It was really cold in Abilene...

We got off to a late start yesterday; the rig wouldn't start.  We finally got things going about 1:30pm and decided to spend our first night in the rig at the Abilene RV park at our $30 Good Sam's rate.  It was a decent enough park right off I-20.  We pulled in near dusk and just had time to get plugged in and hook up the water before dark.  We had some traffic noise from the interstate, but we are both pretty solid sleepers so the noise didn't bother us one bit.

We knew it was going to get chilly last night, but we had no idea just how chilly.  We haven't got the furnace up and running yet and were relying an a ceramic heater.  It did not nearly put out enough heat.  We woke up freezing our butts off and with a bed full of beagles about 7:00 am and decided it was probably best just to get farther south as soon as possible.  We started on our way to Austin.

We stopped for diesel along the way and calculated our mpg.  We hit right at 6.5 mpg and had been travelling between 60-70 most of the way so we were very happy since we were expecting to get no more than 5.

We are now in Austin at the Austin Lone Star RV park.  It's really pretty here and the park has way more amenities than where we were yesterday.  We have spent the afternoon just trying to get the hang of some things.  We still haven't figured out how to get the cable to work, but did find the fuse box today!  Shad's brother lives here and is going to pick him up later and take him on an outing to Walmart to pick up some new fuses and a few essentials we forgot.

This park has a really nice off leash pet play area and the dogs seemed to enjoy that quite a bit.   We haven't figured out the hot water heater yet either so we used the shower facilities at the park which were very clean.


I'm about to take a break from it all and watch one of my favorite RV movies inside the RV!  I'm a big fan of  "Race With the Devil" starring Peter Fonda and Warren Oates.  Is it weird to be watching a movie about people in an RV traveling across the state of Texas being stalked by satanists when you are traveling across Texas by RV?  I don't see us pulling off on any random dirt roads to dry camp where we might witness a satanic sacrifice, so I think we will be in the clear!  ;)

We don't have a horn, but...

We were not able to get the bus moved from storage to the house until yesterday afternoon.  This morning we get a knock on the door from our local police department.  It seems that one of our neighbors had called the police to report the bus had been in front of our house since before Thanksgiving.  We didn't even have the bus until last month!  Aaargh!  We explained to the officer that it had been there less than a day and he was cool about it and said that legally it can sit there for 24 hours so it ended up okay.  He did point out our still expired inspection sticker though...

So back to the horn...  We were unable to find the solenoid locally, so it is on it's way to us from J.C. Whitney. It wont be here until sometime next week.  We have spent hours with help from family members searching the bus inside and out and have still not been able to find the 12v fuses anywhere.  It's been a really frustrating and disappointing search.  

Yesterday we decided to take a chance and call the company that did the original conversion to ask if they might have some idea of where else to look.  To our surprise Shad was transferred to the person that actually did the conversion 18 years ago!  He too had no idea where that fuse box might be, but told us if we could bring the rig to him he can find it for us!  So we are leaving tomorrow to visit Texas Custom Coach in Pipe Creek, TX with our expired inspection sticker in hopes to resolve the whole horn issue without getting caught.  Wish us luck...   

We were already thinking of spending a night in Kerrville on the way to Austin if we were going to get out this week.  It turns out that Pipe Creek is just 30 miles from Kerrville, so that works out well!  Then we are thinking we can swing through New Braunfels and visit Camping World and  head to Austin for a night or two.  Since everything has been up in the air we don't have any reservations yet and are going to start calling this afternoon.  We still need to switch out the mattresses today and have a ton of shopping, packing, laundry, and cleaning to get done.  I'm already tired just thinking about it.  My sister is also in town visiting from Vermont so I need to make some time to go by my parents house and visit.  It's going to be a really long day and I have a feeling my out of shape butt is going to be really tired by the time it's all over.  Thank goodness I'm super excited!

We hope to be on the road on our first trip early tomorrow morning!  

How hard can fixing a horn be?

We were really planning on going on our first outing in the RV this next week.  I had taken my weekend shifts off months ago when we were planning to attend an RV show in Houston, so it seemed like the perfect time to get on the road and try her out.

Well, our horn does not work and our Texas state inspection sticker is out.  No horn = No inspection = No trip.  :(

Shad spent the day with an RV technician trying to get it working, but to no avail.  Tomorrow he plans to spend the day seeking out a new solenoid for the horn which should help, but the solenoid is probably not the only problem.

We have figured out the wiring for the horn was done through a 12v system that also controls the stereo, CB,  and the back up camera.  None of these items are working either, and from what paperwork we have they all appear to be wired into a 12v fuse box.  Easy, right?  Just replace the fuse and see what happens, right?

Well...  the fuse box is hidden somewhere in our rig.  Today Shad and the technician looked over the rig inside and out and they were unable to find it.  So now the plan is to go ahead and bring the bus to our house on Monday and Shad and I will play a big game of seek and find and try to locate the elusive fuse box.  I was kind of relieved after a google search to see that we are not the first ones to have this problem and others have found their fuse boxes anywhere from in the basement, under the sink, to under the bed, but they have found them eventually.  This gives me hope that our search on Monday could be difficult, but eventually successful. 

So, hopefully we can get the solenoid replaced and the fuse replaced and all will be right with our horn and we may get a bonus of a working stereo!  Fingers crossed!

If we can get everything in order we are still going to try to go somewhere later next week, it just may not be the 5-6 day trip that we initially planned, but we are thinking we may get to go spend a couple of nights in a campground somewhere. 

That's really all I have for now; hopefully I will be posting in a couple of days and let you know that everything worked out well!

Thanks for reading!
Tracie