We're on the road again!--or not?!?

After much delay, we made our final plans to be on the road again. Now the count is up to 4 months, 1 week, 2 days, and 16 hours since we parked the motor home here at the ranch in the panhandle of Oklahoma. It is snuggled between the satellite dish and the safe shed, right beside the horse pasture. You can see the horses in the corral behind it, and the pickup is attached and ready to roll on this blue sky morning.

This is also where the motor home was damaged when high winds blew the shingles off Mark's Mother's house. The asphalt shingles hit the side of the motor home with such force that it scratched the paint. It's been winterized since October, when the first freezing temperatures came early to Oklahoma this fall. It has been an interesting fall and winter here! We've picked this day for our departure, and Denisa has been humming the chorus of "On the Road Again!" as she was doing the last of the packing of things that need to go back into the motor home.

We've picked this day for our departure because it is forecast for temperatures near 60, with almost no wind. That's a rare find in January in western Oklahoma! It dipped down to 17 degrees last night, and it was still chilly as we put the last things in the refrigerator. Mark plugged in the engine heater for several hours to get everything warmed up. He fired up that big diesel engine to let it idle for a while, and we went inside to get one more load. When we came back, that diesel engine wasn't running. What?!?

Mark started the diesel engine again. It ran for about thirty seconds . . . and died. We tried it again . . . it died again. Mark opened the back engine compartment (because it is a rear-end diesel), and started looking around.

After waiting so long to finally get back on the road, it looked like we weren't going anywhere today after all! We just wrote a blog about three strikes of bad luck. This sure felt like strike four!

And then Mark figured it out. Remember that we had our motor home worked on in September? We had a Cummins diesel shop in Liberal, Kansas, replace the antifreeze reservoir. It seems that one of the hose connections they did has been leaking ever since then. Now the antifreeze is too low for the motor to run safely. That's why it is shutting itself off!  Mark even caught a picture of another drip of the pink liquid antifreeze escaping out of the poorly sealed tank. It looks like we were charged a thousand dollars for shoddy work.

Mark then made a trip into town to buy a couple gallons of antifreeze. Thank goodness that this small-town grocery store stocks antifreeze! Then there's the tricky job of funneling it in. He started up the engine again, and it continued to run this time! Denisa is sure glad to be married to such a smart guy! If it was up to her, we would have had to be towed back to that same repair shop for more shoddy work!

It caused a three-hour delay, but we finally felt good about being on the road again when the motor home continued to idle well. We know that we will have to deal with that antifreeze leak in the near future, but for now we are on the road again! It was less than 20 miles down the road when we entered into the big state of Texas. That's the last state sign we will picture for a while, as we plan to spend the rest of our winter here.

We're planning to connect the dots between some of Texas's fine state parks as we make our way south. We're finally on the road again--even though a few hours earlier we thought we might be stranded again.