We're NOT "Roughin' It Smoothly"!

We left at 9:45 this morning, planning on driving about 6 hours today...we were about an hour into the trip, and we hit slow traffic on I-55. DING!  DING! the low voltage warning light came on, it's a pleasant little chime, but one we hate to hear. DING! DING! DING! After a couple more pleasant chimes, you really start to get nervous! After two trips into the Freightliner center in South Dakota, they tinkered with it, put computers on it, and they couldn't find anything wrong or duplicate the problem. We thought with their tinkering whatever loose wire or terminal was acting up was fixed, but the problem is here again. If the voltage gets low enough, below 12 volts, we're in big trouble...Someone has said the entire engine and coach will literally shut down and stop you dead in your tracks. We started planning on finding the nearest Freightliner truck center. We made a couple of phone calls on the way today, and talked to service techs a couple of times. Basically, we have to wait until the problem is more severe, even though the coach is under warranty, since they didn't find a darn thing wrong with it in South Dakota, it's our money out the window if we can't get the problem to occur when we bring it in. We pulled into the Freightliner service center in Mount Vernon, Illinois today, not far from our destination of Rend Lake, and they were swamped and couldn't get to us. Wouldn't you know, the voltage problem went away, and the batteries appear to be charging normally once again!  arrrrrggghhhh!

So, here we are, at Rend Lake in south central Illinois....we got in around 5:00, to the corps of engineer Gun Lake campground. ($8.00 a night, folks!) I go to the car to turn it on and put it in gear, and the car is D.O.A. Dead battery! Double arrrrgggggghhhhh! We have no idea why the Honda is going dead after about six hours of towing, we didn't use to have this problem...We'll have to do some investigating and researching on this..Our little charger that we carry in the car for just such emergencies, was still in the car and hadn't been charged from the last emergency. We had this same problem in Branson, when  the car went dead. At that point, we both said, "We need to charge up this little red charger just in case this ever happens again." Did we do that? No-o-o-o-o, of course not!....so here we are, it's getting darker by the second, we're in the parking lot of the campground entrance, no one in sight, no charger available, and Eldy is trying to figure out how to hook up the jumper cables to the batteries in the RV. Luckily, there was a lady at the entrance booth a little ways away who was a sweetheart and I''ll tell you why. I hustled over there to let her know we might be boondocking in the parking lot. She said to take her truck over to the parking lot and we could use it for a jump. Bless her heart! We did, the Honda started up immediately, and we made it to our site just as darkness fell. While pulling into our site, we saw 7 deer right on the ground around and beside our site. It's hunting season, and the deer are being pushed into this campground...We found out one disappointment this evening, the great bike trail they have here is closed for the weekend because of hunters in the area....Well, we just might have to visit three wineries in the area tomorrow so I can get over it. Good internet connection for the Verizon air card, not too bad AT & T service for the cell phones, and just so-so TV channels...we can get a couple of regular TV channels, lots of religious channels, but no NBC, so no Notre Dame football game Saturday night...drat! says Eldo. (I plead the 5th)...When technology is available, we love it! You should have seen us pick our site at the South Abutment campground in Mississippi.

Here's how dependent on technology we are...when we pulled in, we disconnected the car from the RV. I took Eldy's Mac, put it on the front passenger seat, then drove around the campground watching the air card signal fluctuate. When I got a really good signal down by the lake, I drove back and said, "I found the perfect spot!" Well, I did...it was beautiful! We certainly don't do that very often, just thought it was a funny commentary on the modern ways of camping and using technology with the RV these days. After all, we are living in our RV full time, so we have to be connected....some of the time, uh, OK, much of the time... See you tomorrow!

the perfect spot at Lake Arkabutla