Category: Vacation

Ended up staying Amarillo last night. We are using mostly Apple Maps for navigation. I assumed it would take basically the same route in both directions. Nope. Looking at a way lot of this. Reminds me of driving in Kansas…. flat. No traffic so far which is great!

Well what do ya know, going to roll through Roswell, New Mexico. Stopped for fuel and a leak. Will save the tourist stuff for some other trip. Didn’t see a single alien, dang.

I did happen on a sticker for the Engle MT45.  When we travel with it we get travel stickers to remind us where we have been. The goal is to cover up all the grey metal. I’ll try to post a picture once I get back to the ranch. Here is the Roswell sticker before application.

Update: So we ARE using the same route coming as going. Oh well. Here is a nice not-driving picture of the white sand. I remember the white sands from trips through here as a kid.

The landscape is certainly changing. I can’t wait to someday drive this again with some time to stop at the historic markets, but there is an app for that. LOL About 5 hours left.

Oh, the truck took another life, this time a little birdie, yesterday was a large Meadowlark. Both taken via chrome grill impact method. Pictures later. There is a truck name in here someplace, I just know it.

 

So, if you have ever driven I-10 either to Tucson or away from Tucson, you have seen signs for “The Thing”. They taunt you every other mile or so for like 100 miles. Its a road side attraction. I have seen it but I wont tell you what it is.

So yeah – we stopped – here is proof. Still won’t tell you what it is. We did get a sticker.

So here is the final result – three new stickers for this trip. PB – Pensacola Beach, Roswell and The Thing. I tried to get a St Louis sticker but did not goto touristy places. I bet I can find one online someplace, maybe a nice arch.

Here are the totals for the trip from Oro Valley to St. Louis and back. This does NOT include the portion of the trip from St. Louis to Pensacola Beach because we used BroMikes trucks for those legs – his original F250 on the way down and a purdy new F250 on the way back:

So add two 12 hours trips and you have 76.5 hours in a truck. Sounds like a lot and it is, but it was a blast!

Fishing sucked but nothing else did!

We arrived at around 8:30pm into St. Louis and headed to BroMike’s beautiful log cabin. We WOULD have been about 1.5 hours earlier except for the existence of random road side flea markets. Can’t they sell the fleas someplace else? We grabbed some most excellent Mexican food and slept hard.

Here is a good picture of Mike’s new F250 Super Duty Mike and the Schauf Super Duty in White.

At around 8:30am this morning (told you we slept hard) we headed to the BroMike barn and began to dig out the wood and other treasures to haul back to Indecision Ranch. We loaded up some Louisiana barge wood that had been repurposed into house siding. Mike’s buddy Paul remodels old homes in Louisiana and had given him a sheit ton (it’s a real weight measurement) from a home he remodeled. We then some very technical and exacting cuts to fit the wood into the bed of the truck. Thanks for the wood guys!

Here is another picture of the stacks of the wood. Its amazing stuff when you think about how old it is and how good of shape it is still in.

Below is a very cool NC very old and complete Damascus sewing machine and table. I know, your impressed I know what kind it is. Well, I read good.  The machine actually folds down inside the table. I made sure Mike removed all of the haunted buttons and other bits from the drawers as there were quite a few.

I remember an old sewing machine like this in my great grandmothers farmhouse in Fort Scott. I always wondered why it was missing the power cord. It’s coming home upside down. I am for sure and certain that Linda has some plans for this when I get it home.

Here is a closeup of one of the larger boards before we masterfully cut it up. It was over 12 feet long and about 18 inches wide. It’s now two pieces for a table or a very cool new computer desk.

This is a closeup of the bargewood after we cut it. I learned that the heavier wood is, the closer to the bottom of the tree it came from. BroMike says it’s ALL about sap, gravity and growth rate. Note now close the rings are. This tree grew slowly and is therefor more dense.  Its also old. Count the rings… go ahead, I’ll wait for you.

I got over 50. And thats just when it was cut! Then it was on a barge for who knows how long and THEN repurposed onto a house which was lived in for probably quite a while before it needed to be completely remodeled. Wow.

Below is the truck mostly all loaded up. We added some deftly wrapped 6 pane windows in a very quaggy blue tarp and put those on top and tied everything down. Yes that is a real word, I looked it up. No beers were harmed in the loading of this truck. Yes, I voted for Trump and proudly.

On the way out of town we stopped to see BroMark and family. We caught these two high school hooligans lazing around the house with Luna and Ally guarding them. I think something is wrong with Kaylan’s tongue. And that is Drew’s smile, ain’t he handsome! Pretty good goofballs all in all! They are headed to Europe for a school trip in about a week and a half. Remember to watch out for each other and avoid smelly men with backpacks. They are not selling candy and may not be very nice. Watch each other and be safe!!! Take pictures!!!

So we finally got on the road a few minutes after noon and plan to drive at least 2 hours today.

Oh yeah! I forgot to mention, I may or may not have purchased some fireworks. Did I mention that before? I forget.

Update: made it to Tulsa, OK. Went to a wedding here once. Should have tried better to stop it. Sorry buddy. Oh, also we decided we would drive 12 hours instead of 2 hours. Thanks to eagle eye!!!

The fishing wasn’t really disappointing. To be disappointing we would have had to do more actual, well, fishing. We did get out in the bay on Wednesday afternoon for a bit and Thursday morning just a couple miles out of Pensacola bay. Bad weather and a broken motor killed the rest of the planned days.
What did not disappoint was the time I got to spend with Uncle Bob and BroMike. Good times and great conversations!!!!

Every time Mike and I visit a Ford dealership, he ends up buying a new truck. 

I do however think they should consider outlawing road side flea markets. They are dangerous to a schedule. Every time we drove by one Mike got as excited as a dog hearing a doorbell. He does enjoy him a good flea market or antique store. We stopped at two. 😳 He did get a cool tractor seat, so there is that. 

Should get to St Louis today barring random antique stops and then two more days driving to Oro Valley. 

We should not have any mechanical issues in Mike’s new fangled 2017 Ford! I love that the rear seats stow and the floor storage goes flat so I can store the Engle front to back. More room for humans and dogs. So many other safety features ( thus begins my personal spousal marketing campaign). 

 

This allows for the fridge to be accessible by rear passenger or well trained dog. Will have to see if I can make this work in my 2012 F250 Super Duty. It is now 5 years older than Mikes truck. (Less convincing argument tho huh). 

The 2017 F250 does also support Apple Car Play and Android Auto which is a safety feature! Seriously. Smartphones still provide better route guidance IMO than built in GPS and don’t need costly map updates. Plus you can talk to Siri or Google (google needs a better name). 

Finally, when will we be able to tell our car to automatically set the cruise control based on the current speed limit? That would be nice. A feature to add or remove a few miles per hour would be a bonus.  “Hey Siri, set the cruise control to 5 over the limit.” Apple could then program in some witty  responses. 

St. Louis tonight then 24 more hours of driving to get HOME. 

Nice morning…. little bumpy with 4-6 waves  ..

Got out to open water and probably dropped 10 times and got a few bites. 

Then the oil alarm went off on the port outboard motor. Limped in. Bad oil pump. We may be done fishing due to equipment failure just when the weather allows fishing. 

2pm update: Boat at shop, waiting to hear. Best case we get boat back tomorrow afternoon and fish Friday night and Saturday. 

4pm update: Yeah we got nothing. No news. 

10am Friday – Boat will not be fixed until next week. No fishing.  We are done. 

So I may need to break out my “Rain, Rain go away?” soliloquy from Facebook. Still have 2 to 4 foot waves outside the bay so plan again today is to continue donating bait fish to the water. So yeah, no fish pictures yet. 

Here you go Mom!

I was just driving along….. minding my own business….. in my brother-in-law Mike’s F250 Super Duty when all of a sudden….. boom!  It woke Mike and Uncle Bob immediately. “What the heck happened” is what I heard from the back seat.

We were going about 60 miles per hour and lost all power post-boom going up a slight incline. No turbo boost at all. Turbo diesels have no cahones without their turbos. Yep – something was wrong. We were less than an hour away from our rental house in Pensacola, FL and had been driving for 11 hours already that day.

I was able to pull the truck over to the side of the two lane highway and make a quick call to my buddies at Goldies Diesel Repair in Tucson, AZ. I highly recommend these guys! I described what happened hoping that the turbo had not grenaded. After a most excellent description of the incident, Eric nailed it. “It’s not your turbo, your CAC tube blew”.

I opened the hood and he was right! Eric explained that the CAC tube (Charged Air Cooler tube to intake) returns highly pressurized air to the intake of the engine. Since it blew the engine was getting zero pressurized air (turbo boost) and thus had no power at all. Not safe to drive either.

I was able to use duct tape to reconnect the tube to the intake which gave us some minimal boost to limp 4 miles to a gas station and a safer place to wait.

We were in very small town in Alabama called Citronelle,  listening for banjo’s, so we wanted a quick solution. I got a tow truck on the way via AAA and started locating the part. I was able to locate the part 34 miles away in Mobile, Alabama and then located a courier service to bring us the part. I was employing two possible solutions at once. First was to repair in place once we got the part and the second was to have the tow truck available if we were not able to repair or got the wrong part delivered.

Tow truck took a while to get to us because, apparently, they usually only plan to transport two people – we had three. When Alan arrived with the truck, he said he could wait 15-20 minutes until the part arrived. Such a nice young guy!

When the courier service arrived two and one half hours post-boom – it was the correct part! It took an entire minute (seriously, one minute) to put the new CAC tub in place (we used just the top part of the tube, since that is what failed). Started the truck and had boost! We were back on the road!

Lessons learned:

1 – Carry a spare CAC tube if you drive a 6.7 Powerstroke Turbo Diesel. The will completely disable your truck if they go boom and are WAY simple to fix. They cost about $106 at a Ford dealer.  We required the parts with the green highlights in the diagram.

Note: Eric from Goldies said they have only heard of one other CAC tube blowing this way so he thinks this particular failure its rare. I still plan on carrying a spare one.

2 – Carry a space serpentine belt. This another part on newer engines that can disable the engine and is a relatively simple road side fix.

3 – Always have duct tape on hand. It allowed us a temporary fix which allowed us to get to a safe place to wait for the part. Safety is good.

4 – Always carry tools!

We had the duct tape and tools which saved us. I will certainly be adding the serpentine belt and spare CAC tube to my travel kit for my F250 Powerstroke!

This little guy captures so very perfectly the inner me right after – the face, the dirt and the pose!

Now – where are the fish?

From Tucson to St. Louis to Pensacola and back with Uncle Bob and Bro Mike. Saw Sister Barbara…

and My father-in-law Charlie with his wife Rose! Charlie is doing well after heart valve replacement surgery!!!

Next will hopefully be pictures of fish!!!