News From the Road Three 2017

Sculpture near Las Cruces, NM

We have had an interesting couple of days. We gave our daughter, Martha, a call during our lunch/rest stop at a rest area on I10 in SE Arizona. She and her husband, Dane, shared the life changing news that Martha is 8 weeks pregnant. What a moment of overwhelming joy! After that great news the day had a few ups and downs.
One of my bike tires needed to be fixed and when we pulled into the parking lot at a bike shop in Las Cruces there was suddenly a horrible smell coming out of the truck. When we got the out to look, coolant was boiling out on the ground right in front of where I sit. Never a good sign, to say the least. A call to the local Ford dealer sounded like we could not even have the problem looked at for a few days. We have done some Habitat building in Las Cruces, and know the team leaders, so we decided to visit them and see if they could recommend a mechanic. Dyana suggested a shop just around the corner from the Habitat base. Richard, the owner, took a quick look and knew we needed a new heater coil. The repair is usually a big job involving taking the dash out to get to the problem. He suggested a short fix of bypassing the heater until we could get the real fix done. It was the end of the day so he had us drive very little(not over heating engine) then we could return in the morning and .have the bypass done.

Birthday Road Style

I haven't mentioned that Dan shares a birthday with Dr Seuss and Desi  Arnez and that was yesterday. Finding out he is going to be a grandfather was a pretty good birthday surprise. Another Care-a-Vanner heard it was Dan's BD and she went to her rig and came back with this balloon. She insisted we take it, her birthday had been a few days prior, plus her dog freaked out whenever he saw the balloon. She said "Pay it forward" ... I will return to the balloon in a moment...

We found a place to camp at a city RV park that had just one tiny, just right for us, spot left. Dan' s BD dinner was mole enchiladas at his favorite Las Cruces spot. Sunny Acres was a nice place for the night and we enjoyed hot showers this morning.

We got to Richard's Automotive shop soon after they opened this morning. Richard and employees had done some research on Ford F-250s and found that the heating coil could be replaced without messing with the dash AND they could do the job in a couple hours while we waited. YES! That was good news and by 10:30 we were out of there.

We stopped by the Habitat work to see the five almost complete houses and to tell Dyana thanks for recommending Richard. When we were here in October we helped frame walls and put roof on the first couple of the houses.

We stopped for a few groceries and headed down I10 through El Paso and on to a small crossroads called Van Horn.

Here is where we landed tonight Oasis RV. Our camper is behind the teepee. The facility has a row of apartments and the RV area out back plu the chickens and the rabbits. 

To be continued grrr!