Catching Up and a Move

Current Location: Nashville KOA, Nashville, Tennessee

On Monday, Malcolm drove the truck in to work. He called the local Ford dealer to check to see if they could take care of a few items on the truck before our trip (oil and filter change, fuel filters changed, tires balanced, air filter changed and shock absorbers checked). They said bring it on in. Malcolm left work at 4:00 and stopped by to pick up Val. We stopped by the local car rental place and picked up a rental car, then drove on over to the Ford dealer to drop off the truck. After dropping off the truck, we had dinner at Taziki’s then headed back to the house.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Ford dealer called and said the truck was ready to go (didn’t need shocks). Malcolm left at 4:00 again, just as a pretty good line of thunderstorms rolled through the area. That slowed him down coming home. The storms had passed by the time he got to the trailer to pick up Val. The power got knocked out during the storm. Traffic was bad getting to the Ford dealer, so Malcolm called the rental car company to tell them we wouldn’t return the car before they closed. They said drop it off and put the keys in the key drop and they’d just charge us for the day’s rental.

We picked up the truck, had dinner at NYNY Pizza then headed over to drop off the car. Traffic was still bad in the area, but we were able to bypass it, fuel up the car, drop it off and drop the keys in the slot, then drive back to the trailer where we found the power was still out. Fortunately, the trailer was still fairly cool from earlier in the day and the recent rain storm cooled the outside air off into the mid-70’s, though it was still humid.

We opened windows and turned on the power fan in the ceiling to draw air through and eventually went on to bed. Fortunately, our iPads, computers and the mifi unit all had good battery charges.

When we woke up this morning, still no power. Malcolm decided to work at home during the morning until his laptop battery ran out of power. We ended up driving over to Camping World (who also was without power, but was using a generator to power part of the store) and bought a small Honda generator and a Fantastic Fan and cover to put in the front bathroom.

Generator in action

We stopped by the gas station and fueled up the new generator, then took it home to the trailer to hook it up. Malcolm couldn’t find his 30 amp to 15 amp adapter, so it was back to Camping World (which fortunately is literally next door) and picked up one of those. Once back, he had the generator running and the trailer powered up. Our EMS initially was faulting saying that the generator power had a floating ground (Honda generators are known for doing that), so Malcolm searched the internet and found the solution and had us powered up in no time. The new generator is only a 2000W unit, so it won’t run an air conditioner, but at least will power up smaller stuff and run the converter which charges the 12V batteries on board.

By mid-afternoon, we still had no power. The outside temperature was in the mid-90’s, the humidity was high and the inside temperature was close to 100. We were miserable and the cat was looking pretty miserable as well. We decided to take a ride in the (air conditioned) truck to the front of Jellystone to check on when power might be restored. They said the power company kept saying they were working on it, but couldn’t make any promises. Best they could say was “maybe tonight”.

We drove over to the KOA and walked into their registration area. We asked if they had power (yes, they did) and if they had a space our 42′ trailer would fit into. The gentleman at the desk looked at the computer for a bit and said he had one back-in space that was listed as 46′ long. We paid for it and said we’d be back with the trailer. Turns out there was a pretty steady stream of campers from Jellystone doing the exact same thing. We hitched up the trailer and moved it to KOA, hooked up and turned on the air conditioners.

Moved to KOA

After running the air conditioners for about 20 minutes. Probably was close to 100 earlier.

While the rig cooled down, we drove up the street to Logan’s Roadhouse for dinner and dessert, then back to the trailer, which had cooled down fairly well. Malcolm got ambitious and went ahead and installed our new Fantastic Fan in the front bath. He will install the matching vent cover at another time, to allow the self-leveling sealant time to skin over up top.