GOING HOME TO TEXAS!!

[Jack and Liz Pearce]

6:39 PM 4/29/2006

Howdy, Y'all.

First, right off the bat, let me say that this trip, on the way home to
Texas, so far has been adventuresome.

We are currently parked in the Pavilion RV Park in West Monroe, LA. It
is pretty muddy here. I can hear lots of barking dogs somewhere. We have
a clear view of a large transmission tower. I have to get a picture of
that. We won't stay here again.

We left the state of Florida on April 26 at 2:20 PM.

We stayed overnight at Southern Trails RV Resort in Unadilla, GA. Lots
of highway noise and we will not stay there again.

We had some basic(very basic) maintenance work done on the Wanderlodge
at Bleakley RV in Unadilla, GA. They are not equipped to do the chassis
work that we wanted done. we didn't know that. The technician stated
that the main oil filter, the Racor,was probably the original. I looked
at it and it was black and in very poor condition. This same technician
overfilled the coolant. When the engine was started, the excess leaked
out of the tank cap onto the back of the coach. I was NOT happy with
that. Every filter on the coach was replaced. There were many different
brands of filters on the coach. Now they are all the same brand. The
coach has a new air cleaner, too.

We had some questions about the Webasto heating system. They were
answered to the best of the technician's ability. The man who installed
this system doesn't work at Bleakley anymore. Wish that we could find
him, his name was Tim. We also had our PowerTech generator serviced.

We learned that Bleakley will NOT sell Blue Birds anymore. We wish now
that we had done our homework a little more thoroughly and perhaps we
should have taken our Bird to the Blue Bird factory. On a more positive
note, Bleakley's service building is very clean and the people are very
nice and accomodating. I renewed a friendship with the only saleswoman
on staff and we got caught up on lotsa stuff. Of course, I showed her
our coach!!

Yesterday we arrived at the Alabama Welcome station at theh AL/GA state
line(I-20). It was pretty warm in the coach so we turned on the
generator to run the air conditioners. All that worked for about 15
minutes until the genset died. It's water temperature went up to 220
degrees. Whoops. After a couple of phone calls to our technician
friend(Ralph) Jack realized that the big cooling fan for the genset had
died. So of course the genset overheated and turned itself off. We were
NOT happy. BUT we did have the inverter so I opened up the windows and
turned on the big exhaust fan in the kitchen. That helped a lot and as
the sun went down, the outside temperature dropped and the coach became
cooler. Last night the outside temp went down to 60 degrees so we were
comfortable. Now, you may ask, WHY did we stay at the Welcome Station?
Well, we forgot about that lil' ol' race at Talladega and there wasn't a
campsite to be had. We did drive past the racetrack this morning
and holy cow, the surrounding grounds were full of all kinds of RVs.
WOW!

We will be in Texas tomorrow(PTL) and will head for Daingerfield State
Park for about 2 days so that Jack can get in some fishing. Then to
Duncan, OK where Ralph will do some work on our Wanderlodge. Air
conditioners, genset cooling fan, keypad for door, etc. Hey, this is an
old lady coach!! $$$$$$$

Well, that is all for now.

Best regards,
Jack and Liz, going home!!!
Regards,
Jack and Liz Pearce
Fulltiming in a 1993 Wanderlodge WB40