Wonder if we can just camp at Discount Tires?

Yes, here we are, back at a Discount Tire store.  As we fired up the motorhome to leave this morning, the driver inner tire read low.  Yep, we should have had the new valve put in at the Discount Tire back in Michigan…but I was in a hurry.  Could have spent 15 more minutes there instead of nearly 2 hours today, but it is what it is.  We have been to too many of these nice places lately…but I think we have her fixed now.

Here you can see our tire sensor.  Driver inner side reading 56 psi…should be 80.  The 116F above the 56 is how hot the tire is.  And yes, sitting in the parking lot of Discount Tire, with the engine running for A/C purposes with outside temps in the low 100’s will do that to a tire.  I told “Cash”, the guy who first started our repair, that I did not see how he handled the temps working outside in Phoenix.  He said, “I have been asking myself that for the past three years…”  Well, he was lucky…it was his lunch time, and another young man took over just as he was about to take the lug nuts off.  I did not get this young man’s name, but he is working his FOURTH summer, and attends Penn State University.  “Wanted to get away from the heat,” he said.   Well, I did not want to call him an idiot, but in the WINTER it is not cold in Phoenix, yet is FREEZING in State College during the winter.  Well, I think he has one more year left…and after a 90 minute wait to get working on it, he had us on the road within the 2 hour mark.  So instead of heading up I-17 in the cooler mid-morning…we headed up right at the heat of the day…103 degrees according to our onboard thermometer.  But we made it without any issues up to the 6,000+ elevation mark.   Still feel sorry for them tire guys having to sit on the hot asphalt to get the tires off…but the RV won’t fit in their bays, so all the work to get tires off and on has to be done outside.  Luckily, we were able to keep the engine going so Marcia did not have to get out and could sit in the comfort of the cool front seat.  That is, until Skruffy took it over and she decided to sit in the recliner and take a short hot nap.

    

By 5 pm we were sitting in our spot at Kaibab Lake National Forest Campground outside of Williams.  It is $12 per night with the NP Senior Pass, no hookups, but so very, very quiet.  Temps have been in mid to low 70’s from our arrival, and are probably close to mid-60’s  as we near 8 pm, and time to feed the dogs.

Not a neighbor within sight nor hearing distance.  Had a few people walk by, a few cars drive by…oh, it is going to be a nice, cool (cold maybe) night.  Tomorrow…the Grand Canyon.

20 Gallons Gas for $22.58, am I Dreaming???

With this head cold, (yes, we both still have it), it is easy to wonder what is real, and what is a dream.  Like my first car…a 1965 Austin Healy Sprite.  At 16 years old, it was a dream car.  Two seats, convertible…it held 8 gals of gasoline “IF” I filled it up until it started coming out the spout.  Had it for less than a year…rebuilt the engine twice, and if it wasn’t for those duel carburetors, I’d probably still own it today.  What I loved about it, besides the obvious, was that I could fill it up for under $2.  I think the most I paid for gas was $2.25 once, normally I could get by putting in a dollar.  Of course, gas was less than 30 cents a gallon back then.  What a dream!

  

Today I put 20 gallons of gas into the motorhome…and it cost $1.129 per gallon.  WOW…it sounds like a dream, but it was reality.  One thing about shopping at Winn Dixie, beside it being just down the street from the condo, is that you get 5 cents off in gas for every $50 you spend.  You can save it up for 2 months.  With 10 days left in this cycle, I decided to put the maximum, 20 gallons, into the motorhome today…at $1 off per gallon.  Sure could have used some of these prices last year on the Alaska Highway…that WOULD have been a dream!

Two years ago we purchased the SafeGuard tire pressure monitoring system.  On our last trip one of the car pressure sensors stopped working on us.  I thought it was a bad battery, even though we replaced all the batteries just last spring.  Talked to the company and they said to send it to them, and they would replace it for free…so I did.  But when I talked to them a week later, the guy said that it was just a bad battery…even though I had put in a “new” Energizer battery.  He put in a new battery and tested it, and sent it back.  I put it on the car and tested it over at the motorhome, and after I re-programed it, everything worked again.  Apparently in trying to get it to work, I had cleared the setting for this one tire…so it had a bad battery, and it needed to be reprogramed.  Sure glad they honored their 2 year warranty, that’s for sure.  We LOVE our tire pressure system.  It gives you a lot of peace of mind as you travel down the road…and it did catch that one dual tire problem last year.

As for our colds…it is like walking up an escalator.  For every three steps you go, you realize you dropped a step in the process.  YUCK!

Near San Antonio, Shredded Tire Follow-up

After I-12 re-joins I-10 in Baton Rouge, we quickly find ourselves on the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge.  I look at this long stretch of road and wonder, “What if the tire had blown here?”

At Lake Charles we cross over the Calcasieu River Bridge.  Again, I wonder, “What if the tire had blown here?”

For many months I have been contemplating the purchase of a Tire Pressure Monitoring System like the one above from Amazon.  I have had this in my cart as a “might buy later” item…the price has held firm for months.  But this system looks like it would work well with us…the motorhome has six tires, the HHR has four.   Looks like it might be a purchase once we get to Sacramento.
Forgot to mention yesterday that when I pulled off the shredded tire, I see this metal wire hanging down from the wheel well…..it was a part of a standard clothes hanger!  Guy at Walmart felt that it was picked up by the tire on the road, worked into the tire and BAM!  The “bam” probably blew it right into the wheel well.

We are at a rest area just shy of San Antonio, where we are meeting Jim and Carol at a Cracker Barrel in the morning.  Our only difficulties today were the hard roads in a portion of Louisiana and a small part of Texas, and the Houston Traffic at 3 pm…..which was better than a few rush hour trips we have made in the past.  After breakfast, we hope to get to the west side of Texas, and into a RV park hopefully on Sunday, no later than Monday.  With all the bending and kneeling I did yesterday, I woke up to a stiff left knee again much like I had last year after planting my mom’s garden….but not as bad.  Hoping the knee will be better in a few days.