Trailer Engineering (Day 16)

Sonya slept in all the way until…

wait for it…

wait for it…

6:55AM!

I turned over and promptly went right back to sleep until being jolted awake by Sonya’s iPhone alarm, which she had set for 7AM. Hooray! I’m up.

Anyway, we had looked at the weather in St. Louis and found out that, like Kansas City, it is in the bad weather zone and would be having rain all day so we were not in a rush to leave. This gave me the opportunity to improve on the new skill set that I have been developing these past couple of weeks. New skill set? (you ask) What could that be? (you wonder) Well, please allow me to elucidate. Now that we live full-time in a trailer, I am becoming more knowledgable in trailer maintenance. My skils in this area include fuse replacement, sewage pipefitting, janitorial services, sewage valve replacement, hook installation and hangar installs. Also, after the now infamous Espresso Maker Incident , I McGuiver’d an Espresso Maker Stabilization and Containment System (an EMSaCS (c), patent pending). This morning, between making breakfast and packing up, I had time to practice the art of water filtration installation. I had purchased a new under sink Brita Filter during our Walmart shopping extravaganza back on Day 7 and was ready to install it.

On a side note, only 9 days between purchase and installation is significantly less time than I usually give new equipment as I prefer to let it age for at least a month (sometimes many months) before, in my opinion, the equipment is ripe and therefore ready for use.

Anyhoo, got the filter installed without mishap, just plenty of grunting and groaning and a few scrapes - they don’t make a lot of working room under RV sinks. Packing up was a most excellent team effort with everyone pitching in to get things cleaned up and put away.

Our route today is going to take us along historic Route 66 on our way to the St Louis KOA, which just so happens to be located off that famous highway and only a mile or so from Six Flags. I’m looking forward to meeting Lightning McQueen and Mater in person!

Evening Update - We sorta missed the turn-off to Route 66. I was writting my travel blog and such witty and enlightening written works of art require my full and undivided attention. This makes me a lousy co-pilot. Apparently, Sonya saying "we are 90 miles from Columbia", "we are 60 miles from Columbia", "we are 30 miles from Columbia", "we're passing Columbia", were all meant to be prompts for me to navigate our way onto Route 66. What she was really saying was "Blake, if you really want to travel along route 66 to St. Louis, you're going to have to get on the map and figure out where the turn-off is and what roads we need to take as, I'll I know is that the turnoff is somewhere near Columbia; otherwise, I'm styaing on the Interstate and we're driving straight through". Somehow, shockingly, I did not make the translation to that statement from "we are 60 miles from Columbia".

We did make it to St. Louis though and I was able to setup the sewage connections so that both gray tanks can be emptied simultaneously. Yes, it's a big deal. Looking forward to seeing St Louis, even though i picked a bad week for baseball - the Cards are out of town.