#34 The axle you need is in Denver

The welder called and said the job is to create a substantially more structural section along the I-beam including a perpendicular bracing new leaf springs and all this is all very good. I really liked these guys and I know that we're probably into the 2,000- ish range and this has bothered me. That was wishful thinking it was closer to twice that. I would mention that Savannah likes to ride in the back of the camper and whether it's legal or not. When I weigh it all out I'm not willing to skimp on the cost and have this thing falling apart with my daughter in the back. I don't want to have to worry the whole year if my suspension is okay. What day is it all going to fall apart and we look like a derailed train wreck on the interstate with a dead or maimed teenager It looks to me like the guys are going to create an all new proper suspension for me and I'm very pleased. We can get more money but we can’t get any more Savannahs.

This meant we needed to get a hotel. It was about 8:30 at night and so we have been very used to pay about $20 a night for lodging and many days when we boondock we pay nothing at all. When we started looking for around for lodging we started finding that there was absolutely no vacancy and when we found a room they were 40 miles away or 200 per night. We finally found one called the Dakota Cowboy Inn in Custer SD and it was fine at about 110.00. It’s kind of like a motel 6 in a safe neighborhood. No frills but not 200 per night. We had not intended so but we would be there for 4 nights.

I was on some free WI in a motel parking lot and somehow in the process I caught a virus on the laptop. While were at the Cowboy Inn I called Ben and had him look at it using team viewer. He took over the mouse from Raleigh and tried everything and finally using Spybot he found the critter and he stunned it but could never kill it dead. He finally had to wipe the hard drive and we reloaded windows again and we used # 10 as an upgrade from #7. I was able to do a full back up prior to the laptop lobotomy so I thank good son Ben for saving the day again.

On Tuesday the boys called and said one of the axles had lost it camber. Just google it and you will know all about axles. On Wednesday he called and said the only place he could find the axle was in Denver and they could not receive it any sooner than Monday. I told him I would go get it and we did. I wanted some company so I asked India to join me. This was a hard errand to sell because I wanted to leave now at noon, drive 6 hours one way, eat dinner and drive back 6 hours so they could install the axle and get us out of the motel expense quickly. I had to whine a little but she said ok and we hit the road. Cheryl, my sister often says India is the only person that has the design to put up with my foolishness.

I am allowed to go 75 and sometimes 80 on these Wyoming highways and I have about decided that I'm going to go about 1900 RPM's because that's worth the miles per gallon does pretty good. After 2000 RPM you are kinda pouring diesel down the drain pipe if you're not careful. I end up going about 72 or 73 which keeps it just under 2000. If I were to go to 75 miles an hour that's about 3 miles an hour faster so in 3 hours I would get there 10 minutes sooner. It would cost me a ton of fuel at little bit more noise and so I've decided just to keep it at 1900.

We left for Denver maybe between 12 and 2 o'clock in the afternoon and it was a 6 hour drive one way. I had prepaid and the vender closed at 5:30 and we got there around 6pm. The vendor had mentioned that his shop was in a less than perfect neighborhood and he was leaving our axle outside the front door after closing. When get there, everything was good and honestly the wife of the store owner was there with kids watching the axle for me to make sure no one took it. I was very impressed by her dedication to customer service This was such a cool thing. We headed on out and me and India decided that Denver is a bit of busy crazy place and since we had no other reason to be there we wanted to get away from what we would call a rat race. Everyone was very impatient, crazy, kind of like Charlotte or something. We went about 20 miles going back to the house and we saw an exit that had different things to eat we got our tanks filled up with fuel and had some Chinese food at a nice sit down place.

I got some pictures of a really nice sunset

I got coffee-ed up and jazz to get ready to go home and when I look back I will say I hadn't got so jazzed up. I would like to have gone to the rest area and slept at this point as it was about 9 or 10 o'clock at night and it showed us arriving at about 4 a.m. Along with the coffee I decided to drink a 5 hour energy so I was tooth pick eyes now and very talkative. God bless India. I couldn't sleep at rest areas and basically I was just in a spot of needing the rest but not being sleepy. It’s hard sleep in rest areas any way but I would rest for about a half an hour or an hour and then go to the next place an hour so away. The only real negative thing was at about 2 hours away from our destination we ran into severe thunderstorms. I knew that there was almost nothing I could do about it so I figured if I tried to push forward even if it was up 40 miles an hour. I just kept moving but they were very violent thunderstorms and it was really creepy. When it finally became daybreak I was much happier at about 5 a.m. we made it through the thunderstorms here's a video of it I've what I got but it only shows us on the other side of it and it was about over.

We dropped off the axle at the shop and went to the room to sleep.

Late on Thursday the RV was finished and so we made plans to leave town Friday

Got the bill and Rita paid it, I thought I was going to die but they were great guys

On Friday morning the power in most of or room didn’t work and I talked to the manager. I didn’t have to care because were leaving soon. I knew it would be unusable to the next person and they were at about 100 percent no vacancy so I wanted to help.

The manager and his handyman couldn't quite put their finger on it and so I told him I would check for the basics. I thought I would look and see if I could find something wrong and it wasn't obvious and his much as I love really want to be their free electrician I saw no reason to give my services away. I told him if he would tell me slip me 20 bucks. He said if I could solve it he would reduce my bill by one night which is a good deal so I started taking a look at everything. To keep a long story short I spend an hour and a half troubleshooting and figuring things out and eventually figured out there was a big connection around back of the room at it electrical panel. I took care of the problem and he knocked off about one and a half nights. I think we're still messing around about 2 o'clock and we left we went by picked up RV and got on the road to Casper.