Final Leg of Our Journey

We got up early, so we could get to Junction City by noon. The first thing we noticed was that it was cold. Our furnace refused to stay on more than a few seconds, and it seemed that the burner wasn't lighting. We'll have to see if the New Horizons mechanics can find out what's wrong.

On our morning walk, we were looking for a place to deposit our little bag of trash when we came upon a dumpster with some nice broken down boxes, so we grabbed a bunch of those. Now we won't have to find a Lowe's or Home Depot to buy boxes to pack our stuff.

We noticed when we dumped at Lewisville that the black water valve was hard to move, and worse, it wouldn't close all the way. This morning the hose was full and the Pivot Ease connection was dripping. Yuk! We've had the valve replaced three times now. We checked sanidump.com and found out that the El Dorado Water Treatment plant has a public dump station, so we went there on our way out of town and dumped. Fortunately, the valve actually closed almost completely. We were down to half a tank of diesel, so we filled up, not thinking until later that we were doing a favor for the dealership that will be taking the truck as a trade-in.

We headed north of Hwy 77. It was a straight shot, and the road was well maintained, so we made good time and arrived at New Horizons at noon. After talking with some folks there, we decided to go directly to a nearby car and truck wash to get at least the top layer of bugs and dirt off the truck and trailer. We've never seen so many bug splats on Venture's front cap!

After we ate a quick lunch in the car wash parking lot, we returned to NH. We got the keys to new truck, and found out that hitch has not yet been installed, but will be installed in the morning. Our Ford salesman,Gary, delivered a dealer plate so we could drive the new truck along with our old truck to the dealership. Meanwhile, we had to transfer tons of stuff from old truck to the new truck.

On our way to Dick Edwards Auto, we stopped by the post office to pick up our General Delivery mail. When we got to the dealership, we filled out some paper work and met the finance manager, Rick. While he was working on the papers, Gary gave us a quick tour of the controls on our new F-450 Super Duty truck. It will be a steep learning curve, because it's very different from the Silverado.

We found out that because Silverado shows up in Carfax as being involved in a "minor accident, airbags did not deploy," our trade-in is worth less--but we still get the lower figure that has been promised, plus other changes which mean that our bottom line will actually be a bit lower than expected.

We waited for Rick to call us, only to learn that the computer system had crashed. After a while they realize it's a serious problem (maybe someone cut a main cable?). We'll go back Friday afternoon to finish the paperwork.

When we got back to New Horizons, it was after 5:00 p.m. Our Excel had been pulled around back and placed in a slot with water and 50 amp electric hookups. While we were setting up, we met Jim and Sue Coram. We had heard about them from Gary and Judy. They had the Champagne paint scheme modified to use a lighter gold rather than the standard bronze, and we considered ordering the same (but ended up with the standard Champagne color scheme). We got a chance to tour their new Majestic. Jim was especially proud of the 46" TV in the entertainment center, behind cabinet doors, and the 17" computer monitor that lifts from under the counter/desk.

The Corams described some issues they've found--but said all of them were mainly cosmetic. However, they asked for a three-burner stove top and got the Verona four burner.

After supper, we went for our evening walk and ran into Jack and Danielle. They're here to pick up their new Majestic. They have their old unit parked with the door facing the door of their new unit, to facilitate transferring the contents. We'll have the same sort of setup soon.

We could tell which of the brand new Majestics was ours, because we had the ladder moved from the curb side to the street side. We walked around to check out the outside of our new home. Unfortunately, we found some problems, issues, and worries right away. For example, there's no wiring or frames on the roof to install our solar panels. We're hoping that some of this will be cleared up in the morning when we get our official walk through. One issue we face is that the street side cargo door is extremely narrow.

We decided to try not to worry too much tonight (yeah, right). We're telling ourselves that we and the New Horizons folks will figure everything out somehow.

So we went back to Venture and packed up the contents of the office/entertainment center. Our home is now cluttered with boxes, so packed and some just stacked up waiting to be filled.
[photos later]


I haven't been able to get to sleep. Too much anxiety mixed with excitement. Tomorrow will be another day.