Cadillac Ranch
Approaching Amarillo there is a stop you are pretty much obligated to make… at Cadillac Ranch. Created in 1974 by a group called the “Ant Farm,” it consists of 10 old Cadillacs, buried nose first, at supposedly the same angle as the pyramids in Egypt. Or something like that. The cars have now been planted in the earth longer than they ever drove across its roads.
The cars have huge blistering wounds all over. At first I guessed it was uncontrolled rust, but then figured it is literally hundreds of layers of paint. The blistering is more pronounced in easy-to-reach areas.
Since graffiti is encouraged, and I have never done such a thing before, I thought I’d give it a try. There were dozens of spray paint cans left on the ground – surely a few had paint left in them! Yep, the second one I tried was loaded. So now, what to write? My Grandfather taught me “Fool’s names and Fool’s faces, always appear in public places.” I think that comes from a time when spray paint hadn’t been invented, so knives were used to deface trees, etc. So what could I write? Not my initials… So I scribbled ONH for Our Next Horizon. Got my pictures, and in less than 15 seconds, a little girl came, painted blue over most of my artwork, and then “SAM” on top of that. Not anywhere near 15 minutes of fame!
On the way back to the motorhome, (Second from left), I tried a Pano shot – and captured the world’s longest semi trailer!
Check out this little video of Caddies from the air. And look for the guy taking a picture of my drone!
Cherryl at the Wheel
I really like driving our cool home around. It drives well, provides a wonderful view of the surroundings, and it’s just fun. But sometimes I share… Cherryl drives it well and sometimes gives me a break, so I can take a nap or work on my blog. Here she is moving our home from Texas to Oklahoma.
Ardmore, Oklahoma
Lake Murray hosted us a while back, and since we wanted to be in Ardmore for a while, we headed back there. This time we got a site at Buzzards Roost – doesn’t that sound picturesque? We reserved a site online, and when we arrived we noticed the sign said it was a “Handicapped Accessible” site. It was the only site open on the website, but when we were actually in the campground it looked like there were plenty of spots open. And then we noticed that the post with the electrical hookup wouldn’t work. We survived with only battery power that night (Can you imagine??) and in the morning I called the parks office. They had a team there in 15 minutes to fix the electric problem, and let me move to the site across from us. Later we saw a camper van with a handicap sticker in that site, so we were glad we were able to move.
We actually did see lots of buzzards circling far above the campground. Wondered if there was a high mortality rate among campers here.
I love the old stonework on some camp structures. This gazebo with a huge fireplace, the cool tower on the other side of the lake (That I talked about last time so won’t mention further here), and what might have been ranger cabins at one time.
Behind a stone cabin were what turned out to be old bridge abutments. The span was missing, but the abutments looked very strong. The picture below shows both abutments, with a tree growing where the span used to be. (Or is this two abutments with a Pontic that is missing?)
Again, in an attempt to show life on the road isn’t all peaches and cream, I will tell you about the passenger seat footrest. We had the seats replaced a few months ago (The fake leather was falling apart and Newmar replaced all the furniture for us! Thank You Newmar!) and one day the footrest went up, but didn’t want to retract down again. This is a problem, because it severely blocks the way to the door. With some effort, we got it down, but have been afraid to use it. (Cherryl finds it far more comfortable to have it extended. Something about her feet don’t quite reach the floor otherwise) So I called Newmar, and they told me to call Flexsteel, who made the seat. A problem here – Flexsteel just announced a few months ago that they are getting out of the RV furniture business. So they gave me a number of a lady who used to work for them, and now is going to try doing warranty followup. She told me to try a few things, which really didn’t help much… it would now retract to only a few inches from completely down, but it was still annoying and a bit in the way. So last week I started taking it apart. Lots of funny pieces, so at one point I took this picture so I could remember what it used to look like…
With the pads off, and some of the linkage off, it would close just fine. So I started reassembling it, until it failed again. I could find no place the parts were jammed or interfering with each other. I got it all back together, and still no improvement. The only thing I hadn’t done was try to lube the parts – after all, they were new, and looked all shiny and clean. A little lubrication, and the stupid thing works very well. Why didn’t I start there?!
A little more serious problem popped up later. We have a “hood”, the panel under the windshield, that gives access to the generator, my pressure washer and de-ionizer tanks, compressed air outlet, and 4 or 5 thousand miles of wires. The hood is opened by pulling a handle in a lockable compartment on the port side of the coach, just under the driver’s seat. Except when you pull the handle, and nothing happens. Sigh. I knew the cable ran from that compartment, up and around to the bottom center of the hood where the latch is. How on earth could I get up there?? I couldn’t get my hand up on the port side, and could just barely reach the latch from under the starboard side. I sure couldn’t see it, so I stuck the phone up there to “see” what the latch looked like. With that info, I was able finally to push the latch with a screwdriver hard enough to pop the hood open. Then found the cable had come off the latch mechanism (big surprise) and was able to reattach it, and adjust the cable supports so this won’t happen again. In this picture you can see one of the tanks, in blue, the latch at the lower right, the pressure washer hose past the tank, the generator housing on the left, and the generator fuel filter that looks overdue for replacement. Sigh. Soon.
