Monday

Monday morning, we left Bay Landing Campground relatively early (for us!), getting on the road by 9am. We were driving to Granbury, TX to visit Garnet, the makers of the SeeLevel system. We have been having odd readings from our sensors, and, after doing the debugging that they had recommended over our email communications, we asked if we could stop by and they agreed that our system seemed to need some additional attention.

We drove on FM (Farm-to-Market) and state highways, going through small and not-so-small towns.

We drove through Weatherford (one of the "not so small" towns) -- it has Parker County Courthouse right in the middle of town (and right in the middle of the road as you may be able to see in the picture).

Uh oh, there's something crossing the road between us and the courthouse...

We were stopped by the train for about 20 minutes.

After it stopped for about 5 minutes (making us start to get a little anxious), the train is finally gone!

Still a few stoplights to get through though.

The Garmin was telling us to take the second exit from the "traffic circle". Somehow I didn't catch on that it would really be like a traffic circle around the courthouse. When we got to the streets right around it, I was in the right lane, and then needed to be in the left lane to continue around the "circle". Thankfully, the pickup that had been beside me to the left realized that I probably didn't know what I was doing and had not stayed up beside me but stopped behind, so I could easily move over to the left lane and safely make it around the circle.

With little further stress, we made it to Garnet...

Where two nice gentlemen looked at our install and suggested new sensors for us.

New sensor installed on the black tank.

The way that our grey and black tanks were made during manufacturing causes them to have a big bulge about 1/3 of the way up the tank. The diagnosis is that either there is "stuff" caught up on that bulge on the inside or the depth of the plastic is causing issues with the sensors reading. The solution is that we're just going to measure above the bulge. This will mean that the monitor will indicate that the tank is empty until it is about 1/3 full, and then it will start registering. We think that this will be a better solution for us. While we are in Mesa, we can work with it more and understand what the behavior of our system will be.

We told the guys there that, while some retired folks in RVs plan their travels to see things like National Parks and other sites of interest, we seem to plan our travel by visits to places to get service on the rig!

Since we were in Granbury, and since it was lunchtime, we decided to disconnect the Jeep and drive over to Flames for lunch. Flames Restaurants are owned by folks who are friends, who used to come to the same church that we attend in Irving, before they moved out to the Weatherford area.

We had a yummy lunch!

Back on the road, heading west... we had thought that we might stop in Sweetwater, TX for the night, but... remember our comment to the folks at Garnet about our travel plans being influenced by needs for service to the rig? Back on Wednesday as we were driving to Bay Landing, we started hearing a squealing or whistling coming from the back of the rig (where the engine compartment is). We thought it might be a belt, but when we checked the engine while we were parked at Bay Landing, we didn't see any particular wear on the belts (the coach has less than 35K miles, it shouldn't have much wear!). Driving to Granbury, there was no whistling or squealing, but, after we got onto the interstate heading west, it started up again. It seemed to be really bad just before Abilene, and we discussed stopping there, but the Freightliner service in Abilene there was not designated as an "Oasis" shop, which is the designation that Freightliner has for shops that specifically caters to RVers.

The Oasis service network is designed for you—the RV owner preparing for the next adventure. Each Oasis location features accommodations to make your service appointment as pleasant as possible. Oasis service technicians are specially trained to work on FCCC chassis, and through our nationwide parts distribution system, they are positioned to receive parts quickly—sometimes even overnight. (https://www.fcccrv.com/parts-and-service/oasis/)

As a side note, I had contacted an Oasis designated shop in Fort Worth just in case we had problems as we were driving to Granbury. I had figured we might want to stop off there -- they indicated that they really did not have accommodation for RVs, and recommended I contact the South Dallas shop instead... now, Premier Trucks has 3 service centers in DFW (Dallas, South Dallas, and Fort Worth), and two of them are listed as Oasis locations (Dallas and Fort Worth), but only the one *not* designated as Oasis has facilities to accommodate RVs... seems strange to me!

Anyway, we decided to keep driving to Odessa, where Premier Truck Group had another Oasis location. I had called, and they did not have a place specifically to accommodate us, but the service writer said that we could park outside the gate after they closed at 5:30pm. We stopped for fuel in Big Spring, TX (about an hour away from Odessa), and after that, no squealing or whistling... we drove to the Freightliner place and parked outside the gate for the night. We talked to Jimmy a couple of times on Monday about the problem -- we aren't sure whether they will be able to resolve it since it is not happening constantly. This morning, we've talked to a few folks here at the shop, and they seem to feel that they will be able to debug it. We have prayed that they will be able to do it!

We're in the customer lounge - all three of us (Miss Kitty in her kennel), and hoping that they will be able to find and fix whatever the problem is.

So, that's the story of why we are in Odessa!