas RV Rally” that several members of our local Tiffin Allegro Club are sponsoring as part of the TRVN (Tiffin RV Owners) forum in April 2016.
At Canton, I was able to meet with the manager of the campground and sign the contracts for the rally I was also able to get some questions clarified about the campground, and visited with several catering places in town to get cost information.
We left Canton about 1:00pm Thursday, and got home about 8:00pm. That’s when the “at home” fun began. We just parked the Bus in the driveway and slept in it on Thursday night, and when we spent some time in the house on Friday morning, we found out that the a/c was not working. Being that it was near the weekend, and not really an emergency with the Bus in the driveway, we waited until the next week to get it repaired.
The first repair did not fix it, and the second repair only lasted three days, so we decided that the 21 year old a/c unit had to be replaced. When your system is that old, and with new Federal laws on Freon, you not only have to change out the outside compressor unit, but the attic condenser/heating unit also. That took a few more days to accumulate the parts and get in the queue for a crew. Another week sleeping in the driveway!!
The outside unit went from normal size to big…….. 4 foot tall and a much bigger base which meant a bigger concrete pad. That meant that I had to reroute the sprinkler system or have it ‘under’ the a/c unit!! More work!
To change out the attic unit, they had to take down my folding stairway in the study closet, and when all was back together, Patsy decided it was a good time to repaint before all was put back in!!
On the way home from the last trip, I decided that I wanted to polish and wax the Bus. I began by washing the roof, and then the rest of the Bus exterior. During last January’s visit to Quartzsite, I found a rolling scaffold that looked like it would be an asset in waxing the Bus or, as my son, Rick, said, helping to paint 10 foot high walls in a house. For waxing the Bus, it came in really handy….
In the above picture, note the reflection of the ladder in the paint job!!
This time I changed the Meguiar’s products that I used. I started with the Ultimate Polish, and finished it off with Meguiar's M21 Mirror Glaze Synthetic Sealant 2.0. It took a lot of rubbing, but the outcome was worth it. I also cleaned the Aluminum wheels using a two part cleaner and wax (Aluminum Deoxidizer and The Original Purple Metal Polish) that I read about on the TRVN. It was easier to use that what I had done before, but still a lot of detail work. I even used it on the exhaust pipe extension, and the air horns!! It was also a hot time of the year to do it, but it is done. Here are some “AFTER” pictures……
To finish out the work done in the four weeks at home, I had to remove the electric toilet from the Bus and rebuild the seals in it, and had to trouble shoot the towing brake wiring in the Honda that we pull behind the Bus. It began to blow fuses as soon as I plugged it in. I had to run a bigger wire from the battery to the Brake Buddy unit. After all of that, I am ready for a restful trip.
The ultimate purpose of this trip is to attend the FMCA Convention in Madison Wisconsin. On the way there, we will travel back through Canton to take care of a few more details, and to visit the local Chamber of Commerce. Then it will be back through Little Rock to spend the weekend with our granddaughter, Rachel, and her parents. Sunday afternoon, we will head to the Tiffin factory town of Red Bay, AL to have some local technicians do some repairs to the Bus, as well as talk a couple of motorhome service companies about participating in the rally next Spring. On the way to Red Bay, we plan to spend about 4 hours visiting Patsy’s cousin, Betty and husband Vernon, in Memphis, TN.
We will then take about 10 days to travel to Madison via the Mammoth Cave area in Kentucky, and the Amish communities in the Elkhart, IN area.
More later…………..
1 comment:
I wondered what all of the action was at your house before ya'll left!! Natchez Parkway is really lovely-glad to see things are coming together for the Tiffin rally in Canton. I am planning on putting it on our calendar as we would love to attend. We are headed out August 6 and won't be back in Texas until mid-late September. Have a good rest of trip.
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