5th Wheel Adventures

10/03/2025

It's beginning to look like fall in Florida. It's about as good as it gets!

09/22/2025

Word to the wise...

09/18/2025

Another Army Corps of Engineer campground. Not exactly what the picture looked like but it'll do. Being Thursday, the campground is a little empty. It'll change tomorrow...

09/01/2025

A few images from our recent stay at Doll Mountain Campground outside of Ellijay, GA. We were the only ones in our camping loop (actually, the majority of the campground!) except for our last night there. This was a really nice Army Corp of Engineer campground.

08/29/2025

Yesterday's trip was not uneventful. Diesel prices are really high in Illinois so I was hoping to use my aux tank to transfer fuel as I needed it. I wanted to get diesel in Iowa which is close to 50 cents cheaper (on average) than Illinois. Except - the control box for the aux tank wasn't working. Sometimes all it takes is to turn off the truck (remove power) and restart everything and it'll all work. Pulled off at the next rest stop (only about 30 minutes down the road). Turned off the truck, "rested" a few minutes, and started everything back up.

Aux tank control still wasn't working; now what? Started listening to the music on my iPhone while traveling down the road. There was another truck stop about an hour farther along the way. In the mean time, I noticed the GPS receiver on the truck wasn't working! It was receiving no satellites which meant the truck's navigation map wasn't working. Did I somenow blow a fuse to the satellite receiver and the nav system? That'll have to wait.

Just before I got to the next truck stop the aux tank controls started working again. So I started transferring fuel saving me extra $$$ from buying fuel in Illinois.

Made it to Iowa finally and then the cat decided shw had enough and had to do her business in her cage. Found another truck stop we could pull off at to change her p*e pad to make her happy for the finaly 45 minutes to the campground. As we started the truck to move out, XM Radio started working again as did the GPS receiver! So the truck was back to "normal" again.

The bottom line is I have no clue why all of this happened so there's no way I can "fix" anything so it won't happen again. I guess the next step is to just carry on.

08/26/2025

Good news. Found a mobile RV tech who is actually staying in the same RV park I'm in and is just a few sites away! They're going to be able to get to me later today!! Which means we'll be able to get back on the road headed to the Antique Airplane Association fly in starting tomororw! Yipp*e!!!!

08/25/2025

Not a happy camper right now. Just extended our stay at this campground two more days. Out of the two mobile RV techs I've called, NOT ONE of them has called me back. So I'm trying an RV tech who's staying at the park to see if they can help. If not, I'm leaving Wednesday with or without brakes. After all, it's not like I've never driven through half of Canada and most of Alaska without RV brakes. The drive through the flat lands of the midwestern US should be relatively easy.

08/09/2025

The late summer / fall RV trip has started....

07/17/2025

Yes; I went there. I needed to see what all the excitement (hub-bub, talk, recommendations, and finger pointing - painting?) was about. What was it you say? It was Cadillac Ranch just off the interstate west of Amarillo, TX.

It looks rather unassuming as you drive by it on the highway looking for a place to park. Yes, it can get rather crowded at times! You have a short walk to get there as it's in the middle of a field. Don't forget to bring your own cans of spray paint or you can purchase some (probably) overpriced ones and other souvenirs from the local vendor conveniently parked nearby. There's probably more paint on these cars than there is metal left after all these years!

07/13/2025

It may not be the tallest now but it was three years ago when I drove past!

From the RoadsideAmerica web site:

"100 truckloads of parts were needed just to assemble the crane to raise this rotating titan, which tops out at 653.5 feet above the flat West Texas Wind Corridor (Most wind turbines rise less than 500 feet). It's as if you took the Gateway Arch in St. Louis -- the tallest monument in the U.S. -- and stood it in the middle of the Texas Prairie. Except that the Turbine is even taller.

The GW 3S Prototype (its official name) began spinning in May 2018, part of the UL Advanced Wind Turbine Test Facility at West Texas A&M University. Unlike most turbines, which are clustered in wind farms, this one stands alone. 80 cement mixers worth of concrete were needed to anchor it, part of a lengthy list of superlatives involved with its construction. Visitors can't climb it, but they can look at it, and to take a photo of all of it you'll have to stand about a half-mile away."

07/03/2025

Spent a few days at Palo Duro Canyon State Park in Texas a couple of years ago. Doing something a little different this time: rather than sharing individual photos, I decided to put them into a short video for sharing. Hope y'all like this format. I'll be playing with this some going forward with other locations.

A few images in video format showcasing Palo Duro Canyon State Park in Texas.

07/02/2025

I've taken pictures of Swallow Tail Kites before and I even have a photo of one eating in flight (I think that's what they normally do). However, I've never seen one take a drink before! I've seen swallows do this multiple times (they're really small and I've been unsuccessful getting a photo of one flying along and getting a drink - they're FAST) but this is a first for me.

I barely had time to grab my camera and swap lenses to my telephoto. I was only able to shoot through my dirty window though (I really need to tell the owner in no uncertain terms to WASH THE WINDOWS!) And I was in such a hurry that I didn't even manage to adjust the telephoto to, well, telephoto range. So these were all shot at 60mm rather than at 600mm. Extreme editing and massive zoom into the image in editing has degraded the image some. But here is a pretty cool sequence of a Swallow Tail Kite getting a drink of water!