Sunday April 11th 2021

I only had 20 miles to travel today, but it was one of the worst travel days I’ve had in five and half years on the road. Both the weather and a couple of mechanical annoyances contributed to the high stress travel day.

The sun made an appearance shortly after sunrise, but it didn’t last long. By 9AM a line of wind with a little rain passed through the area. The forecast indicated that the main wave of storms was a couple of hours away right when I planned to finish my travel preparations. I decided to start early and find somewhere to stop along my twenty mile route so I didn’t have to pay an early arrival fee. The first mechanical annoyance of the day got in the way of that revised plan.

For some reason my main slide room and the leveling jacks would not work. I couldn’t bring the slide in or raise the jacks to travel position. This specific problem hasn’t occurred before. I tried the solutions I’ve used in the past for similar problems with out success. My next step was checking the fuse array. The hydrophilic pump used for both mechanisms is protected by a twenty five amp DC breaker. Everything looked alright, but somehow I did something to make the darn thing work. It was raining again by the time I got the slide room in and the jacks into travel position.

I continued to prepare for travel in the rain until it became clear that the thunder and lightening had arrived. Safety dictated that I sit out the storm inside my RV home. A couple nearby lightening strikes with accompanying thunder proved the correctness of the decision. Forty five minutes later the thunder and lightening were over and the weather radar indicated that a lull in the storm front was approaching. It was also getting close to checkout time.

I got drenched finishing up the departure process. Hooking the car to the motorhome was a challenge. I attempted to complete the task in the road in front of my site. A puddle and difficulty getting the car lined up straight behind the RV complicated the task. It took a little longer than normal, so I got even soaked.

The drive wasn’t without its challenges too. I had to keep the windshield wipers on full the whole drive. Visibility was also difficult and I had some kind of noise coming from the dashboard that I haven’t heard before.

Once I arrived at the Orlando SW KOA in Davenport I had to setup in the rain. The original forecast indicated that the storm front would be through the area by 2PM. They were wrong again. It rained hard until about 6PM. At least I didn’t run into any really heavy winds or hail. Both were associated with some of the storms in the area.