On the road!

Our intent had been to start our adventure around 7pm on Friday the 8th, but like most best laid plans we left a little after 9pm. Our "plan" was to drive to Kingman, AZ and spend the night behind the Cracker Barrel, and then hit the road early the next morning. I figured we would be in Kingman by 2:30am.......but.......we were about an hour out from Kingman in the tiny border town of Needles taking a short break...you know, get out walk around the coach, making sure nothing is going wrong that we're not aware of yet. We get back in, I turn the key, and nothing. I check to be sure it is in neutral.....DP's have no "Park". You have to start it in neutral. Yep, it's in neutral, but it won't even turn over...I can hear the solenoid on the rear panel clicking. The batteries are all topped off, and all the lights are working so my old problem in the rear panel has not returned (loose connection). Finally, I give up and call Good Sam Club ERS. They initially want to tow me somewhere, but I ask "where" at 2am??? I ask them to locate a 24 hour service who can send someone out to troubleshoot my problem. Don from Advanced Mobile Tire, Inc. arrived at my location around 3:20am.......he quickly determined that the starter was getting a weak signal....only about 3 volts.....not nearly enough to turn the big Detroit Diesel over, so we removed the existing trigger wire and ran a new one down to the starter, and what do you know...it started right up. He had us back on the road by 4am, and we arrived in Kingman around 5am......I ended up sleeping around 2 1/2 hours.....not what I had "planned".....haha!

We got up and got dressed around 7:30am and went into the Cracker Barrel for a great breakfast and lots of coffee. We were on the road by 8:30 headed east into the sun. Our destination for Saturday was Gallup, NM. We took a 30 minute break in Flagstaff, and then pushed on down I-40....the weather was great....crystal clear skies and a slight tail wind.

By the way, this is the first trip we have pulled our new car hauler trailer with the T-Bird in it and it has pulled great so far!

Flagstaff rest stop....

With the trailer we are 60' long now.....

Our distance on Saturday was 327 miles.....I really don't like driving too much more than 300 miles a day, so this was within my comfort zone. I was planning....there's that "p" word again...to fuel up in Albuquerque, but I hadn't accounted for the extra weight of the trailer and car. We were about 30 miles out from Gallup and I had to give in and get fuel as it appeared we were down to less than a 1/16th of a tank...maybe 11 gallons.....not a good idea to temp the gas gods so about the time I was getting concerned we saw a sign for "Speedy's", and a price of $2.91 per gallon....almost 40 cents lower than Ontario, so we exited and I took $500 into the cashier for pump #29 expecting to leave most of that with her after filling.....my tank takes 180 gallons and I expected, based on where the needle was, to put in close to 170. Well, to my pleasant surprise the pump clicked off at 143 gallons! Looks like the gauge is a little off as I must have had close to 37 gallons left....hmmmm....I could have made it to Albuquerque.

We finished fueling up and got back on I-40 for the final 19 miles into Gallup, NM and USA RV Park. This is a great park, and is a totally family run operation. They really provide great customer service, and do everything in their power to make sure your stay meets your expectations. In addition to all that the WiFi signal was amazing on the back row where we parked for the night....very fast considering how full the park was.

USA RV Park, Site 86

Watching the sun set.....