Completely deflated.....

6:54 am - Thursday - January 24th - Albuquerque, NM - 30º F ('feels like' 24º F), 55% humidity (love it!), wind 6 mph out of the north by northwest.  Crystal clear blue skies today with a forecast high of 48º F.  Sunrise is 7:11 am, and sunset is 5:28 pm.

As you will recall we awoke to a frozen world Wednesday morning.....the 'feels like' temperature was 10º.  At one time we had three electric heaters, plus all 3 gas heaters running full blast to take the chill off the Newell interior.  Sometimes when it is bitter cold we will lose some air from our airbags which we use to level the coach, and this was the case Wednesday morning.  Often it is the right side of the coach that settles, and I simply turn on the leveling system and let a little air out of the driver side airbags to bring it level again, but when I attempted this nothing happened.  I looked at the air pressure gauges (there are two) and saw that the PSI was just above 10 PSI, which essentially means we have no air pressure....

Note the red lines I have drawn on this picture in the upper left of each gauge...that is where the gauges were Wednesday morning

......hmmmm, that is worrying, right?  Of course my mind always goes to the worst case scenario, and that is there are more MAC air valves going bad.  Of course, the worst is rarely ever the case.   We planned to roll our wheels about 9 am, so about 8 am I attempted to fire up the Detroit Diesel, but I was unable to give it any throttle as I had no air pressure, and my throttle, of course, is air activated......air pressure is needed to operate the throttle.  Since I could give it no throttle the engine kept dying.  Okay, I can solve that problem!   I go out side to the passenger side engine bay and set up my pancake compressor to feed air back into my system. It takes about 10 minutes to bring the air pressure to just shy of 110 PSI, and I am then able to start the big DD 6V92.  While it is idling I quickly put away the pancake compressor.  

All the while TLE has been putting the interior into travel order so by the time I get back inside we are ready to roll.....it is just 8:30 am.....a little earlier than we like, but we rolled our wheels anyway.  By the time we merged onto I-40 the PSI was running at 120 PSI, which is where it should be.   As we left frigid Amarillo in our rear view mirror......

.....the views gradually opened up, which we had missed for such a long time.....

.....just shy of noontime we entered New Mexico, and the Mountain Time Zone, so now it was just shy of 11 am.....another hour retrieved on our way back to the Pacific Time Zone.....

.....in Amarillo we were sitting at about 3,600' elevation, but as we put mile after mile behind us we were gaining elevation.....soon we passed 5,000' elevation, and about 50 miles east of Albuquerque we topped out at 7,200' elevation

7,200' elevation....heading downhill into Albuquerque now

......as we passed through Albuquerque about 1:30 pm we were back down to 5,200' elevation, and when we exited I-40 westbound we were at 5,300' elevation.  We had covered some 320 miles, but it did not feel like 320 miles.  The drive Wednesday was such a pleasure we blew right by our originally planned stop about 40 miles east of Albuquerque, and continued on another 60 miles to our present location......Route 66 Casino and RV Resort, about 20 miles west of Albuquerque.....

......there are 100 sites in this pretty new RV park at the Casino, and all the interior roads are paved, with each site having a 45' concrete pad.  There were very few RV's in the park when we arrived at 2 pm, but by nightfall there were probably a dozen.  The views are gigantic, and unspoiled.....we may just be tempted to stay here for more than one night.....suweet.  There was, and is not a breath of wind, and the sun feels so good.  Of course, the low humidity (55%) doesn't hurt even a little.

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'Feels like 10º F.....'

6:36 am - Wednesday - January 22nd - Amarillo, TX - 21º F (feels like 10º F), 56% humidity, wind 10 mph out of the west by northwest.......clear, but still dark.....forecast high in Amarillo for today is 50º F.  We roll our wheels in 3 hours!

Not much to write about Tuesday......the winds remained steady in the 30's most of the day, and the temp never got above 32º F, while the 'feels like' temp was in the high teens all day long.  I had planned to disconnect from city water sometime Tuesday as we knew it would be below freezingTuesday night, but we were not expecting it to be so cold during the day.  As a result our water line froze necessitating me going outside to disconnect it, and then drag the hose into into what sun so the frozen water inside might unfreeze and drain out, which it did eventually.  To say it was bitter cold outside does not adequately describe it.

Because of the high winds we just stayed inside (except for two, or three outdoor forays for me) with all electric heaters running non-stop all day long.  We had planned to do some more sightseeing Tuesday, but the wind and the 'feels like' temperature quickly put to rest any such notions.

We spent the entire day watching a backlog of recorded shows from our DVR, as well as the Hallmark channel (there where at least three naps for moi).  Eventually the heavy cloud cover dissipated and the sun did come out for a few hours at the very end of the day.  By 8 pm the winds began to abate.

We knew it would be very windy Tuesday, which is why we opted to stay here until Wednesday, but we were not expecting the super cold temperatures.  Weather.com says it is 21º F as I write (7:02 am), and that by 9 am (our projected departure time) it should rise all the way to 26º F.  If we were just 509 miles south of here in San Antonio we would be experiencing 40º F right now with a forecast high of 60º F.....now that is more like it.  It is what it is, and we shall make the best of this arctic blast and continue westward to Flagstaff over the next few days.

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The color is Yellow......

7:18 am - Sunday - April 22nd - Amarillo, TX - 41º F, 91% humidity, wind 7 mph out of the northwest....forecast high for Amarillo today is 64º F.......mostly clear skies after a little rain yesterday.....we only experienced some sprinkles west of here for a few minutes.  Will be on the road in less than an hour.

It was quite cold (34º F) Sunday morning in Edgewood, NM, and it took about an hour using the block heater to warm the big 6V92 up enough to start her.  We were back on eastbound I-40 by 8:30 am heading for, we hoped, Amarillo, TX.......another state and another time zone change......more clock changing ahead.

The skies started out partly cloudy, and by the time we arrived in Amarillo (means yellow in Spanish) around 3 pm Central Time it was totally overcast, however, I get ahead of myself.  The road surface was as smooth as a baby's butt most of the day, and mostly flat.  The engine temps ran in the low 180's most of the day climbing into the 190's on short climbs......perfect!  It was really just a matter of me hanging onto the steering wheel and enjoying the giant views...... 

......by  11 am we were coming into Tucumcari, NM which is about the last large (I use that word advisedly) New Mexico city on I-40 before the Texas border.  We stopped overnight in Tucumcari about 9 years ago, and while it was kind of a sleepy little town on a Sunday afternoon, it seemed there were a lot of active businesses.  We took a walk that day down Route 66 about 6 blocks to visit the local supermarket.  Below you see the local supermarket all boarded up in the background on Saturday, April 21, 2018.  It seemed that about 50% of the local businesses were closed for good.....

.....it was a little sad to see the stark decline in just 9 years.  We took our second break of the day in Tucumcari at the abandoned supermarket and then continued our quest to cross another state line.  Within an hour we were saying goodbye to New Mexico and being welcomed into Texas.......

.....the terrain did not immediately change, but within 20 miles we came to the flat Texas landscape with which we are well acquainted.........

........with 100's of windmills covering the landscape in every direction......we were passed by a couple of  'Tiny Homes' along the way.......

.....at last we were on the outskirts of Amarillo and our destination for Saturday......the Cracker Barrel just off the Interstate on the north side.  We exited the Interstate and made our way over to the RV parking area in the Cracker Barrel parking lot.....

.....found a spot that suited us and parked.  This is only the second time the RV parking has been long enough for our 62'.  The only other time we have found long RV spots was at the Cracker Barrel in Missoula, MT a few years ago.  The time was about 3 pm Central Time, and the skies looked quite threatening, although we did not get any rain.

We went into the Cracker Barrel about 5:45 pm to have breakfast for dinner.....I had their Oltimer Breakfast (2 eggs, bacon, grits, biscuits and gravy).  Service is always quite fast, and true to form within about 8, or 9 minutes we had our food and were sipping coffee.  We talked about how idyllic the day had been, and our Jello plans for Sunday.....hopefully we will enter another state (Oklahoma), but no new time zones.

After returning to the coach I decided to spend the evening setting up our ROKU TV channels.  Many of the channels we watch are already included in the 'Home' menu, but we had to add about 6, or 7 more which takes a while.  By the end of the evening we were set, and as I write this latest missive I am watching British Premier Soccer on ROKU TV......no turning on the DirecTV DVR, or cranking up the satellite dish.....just turn on my Samsung hotspot, and turn on the TV and we are in business.....perfect for traveling.....quick and easy!

We watched Masterchef Junior before retiring the for evening at 10 pm, which is really 8 pm Pacific Time......my body is still adjusting.

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