Monday morning was full of fear of the unknown. We needed to get out of Phoenix as early as possible and essentially that meant when I woke up. 😉 Which happened to be my favorite time of 4 am. We had a wonderful time with friends in Phoenix. Judy Schreiner bought us lunch as we came into town and Sharon Girodo made an incredible dinner Sunday night, but all that was distant in my mind once I started thinking about the electrical outage we had experienced the last 5 minutes of our drive on Sunday. What was going to happen when I tried to start the rig?
Hopefully when I turned that ignition everything was going to be fine. Everything was ready. I turned the key and it started. YES!!! WAIT! Why are the headlights flashing on and off in the Girodos neighborhood at 4 am? UGH!! I had to get out of there or the neighbors were going to be hot, so I pulled out and maneuvered my way through the small roads to the Interstate. Fortunately there was an open truck stop.
I have never been one to read instruction manuals. I just dive in and make it work. However this time it was different. Smokin Hot was waiting to see how I handled this. Her husband who has never done anything mechanical or physical for that matter, (if you can pay to have it done, then by all means) lol, needed to “make this work” for more reason than one. I immediately began to search for the fuse boxes. The rig has a chassis fuse system and a home fuse system. Evidently our running lights were out and the short caused a complete failure for just a few minutes yesterday. The majority of the system was back up. I just needed to track down the short. Our rig has 75000 parts to it. How was I going to track down a short in the dark at 4:30 am in the morning?
Google is a wonderful thing!! Within 10 minutes I had found the failing switch!!
I just couldn’t locate the cause. That was going to have to wait until I could get it to a mechanic. We had to get on the road. Once I pulled the failing switch out, the headlights worked fine, we just
didn’t have running lights, but we did have hazard lights!! By 5:30 am, we were on the road fully fueled, showered, shaved and fed. Hazard lights and all.
The end was in sight and the Texas border was reachable that day, and if I pushed it, we might even get beyond. Pecos Texas to be exact, and if you haven’t ever been to Pecos Texas, then don’t. lol I think it consisted of, well, if you blinked you would miss it. Fortunately for us there was a patch of gravel with a few RV hookups and to top it off a wonderful couple had found their way to Pecos as well. Tim and Susie Zich were parked right next to us. They were very kind and offered to help in any way. Jill and I had the wonderful opportunity to visit with them in their incredibly beautiful rig and we used that time to ask as many questions as we could about full time RV life. We will always keep up with them and their travels and we look forward to meeting them on the road again one day soon. For the first time in 5 long days our night was uneventful.
Lindale Texas was a beautiful sight on Tuesday. We were a day late, but we were safe. The rig was still soggy but it had made it through the trip of a lifetime. Our work had just begun, 4 more days before we could rest.
I certainly enjoyed the adventure!!