Friday, March 5

Dakota Ridge RV Park   Golden, CO $45.61 per night

Saturday, March 6
Tom called a Stanley Steamer company and we had them come over and clean our carpet. Quick, efficient, and now we are clean. The carpet is now 3 years old and needed a cleaning badly. We had been trying to find someone to clean it for a couple of months but everyone we called either couldn't do it while we were in town or their equipment was broken. Went to Micro Center and Frank got some USB cables to reorganize the external hard drives. Lots of little projects getting accomplished or at least started.

Sunday, March 7
Frank spent a good part of the day in the trailer basement working on a plumbing job. Now the water softener is much easier to remove for regeneration. He did have to move some pipes and that's when we found none of the hardware stores around here have the pipe fittings our trailer uses. So a couple of the pipes got jerry rigged until we can find the proper parts. We had dinner with Dave and Jim at Chad's restaurant.

Monday, March 8
Today was a shopping day. We went to ACE hardware to look for plumbing parts, but did not find them. Later we visited an RV dealer where we were able to order the parts needed. Surprisingly, they called us an hour later saying they had them delivered and we could come and get them. So when we returned to the trailer, Frank again worked on completing the basement's replumbing, finishing after an accident which flooded the basement with several gallons of water. We also picked up some RXs at Walgreen's.

Tuesday, March 9
Tom took five of our audio books, which we have listened to while driving the truck and trailer, and sold them to a used book store. Then he bought seven new audio books for future listening. Frank and Tom went over to Jim and Dave's trailer and assisted them in removing their trailer's fifth wheel hitch from the back of their truck. Then Frank went with them to see their new house. Later Tom joined them at their house. The house will be 100 years old next year and is in excellent updated condition.   Later all four of us went to dinner at Country Buffet.

Wednesday, March 10
Yesterday Tom noticed a squealing sound coming from the front end of the truck. Since we needed new front tires, we had a tire store put on new tires, check the front end alignment and investigate the squeal. They said there was a U-joint problem at the end of the drive shaft. Later in the afternoon we dropped the truck off at a nearby Ford dealer and rented a Nisan truck while the F-250 was in the shop for repair. We then drove back to Dave and Jim's new house to help setup new furniture.  

Thursday, March 11
Today the Ford dealer called and said the U-joint problem needed to be shipped off for another company for repair, and that probably we would get the truck back tomorrow, Friday. Tom did the laundry, and then went grocery shopping. Frank again picked up RXs. Had dinner again with Dave and Jim at White Fence Farm, which serves a nice family style meal where everyone orders their own entree but the rest of the meal is served family style. Foods are included such as corn fritters, mashed potatoes and gravy, cottage cheese, cole slaw, beets, and a bean salad, plus rolls.

Friday, March 12
We got the truck back today. Turned out we had a slightly bent drive shaft which had to be sent out to a special place to get straightened. Frank spent much of the afternoon working on the computer cabinet, rebuilding the mounting system which had an oak piece split last year. Looks much better and shouldn't have any problems with the server moving.   We had one last meal at Chad's restaurant for dinner.

Saturday, March 13
We decided to stay another day and take a bit of a tour into the mountains. Beautiful weather and beautiful scenery.

Wednesday, March 17

Council Road RV Park   Oklahoma City, OK $25.20 per night

Thursday, March 18
We got up early and took the trailer to Motley's. We showed Allen our concerns and asked him about some unusual tire wear we had just discovered. He climbed under the trailer and found the Mor-Ride suspension system was broken. That required a call to the factory for overnight shipment of replacement parts. we also took all 4 tires over to a tire place nearby that was recommended, and at their recommendation, we replaced one tire, and at our decision we also replaced a second one that was beginning to wear. So we ended up in a hotel and had no access to Frank's email or our daily log for updates.

Friday, March 19
Once we checked out of the hotel we drove to the Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum for another visit. This one was nice as we spent almost all our time going through the art gallery of fantastic western paintings and sculptures. Due to photography restrictions in the paintings area no pictures are available. After the museum we went to the tire place and picked up the 4 trailer tires and hauled them back to the RV shop. We left and did some sight seeing and a bit of shopping before returning to pick up the trailer at 5:00. We also had them lube the slide-outs and repack the trailer wheel bearings. Bottom line, $4,400. Here are some photos of the broken parts.

Saturday, March 20
The snow began last evening and continues today. We had some thunder storms last night and the campground's Internet went down. Apparently their router was blown out, so we are using our own service for the rest of the weekend. Frank spent a lot of time learning more about KML files, and Tom worked on taxes. We drove to Country Buffet for dinner through the snow storm but it was worth it to keep from having to cook dinner here. Roads are slippery but traffic was light.

Sunday, March 21
The snow quit this morning, total accumulation is only a couple of inches but that is mostly because the tempeture was right around freezing and most of it melted as it hit the ground. The sun was out this morning but we had partly cloudy skies most of the day. We went to Country Buffet again for dinner but this time the sky was clear. We are anxious to get on the road again. Frank worked on fine tuning the Google Earth link for campgrounds we have staid in this year.

Monday, March 22
Well we didn't get very far today. The RV repair place called us this morning and asked if we could stop by and let them weigh our trailer to see if we were overweight. That could have caused the failure in our suspension system. Turned out this was the first time they had used their new weighing system and it took several hours to figure it all out. The info will be sent to the scale manufacturer for a detailed analysis which will be sent to us later. It doesn't appear we are over weight, but while we had the trailer in their bay they checked the distance from the hitch pin to each side of the two axles. It turns out that one axil is 3/4 inch off of what it should be. That could also be responsible for both tire wear and possibly for the previous failure of the Mor-ride suspension system that was replaced last week. So we decided to stay another day, and tomorrow they will try to make an adjustment that should straighten out the alignment. Hopefully that will solve the overall problem.

Monday, March 29

Tyndall AFB Famcamp   Panama City, FL $17.00 per night

Tuesday, March 30
Work day. Tom did shopping while Frank worked on web pages. We got our full timing trips from 1989-1993 formated for the web and posted.