23 Jul - Tire Repair and Admin Stuff

 

Rise and shine!  0700 hrs appointment this morning at the tire shop.  Very slow leak on the left inner dually.  Had to travel about 15 miles north to a truck tire shop as no one else around here had a lift that would support the big ol' brown truck, or so they said.  That's funny as I carry a floor jack that will raise both the truck and the trailer individually. 

 

But the truck tire shop is set up and has the parts such as a replacement valve stem which is exactly what I suspected and exactly what they found.  No fancy stuff here.  Just basic troubleshooting using copious amounts of soapy water!

I was in and out of there in less than an hour and the folks were very friendly.  They checked the outer dually as long as they had it off, and all is well.  So hopefully my tire leaks are over for a while. 

Tonight I got out the Viair compressor and my Milton high accuracy tire pressure gauge and set the pressures on the button.  We have a Tireminder Tire Pressure Monitor System (TPMS) that has a sensor on each valve stem and it reports temperatures and pressures of each tire of the truck and the trailer including spares, to a monitor inside the truck cab.  If it senses a rapid change in tire pressure such as a catastrophic failure, or if it senses pressures or temperatures outside a preprogrammed range, it alarms.  It is a "must have" if you travel with an RV.  So I set all the tire pressures and verified TPMS readings.

Part of the morning and afternoon were spent catching up on paperwork!  We have a campground coming up that allows Amazon and other packages to be delivered, so I ordered some items to be drop-shipped ahead of us.  We will pick this stuff up at the KOA south of Pittsburgh PA when we are there 2-6 Aug.  I've been fighting with Verizon over a couple iPhone trade-in's before we left on our trip and several other issues, so Friday was a good day to tackle some of this stuff.  We headed to the Exchange to do some shopping and picked up lunch there.  We stopped at the Commissary on the way home and restocked on the groceries a bit.  

Speaking of that, wow the time is sure flying by.  It's hard to believe it is almost August already and soon we will be turning the corner and heading back west towards home.  The schedule is packed pretty good from now until we leave:
- Tomorrow (Saturday) we are driving to Baltimore to visit the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse, the Star Spangled Banner house, Babe Ruth's home/museum and the famous inner harbor area. 
- Sunday we drive back to Baltimore and attend the Baltimore Orioles vs the Washington Nationals baseball game at Camden Yards
- Monday we travel to Chantilly VA to see the Smithsonian Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum
- Tuesday we are headed off on another lighthouse tour.  This time we will be south with a round trip over 200 miles visiting the Cove Point Lighthouse, the Drum Point Lighthouse, the Piney Point Lighthouse and the Point Lookout Lighthouse. Due to the length of that trip Little Miss Liberty will be riding along on that one.
- Wednesday is the day before we depart, so we have no touring scheduled.  We usually spend the day cleaning, fueling the truck, maybe a last load of laundry and basically just preparing to depart the next morning.
- Thursday we pull chocks and head for the Brandywine Creek Campground west of Valley Forge PA.

I think we've squeezed about everything we could have into our stay here.  We are still disappointed about the whole museum/timed ticket debacle but it is what it is.  Luckily for those visiting in the future is they are lifting those restrictions.

Hopefully you are not getting bored with "another day in the life of the Schellhase vagabonds", but you are getting as it is happening.  That's it for tonight.  Thanks for tagging along.