And the bad news is . . .

We left Coleman State Park this morning and traveled down to Red Bay, a total of some 35 miles or so. The first place we went was to Bunk House RV which was said to have a supply of jacks. They did have some. . . all used. . . all takeoffs from motorhome that were replacing the jacks with something different. They want about half price or $350 a piece for the used jacks. We have no way of telling how old they are, they just guaranteed that they worked when they took them off. Well, all our jacks have been replaced at one time, so the new ones don't have a great life expectancy. We are reluctant to trust used ones. And we need two, so that would be $700 and about another $300 to put them on, so we are up to $1000. We talked with one guy about them. . . Everybody down here even in these cottage industries that have sprung up around Tiffin. . . have all worked there and seem to know a lot about the rigs and the systems. When we described for him what our coach did, he said that sounded like more of a controller issue that caused the jacks to break. It was so wild the way it happened. But I am inclined to think the controller had something to do with it because it never faltered. Normally when a jack acts up, the controller starts beeping, red lights start flashing and all He!! breaks loose. This time, there were violent "bucks" and the controller just continued to hum along as thought nothing was wrong.

So we are thinking that if we bought jacks to put on it and it was the controller that was bad. . . well. . . know that money would have been for nothing because the controllers are also obsolete and none are available anymore.

The gentlemen did tell us that he thought a lot of the problem was that Tiffin didn't put on heavy enough jacks to begin with. Perhaps that's why all of ours have broken at one time or another. So we are seriously considering an entirely new system. . . just have to decide which one.

Meanwhile, another problem surfaced yesterday when we stopped for a break, this time on MinnieMee. We noticed the generator tailpipe dragging on the ground. Had to have just happened. A clamp broke loose and it was so rusted that it is unusable. Also a hanging strap was torn and was going to follow the same path. We removed the tailpipe the rest of the way. Today we bought the tools Terry needed to fix it. It required a breaker bar because he couldn't get a rusted bolt loosed with his tools. So when we got to camp tonight, he got it fixed. He did a good job and it looks more professional than what was on it. Now we can again use the generator. We couldn't use the generator because it was exhausted straight down to the ground and we would have had fumes. But we are really just using it when we stop for lunch. He wanted it fixed for tonight because we are getting storms and if we happen to lose power, he wanted options.

We are in our camp now at Piney Grove, our home for several years while we come for the reunion. We are in the same site we always book. . . a really long site with 50 amp. So it's overkill for MinnieMee, that's for sure, but it's a nice level site for her.

Not sure what's on the docket for tomorrow. May hang around camp. We don't have a toad, so if we go anywhere, we have to break camp. That's not hard in MinnieMee, though!

Till next time. . .

Dale