The Train!

Woo Hooo, Wooooooooooooo Hooo.  And thats the 5th train since we landed here about three hours ago.  The track is about 50 yards from the back end of our rig.  Where's Sam, he'd be in train heaven.

So where is train heaven?  We are just West of Springfield, Mo. in the local KOA campground.  The place is clean as a button, and the people were nice and friendly at the office.  She was totally worried that a fellow that was lost hadn't called her back yet and had not arrived.  Asked me if I was the one that called, and well no we were lost too, but the GPS drove us right in here.

Like all KOA's this one is way more expensive than it should be, but it is right off of US 44 which is old route 66 after Oklahoma City.  We are East of Joplin, Mo that is part of that famous song.

We packed the remaining stuff in a couple of hours this morning, and I was out finishing the washing of the rig when it was still in the 40s outside.  That turned out to be nuts, as it started to rain while we drove over Truman Lake at about 3 PM, and it is still pouring outside as I type this.

It never made it much over 50 all day, but the sun did come out for a while after about 10 AM.  That is when I was hooking up the CRV to the back of the motorhome.  It all hooked up just like the video on you tube.  Put the pins in and back up the car until the arms latch very easily.  But not to be without a hitch, my lights didn't even begin to work right!!!

Remember I had to put the plug on the end of a premade wire?  Well..... the colors of the wires in the harness do not conform to standard trailer wiring.  The only wire that matched was the white one was ground.  So I got to take the tail lights apart on the back of the CRV, and learn how the fellow did it.   I was re taping stuff almost immediately.  And after some time crawling around on the street between the  vehicles, I learned that what was normally brown was really red, and the green one didn't go to the right stop light at all and so forth.  So after about an hour, we were back on track.  That's why you always start a little early on these first time things.  And make sure you have your multi meter along too.

We did manage to get the brake box set in front of the seat and initialized in fairly short order, since we had made those mistakes yesterday.  It found the control on the dash of the motorhome with its RF pairing and works quite nicely.  If I stop nicely or fairly normally, the car brakes do not activate at all.

The gain was set at 5, or middle of the range.  But if you have to stop a bit quicker, the light comes on on the controller and the brakes apply.  Not enough to try and stop the coach, as that would be really hard on the little CRV brakes, but just enough to help with your stopping distance.  I didn't turn it up any, because purchasing brake rotors for a car with 900 miles on it didn't seem like a good idea.

But as I got into the car and shut everything down, it was almost appalling to see that the speedo hadn't changed since we left KC about 175 miles ago.  And it didn't use any gas at all either. It may have effected the motorhome consumption, but only slightly.  So we saved somewhere around $28 in gas today.  Lets see, 20K new car, 24 hundred of hitch parts and installation, saved $28 bucks!!  Gonna take a while to come out on that one!  But Loyce got to sleep in the big passenger chair on the riders side all afternoon....... Priceless!!!

Wooooo Hooooooooo, yet another train moving at about 10 mph, as they are just outside of town, this could be a long night, but the rain is pitter pattering away on the roof, and filling the broken skylights, until they run over and down the side of the coach..................

Retired Rod