Monday was an excellent travel day. We got up at 0630, had coffee and a bowl of instant oatmeal, finished up hitching the rig and hit the road by about 0800. Ardmore, OK was reached a mere 392.6 miles later and we have a very, very, very long pull through at site 47 in the Hidden Lake RV Campground. Here’s a picture of the site; you could probably park 2 fifth wheels in this site without not much trouble.
We dropped the front jacks, hooked up water and electric, and didn’t bother unhitching since we’re just staying overnight. We headed out to the Brew House for dinner and found out they were closed on Mondays so ended up at the Catfish Corner restaurant. Both of us had fried fish…man was it good. Coated with cornmeal and deep fried…it was quite yummy. The decor in the restaurant was quite eclectic; here are a couple of shots of the interior.Â
We got up early Tuesday morning, broke camp and hit the road. First stop was McDonalds about 4 miles up the road for breakfast and coffee (we didn’t even make any). After that it was 80 miles or so up the road where we bought fuel for BAT right outside of Norman, OK. We then continued up I-35 until time to stop for lunch. Neil spotted a Travel Stop that had a Dairy Queen so we had a chili cheese dog and a caramel milkshake (well, actually we had one each of each of those for a total of 2 of each of them total) and right over the border into Kansas got off the freeway to avoid the toll roads in Kansas. We headed east about 15 miles, avoided the bridge with a clearance of 12 feet six inches (we are 13 feet 6 inches tall so we definitely couldn’t make it under that overpass) and then proceeded on several 2 and 4 lane roads (pretty decent actually except for not being limited access freeways) all the way to Junction City, KS. The only bad part is that we only go 58 or so miles an hour so you end up with traffic piling up behind you with a speed limit of 70 or 75 and then they come flying past you…curves or double yellow lines or no passing zones mean nothing to the other idiots on the road.
We arrived here at Camp Horizons (otherwise known as the New Horizons factory, dumped our holding tanks which were 25% or so full from our two days of travel with no hookups since we plan on being parked here until Saturday morning and there are no sewer hookups; then got parked in our assigned spot in front of the service building. Here’s a photo of our house (with the tarp up over the window since it’s supposed to rain tonight, hopefully they’ll get that fixed in the next couple of days).
Neil went on a bike ride and had a shower then we headed out to the local Elks Lodge for beer and dinner…which consisted of some Fried Mushrooms and Jalapeño Poppers since we were pretty full from lunch.
Then it was home and early to bed since we have to be up early tomorrow…we have to have finished coffee, breakfast, and be ready for worker bees at 0700 so that means the alarm will go off at 0530. I thought we were done with that craziness since we are retired now…but it seems like we are at least as busy now as we were when we were still working. I don’t know how we got everything done back in those days.
Anyway; there will be no fun this week…after talking to the repair folks in the morning we’re headed over to Film at Eleven (strange name for a truck modification shop, isn’t it?) to drop BAT off for installation of air springs on the rear suspension. Then we’ll do laundry or Connie will work or we’ll hang out in the lobby of New Horizons depending on the work schedule for the rig.
Wednesday morning we met with Ken about 0730 who said they would get right on our work. After that we drove over to Manhattan to drop off BAT at Film at Eleven for the air spring install; getting back to Camp Horizons about 1045 and the house was still sitting where we left it…so much for getting right to it. We’ll hang out in the lounge, go eat some lunch, and probably run back over to pick up BAT later on today; they said it was a 3 hour job and would easily be done today.
Cyas.
Travels with Gunther and Kara 
glad ta see ya made it… i always say an extry prayer on travel days fer yall – tell ’em ta fix da rig ‘n truck, git yall cruisin’ again. the alamo was cool, really enjoyin’ the blog. hope they solve that leaky window situation fer ya, git ya back on the road agin. yall be careful, keep me posted, lemme know where yer headed – i hear tell aint nuthin flatter than kansas.
ron
Thanks for the prayers for us; sometimes we need them…particularly on big city travel days as that is usually a white knuckle experience. The guys at the truck shop tell me that the ride will be way better with the springs and some friends of ours who did the same mod agree. Window is fixed; just needed a new gasket seal; the original one was stretched a bit when they glued it to the window frame and it pulled loose from the frame in the corner and the seal cut across the corner instead of around it. They’re doing a water hose test to verify.
We’re headed for Colorado Springs on Saturday/Sunday and will be there for 10 or 11 days.
You’re right…Kansas is very flat. Some guy I found on the internet compared the average height variation to the distance across it and then did the same comparison for pancake. His research revealed that Kansas actually is flatter than a pancake:-) The middle to western part is really flat, much more than the eastern portion where we are now…we’ll see that on Saturday with a stop right before the CO border then on into Colorado Springs Sunday.
Hope you got all of the kinks out of leaky windows and such, springs on BAT notched up and ready to rumble!! New mattress too since they messed up w/original one? BabySis
Yeah, got every thing fixed except Chris forgot to patch the hole in our ceiling where he moved the cell phone booster antenna. Luckily we’re not leaving until 8 AM or so tomorrow and they will all be in working at 6 AM since they have a rush delivery for Friday on another rig (51 feet long, what a monster). I’ll just run over first thing and beat on them.
Everything else got fixed just fine; I’ll put up another post in a bit with details and some pix from our hike today at the Konza Prairie Nature Conservancy preserve. Pretty cool hike it was.