Monday, June 6, 2016

Heading for a rally and avoiding bridges

Wednesday, June 1, 2016


Today we hitched up the Mammoth (II) and headed for the Missouri Chapter Rally in Platt City, MO. Why go there, you ask? Well, we wanted to get away, and visit some Heartland friends in the process. The closest rally during early June, when Tony can take some (summer) time off, was the MO Rally. So, back in March, we planned to go.

The few days before, we'd been getting lots of rain, so washing the rig was pointless, as was the truck. But it didn't look too bad, since I had used the Bugs-N-All on the front cap and washed/waxed the truck a few weeks ago.

"less-buggy" front cap

Tony also replaced the fuel pump on his large fuel tank a few weeks ago, in preparation of using the big tank on this trip. The original one was starting to "fuss" a lot, and not fuel efficiently. We asked Tony's mechanic friend to look at it, and he agreed it was failing. So I researched the pump and found the exact same one -- but also a step up from it, that was just about $25 more, and increased the flow rate a little bit. It was not too hard for him to change it out.

Some other important news was that Tony was hired for the 2016-17 school year to be the head director in Cisco, moving up from assistant. We are very excited about the move, but of course it means more responsibility. We have no doubt he'll handle it well.

Wednesday morning Tony had some work things to wrap up, but then he came home and we hit the road about 11AM. The rain in our area had let up some, but we knew more was on the way.... Very bad news for the folks at Lake Leon, where we used to live, and now Lake Cisco, north of the town, was getting full, and threatening to go over the spillway at the top of the "Big Dam". Last year, it was 20 feet low.

On the road again! This pic is heading down Ranger Hill in Eastland County.

Rest stop along the way, still in Texas. a little rainwashed.


One of the other things I did before the trip was to add POIs (Points of Interest) to the GPS that included low clearance bridges, so it would avoid those we could not fit under. I thought in the process it would be nice to know where ALL the low bridges were, not just the ones we could not fit.

Well, apparently, that was a mistake. The GPS thought I meant to AVOID ALL THE BRIDGES IN THIS DATABASE. So at one point, the GPS took us off the interstate, and through a residential area, then on some rural county roads, over a high railroad crossing, and under low-hanging trees, rather than on I-35! We spent an extra HOUR taking this detour, until I figured out what the GPS was doing to us. We finally got back to I-35, north of Oklahoma City, where there happened to be a Braum's! So we were able to stop and enjoy some good burgers and shakes!

Once we got back on route, we made it to our stop for the night just about 8:30PM! We stopped at the Oasis RV Park, near South Haven, Kansas. Now we get to add Kansas to our "states visited" map! The park was relatively quiet, long, wide pull through sites, and fairly level gravel.

Sunset over our site at Oasis RV Park, South Haven, KS

After doing a little work and relaxing, we hit the hay.




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