I awoke at 3:58 with a sore neck. Boy, I must have had my head twisted somehow during the night. That must have been some wild dream - shucks, I’ve forgotten it. And, I tossed and turned trying to find a comfortable way to sleep - couldn’t find any. Maybe, I’ll just lay here awake thinking miscellaneous thoughts for 3 hours. What fun.
On our way down to Mesa in October, about 10 miles from our campground, the ‘Check Engine’ light came on. OMG, what now? We just had a big repair and an annual maintenance review, now what? So, Gary checked the code which the engine had, and it was an EGR valve that needed to be checked. We’ve got other things first, we’ll get to that later.
Now, it’s ‘later’.
We checked the 2 Freightliner Service areas in Phoenix.
One is a first-come, first-served. Hmmm. We’ll have to get there early and, if others are ahead of us, we might not get in that day. Well, we could go the night before and wait at the gate for them to open. That sounds fun: ‘camping’ out in the street waiting for the Freightliner to open. Can’t think of anything I’d rather do. And, if they don’t get the repair done that day, they have no place for us to stay - that means a motel nearby.
The other Freightliner is an Oasis stop which means they specialize in RV’s and even have a ‘campground’ - a spot with hook-ups while you wait for service. A cement parking lot next to other waiting RV’s but - at least we can get an appointment and, if it takes longer than a day, we’ll have some place to stay.
Guess which one we chose? Yep, the second.
But, they want us there at 6:45 which means leaving here at or before 6:00. Our site in #355, the one circled on the map. In the middle of the park. Do they want us rumbling through the park (the dotted line) to the entry gate, where the arrow is - in the dark, in a big diesel? Probably not. So we went to the office, asked if we could park in the front pull-through section, right next to the gate. Sure enough, and they wouldn’t charge us for the more expensive spot, Y, and we only had to follow that short line with the arrows to the front gate. Note how much closer to the gate this new space is. Made it so much easier to get out early in the morning without too much hassle.
We got ready to move, rumbled through the campground in the afternoon, pulled in and got ready to go out for dinner. We’ve been going out for Wednesday breakfast with another Iowa couple whom we met 5 years ago, our first year in this park. But, since our appointment is early Wed morning, breakfast at 4:30 a.m. is out, we’re going out for Tuesday dinner at Panera. They leave for an Iowa family Christmas on Friday so we don’t have much time.
Dinner was lots of fun. Mary worked for the Iowa DOT and we learned all about guard rails and all the experiments that have been made throughout the US for the most effective one. Then we learned about ‘Super 2’s’ those 2-lane highways that have a passing lane in the middle that switches from one lane to the next. I mean - how often do you get to learn about all this? Pretty cool. We asked her what education she had for the job and she said she learned on the job. She used to go out into the field to inspect and help map. Then she used CAD to get the design down right. Interesting.
And, all we did was fun some video stores.
Maybe we’ll meet them again next summer in Ankeny, IA for breakfast where they live and where we stay for a month or two during every summer.
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