Accommodation

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Shawnee OK to Wichita KS

I awoke with a start at about 3:00 this morning with a premonition: I was about to have the day from hell. I tried to calm myself down and get more sleep, but I only got in a little fitful dozing. I gave up around 7:00 and got up to pack. I had coffee, but my stomach was too much in knots to even think about breakfast.

I took the time to analyse this premonition. Was it one that would allow me to change my fate or one that doomed me? I decided not to go to Wichita today and try to wrangle another free night out of the casino. The bad feeling didn’t appease itself at all. In fact, it got worse. I would just be delaying the inevitable.

So I packed, returned my parking pass, got gas, checked my tire pressure (perfect), hooked up, and headed on down I-40 eastbound. About a mile from the exit for Midwest City, BOOM.

I pulled over and walked around the rig to discover that my interior dually on the passenger side had disintegrated. I went back in the cab and asked my GPS where the nearest tire place was, which was fewer than 3 miles. I knew I could get there on my own power, so I put the four-way flashers on and motored over there slowly.

The place was Cramer Tires, a small mom & pop type of outfit. I was able to pull in straight enough to unhook. A lady came out and asked what I needed and then went out back to check her inventory of used tires. I’m getting new tires shortly, so a good used tired for $56 (all inclusive price) sounded pretty good to me.

Once they got the tire off, the reason for the failure became evident: a bad valve stem. The tire condition was good and so was the pressure. They replaced the valve stem, mounted the new tire, and I was on my way in about 1.75 hours. I thought everything was good till I got about 40 miles down the road, which was too far.

I pulled into a turnout on I-35 to use the bathroom and the toilet room was so hot that the toilet seal had melted and the toilet was loose. I ran outside and discovered to my horror that when the tire blew, it flew back and knocked the exhaust pipe up into the sidewall! I was very close to a fire (see the picture below). Moreover, the heat was enough that it disintegrated the pipe that goes from my grey water tank to the valve so my grey water was dripping onto the highway.

Thankfully, I was able to bring the tailpipe down after sitting at the rest area for enough time to cool the area down.

I stopped at every opportunity I could all along I-35 and everything seemed okay up until I got onto the turnpike, where there were few exits. The rig just didn’t feel like it was handling correctly. By this point, I was almost at L’s, so I slacked on the speed and drove cautiously.

My toll was $4.25, as I’d estimated, and then it was just a few minutes to get to L’s. I got lined up straight, unhooked, and then backed onto some blocks. L even had an extension cord ready for me.

It was at about this point that he informed me that my ‘new’ rear time was flat as a pancake.

L said that he’s going to have a look at my plumbing over the weekend. Am I glad I’m landed here!

He’s convinced that the neighbours won’t care that I’m here, so at this point, I’m looking at being in Wichita till Wednesday or Thursday. We’ll see.

Once I was settled in, we headed out to the Anchor pub in old town Wichita for a couple of pints and dinner so that I could meet his sweetheart. I hadn’t eaten all day, so when he told me not to be shy and order an appy, I gladly did and got some really nice chips and salsa. For a beer, he recommended a really dark brew called 1545, which was perfect for the cold and damp weather. Dinner was one of the best grilled chicken burgers I have ever had.

Downtown Wichita is beautiful! It’s one gorgeous building after another. I especially like all the bronze statues along the main drag. They are likenesses of ordinary folks doing ordinary things on a busy city street. I’ll try to get back out there and snap a few pictures before I leave.

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I Have Failed Once Again…

… to pay a casino for its hospitality. Not as dramatically as in Alabama, but definitely humourously.

I went in around 6:00 to play my free game of Keno. That won me $1. I then put that $1 in a slot machine and that won me $10. I played that $10 down to absolutely $0, and that won me $10 in match play for signing up for the player’s club, plus another bonus $10 (please don’t ask me to explain why, these machines mystify me).

To be able to cash out, I had to play the free $20 completely and by the time I did, I was $8.63 up. I cashed that out, went to the buffet, and discovered that the price on the website was wrong and the real price, less the Wednesday night female discount was… $8.63.

Not being a cheapskate, I left a $1 tip to the lady who brought my lemonade and cleared my plates. 😀 So that was my grand expense for the night, a whole dollar!

The buffet was meh. I over estimated how busy it would be on a Wednesday night, so when I got there, a lot of the food had been sitting for a while. I grabbed what looked fresh, which did not involve many vegetables. 🙁

Everything was quite tasty, though. I liked their pork sticky buns and BBQ pork ribs the best. The mashed potatoes were tasty and so was the white gravy to put on them. Yes, white gravy. I had no idea what it was the first time I tried it, so on the next round, I asked a man pouring it all over his plate what it was. I even tried their sushi and it was surprisingly palatable. Oh, and I can’t forget their potato soup. Now that was really yummy!

There was a bunch of other tasty goodies, too, but nothing that totaled up to the $15 they were asking full price (my discount was definitely more than the $5 state on the website!) since the steak and baked potatoes didn’t appeal to me. But I’m not going to complain about a free meal!

The desserts were good; high quality ice cream and assorted pastries. I got one bite each of two kinds of ice cream and one bite of a surprisingly fabulous caramel cheesecake. There was also a guy impressively setting rum-soaked bananas on fire (bananas Foster, I imagine).

I’m off to Google white gravy. My mine is blown by the deliciousness of it. I can just imagine crumbled sausage swimming in it and soaking into my fabulous biscuits.

Post edited to add: white gravy is just a really thick béchamel sauce using pan drippings instead of butter!

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Good Thing This Place Is Free

Well, it was another crappy night since the RV area is right next to the truck area and it was cold, so rather than a quiet night next to a creek, I got serenaded by reefers up until about 8:30 this morning. I am cranky.

I have no intention of staying beyond my two other free nights, but if a reason to do so came up, I would definitely argue for another freebie. This place is NOT worth $25, especially not to a customer!

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Pauls Valley to Shawnee, OK

It was a so-so night at Walmart. Because of the lack of parking spots, a reefer parked almost on top of me (not exaggerating; he had to go out his passenger door and I couldn’t open my house door!). I couldn’t fault the driver for that. He ran the engine for a few hours in the evening, then again in the middle of the night before finally taking off around 5:00 or 6:00. So my sleep was interrupted and I gave up around 7:00.

Since I only had about an hour to my destination, I thought of just taking off, but something told me to check my email. There was a comment from Linda Sand warning me that there are two Firelake casinos in Shawnee and that she was parked at the wrong one. Since it was on route to the right one, where I had planned to spend the night, I decided to stop there first and meet her since we keep just missing each other this spring. Onsite, I could check out the RV facilities and determine the best casino to stay at.

I arrived at the first casino, Firelake Casino, around 10AM, after circling around the complex a number of times before finding the RV park. I knew Linda is a late riser, so I sent a message to let her know I was on site instead of banging on her door, then had breakfast and did some online stuff. I called the casino to ask about the RV park and after being bounced around a bit, I was told it is $15 for FHU. Good deal and a nice location, but too much for me right now.

Linda got back to me around 11:30 and I went to check out her swanky digs (WOW, the things you can do with a class B when you custom design the layout!) and we gabbed for a bit. We will be having dinner tonight.

I headed out to the Grand Casino around 2:00 and was settled into a spot and had had lunch by 2:30. Linda had warned me I would have to unhook and back in, so I was prepared. Neither event took any effort. The slots are super narrow, but there is ample room to back in and they are perfectly angled for easy entrance. The view out the back is of a muddy creek, but the view from the desk is half into a bedroom window (I’m keeping that curtain closed!), one quarter onto an RV wall, and one quarter to the big rig parking lot.

In exchange for signing up for the player’s club, I get three nights with power and water and access to a dump station (each additional night is $25). With the player’s club, you get free keno, 10 entries to a draw, and $10 in match play (so you put $10 in the slot machines and they give you 10, but not on progressive machines). I have never played keno, but for the chance to win $100, I will try it out!

Three nights with power will be much appreciated since it is super cold and overcast. I’m running out of propane, so I have to ration until I find a place to fill and am grateful I can run the electric heater.

Gas prices in OK are much cheaper than in TX, to my surprise. Thank goodness for that. My gas mileage the last two days has been the pits and I’ve had to adjust my gas budget from $600 to $900 to get back to Canada from Dallas. *sighs* I’m just glad I’m not paying Canadian prices for fuel!!! Here, fuel is about $3.20 ($0.85/litre) a gallon and average Canadian prices are $4.90 ($1.30/litre) a gallon. So to fill the motorhome here (50 gallons), it’s $160 and to fill it in Canada would be $245!

I wish I could have had just one more month in the US to avoid getting back to Canada in this frigid soupy mess. I’m afraid that that’s what I’ll remember most about my winter, the cold humid last days rather than the hot sunny days walking barefoot along the beach with palm trees rustling in the background. Those days already feel like they belonged to another life. 🙁

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Oklahoma!

I had hoped to sleep in this morning, but once I was awake at 6:20, that was it. I said, “Neelix?” and one of the lumps in my bed rose and came to cuddle with me for about an hour.

Ms. Cinnamon told me to have coffee with her this morning, so I didn’t have to touch the kitchen. I just packed the office, checked my email on the iPad, and eventually went outside to fill up the water tank as well as a bunch of jugs. Just as I was finishing this, Ms. Cinnamon came to get me for coffee.

We lounged for a bit then headed out to buy me a new sewer hose. Her favourite RV supply place had just gone out of business, so we ended up back at Walmart.

I needed about 25′ of hose to get to her outlet and mine and the kits were all 20′, with no couplings to put sections together. I finally clued in that I could connect my hose to a really nice complete kit with new fittings, so I splurged (all of $30) and got that. It is going to be so much nicer to wrangle than my current setup, except that it doesn’t fit in my new sewer pipe holder! 🙁

Back home, she helped me dump and then I unplugged so I could be guided out of the driveway. It took a bit of back and forthing and grass trampling, but I finally made it onto the street. I hadn’t driven my truck since I left San Antonio, so Ms. Cinnamon was worried it wouldn’t start, but the thought never crossed my mind. Moya happily roared back to life (I am sooooo looking forward to a prairie drive with her!) and I hooked up easily.

Ms. Cinnamon and I said our goodbyes and then I headed out through Dallas one last time. She gave me good directions, so I just had to watch out for the construction, mad drivers, and traffic. I was really glad to get clear of urbania and get into some easy interstate driving.

I heard Neelix meowing very loudly as we set off, which is unusual for him as he is a cat of few words. It’s almost like he was say, “Mom, wait! WAIT! We forgot Tabitha!” 🙁

My plan was to stop at a rest area in Gainesville, just before the Oklahama border, but it was just a picnic area and out in the open sun, so it wouldn’t have been a great place to spend an afternoon (but would have been a perfect stop last night). It was early, so I decided to continue on to my planned stop for today, the Walmart in Pauls Valley.

I was running really low on fuel in Gainesville, so when I spotted a Shell station that was an obvious easy in and out, I stopped there and got $99 worth of fuel, the maximum the pump would give me (odd number, no?). In Canada, I get the pump reauthorized in those situations since $100 doesn’t go far, but I get more than half a tank for that price in the US, so I prefer to just get that, which forces me to stop more frequently.

And then, without fanfare, I said goodbye to Texas. 🙁 I literally left a piece of my soul in that state and so it will always be a part of me even if the road ends up never taking me back there.

I stopped at the Oklahoma welcome centre for lunch and went in to get some OK City info just in case I decide to play tourist. I was offered coffee, which I gladly accepted!

From there, it was exactly one hour to my stop for the day. Customer service was very welcoming, but this isn’t a great lot for big rigs. I’m not crazy about how I’m parked and I may try to find a better spot if the lot thins out a little this evening.