Can I Shoot It?

The leveler alarm that is. Most coaches have an alarm system when the levelers that keep the coach steady and level when you are parked don't retract properly. Wolf apparently has a glitch in the alarm system as the levelers all seem to be fine but the alarm beeps randomly, frequently and annoyingly when we travel along. Geoff has some hearing loss in that sound range but I do not and there are times if I knew where in the system it would shut it up I would be willing to shoot it!

We get on the road early and, except for my desire to shoot the leveler alarm, cruise along in the Texas Hill country enjoying the flowering cactus, yucca and thistles. Around 10 am we are back on I-10 and stopping for breakfast at the Sutton County Steakhouse in Sonora, Texas, where I worked, ummm, way back in 1978 or so. Boy has it changed since then! Although I suppose nearly 40 years does change things, even me I suppose!

Our plans had included a digression off I-10 of about 120 miles to see Ft Davis but on a closer look, the route is up into mountains ... yes, Texas has mountains, sort of. We finally decide to bypass the national historic site which is one of the best surviving examples of an Indian Wars' frontier military post in the Southwest. Unfortunately driving winding mountain roads has to be taken more seriously when you're in an RV. Instead we will go further today and have more time elsewhere.

And here comes another adventure! Geoff caught movement out of the corner of his eye and asked me if I saw anything. I certainly saw something moving in the reflection on the back of the side view mirror. He pulled over at the next exit and sure enough, the windshield seal was coming loose and flapping in the wind! Good old duct tape to the rescue, fixing the situation at least for a while. We will certainly keep an eye on it. Those of you who have read the earlier blogs about last year's trip will remember we got a windshield full of rocks which we had to have replaced when we got home. Clearly something has gone amiss with the installation of the replacement windshield. The image to the right actually shows that same corner of the windshield after removing the tape but before it was repaired and cleaned up.

When we got to the next reasonably sized place, Ft Stockton, we called in about it but basically it seems that since we are not in immediate danger we should just keep an eye on it and deal with it when we get home. Of course now we have even more adventure ... the traffic pattern at the Flying J in Ft Stockton was horrible and we managed to scrape the lower part of Wolf's passenger side on the freshly painted yellow concrete things Flying J uses to direct and control traffic. It doesn't show as strongly in the image here as that bright yellow does in person.Wolf must now bare the shame of a long yellow streak along his paintwork.

After gathering up our jangled nerves we headed west along the Texas mountains stopping first at the WalMart in Ft Stockton where Geoff announced it was 109 degrees per Wolf! We drove through pecan orchards and saw burn scars on the land from wildfires until we reached the Van Horn RV Camp in, of course, Van Horn, Texas.

We left Van Horn at a more reasonable time, close to 8:30 although that might still be Eastern time! In all the excitement the last day or two I forgot to mention that Geoff discovered we were missing the lug nut on one of the wheels. Along with everything else we have made several stops trying to find a replacement. We tried again in Van Horn with no luck and are now headed towards El Paso.

This stretch of I-10 runs very close to the border and for much of it we can see the Rio Grande and Mexico on the far side. We've seen Border Patrol east bound and cameras west bound. I'd never really thought about being so close to the border and, although I have been to Mexico, it was over 50 years ago and that was Tijuana when I was in college!

There are nasty cross winds through El Paso and on over the border into New Mexico. Just into New Mexico we pass a Border Patrol Inspection Station but all we had to do was slow down, stopping people seems to be random. We also see a lot of dust storms and it is sort of neat when they cross over the interstate losing their dust and going nearly invisible until they reach the dust again on the other side.

I think the picture above was taken around Bowie. It shows the mountains of Mexico and, if you look carefully, in the middle is one of the dust storms with another, fainter one, to the left of it and a third one at an angle on the right side of the image.

We've decided to push on through and get to the Crazy Horse RV Campground in Tucson a day early, arriving the evening of May 27th and a call to them okays the extra days stay. Time for some down time!