Leslie and David's Wanderings: 2025

It has been an eventful year. We knocked off three bucket list destinations (New Zealand, Australia, and American Samoa), revisited past destinations, visited with family and friends and found several out of the way surprises. We can summarize this year’s travels with:

1. Drove over 18,000 Miles in the Behemoth (Our F-350), 2349

miles in our New Zealand Caravan and another 1200 miles in our rental car in Australia.

2. Visited the National Park of America Samoa (total so far of 57

out of 63 American National Parks).

3. Visited 9 National Parks in New Zealand (out of 13)

4. Visited 8 National Parks in Australia (out of 726)

5. Visited 29 other interesting and historic places in the USA.

6. Visited with friends and family along the way.

7. Posted over 140 entries to our Blog.

8. Tasted wine in an additional 5 states (28 out of 50).

Our quest is not over yet! But after 7 years of living in our wonderful Wanderer, we are ready for something bigger and less bouncy. So, we will spend the next few months looking for our forever home in central Texas. We still plan to travel but are going to establish a home base to come back too.

As usual, time seems to accelerate between Thanksgiving and Christmas! David had a lot of work hours as he tried to wrap up his assignments for the year. On 6 December, we packed up the Wanderer to take it to the body shop. As David was putting up hoses and cords, Leslie decided to walk the garbage over to the trash bin. Unfortunately, the boot she was still wearing, for the broken bone in her left foot, got tied up with her other foot and she did a face plant onto the road and trash bag. She bumped her nose and chin painfully on the pavement, jammed both wrists and her left elbow and cracked several ribs on her left side. David did not even know it had happened since he was busy with the Wanderer until she came staggering back to the campsite. Being the trooper that she is, we finished getting the Wanderer buttoned up and towed it down to High Class Body Shop in Spring. We spent an hour getting it turned around in the small parking lot to get it where they needed it parked (their large fork lift had been loaned to the RV sales lot next door). But once in place, we went over what needed to be done with Gerson, the owner. In addition to getting the nose cone repaired from the hitch failure damage, we also asked him to remove the New Horizon decal from the nose cone as it was cracking and peeling after 7 years of exposure to the sun. In addition, they were fixing a crack in the left rear fender they had repaired a couple of years ago and buffing out some branch scratches. David told them not to worry about plugging it in as the refrigerator would run off the batteries and the batteries would get charged by the solar panels while it was outside. We then headed over to Cynthia and Felix’s where we were staying while our home was in the shop. The next day, Leslie decided she really needed to see a doctor about her injuries, so we went to the Doc -in-a-Box we have been to before on SH242. After being poked, prodded, and Ex rayed, the doctor said nothing was broken (she did not tell him about her ribs) and gave her a prescription for anti-inflammatories and told her to take Advil for the pain. We stayed with Cynthia and Felix for two weeks, as it took longer to complete the repairs than originally planned. David flew to Albuquerque for work the first week (and to do some Native American jewelry shopping for Leslie). Leslie and Cynthia stayed up late talking almost every night. We made several dinners for all of us and enjoyed visiting with their friends and the Grand Nieces when they were over. On the 19th they finally called to say the Wanderer was complete. They had been sending us pictures along the way so we could keep track of their progress. We showed up on the 20th to pick our home up, only to find it was not really finished. They had not buffed out the branch scratches we asked them to do and the electrical repairs for the trailer cameras were not done. They had subcontracted out the electrical repairs to the RV Sales lot next door ($300) but they never actually did them. While they worked to correct those issues, we went and got lunch. When we got back, they were still not done, so David got out and helped. We did get the cameras working but it was a jerry-rigged repair. They did a beautiful job on the body work and the paint matches beautifully. We finally got out of there about 4PM and back to Leisure Lane to get set up just before dark. They are planning to send someone to our site to do a better repair of the camera electrical after the holiday’s. Once we got the Wanderer set up, we went inside and discovered it smelled really bad! It seems all the food in the refrigerator and freezer had spoiled. On further investigation, we found both the inverters were off line and showing a E02 fault. The refrigerator was running now that we were back on shore power. We emptied the refrigerator and freezer into trash bags and then began washing everything down. Some of the “juice” had leaked out onto the floor and ran down the floor to the back slideout. We washed down the floor, refrigerator and freezer as best we could. The smell would not leave the refrigerator, even with baking soda and a small room deodorizer in it. Even with a smelly refrigerator, it was good to be back in our own home! After several days of testing and research, David finally figured out our inverter issue. After digging deeper on the internet, David found an entry in a forum that said for the Xantrex PRO XM1800, you have to remove both the battery input power and AC input power for a few seconds to reset the unit. We did that and they both reset. They are now showing the same battery input voltage as the house system and no error codes. Everything seems to be back to normal. What we suspect happened is that when they had the Wanderer in the paint booth, the solar panels were not generating enough power to keep the batteries up and they dropped below 11 volts which shut off the inverters. When they had it rolled it back outside, the solar panels charged the batteries back up but the inverters stayed off line and the refrigerator stayed powered off. On Christmas Eve Eve, we volunteered at the church to be greeters for the Christmas Service. Leslie got to run the camera to take pictures of the families dressed up in their Christmas cloths. The Christmas sermon was wonderful as usual and the candlelight singing of Oh Silent Night made our hearts swell with joy. Leslie decided it was time to take the boot off and go back to regular shoes as her foot has healed enough it does not hurt. On Christmas Eve we went over to Lauren and Bryan’s for the evening. We had a wonderful dinner before exchanging gifts. Olivia and Avery tore through their gifts with gusto! It was fun to watch them tear open a gift, look at what was inside, say thank you to the giver, then throw it over their shoulder onto the pile so they could tear into the next one. We left early so the kids could get to sleep before Santa came and went home where we had our own Christmas gift exchange. A wonderful night! Christmas Day we went back to Lauren and Bryan’s to see what Santa had brought the girls and to have brunch. We then went over to Cynthia’s friends, Rob and Brigit’s for a late dinner and to play some games. It has been a busy but fun month!