Route 66, The Mother Road

June 3, 2022June 2, 2022 — Travel — 2 min read

We call them “Stumble Upons”. Things or places we didn’t plan to do see or visit, yet somehow we “stumbled” upon them. We had decided to travel about 200 miles today from the Dallas Fort Worth area to somewhere in central Oklahoma. We had stayed in this general area during last year’s travels but didn’t want to stay in the same place.. Our search turned up the above RV park, and what a pleasant surprise it was.

That is Sophie and our red Jeep Cherokee dead center in the photo. The RV site cost us only $17.50 a night for the two nights we are staying here for a full hookup site and they even have showers and laundry. But the greatest thing about the RV Park is what is in the foreground. That is the original concrete of the road known as Route 66 which we traveled on to arrive at the park. It simply doesn’t get better than this.

Looking west on Route 66.

Those that know me know that has to be my foot on Route 66. Shoes and I do not get along. If I am absolutely forced to wear shoes to enter someplace or do something I will wear them, which usually is less than six times a year, Otherwise I wear Teva’s or go barefoot. And yes, I did have a skin to concrete moment.

Sophie’s Tire Pressure Monitor System

June 2, 2022June 1, 2022 — Eclectic, Travel — 1 min read

With the new Borg valve stems installed, today we attached the tire pressure monitoring sensors to the valve stems. It is an easy chore, just screw them on the valve stems and the RVI Command Center instantly recognized the sensor and paired with it. I liked that each sensor is labeled for the tire it is monitoring. The downside is that the batteries in the sensors can not be replaced requiring the sensor itself to be replaced at $20 per sensor.

This sensor is labeled for the left rear outside tire.

This sensor is labeled for the left rear inside tire. The system we use is from RVI. We have the braking system, the towed battery charger and the Tire Patrol TPMS. The readout for all of them is shown in the command center tablet mounted between the front seats so we both can easily see it. I probably should do a post in the future on the Ready Brake and also the Battery Charger. I must say I really like the small size of the Ready Brake and how easy it is to install and remove from the Cherokee.

Sophie Gets Borg Valve Stems

June 1, 2022June 1, 2022 — Eclectic, Travel — 2 min read

When we were at Quartzsite in January at the LTV gathering we learned about a much better way to make checking the air pressure and adding tire monitor sending units to the tires on MB Sprinter units which is the chassis Sophie is built on. This is the outside rear dual wheel. Even though there are two wheels, only one valve stem is visible. The one showing comes from the inside tire. The outside wheel valve stem points inward toward the inside wheel making it almost impossible to get to. Also the long unsupported stem from the inside wheel can apparently develop problems when a tire monitor is attached to it.

The stem on the front tire. It is short enough that some folks do not replace them with the Borg stems while others do.

The Borg stems are made for the specific wheels on the Sprinter chassis. Sophie has six Alcoa aluminum wheels so the set we bought was specific to those wheels.

Tires are removed for the installation. Both what we learned at Quartzsite and read on the various LTV and Sprinter groups pointed towards making sure a good tire shop did the installation. Since we were going to be passing near the Fort Worth area during our summer travels, and with both Borg and group posts saying Briscoe Tire in Denton was experienced in installing these stems we decided to stop in and have them do the installation. As luck would have it, there was also a RV park just a mile and a half from their shop making everything much easier.

Front stem being installed.

The rear stems installed and the tires remounted. The bottom stem is from the inside wheel and is mounted with a stabilizer that fits in the handhole, meaning no wobble when the tire monitoring unit is installed.. The top stem comes from this outside wheel.

Closeup of the outside stem. It is “U” shaped making for easy access to add air if needed and also to mount the tire monitoring unit. Now we can mount our tire monitors making us both feel safer during our travels.

Mineral Wells Fossil Park Day 2

May 31, 2022May 31, 2022 — Nature, Travel — 2 min read

Back to the fossil park again. We arrived shortly after the gates opened at 8 AM and as before, we were the only ones there. We have read reviews of the fossil park where people complain about how hot it is. If people come later in the day it will be hot, this early in the morning it is merely uncomfortably warm.

Today we will be concentrating on searching for what is seen in this and the following two photos.

We thought we found several of these echinoid plates the other day, maybe we will be more successful today.

The ultimate find.

The requisite flower photo.

The focus today was on small fossils. The best place to find them is where the water flow slows significantly and smaller material would be deposited. The farther out the water runs, the slower it goes. Anytime it encounters vegetation the same thing happens. The arrows point to two places where significant finds were made.

My finds for the day. To the left of the dime is ??? Could it be a shark tooth? The size, the form and weight suggest it certainly might be a shark tooth.

As you can tell from the size of the finds compared to the dime, today was all about finding the small, smaller and smallest fossils. Clockwise the finds are Red: echinoid plate. Yellow: crinoid pentagon section. Green: tiny Brachiopod. Blue: crinoid spines. Literally hundreds of fossils were handled with only these being collected. What an awesome morning collecting fossils.

Sophie’s Bed, Now You See It, Now You Don’t

May 30, 2022May 30, 2022 — Travel — 2 min read

The reason we like Sophie, our RV (Caravan), which is a LTV Unity RL. The RL is the acronym for Rear Lounge. What makes it so nice is the bed which is a murphy bed that pivots up against the rear wall when not in use. The other thing that we learned is due to it being hidden, there is no need to nicely make the bed.

The bed has now been raised and latched in place with the back cushions of the seats in place. It takes us less than two minutes from start to finish to put it up or down. It is also very easy to lift or lower so the wife often does it herself. Needless to say we absolutely love this floor plan. With a TV, table and seats up front we can either spend time together or have our own separate spaces.

Footrest extended. The seat beside it also has a footrest, both of which are electrically operated. I usually sit back in the corner at an angle. You can rightly point out there is nowhere to set anything and you would be right, at least in this photo. Sometime in the future I will post our solution to that, which is actually very simple.

The view from where I sit in the corner towards the TV. The interesting thing is that we are within the optimum viewing distance for a TV of this size. I have also installed Fire TV Sticks to this TV and also the front TV so we can stream separate shows if we want. Life is good.