Sunday
A day of rest (imposed) - as it used to be. I remember growing up, no one worked on Sunday, no stores were open. It was a day for church and family. No one was open to get tires or our brakes fixed, so we found a vacant lot and parked.
Monday
Bright and early we were up and at the tire shop by 7:45 am. 2 new trailer tires (all new now) and we're on the road. As we traveled, we checked yellow pages for trailer brake repair. After about 5 calls, found Century Trailer in Ft. Stockton (100 miles from our beginning point today) who could get to us. Carefully made our way there. Bright sunny day and hardly any traffic on the 10.
Arrived at Century Tire about 10:30 am, a family owned business for about 40 years. Very nice and very competent. They not only build and repair trailers but also fabricate large overhead grain bins, primarily for ranchers who have a large feeding operation so they can drive their grain wagons underneath, pull a lever to fill their hopper and fill their fill their grain wagon and dispurse it on the ground over a large area or into a trough. Big business around here. They got to us about 11:30, broke for lunch and resumed work at 1 PM. Come to find out it was the middle right brake on the RV. For some unknown reason, the brake shoe actuating lever, with the magnet on the end of it, had broken and the magnet had wedged itself between the shoe and the drum, causing the wires of the magnet to short. They did not have an actuating lever so they replaced the whole backing plate assembly.
On the road again at 1:45 pm. Stopped in Van Horn, TX for fuel, crossed the central into mountain time zone and over the Continental Divide. Pulled over at a Flying J just outside El Paso and found a quiet parking place. It was only 4 PM (mountain time) but 5 PM our bodies time and we had been up early, so we were stopping. Also didn't want to do El Paso rush hour traffic when we were tired. Decided to go into Denny's (at the Flying j) for supper. Not busy at this early hour, but after we ordered....20-25 minutes, no food. Hadn't seen our waitress for a while, so snagged another gal. Next thing we know the manager was at our table, saying he had just turned our order in and it would be out very shortly and on the house. Apparently our waitress forgot to put our order in before going on break. Duh. He was not happy and we did see her show up shortly after that and then was gone. Fired? Who knows. Our new waitress was very cute and attentive. Oh, the woes of restaurant management...wouldn't want to do that for a living! Crashed early.
Tuesday
Another bright sunny day even though there was 30% chance of rain/snow showers. Still chilly - 29 at night but near 60 during the day. 9 am start and made it to Bowie, AZ, Hot Well Dunes Rec. Area by 2 PM. (This is BLM land - $1.50 per night for us oldsters. Almost always quiet during the week with a few campers and locals but crazy on the weekends with the ATVers all over the sand dunes here. Got set up easily and soaked in the hot tubs for a while. The hot tubs used to be open 24/7 but now they are on solar power, so they fill up in the morning when the sun comes up and empty out when the pumps quit as the sun sets. Very efficient, but does curtain the early morning soaks which we enjoyed. J took a nap, we had dinner and I crashed early. So dark and quiet here - easy to sleep well!
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