A Little Adventure

Often, when we meet people and they learn we are full-time RVers, we hear, "Oh, the adventures you must have; the stories you could tell!"

I just smile and nod and wonder how to answer them. The whole full-time RV thing IS an adventure, but what stories? Do they mean boat trips and zip-lines, or wildlife safaris? Our sight-seeing is pretty tame (read: whatever is low-cost or free, with the exception of a very rare splurge). We're happy, but adventures? We wander around historic districts and visit a few museums and look at the scenery a lot. Not many hair-raising stories there.

The closest we come to an adventure is when something unplanned happens, which we pray won't. Like last week, when we almost got caught in that early October snowstorm that hit Wyoming/South Dakota/panhandle Nebraska. We barely outran that.

Or when something goes wrong with the trailer or the pickup truck. Like yesterday. We were headed south from Elk City, Oklahoma, toward Texas, when we realized our air conditioner wasn't blowing cold; not even cool, and it was warm out. Not knowing the cause, and keeping to our practice of addressing mechanical concerns immediately, we used the Smartphone (yes, again--love that Smartphone!) to find a Ford dealer in Altus, Oklahoma, the next town.

Yes, they could look at it. We could drop the trailer in their adjacent parking lot.

As I said, it was hot, but it was also very windy, so even without electricity for air conditioning, the trailer stayed comfortable with all the windows and the door open and the wind whipping through it.

Not wanting to lose a chance to make good use of the unexpected stopover, we got Damien busy on a math lesson. He wasn't thrilled.

All afternoon we waited, hoping for a good outcome. We had heard of air conditioner service costing in the high three figures, and such a bill would definitely force us to be even more frugal. Finally, at the end of the afternoon, it was done. They'd recharged the Freon, and the bill was only a hundred dollars and some cents! It was too late to get to our destination, so they kindly let us dry camp in the parking lot overnight.

So, this is a story of an adventure that turned out well. In other words, nothing much happened. And that's the way we like our adventures.