Thursday the 6th we traveled the 280 miles to Columbus TX. That was a very long drive for us and we did it on just one tank of fuel. We didn’t pick a campground before we left so Patty did the research on the way west on I 10. We knew we were going to be on I 10 for the next couple of days so there wasn’t any real need to pick a place for our one night stay west of Houston TX. We are getting real good fuel mileage for some reason right now so as we went along we just kept intending the distance to where we going to stay for the night.
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| Back in Texas! |
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| Our site in the Columbus RV Park. |
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| We don't know the circumstance here but this RV burnt to ground. |
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| We had a loose turkey chase us around the campground. |
On the 7th, Friday we traveled the last 180 miles to Ingram TX which is about 50 miles west of San Antonio. Just as we were in the last 15 miles or so of the trip, the truck wrench light came on again as we were pulling up a small hill. The engine fan came on too which is not normal for such a small hill. It takes quite a bit of hard pulling to get that fan to come on. In fact, we never heard that fan for the first 3 months until we got into the Rocky Mountains the first year we were out. We thought there was something wrong with the truck back then because the fan is very loud. So now I have the same situation as I had a month ago as we pulled into Jackson MS with this wrench light on. I didn’t stop, I just kept on until we arrived at our destination about 15 minutes later.
We went to the Guadelupe RV Resort where our friend Janelle is a resident. We have known Janelle now for over 2 years after meeting her at our stay in South Florida our first year full timing. We arrived around 3pm and were set up in the Park Model sites number 27 next to Janelle. This campground is nice but a little on the pricey side for us at $39 a night plus the cost of Wi-Fi.
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| Our site at the Guadalupe RV Resort. Janelle's site is on our left. |
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| This is a large campground! |
The Guadelupe has a nice bar located in the center of the resort that draws a lot of local town people out too. So after getting set up and having a little dinner that Janelle brought over we headed over to DT’s for drinks and karaoke. We were surprised that the place draws so many people. This is the way to have a bar in an RV resort. By 9 pm the place was really hopping. By 10:30 we had enough and headed back to our RV for the night. It was a long day!
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I decided to just wait until Monday to take the truck into the local Ford dealer, Ken Stoepel Ford, here in Kerrville TX. My reasoning was that Saturdays were usually very busy and if I needed to call back to Rogel Ford in Jackson they were closed on Saturday. Also, I just didn’t want to get up early and deal with it just after we got here. So I made an appointment online for 7:30 am on Monday at Ken Stoepel Ford.
Saturday and Sunday we (I) just hung out at the resort and enjoyed the nice weather while it lasts. Patty did a lot of sleeping as she has been having issues with her blood sugar again. She is either way up or way down, just can’t seem to get into a groove with it. We have new things to discuss with her Endocrinologist in Edinburg TX when we finally get down to our winter spot. The Dr. adjusted her insulin pump before we left and she was doing very well. But now she just seems to be all over the place with her sugar levels. Also, she is reacting differently to being low now. Before, Patty would start to sweat and get lethargic that would let us know she was low. Now she becomes hysterical and has uncontrolled movements and talks out of her mind. It’s pretty scary actually!
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| One of my walks around the campground. This is the Guadalupe River on the right. |
Monday the 10th I got up a little before 6 am and did my stretch bands routine and then headed off with the truck to Ford. After about an hour I was informed that the truck had the same issue as before with the oil cooler being bad. Also, there was a fault code from the truck computer saying the fan clutch was bad. The good news is that since the previous work was done by Ford (Rogel in MS) the current failure is covered and won't cost us anything, just the time to do the work. Also, the fan clutch is covered by our extended warranty, yea us! Ford also wants to replace a $150 electronic sending unit while they have the cab off just because it’s a good time to do it cheaply, so I agreed. All in all we will have to pay $500 for this repair in total (warranty deductible and the sending unit).
At first, Ford said that they couldn’t get to for a week. Then that afternoon they said that since we are traveling and the issues we have had before, they pushed us to the top of the work pile and in fact had started on it already. They believe it will be done tomorrow by the end of the day! Wow!
As far as the rest of the day, we went to the Walmart here and got some more wine and a few food staples. We are now thinking we may get to Cotulla TX to visit new friends this week, finally! So we topped off our three propane tanks so we have all of the propane we need when we boondock at the oil well.
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| No matter what, we eat good! |
I also had a brain fart about keeping warm during this polar vortex while boondocking. This latest polar vortex is now hitting here and will be down in south Texas by Wednesday. Since we will be boondocking without electricity we will need to use our generator. When it’s warm out, relying on the generator is OK because we don’t need it too much. However, when it’s cold, we need to keep warm all of the time, especially when it’s only going to be mid 50’s in the daytime with low 40s at night. We will need to run the furnace which will run but uses the battery to run the fan. We can only get about 5-6 hours out of the battery running the furnace fan. The 40s and 50s isn't that cold but it does require having some minor heat and running the generator is really overkill for this purpose. So what we need is a small propane space heater.
Tomorrow I plan to be on a mission to get a propane space heater. Also, the cold weather gets here tomorrow so I am planning to make some cold weather chili!
Stay Tuned!
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