24 August 2017
This morning we closed up the fiver, now officially called “The Wanderer”, and hitched up the truck all by ourselves. We then went into the office to say goodbye and to thank Drew, Candie, Austin and Harold for all their help and our beautiful RV. Then we climbed aboard the “Lead Wanderer” (Our F-350) and headed for Oklahoma. We jumped on I-40 west, then headed south on I-135 so we could stay on the interstate. We stopped at the first rest stop and checked the torque on the wheel lug nuts as was recommended. Five of the lug nuts needed tightening so it was a good thing we stopped and checked. In Wichita, we picked up I-35 south and cruised on our way. As the miles went by, we became more comfortable with towing this huge trailer. We got more comfortable with the motion of the truck with the trailer on it. South of Oklahoma City, we pulled into Martin’s Landing campground in Murray State Park. After looking over the sites we pulled into site #5 since it was a pull through site with full hook ups for $30 a night. Then we unhitched and set up the fiver for the first time! Everything went smooth and we were soon lounging in our theater seats enjoying a good glass of wine and a cold beer.
25 August 2017
Got up this morning to take Etta for her walk and found water spilling out from the bottom of the trailer!!! I quickly shut the water off and began checking to see what was going on. It was obviously fresh water, not grey or black water. I checked the fresh water tank and it was 100% full but when we had left Junction City with only 10%. The Anderson Valve was set to “City” but for some reason the water was going partially into the plumbing and partially into the fresh water tank. I bleed the pressure off system with the outside shower the way Harold had showed us. I called back to New Horizons and got Harold, he recommended switching the Anderson Valve through each position a couple of times and then back to City. I dumped more of the fresh water tank (found out the fresh water overflow goes into the dump pipe and the fresh water dump pipe comes out the bottom of the trailer, not through the sewer connection) so I could see if it was still going into the fresh water tank. Turned the water back on and everything was working correctly. But I did not want to dump 100 gallons of fresh water on the ground, so we switched over to the Normal position to use the water from the tank up.
Problem fixed (we hoped), we headed into downtown Ardmore for some lunch and shopping. Downtown Ardmore is a pretty with a brick sidewalk main street but like many small cities, a lot of the storefronts were closed. There was a lot of lawyers and loan services. We ate lunch at Casa Romo. It was fairly good and very spicy. Did a little antique shopping and headed to Commerce Street (where most of the big box shopping was at) for grocery shopping. On the way back to the RV we stopped off at the Marina to pick up fishing licenses and over to the lodge to check on the kayak rentals. A very relaxing day. We turn on the TV to nothing but hurricane Harvey coverage as it came ashore in Texas.
26 August 2017
We headed out today to go to the flea market in Ardmore as well as another antique shop. At the antique shop we found out about an estate sale, which we stopped at out of curiosity. In the flea market, Leslie found three porcelain dogs to add to her collection. After stopping at the estate sale, we made our way up US-77 to the small town of Davies. We were there to try a restaurant out that had good reviews but it was closed on the weekends, so we went to Los Generales. It was an excellent choice. The food was all home made, nothing was out of a can, even the refried beans and sauces were fresh made. Definitely will return to Los Generales if in this area again. From there we went to the Chickasaw Cultural Center near Sulphur to learn about their heritage. There we toured a recreated Chickasaw village and saw a demonstration of their “Stomp” dances. We then drove south of US-77 to Turner Falls state park. The park charges a $12 per person entrance fee, which since we only wanted to see the falls and not go swimming, we declined. But we drove to the overlook off US-77 and got a good view of the falls. They do have RV sites in Turner falls for $25 a day (water and electric only) but you also have to pay the per person entrance fee for each day. The whole Arbuckle Mountains area is very scenic. Then it was back to our new home on wheels.
27 August 2017
Today we got up early and tried our hand at fly-fishing. We did not catch anything, but avoided hooking each other and ourselves somehow! We then went to Tucker Tower, which was built, by the WPA and CCC in the 1930s. The museum inside helps document the life and work of the WPA and CCC during the construction of the Lake Murray Dam, Tucker Tower and other structures in the park. Then it was on to the lodge area where we rented a couple of kayaks for and hour ($7 per hour) and paddled our way around several bays at that end of the park. We both enjoyed the experience and look forward to having our own kayaks to paddle in. Later that evening, we tried our hand at some more fly-fishing. Again we were skunked but enjoyed ourselves anyway. That evening, we had used up the fresh water tank, so I moved the Anderson valve back to “city” and monitored the fresh water tank. Sure enough, the fresh water tank started to very slowly fill up. I tried rotating the Anderson valve to different positions (with pressure off just the way Harold showed us) but it still put water into the fresh water tank. So the problem is not fixed as we hoped.
28 August 2017
Well, it is time to head home. We packed up our stuff and dumped/washed out the tanks and connected up the truck. It will take some practice on the hooking up to get a good system down. David called New Horizon’s about the Anderson valve and they said they would have someone in the DFW area come to where we were storing it and replace the valve. So we hit the road for Fort Worth. We were closely watching the weather to see if any of the remnants of Hurricane Harvey would cause us any issues but fortunately the weather was clear all the way home. We pulled into United RV to get the Texas safety inspection prior to dropping off the fiver for storage. Seems Texas would not accept the manufacturers weight rating and we had to get the trailer weighed at a Texas certified weight station. Seemed pretty silly to us, but since there was a set of scales just on the other side of the TX121 freeway, it was easy enough and cheap enough to do ($7). The trailer weighed in at 17,476lbs. Of course we passed the safety inspection (Lights and brakes) and unhooked the truck. It was hard leaving our new home behind but we are looking forward to our future adventures in it. We found we settled into life in the Wanderer very easily, even Etta felt at home.
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