Living on the Road

with Jim and Gayle

July, 2019

July continued with issues with both of my knees.  The left one continues to be swollen and stiff with the "catch" in the back of the knee.  There is still no resolution to the problem, so I will continue to do my PT exercises over the summer.  In the meantime, my right knee hurts.  I assume it is from the torn meniscus.  I had a cortisone shot in it just before we left.

When we lived in Vienna, Susan Pepper was the Program Coordinator.  We haven't seen her since we returned 22 years ago.  The day before we left Indio, Susan and her husband, John, arrived for a business meeting.  We were able to have dinner together.  It was fun seeing them after all these years!

Finally, with temperatures being consistently in the triple digits, we left Indio.

Trip went well for the first three hours.  Just outside of Parker, AZ, however, we hit some brutally rough roads, including about a foot drop from an overpass bridge to the connecting roadway.  Our leveling system alarms went off.  Jim quickly pulled to the shoulder of the road and walking around, it was clear there was an issue with the rear passenger side ride height.  He was able to manually get enough ride height to limp us down the road to a truck stop parking lot where he could work on the coach.
In 118 degree temperatures, he had to crawl under and around trying to determine the issue.  He diagnosed it asa broken ride height valve.  He had a spare (go figure) and was able to replace it.

Thinking all was well, we spent the night in Parker, AZ.  The next morning, however, the coach wouldn't go to its travel height.  Three hours away, in Lake Havasu, was an authorized HWH repair shop.  Jim felt he could limp us into there, which he did.  It was the weekend so we had to wait until Monday for service.  In the meantime, Jim spent a lot of time studying schematics and doing research.    Monday morning, as we got out of bed, Jim told me he had determined that he'd just installed the valve upside down.  Sure enough, he re-installed it and we were successfully on the road.   He has since bought three more valves just to have on hand for the other three leveling valves on the coach.

Our first real destination was Heber City, UT.  We have three sets of friends from this area so we stopped to visit with them.  Barb and Skip hosted all four couples for dinner one night and Bill and Karen hosted us on another night.

While in Heber City, Jim noticed that we had a coolant leak, probably from the rough road abuse.  We spent a day at the Cummins repair shop getting seals and hoses replaced.

We went to Denver, CO to see my Mom in her new retirement center and my sister, Lynne, and her family.

My Mom is doing really well at her new place.  The retirement center is having a lot of start-up issues, particularly in staffing, but Mom is hanging in there with a good attitude.  Lynne and Michael are really helping her.
We really enjoyed the north Denver area (Thornton).  We even considered "landing" there when we quit motorhoming.  A look at housing prices sort of cooled that, however.

Lynne and Michael took us to hear a wonderful a cappella group, "Face".  Probably the best concert we have been to in years.

 

Lynne has this huge Maine Coon cat, Gatsby.  He makes Max look small.

Max