July 12 - 15, 2016 - We finally broke free from Texas

NOTE:  We apologize that we have been incommunicado (no blog posts or texts, for the most part) in a few weeks. Both of our cell phone and My-Fi signals have been infrequent at best, and mostly only available in pockets along our drives or hikes. In the future, should this be the case again, we may again be silent for awhile, but will get back to you and our blog as soon as we are able to. However, we don’t anticipate any other ‘dead-zones’ except possibly in Nevada and parts of New Mexico.

July 12 - We finally broke out of Texas on July 12th and headed (almost) non-stop to Wyoming, stopping only to sleep at 3 Rest Areas along I-35 northbound and I-80 westbound. We left Texas with still a few issues, the worst of which seemed to be malfunctioning wipers (again, as we also had wiper trouble with the Challenger), but we were determined to not let Texas keep us there any longer as we have been there for 9 weeks already between one issue and the next.

We had just been to Temple Freightliner in Texas to fix 2 holes in an airbag and there discovered that there was actually a Service Letter calling for the replacement of both rear airbags, which they repaired quite quickly with an Overnight Service from Freightliner Parts. However, little did we know (or suspect) that the wiper (which had been working previously) would also have needed checking. Yet on our trip up I-35 we noticed that they now seemed to work properly only on and off and as this is a crucial piece of equipment (especially if it rains) we tried to get serviced by another Freightliner Service facility... the one at the Nebraska Truck Center in North Platte, NE, but they were not concerned with our safety and refused to address our issue. So, we called Freightliner Warranty directly and they arranged for Floyd’s Truck Center (a member of the Freightliner Elite Group) which not only welcomed the opportunity to address our issues but went the extra mile to have us stay at their location overnight make sure we were satisfied with the outcome. As it seems the only thing wrong with the wipers was that some wiring had been loosened when the Brake Buddy Stealth remote was installed into the Discovery at Lone Star RV Center in Harker Heights, Texas. Since then the wipers have worked as they are supposed to. So we flew right through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska and therefore cannot comment on these States. We were originally scheduled to do the Southern route via New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada on our way to California but due to all the extra time we were delayed in Texas, we opted to take the northern route instead, as by that time the temperatures in the Southwest were ungodly (in the 100s+), whereas in Wyoming it’s in the 80s and lower 90s. Wyoming is abundant in its wind and the State takes maximum advantage of that by the number of wind turbines, which makes it the 2^nd largest producer of energy from wind power.