Rex and Nancy's Travels - "ALL WHO WANDER ARE NOT LOST" - JRR Tolkein

Shortly after noon on Wednesday we noticed that the truck was losing power on the small hills of west Texas. It kept getting worse and black smoke starting coming out of the tailpipe. We stopped at a roadside picnic area about 30 miles east of Midland where the truck died and wouldn’t start again. Thank goodness for Good Sam Emergency Road Service! They found a towing company that had a truck big enough to tow the truck & 5th wheel.   They towed the truck & 5th wheel to the Ford dealership in Midland and we followed in the Jeep. We got there at 6 pm just as the dealership was closing. The tow truck driver parked the truck & 5th wheel on a side street beside the dealership and that’s where we spent the night. We couldn’t open the slide outs all the way so ate out at a great Mongolian grill with Jen, Rex’s daughter. After dinner we visited with Jen at her apartment until it was time to call it a night. Luckily the street the 5th wheel was parked on was a dead-end street a

We took off Monday morning and didn’t even make it to the interstate before we had another blow out! We were able to pull into the driveway of the local Pepsi distributor where Rex took off the tire and went to the tire store where we bought the tire last week. They didn’t have one in stock and it would take a couple of days to get one. Rex came back to the 5th wheel and we were discussing that we really didn’t want to travel very far without a spare when a very nice man stopped and asked us if we needed help. He called a tire store close by and they had a tire. Instead of just giving Rex directions to the tire shop, he had Rex follow him in the Jeep to the store. Unfortunately we did not get his name but appreciated his help. With a 2nd new tire we were on our way. It was too hot to camp without electricity to run the air conditioner so we stopped at a very nice RV park in Hot Springs, AR called Cloud Nine RV Park. It was in a heavily wooded area and had a nice trail through the woo

The brake caliper parts for the 5th wheel did not come in yesterday but are suppose to be in by noon today. Rex had called the company that manufactures the brakes and they told him how to bypass that wheel so that the rest of the brakes would work. After making that fix and bleeding the brakes we headed to Trailer World in Bowling Green and got there just before noon. Wouldn’t you know it, UPS was late today and we didn’t get the part until 2:00 pm. We then headed to Sikeston, MO where we arrived at Nancy’s brother’s house around 6:30 pm. Nancy’s nephew, Christopher, and his wife, Madison, have a house on 5 acres and we are parked on their property. We had a nice visit with Nancy’s brother, Bob, and his fiancée, Audrey.   We also enjoyed visiting with Christopher and Madison.   Bob’s two younger sons, Mike and Jason stopped by for a visit on Sunday.   Madison was babysitting her cousin’s little girl, Leyla and we got a cute picture of her riding Lilly, the Great Dane.   Christop

We drove to Georgetown, KY where we spent the night in the Wal-Mart parking lot. It was a busy area with lots of truck noise but we managed to get a good night’s sleep. Tuesday morning we headed towards mammoth Cave National Park. After about two hours we were on I-65 and a pickup pulled next to us, honked and motioned toward the rear of the 5th wheel. We pulled over and discovered that we had blown a tire. The tire was torn completely off the wheel and had wrapped around the axel and broke our brake line. The shoulder of the road was narrow and there was not a lot of room to change the tire. There were a lot of semi trucks going by and many of them couldn’t or wouldn’t change lanes. It took Rex a while to get the shredded tire unwrapped from the axel but after about an hour we were on our way again. We didn’t have brakes on the 5th wheel so we slowly drove the 30 miles to the campground. After getting set up in Diamond Caverns Resort & Golf Course, Rex went in search of parts to

We have been keeping busy our last couple of weeks here. Rex cut down some dead trees for Arnie in the woods behind their house. They rented a log splitter and split the wood so now Arnie and Sheryl will have wood to burn for a few winters. He also built a set of cornhole boards for his mom. We went to a flea market in Kidron, OH where there were selling a lot of old tools and junk. Many Amish go to the flea market so we got to see lots of horse buggies.               We visited the grave site where Rex’s father and baby sister are buried. We trimmed the trees and cleaned up around the markers. Rex’s sister died at 8 days old in 1964 and his father was killed in an oil field accident in 1965.       We have been getting together with a lot of Rex’s relatives. We had dinner with his cousin Peg and her husband Fred a couple of times. Rex’s mother gets together every Saturday night with family at McDonalds. We joined her and her brother, Ike, and her sister, Margaret and h

We left Cheyenne on Monday morning and drove to Lincoln, NB where we spent the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Tuesday we drove to Princeton, IL where we again stayed in a Wal-Mart parking lot. It rained hard all day Tuesday and when we stopped at a rest area somewhere in Iowa for lunch Rex noticed one of the tires of the 5th wheel was low. When he was airing it up he found that the wheel rim had split- so he had to change the tire in the pouring rain! We called DRV, the company that manufactured our 5th wheel and they had one wheel rim left that we could have. They are located in Howe, IN, which will only be about 100 miles out of our way. We figured we would have a hard time finding a wheel to match any place else and we knew we were not going to make it to Ohio in time for Rex’s stepfather’s funeral, so we decided to take the time to go get the wheel. We got to Howe at 4 pm on Wednesday, just in time to get the wheel before the plant closed for the day. We spent the night at Grand