The Steele Fam is on an RV vacation again!! Hurray, and like last year, I was going to try blogging again. So here goes…
This year we’re going to try more of a hiking / slot canyon / river rafting type adventure. We’re going to repeat part of the trip we went on last year, but spend more time in the Utah area – seeing Bryce Canyon, doing some hiking, and spending time in Jackson, WY.
A bit about RVs…
The great thing about RVs is that the family gets to be together while site seeing, but we don’t have to be smashed together in a car. We’ve got 4 kids – Mikaela (14), Jonathan (13), Joshua (7) and Daniel (6), so long trips in a car is a bit tight when you include luggage.
So we figured – hey, why wait till we’re retired, lets try RV trips now while the kids can enjoy them.
RVs combine the most irritating parts of vehicles and houses. They have all the stuff that need maintenance on vehicles like tires, shocks, suspension, electrical/battery stuff, starters, engines, oil changes, fluids of all types, spark plugs, etc. (See last years blogs.) This is combined with all the cool stuff from a house that needs maintenance like plumbing, air-conditioning, heating, water heaters, water pumps, beds, sofas, etc. You get the idea. So it allows you to pretty much have some type of problem every day of the trip along with plenty of things to work on when you get back!
But even with all that, we’ve been having a blast. The kids have named our RV “Rev”. Daniel was asking yesterday when I was filling up the water tank if “Rev” was thirsty. I told him that he sure was, “He’s been drinking fuel, water, oil, transmission fluid – you name it, He wants it!”
We had just got two new tires from Firestone last week for the front. They felt real smooth driving home, but when we started the trip out, I noticed that the steering wheel started to vibrate when we started driving above 70 mph. Since we love to listen to the CarTalk guys on our iPod, I remember that the tires might need to be rebalanced – I sure wish we did that before we left!!
We stopped near Elephant Butte to get some gas -- Pronounced Elephant “Butt” by Jonathan, “Why would anyone want to live in an elephant’s butt?!?” he exclaimed. It was around 7:00pm so I knew there was no chance to find anyone who could balance tires till tomorrow. But as I was pumping gas, I saw a young guy in one of the garage bays at the gas station. He didn’t look like he was doing much, and next to him – were my eyes deceiving me? No, there was a tire balancing machine! I figured, what the heck, I’ll ask him if he was up for balancing some tires. After convincing him that an RV is just an F350 truck with a big campershell, he said, “sure, I’ll give it a try”. He popped off each front wheel with ease and balanced them one at a time. $11 a tire later, and success! We get to go 75mph without feeling like Scotty is going to yell from the back, “Cap’n, the ship can’t take much more of this – she’s gonna fly a’part!” Of course if we go much faster than that, all the other things that rattle, shake and bump, start kicking in – but 75~80mph is pretty good for a top speed.
We stopped in Albuquerque last night at the Flying Eagle Travel Center / Truck Stop. It seems to be on an Indian reservation – We’re right across the street from a circus tent style Casino and there are about 20 other big rigs in the lot. Because you kind of feel weird being the only RV in the lot with all the trucks, I asked inside to makes sure it was OK to park with them. She said it was no problem. We kind of felt like the little poodle hanging out with the junk-yard dogs, but hey, it was free!
More to come! (Mikaela is going to be blogging too, so make sure to check her blog – Link on the right of my page.)
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