I worked Thursday night, so we took off on Friday morning when I got home from work. I pulled in to a local gas station to fuel up for the trip. While gassing up, I was checking on the strap downs on the motorcycle we were bringing along on a hitch-mounted carrier. A mechanic from the gas station rushed out and yelled "Sir! Is that gasoline leaking under your vehicle?" I promptly quit pumping, and checked on it. It was indeed gasoline, and my first thought was that the gas tank was leaking and that we'd have to cancel the trip. I asked the mechanic to check on it, and he found that the gas fill hose was cracked. He didn't have a replacement, but told me to go check at O'Reilly's. I did, and of course they didn't have it. I tried the Ford dealership in town too, and they said they'd have to order it.
The mechanic had said there was no danger to driving the RV, so we decided to just go on down towards Galveston, where we would stay at the State Park.
The day was heating up, and the AC on the vehicle part of the RV has been out for some time. I had earlier tried starting the generator up to run the roof AC unit, but the generator wouldn't start... which was no surprise since we never use it.
After about 100 miles we stopped to get some more gas into the tank, and I found that pumping slowly minimized the leaking. Since it was getting really miserably hot in there, I decided to give the generator one more try. After a couple of attempts of starting it, it actually started! I was jumping for joy... for 3 seconds, after which it died. I saw some sort of liquid pouring from a hose going to the generator. A quick smell test confirmed what it was. What else than gasoline...
I tried patching the leak with duct tape and moving the hose clamp to right over the hole, but without any degree of success. The gas kept of pouring out. Something about the heat and gas fumes made me mutter some rather nasty words while I was trying to fix the leak. Luckily I had reverted back to speaking Finnish, so if anyone heard me, I don't think they were offended.
After 30 minutes I came to the conclusion that the gas must stop streaming by itself at some point, since the carbs of the generator weren't creating any suction. So off we went down the road again (leaving a nice puddle of gasoline behind
)We had had the refridgerator plugged in overnight to cool it down, and usually it stays cool enough without being run on the road, but it was quickly warming up, probably because the temperature inside the RV was close to 95. We turned it on to run on propane, and promptly ran out of propane in the tank... I knew we were low on it, but not that low.
I knew that the Flying J truck stops have propane fill stations, and we finally found one close to Houston. Triumphantly I pulled up next to the tank and picked up the telephone they have set up there to get an attendant to come fill us up. I was informed on the phone that they unfortunately didn't have anyone on staff certified to pump propane, and thus couldn't help me. Oh well... there's got to be plenty of places down the road to find some gas.
Going through Houston, I spotted a U-Haul store with a huge gas tank up front. Only problem was that we had already passes the exit for it. I took the next one, thinking we could make the block and come back. We ended up lost for a while in a rather bad looking part of town. After some tense moments, we made it back to I-45 and landed right on the U-Haul location. We got our gas filled after some problems with the fittings of the filler hose that made the attendant mutter some choice words in his native tongue, but the fridge still didn't want to run...
We finally made it to our destination without any further adventure. We were both beat, and so were the dogs. If 95 degrees feels bad, it feels even worse when there's a 120 lb dog breathing down your neck. The trip was supposed to be 5 hours, and ended up being 9 hours and change.
The next morning we got up early to ride the motorcycle to the Forum day. The State Park has a gate that doesn't open until 7AM, but they had given us a code to the lock if we needed to get up earlier. I saved the code on my phone. We got to the gate, and piddled with the lock for a good while. It wouldn't open. Maybe I didn't get the code right? We rode back to the camp site to find the code (it was written on the registration card you have to put on the windshield of your vehicle). The card had blown off during the night... it's supposed to go on the inside, but since we use a shade that goes on the outside of the windshield, we always tape it on the outside. We were looking all over the place for the card with our Streamlight flashlights, when MrsFosforos noticed that one of the neighbors was up and about. She asked if him if he knew the code, which he didn't. We asked if we could look at the card inside his car, but he didn't have the keys to it. The Streamlight came in handy, and we managed to read off the code through the window.
We jumped back on the bike, and now the battery was dead, since we had left the headlight on while searching around. With the help of MrsF, we managed to run-start it, and as soon as it started, I revved the engine to make sure it didn't die again. Now, the park has quiet hours from 10PM to 8AM, which MrsF reminded me of by yelling: "DON"T MAKE NOISE!!" I couldn't hear in my helmet, so I said "WHAT?!!" She screamed as loud as she could: "DON"T MAKE NOISE!!!!".
I'm sure the whole camp grounds heard all that. We got on our way, and when we got to the gate again, someone had gone through and left if open...
We made it safely to the Forum Day, and other than getting soaked by rain on the way back to to the RV at the end of the day, there were no more misfortunes.
Was all that worth it? Yes it was, without doubt. We will be back next year, but hopefully better prepared.