After yesterday’s grueling battle with the Kansas wind, I went to bed before 9pm. That’s pretty early - usually I go to sleep around 11 and wake up around 6. Something like that. Not yesterday - went to bed before 9 but still woke up around 6:30 or so.

I love when the days are warmer but the nights cool down such that I can run the Maxxair fan over the bed in our travel trailer, open a window and just sleep like a log. I’m grateful for air conditioning but not the drone of our Coleman Mach unit all. Night. Long. Bleh. And this is their quiet cool. Perhaps they were shooting for an oxymoron?

In fact, in the past, we had a WackO Products RV air conditioner silencer. The one and only Darryl Abts did the installation himself. Then we got the trailer rear-ended and didn’t have time to thoroughly test this gadget, although it did a good job when we had it.

Long day

Anyhow, after yesterday’s fight with the winds on our way from Kansas to our friends’ house in Oklahoma todays 300 mile journey really seemed to drag on. We didn’t really stop anywhere, other than for gas a couple of times.

Still, we do tend not to drive very fast - around 63 miles per hour - so the 300 miles took us about seven hours. After yesterday, that was a very long drive. I was so happy when we got to camp.

We’re back in Texas on our way to a Rockwood Mini Lite rally starting tomorrow and have returned to Dinosaur Valley RV Park tonight. We really liked this park when we were here last, the location was good and they have a hot tub.

After I finish blathering on here, that’s my next stop. Oh baby oh baby oh!

Who wet the bed?

We forgot to report the wet spot we found in the bed the other morning, after that crazy rain in Kansas. As we mentioned, we like to keep the vent open and the Maxxair fan running. Since there is a scoop-cover over the fan on the roof, that normally is no problem. Rain can’t really get past the cover. Well, when it is raining and blowing that hard, all bets are off. Rain dripped in through the opening and right onto the bed! A few hours with the two personal-size Ryobi fans took care of the problem lickity-split.

How’d that get there?

Yesterday I noticed one of those plastic wheel arch moldings getting loose. I discovered one of the screws that held it in place was loose and the other was just gone.

As a roadside repair, I put in a slightly larger self-tapping sheet metal screw but found that it was gone pretty quickly. Nuts.

If you run over a black self-tapping sheet metal screw on the highway, you can keep it. I don’t want it back. Also, my apologies.

So this morning I got out the trusty box of tools and stuff that ride in the pass-through of our trailer and found a screw and a nut that seemed to fit perfectly. Since the self-tapping screw was simply screwed into the thin sheet metal skirt molding on the trailer it was really easy to get behind the space, put the screw through the plastic and sheet metal and tighten it down.

Something I also carry, that seems quite foreign to the RV industry, is Loctite. This stuff keeps screws from unscrewing and has been good stuff since my dad’s company introduced it to me in the 1980s or so. I love this stuff.

So there’s now a non-matching screw holding the plastic trim molding down with a nut on the back that’s made more permanent through the magic of Loctite.

Today’s long journey was the perfect test and it passed with flying colors. But this whole thing just gave me something to think about.

Where in the heck did all that stuff come from?

Looking in the pass-through storage it dawned on me that we have a lot of stuff in there. A screen tent, lantern stand, tool box, totes galore full of RV stuff, a torque wrench, leveling wedges, leveling blocks and a box full of Starlink.

It’s amazing how stuff accumulates. And I don’t think I’ve counted it all. In fact I just remembered the power cord, Hughes Power Watchdog and water stuff. And chocks. Sheesh.

I think, when I get back, all of this stuff is going to get re-evaluated.

It makes me think of when we first pull-up to a campground and open-up the camper how nice and open and neat it all is. So pretty.

Give us two days, the interior looks like what Dorothy’s house must have looked like after the whirly ride around Kansas on her way to Oz.

I guess that means that I have to re-disorganize the pass-through storage on this rig.

Actually, Peggy likely will as she’s really good at that.

Looking forward

I think we’ve finally decided to put the podcast on YouTube regularly. Our plan is to start this week, and hopefully get the help of our MiniLite-owner friends during the rally. Stay tuned!