Where Did That Come From?

Where on earth did this really long screw come from?  We didn't know what the problem was but when John checked the trailer tires Thursday in preparation to drive to Chatfield State Park on Friday, he found that one of the tires only had 30 pounds pressure instead of the normal 65.  Oops!

We called our road service company, Coach-Net, and they sent out a tow truck from the nearby town of Berthoud to remove the low-pressure tire and put on the spare.

We were very impressed with the service.  Coach-Net called to tell us the truck would be there in 45 minutes.  The driver, Jake, called us when he was 10 minutes away.  And by the time he had started to work we received a call to be sure help had arrived.

John watched as Jake jacked up the trailer.

Once the tire was off, they inspected it to see if they could find the problem.

Yep, the screw pictured at the top of this post was imbedded deeply in the tire.  No wonder it was leaking air.  Jake put in a plug so the tire wouldn't leak and put it back on the trailer.  One of these days we will have the tire repaired even better, but hopefully this will hold till we return to Arizona.

We needed to get on the road Friday so we could see family in Littleton.  We shared adult beverages and chips and dip with our son Eric and his wife Liz and grandson John.  Kylie, our granddaughter is in Oregon swimming the in sectional meet.  We will see her next week.

There Was a Little Delay

We were ready to leave Gold Canyon and head to Williams, AZ, at 8:30 this morning. But we didn't actually pull out until 10:30. The delay at first caused a bit of panic. The batteries in the RV were dead. We need the 12-volt system to raise and lower the landing gear of the 5th wheel, to open and close the slides and to reel in the power cord. John said, "call AAA." I said, "We don't have AAA, we have Coach-Net." That turned out to be a really good thing. Instead of AAA dispatching someone with new batteries, a technician from Coach-Net called back in about 45 minutes later. He walked John through several diagnostic tests. It looks like the switch in the controls for the landing gear that reads "In for storage, out for use and charging" means the batteries don't charge when that switch is in and the control panel is closed and locked.

The technician told us to put the switch in the charging position and wait 30 minutes to see if they batteries had a charge. So we set that up and went for a walk. When we returned, the batteries had charged enough we could complete everything and hitch up and pull out of our site.

Apparently, our RV had been sitting long enough without charging the batteries that they were totally out of power. The funny thing is, I harp at John for never parking without hookups so we can run down the battery. (You have to do that to keep them strong, don't you know?) Apparently, our RV took care of that all on it's own. At least, we hope that is the problem. If so, we saved quite a bit by not getting new batteries today. And, to top that off, our Coach-Net service is free till 2016. We received one year free with the Mobile Suite purchase and last summer we attended a Mobile Suites Rally where RVsForLess, a rally sponsor, gave us an additional 2 years free.

It feels good to be back on the road after sitting in southern Arizona for 7 months. On our trip north on the 101 and I-17, we saw this truck hauling several small trailers that looked like they belong to the US Army, each with a box inside.

We also saw this smoke on the horizon.

Before we could get too worried about a wild fire, we passed a sign that read, "Managed Burn. Do No Report."

We are at Railside RV Ranch in Williams for the next few days. Why? Because the Grand Canyon Train runs right by the park. We can even watch it through our back window.

We were planning to make reservations for the train sometime next week, but when we checked in here we learned that, on the first Saturday of the month, the train is pulled by the steam engine. Since tomorrow is the first Saturday of May, we quickly made reservations to ride tomorrow. After all, we spent a week in Skagway, Alaska, waiting to right the White Pass and Yukon train pulled by a steam engine. (Skagway is really not worth a whole week unless you have a really good reason to be there.) Tomorrow will be fun!