Red Hot News Update!!!

Our new friends Diane and Jim Hubert had to leave Silent Valley on Monday, May 9th to go home for ten days, so we went to see them before they left.  They have a 5th wheel trailer, with an interesting floor plan.  We have not seen inside too many of them, but the ones we've seen all had the bedroom up in the front over the 5th wheel.  Theirs has the living room area up there, and the bedroom and bath are both down on the lower level.  I think that was a nicer design.

 
The picture on the left is their 5th wheel trailer.  They left it up on the hill in storage, and when they go other places, they take a tent camper they can tow behind their van.  The picture above on the right is their little darling Lucy.  She is very friendly, but could only take just so much of Millie sniffing her over!!!!  She is really cute, and runs outside when the door is open, but comes right back when she is called.....not like Millie, who would run and run.

As you know, we were worried about the possible danger of driving down the hill from Silent Valley if the brakes were not usable, so on Monday I called the Auto Club and arranged to have a tow truck, from Stagecoach Towing to load up the RV and carry it down the hill on a large flat-bed truck.  The dispatcher said they would have the truck up there between 10 and 10:15 am on Wednesday.  At about 9:45 am I got a call from a different towing company asking questions about our needs.  After I told her what she needed to know, she said there was no way she could have a truck up there until THURSDAY.  I told her that was not satisfactory, so she said she would call Auto Club back and tell them they needed to get us another truck.  Finally they got us a truck, but he could not carry it, so he would disconnect the drive train and tow it down the hill. 

 This was in the parking lot across from the entrance to Silent Valley, where he hooked the RV up for towing.

 We came down the hill first and Jim caught this shot as the guy got our RV down on flat ground!  By the way, I've never mentioned this, but we named the RV Marylou after my mom, so she could go everywhere we go with us.  
This picture was as he towed Marylou past us on the way to TruckWorks.  We got there, and by the way, it was almost 90 degrees outside, so I had to take the dogs into the office with me to wait.  Many of you have not met our furry kids, but Willie is usually afraid of all strangers, animals and noises.  Millie, on the other hand has never seen anyone or anything she didn't want to meet and/or investigate!  I expected to REALLY have my hands full with them.......but both were on their very, VERY best behavior.  They were quiet almost all of the time.  The one time Willie barked I told him no, and he sat right down and stopped.  Since the shop was busy, we ended up being there over 3 hours, but they were never a problem!!!  That is so amazing.  To make the rest of this story short......they checked all brakes and components, and the brakes are still in good condition and nothing needed to be replaced or serviced.  We do want him to replace the shocks, as they are 12 years old and quite worn, but he has to order them, so that will be done next month BEFORE we go back up to Silent Valley again!  We only had to pay for one hour of labor, which was only fair.   I can only say great things about TruckWorks.  He could have said we needed other work, and we might not have known, but he didn't.  He checked the RV out and we didn't need to replace any parts.
He was a nice, honest and efficient person with a nice clean shop, and good workers.  This picture on the left is a clock made to look like a truck front end.  Terry told us an old friend gave him that about 8 years ago.  He has never put a battery in it, but every once in a while the horn goes off, so he calls the friend that gave it to him to see how he is doing. 

We got back to the KOA in Banning before 5 pm, and got set up in our site.  With all the stress of worrying about it all, we were exhausted.............so I called and ordered a pizza from Pizza Hut (they deliver!) and we had a quiet evening there.

I took these the next morning before we left to come down here to Wilderness Lakes.


That's our house, and our neighbor with a tent trailer.  The picture on the right is a view in the KOA park.  We left about 10:30 am and got down here before noon.  After checking in we set out to find a nice site.  Much to our amazement, one in our favorite location had just opened up.  The guy next door said the previous camper had left less than 20 minutes before.  We got in and unhooked the car.  Jim began the set-up as I moved the car out in front.  We got everything done, and had a quick lunch, then decided to try to get a satellite signal for the TV.  Jim set the dish outside and I ran the start up program.  By the time he came in to see how it was going...................it was already acquiring the signal from the satellite!  That's the fastest we every gotten it.  All is well.  We were still quite tired, so we had the second half of the pizza for dinner, took showers and got a really good night of sleep.  All good!

Praise God for our good fortune this week.  The news could have been so much worse.  We praise and thank Him for all of our many, many blessings.  Also, Norm is out of the ICU and is stable and getting better.  Thanks be to God.  

Have a wonderful day and enjoy the weekend ahead.  That's all for today.