Oct. 18, 2009

From N 37° 14.874 W 93º 18.701, Super WalMart, Springfield. Missouri.
We had been in the Eastern Time zone since mid-July. That changed last night. I woke up so early this morning, being somewhat clockly challenged, I set the bedroom clock wrong. I realized my mistake while making coffee, I had set the microwave clock correctly.
I’m not sure what the outside temp was during the night. I had the front thermostat set on 60° and heard it running most of the night. When I got up I turned the bedroom thermostat to 60º when I got up and it came on immediately. The both ran until we were ready to leave. The coach started shedding 110 appliances just before the coffee finished brewing. I had to start the genset to finish the brewing and using the computer. I’ll sure be glad when we have the larger batteries. This coach is a real power hog compared to the Revolution. I guess it’s the extra fridge and computers.
We got underway at about 8:30 AM. Most of the roads in both Illinois and Missouri both have 55 mph for vehicles like ours. Because of my short sleep we stopped at three rest stops. We had lunch in the first one and then I did geocaches. The next rest stop had a geocache too, so I bagged that one. The next rest stop had a welcome center but no geocaches. It did have the largest truck parking area I have ever seen in a rest stop. We had decided to stop at a WalMart on the west side of Springfield. The rest stop was at mm111. Just as I got up to speed on the interstate I noticed there was a brake check up ahead. Traffic went down to one lane, eventually stopping altogether. We could see the jam continuing up a hill in the distance. Traffic stopped twice so long I shut down the engine. Thiscontinued to mm105 where the wreck was being cleared. We stopped at a Cracker Barrel on the east side of Springfield. We all love their food, of course Glenna get two suppers for the price of one. She didn’t eat but about half her meal.. We got to the Super WalMart at exit 77 at about 6 PM. There were several semis parked under no truck parking signs. I went in and got an OK from the manager to park for the night. There was one other RV here and the lot was noisier than the one last night.
We drove 327 miles in two states today and plan to be at the Rockwell RV Park in OKC tomorrow afternoon. We have stayed there before. We plan a few days of down time planned before visiting relatives in the area. We are hoping the park still has an onsite Beauty Salon. For the ladies, not me.
As a side note; American Coach srikes again. They replaced the hdrolic piston that operates the step cover. Now the switch is backwards, it retracts when Extend is pressed and extends when Retract is pressed. When we get set up in OKC I'll take a look at it and see if I can reverse the wires.