On the Road Again, Finally

We got up early this morning and got Venture ready to go before heading to Sedona to Vince’s Autobody. We were hoping to keep them aware of how urgently we wanted our truck back. When we got there, we learned that the part had been sent by UPS. Jim, the owner, ran the truck down and got the part. Everyone was very apologetic about the part mixup. When we got our truck back, it was shiny and clean an looked as good as new.

We headed back to our campsite to hook up and drive to Kingman, AZ, to spend the night, but first we had to stop in Camp Verde to dump and get some fresh water. We got on the road around 2:00 p.m.

At our first stop, Ken discovered that one of our kitchen cabinet door latches had broken, spilling dishes all over and shattering a Corelle lunch plate. We cleaned that up, but then discovered that our new pepper mill had rolled under the big slideout and gotten wedged tightly. Nothing we tried to dislodge it seemed to be making any progress. We tried moving the slideout in and out a bit, only to hear ominous grinding noises.

We tried to use a hammer to move it toward the opening, but to no avail, so finally we decided to try to destroy it with the hammer and retrieve the fragments. Ken was finally able to do that, but just as the thickest fragment of the pepper mill popped out, the slide out fell on his hand! After a few moments of horror, he managed to pull his fingers out, bruised but intact (whew!).

A bit further down the road I noticed a large piece of the vinyl sealing trim from the margin between the roof and the side of the trailer was hanging free in the wind under the front end. I pulled over and we decided to cut the dangling part (about 20-25 feet) loose. The vinyl had torn free of the screws securing it in place. The lower end was easy to reach, but I had to climb on the roof in the wind to cut the top end—not a happy experience.

We were glad to arrive in Kingman to make our stop for the night. Frustratingly, we have no internet connection on either the Verizon modem or the Droids. Curses!

We decided to stay in a K-Mart parking lot. It’s posted “No overnight camping,” but the friendly lady at the customer service desk said we wouldn’t be disturbed.