A small bump in the road.......

8:38 am - Tuesday - January 8th - St. Marys, GA - 56º F, 99% humidity, wind 1 mph out of the south by southeast......mostly cloudy today with a forecast high of 74º F.

Monday was moving day....time to leave our site for four days at the corner of Rose and Martinis.  Our goal was to be moving the Newell out of the driveway and over to where the trailer was parked between 9 and 10 am, and we were right on schedule when I lit the fires of our Detroit Diesel 6v92 around 9:15 am, then the unexpected happened.....a 'small bump in the road'.......

.....the left side of the coach would not come up to 'ride height', however, the right side did, so we were listing severely to the left.  I also noted that the air pressure on both my gauges would not get above 100 psi.....usually within minutes the coach is up to 'ride height', and air pressure is registering at 120 psi.  Okay, I'm thinking, something must be leaking somewhere.  I turned off the DD, exited the coach and walked back to the engine bay to check the rear '6 pack' and even before I open the passenger side engine bay door I can hear a very loud hissing.  That's good, because at least the leak is obvious.  I open up the bay door and zero in on one MAC air valve almost immediately.....coincidentally it is the valve that has the 'ride height' solenoid attached to it.....

......on the lower right side of the valve is an 'exhaust port', and was it ever exhausting.  I carry 4, or 5 of these valves as backups, and so it became immediately apparent something was wrong with the valve, so I got out one of the spares, then set about removing and replacing the defective valve.  In all it took about 90 minutes to complete the task, and when I started everything up again the left side was still not rising, but I could manually raise it using the 'leveling mode', and I could not before.  Now here is where it gets interesting.....after completely raising the left side using the 'leveling mode' I flipped the switch back to 'ride height', and the left side,which was now higher than normal settled down to ride height and stayed there.  To test the system I manually lowered the the rear, then put it back in 'ride height' again, and the rear raised back up again......cool, it's fixed!

By this point we were over 90 minutes behind our schedule.....la de da.  I moved the coach over to the trailer and quickly dropped the trailer back on the hitch, inserted the VW and we were on our way north to St. Mary's, GA.  Why St. Mary's, GA?  Well, that is where our good friends Roscoe and Geni, are spending the winter volunteering at Crooked River State Park.  We first met Roscoe and Geni at the Mammoth Hot Springs General Store in Yellowstone two summers ago (2017) and became fast friends by the end of the summer.  When we were working at the Grand Canyon last winter they came to visit us and we had dinner. Neither TLE, nor I could imagine being this close to them and not taking a couple of days to visit them at their winter job.

After a completely uneventful 197 mile drive (including a couple of rest stops) we arrived at Crooked River around 3:45 pm, and after registering at the office headed to Site # 4, which Geni had so kindly reserved for us.  As we approached the site we could see Roscoe and Geni standing there waving us into the site.  We parked and exited to hugs, and a couple of cold brews.....what a great welcome!

After talking for about 30 minutes we agreed to reconvene at our site at 5:15 pm and drive into old town St. Mary's for dinner.  We were able to catch the sunset at the perfect time......

 Left to right: Moi, TLE, Rosco and Geni

Beautiful sunset

.....after spending time watching the sunset we headed to the restaurant....'St. Mary's Seafood and More', reputed to be the #1 restaurant in town, which is verified by Yelp who gives them 4.5 stars on 193 reviews.  I had their special, which was Blackened Tilapia, and Blackened Shrimp.....OMG....I'll leave it at that.  TLE, Roscoe and I chased our entrees with Ying Lings, and Geni had a Fat Tire.  We talked endlessly as if no time had passed since we last saw them a year ago at the Grand Canyon.

We had planned to sit by the fire after dinner, but the NCAA National Championship pitting Clemson against favored Alabama (5.5 point favorite) was on at 8 pm so we deferred the fire to Tuesday night.  The game was close for the first 1/2 with Alabama up 16-14, but in the second half Clemson scored 30 unanswered points to win the game by 4 touchdowns......a complete upset for the ages.   I know our friends Richard & Rhonda (Richard graduated from Clemson in 1979) had big smiles on their faces around 11:30 pm Monday night.

Thanks for stopping by!

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