OK…as promised the other day here’s the longer version.

We left Lake City FL last Saturday for the trip on I-10 and I-75 to Foley AL. Traffic was much better but we inadvertently didn’t get the fridge properly blocked so that the door wouldn’t bounce open slightly. Well…it did…and a water bottle fell down and jammed it from completely closing…so we ended up with the freezer at about 13 and the fridge at 50ish when we arrived. No worry…we just fixed it…or so we thought…for our next travel day.

Foley was great…we ate at Lulu’s and Acme Oyster House…a couple of our favorite places…well at least Acme is but we really went to Lulu’s so that we could buy more hot sauce from their gift shop. It’s only $5 a bottle there and mail order is $8 plus shipping so we got 3 bottles for a total of 4 in the pantry…that should last us awhile.

We dumped and flushed our tanks after sloshing them around half full with vinegar and Dawn in them to get the crud off the inside…and this pretty much restored our tank level indicators to proper operation. Standard beginning of travel season stuff…they just get gunked up over the winter.

Monday morning…we headed out early for our 380 mile trip to Vinton LA for an overnight stop. Unfortunately…just west of Baton Rouge…I-10 was completely closed on the westbound lanes and had been that way since we left. We had hoped it was just an accident since we knew about it at 0800 when we left…but alas it was apparently either a really serious one or something else as it was still closed. We got shuttled off onto an at grade US highway alternate route. The only problem was that we were joined by about 50,000 of our closest friends and the traffic was pretty bad. Adding in the extra 50 miles the detour caused…and we didn’t get to Vinton until well after 1800. We ate dinner and pretty much nothing else…although we did have to clean up after another fridge partial opening.

Tuesday morning…we were up and out early again…and finally an uneventful travel day. We pulled into Buckhorn Lake Resort in Kerrville TX about 1500 where we’ll be for 11 days including the project below and the NHOG rally which starts on Monday. Luckily…the third time was the charm and we figured out the fridge problem and have it solved now. We’ll also ask around during rig open house walkthroughs next week to see what other creative solutions folks have found to this problem. RV fridges have latches that hold the doors shot…but unfortunately they’re smaller than residential ones and don’t really keep your ice cream hard. Residential models are larger and do keep your ice cream hard…but don’t have a good way to keep the doors shut on bumpy roads…so folks get creative with solving that problem. We thought we had been creative enough…but apparently not so we’ll be looking to upgrade our securing solution.

The reason we got to Kerrville early was to replace the carpet in our living room slide with the same hardwood in the rest of the rig. The carpet was…naturally enough after 7 years…pretty ratty assed and needed to go. Luckily our friend Jim Fiste had already done the replacement in his rig…and knew all the tricks. He told Neil that if we brought the materials with us he would help with the install. So we picked up the $800 or so worth of materials and carried it along with us from FL.

Early Wednesday morning…well actually 0900 but Neil and Connie were up early to move all the stuff on the slide into the bedroom to get it out of the way…they started the project.

Here’s the before shot after they pulled up the carpet. You can see the nasty stained carpet which they laid out for a work surface.

Next was laying out the pieces to figure out the right pattern…there are slight color and knot/grain variations in each piece so you need to make sure it looks right before proceeding. As you can see…the third piece in that Jim has his hand down on is a little light…so they pulled that one up and used it elsewhere. You also make sure that the seam overlaps don’t line up perfectly during this process…marking which ones need to be shortened.

Next up…make sure you like the pattern…get Connie’s approval for any additional plank swaps needed…and then you notch out the board closest to the inside to go around the edge and rip the outboard one to the right width.

Next up…pull everything up and lay it out on the carpet in order and start glueing it down…Jim spread glue on two broad widths at a time starting at the outboard edge then lining up the planks with pencil lines that they laid out on the underfloor. Repeat until done, then add the overlap stair nose trim at the inboard edge of the slide, walk around to seat the planks, and weigh down the stair nose with tool boxes, weights, and everything else you can think of and wait for the glue to dry.

They finished up around 1530 and after a shower and the 1600 happy hour at the clubhouse they headed out to Taqueria Jalisco for dinner…and had the best Mexican food they’ve had since 2017 out west in Zion National Park.

Afterwards…Neil and Connie move enough stuff to get to the bed to sleep…and reassembled their recliners but closer to the TV than normal for the evening.

Thursday morning it was just a little more cleanup. They cleaned up a few glue spots where it oozed out of joints and reinstalled the vertical trim pieces on the slide and the project was done…and man does it look good…way better than the nasty stained carpet there before. So far we’ve had 6 or 8 NHOG folks come by to gawk and tell us they’re going to do it themselves.

After that…Jim headed off and the adults put the slide back together…they bought some dark brown small carpets to go under their recliners and the dinette table to keep from scratching the floor.

And the finished/reassembled slide.

Lookin’ mighty fine I tellya…mighty fine.

Friday…we actually didn’t even set an alarm to get up so we slept in all the way to 0700 before coffee, breakfast, and re-leveling the rig. Neil ordered us a new door latch…ours is failing the same as the previous 3 did so we’ll get the part next week and install it I guess.

Interesting stuff found on the net.

You don’t see this every day. Dashcam capture from Ontario where a student pilot was in a plane that lost power. Fortunately the instructor pilot took the controls and managed to avoid crashing on the highway…he made it onto the field to the right before setting it down…but hey, any landing you can walk away from is a good one…right?

No explanation needed for these.

Cyas.