Still raining hard this morning when I got up. No real reason to go out in it too early so I just stayed in and read my book for a couple of hours, and drank near endless cups of hot tea while watching the rain drip from the leaves on the trees.

    By 1:00 I was feeling a bit cooped up and decided at least a drive would be better than nothing. Wanted to head for Roanoke like my original plan for the day, but when I started up Emma, my GPS, she failed to find any of the multitude of satellites that had to be up there in the sky. Given that everywhere you look in this country looks pretty much the same, all trees, and the highways are little more than two lane roads, poorly marked at that, it didn't seem prudent to try navigating all the way over to the big city. My thought was that I would most likely find my way there, but then wouldn't find my way back. The thought of wandering around this country in the dark, often with fog on the road, didn't exactly thrill me. Okay; so I'm a bit of a scardy cat, or as I like to think of it, mature and smart. At least that is what I'm going to keep telling myself.

   So with that in mind I just went out to the nearest highway and turned left towards a town I could actually find on a map. Turned out that it took me directly to Martinsville where I had a very nice, late lunch before wandering around the streets for a couple of hours. Ended up in the public library there for a couple of hours catching up on the news and watching a show on the computer.

   It finally started to clear up a bit this evening so once I made it safely back to the park I had an hour or so to go out and take a walk along the lake. Very pretty this evening once the sun came out. Saw a couple of deer and lots of very colorful birds, cardinals, indigo buntings and such.

    Have been very happy with my latest roof patch using duct tape. So far it has only leaked about a 1/4 cup of liquid in over 48 hours of pretty constant rain. Still more than I would like, but I feel I'm on to the cure now, and will give it a more permanent fix once it stops raining and warms up again.

    Hope to actually make it into Roanoke tomorrow if everything goes as planned. I also have to figure out when I'm going to get my laundry done though. It's now been more than two weeks since it was last done, and while I still have more than enough clean clothes for at least another two weeks if needed, the ones that are dirty, include the ones from two weekends worth of dancing. I am so glad they are stashed under a pretty air tight bed, but they need to be taken care of soon!

    Tonight I have a couple of pictures from my drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway yesterday. They were meant to show the ground fog and rain amongst the trees. Not sure if it really shows up very well, but I like them.

Blue Ridge Parkway Overlook near Floyd Virginia

 April 7, 2013

The ground fog was just pouring over the mountain and through the trees when I took this picture. It doesn't really do it justice since there is no movement. But it still looks neat enough with the trail heading off into the distance.



A similar scene in black and white. I thought the fog might show up better, but it didn't.



Looking out on a wet hillside and valley through the rain. It looks more like a fall picture with all of the red, but that is just the color of the new leaf buds on some of the trees.

More ground fog pouring down the side of the mountain.

One last view.

    Rained hard pretty much all night as far as I know. I heard on the radio that they had as much as 5 inches in some areas over night, so it was really coming down at times. I finally went to bed around midnight after watching the lightning flashing through the forest and the thunder sounding like Thor was right on top of the trailer. So it wasn't real early when I got up this morning.

    Decided it would be a good idea to go get checked in with the rangers before even eating breakfast, so that is what I did. No problem with the check in as they don't assign numbered spaces even for their reservation system. So I signed up for the next 8 nights and now know that it can be extended a few more days after that if I need more time in the area.

     Got back and started in fixing some breakfast but only got as far as toasting an english muffin when my friend from the town of Floyd emailed and said that her meeting in Roanoke had been cancelled and that she was free for lunch if I had the time. So I looked at the english muffin.... and thought about lunch out with a nice friend.... and looked at the muffin... and there was no contest. lunch out it was.

    Drove in and met her at a little restaurant she new, Natasha's Cafe, and we spent a very nice hour or so talking and eating this amazing homemade vegetable quiche, and in my case, a bowl of carrot-ginger soup, all washed down with a couple of cups of very hot tea. Very tasty!

    I spent the afternoon driving south on the 'Blue Ridge Parkway' to see what it had to offer. I spent some time at one of the scenic overlooks taking in the view. The tops of the mountains were all covered in fog, but the valley below with all the new leaves and the dogwoods and redbuds in bloom was stupendous. I watched these tendrils of fog as they twisted upward like small ethereal tornado's until they finally cooled enough to disappear. The buzzards had also discovered the same thermals and it was wild to see them fly into the mist and circle with them ever higher. It was really neat to be able to actually 'see' the air currents and how the birds would take advantage of them.

    Further along the way was Mabry Grist Mill, the most photographed area on the whole park area. I can understand how it would appeal to everyone as a subject to take pictures of, I certainly took enough of them, and I was out there in the rain at the time. I found that it is actually possible to hold an umbrella and take photo's at the same time, you just have to stick the handle in your shirt pocket and wrap your arm around it while zooming in and out. I'm waiting to see if the sun will come out sometime in the next few days as I would like to go back and take some more photo's in the light. But either way there will be a few pictures at some time in the near future.

    I went on back to Floyd afterwards and met up with my friend again for dinner. There isn't a whole lot open in Floyd on Tuesday night it seems so we ended up going to the one and only Mexican restaurant there. It was actually quite good considering I haven't had much luck with Mexican food anywhere east of the Mississippi River. I had combo fajitas with a Dos XX's and it was pretty darn good.

    Got a quick tour of my friends place after dinner as she lives on about 22 acres outside of town right above a sweet little river. A cup of hot tea and some good conversation and then it was time to head back to the trailer. I am sure glad there is such a thing as GPS as I would of been lost in 5 mins or less. Emma got me safely back to the trailer, though I have no idea how we got there.

    Tomorrow I think I'll head into Roanoke and see what there is to see in that town. I have heard of a transportation museum and an art museum and I am sure there are all kinds of historical sites scattered about so it should be a pretty busy day.

   Got off to a slow start this morning. Woke up around 6:00 with my nose all plugged up and a throbbing headache. Since it's spring and the wind was blowing all night, and I hadn't had anything to drink last night, it seemed logical to think that my allergies had finally caught up with me. So I popped a couple of pills and went back to sleep for a couple more hours. Next thing I know it is after 11:00 and it is starting to rain outside. Lucky for me it doesn't take long to pick up and leave anymore so I was all hooked up and over at the 'dump' site in less than 30 mins.

    It rained on me, sometimes very hard, all the way down into Virginia. So much for washing the truck last night.... but then it was covered with a layer of green pollen this morning anyway. Took the back roads mostly, as there wasn't all that much of a hurry to get to where I was going. Even then I still managed to get into Fairy Stone State Park before 5:00 p.m. Nobody here when I arrived, I have since noted that there is a camp host trailer on the other side of the campground, but otherwise I'm the only one here. Got the trailer set up with no problem, it even stopped raining for that part of the trip, other than having to do a little extra leveling it wasn't to hard to do. One of the park rangers stopped by to check me out but he told me to just go up to the office in the morning and check in as I wanted to stay for at least a week and he didn't think it was worthwhile to fill out the paper work tonight as well as tomorrow.

    A bowl of chili tasted pretty good this evening as the rain started up again and the temperature started to drop. Right now I'm sipping on a cup of hot tea and listening to the rain on the roof and the thunder in the distance. One really good piece of news is that the roof has hardly leaked at all through these many hours of rain. So I can assume that the duct tape I used the other day has worked pretty well and now I'll be able to figure out a more permanent solution. For today though I'm going to leave you with a few pictures from last week when I visited Glade Creek Grist Mill while staying in Fayetteville, WV.

Glade Creek Grist Mill in Babcock State Park

April 1 and 4, 2013

Looking up river at Glade Creek Grist Mill. Located in Babcock State Park in West  Virginia, this mill is actually a compilation of three different mills from the area. The oldest parts date to the 1850's with most of the rest from the 1890's. It is still a working mill and you can see it run on most Saturdays and Sundays throughout the year.

Another view. You can imagine that this mill is photographed pretty often.

I took lots of pictures, obviously, but couldn't decide on any one photo. Was hoping that some of you might vote for the one you like best.... if any.

One last one from this perspective.

A picture that shows the water wheel and water flume.

A view from under the bridge over Glade Creek.

The wooden water flume that supplies water and power to the water wheel on the side of the mill. Originally made completely out of rough sawn wood it looks like additional metal fasteners were added later to help hold it all together.

 

A close up view of the through mortise and tenon joint that was used to hold the wooden water flume together. Note the addition of a wooden peg that pinned it all together.

The front facade of the mill.

The next few photo's of the inside of the mill are from my visit last year. Here is one of the two grinding stones. This one is for grinding corn and only weighs in at about 1,000 lbs. Inside the wooden vat is the upper 'runner' stone that turns and the lower 'bed' stone that doesn't. Corn is fed in through a hole in the center of the upper stone via the hopper on top. A series of radial grooves in the stone catch and grind the grain as the grooves become smaller and smaller as they near the edge. The wooden vat catches the meal and drops it into a box below the stone.

The other stone set up is for grinding wheat and other harder grains and is therefore much heavier. About 1,200 lbs. What I thought was interesting though was the wooden 'stone crane' with hooks that was used to lift the upper stone off when the stone had to be 'sharpened'. (Re-grooved). Once sharp a pair of stones was good for about 8 years of use before resharpening, based on typical use.

It just amazes me that you can make joints that can produce such power out of wood. This shaft drove a vacuum pump that drew the corn meal up to the 2nd floor where it would be sifted into 4 different sizes and uses.

Finally a little bit of metal in the whole structure. This shaft would go up through the bed stone and turn the runner stone above.

A couple final shots of a couple of the water falls. I tried retarding the shutter speed a bit on these to get more of a flowing water feel.... and then held really, really still. These 3 are the only ones out of more than 30 that even came out. I sure do like digital cameras. 

 

 

     Up earlier than anticipated this morning given that it was nearly 1:00 a.m. last night before I got to bed. That was after a rollicking 4 hrs of high intensity dancing to the tunes of the Contrarians and Perpetual e-Motion. My feet hurt!

   Be that as it may though, I was up and ready to go dance the last hour and a half of contra early this afternoon. Today the last session was PeM with Shawn doing the calling. Only 8 or 9 dances for the session, but with each running between 10-15 mins long, it was a whole lot of dancing to do in a very short amount of time. I love these last dances of the weekend though, people have loosened up by then and the band has really started to relax and play well. There is that problem with people being a little punch drunk from being so tired, but what's a few million dead brain cells really? Besides, it doesn't really matter if you goof up a move or two in the dance.... everyone does it, and with weekend dancers they are all good enough to 'get it back' in a hurry and just carry on. So it was a wonderful time and it ended way to early, even if I probably couldn't of danced any more anyway.

    Had to say goodbye to a whole bunch of nice people afterwards and that is always hard to do. It may be that the Sunday afternoon after a dance weekend is the hardest few hours I have while travelling alone. It doesn't seem like that striking of an emotion considering I've just spent a whole lot of hours interacting with some of the nicest, happiest people you will find anywhere. So feeling a bit sad about it coming to an end seems only natural. On the other hand, it is also nice to know that it won't be very long until the next dance weekend and in between times there are bound to be plenty of fun things to do and to see.

    Speaking of which; to mitigate the feelings of self sorrow a bit, I decided to go get my 'Guys Night Out' fix a bit early. So off to the big city of Beckley to see the new Iron Man III movie. Just about perfect as far as that kind of movie goes. Lot's of gratuitous sex and violence and even a bit of a plot. A good portrayal of a flawed human being by Robert Downey Jr, perhaps a bit of character acting. He is certainly turning into one of my favorite movie actors.

    The movie wasn't out until nearly 9:00 so it was late by the time I started back to the trailer. Stopped long enough to fill the truck tank so I can get a decent start out of here in the morning. Also saw that they had a self service car/truck wash bay there so I spent a good 20 mins washing off the mud and salt from the last couple of weeks on the road. Henry looks a whole lot better now, at least on the outside anyway.

    Am aiming to head back into Virginia for at least a week starting tomorrow morning, and spend some time in the North Central area around Roanoke. Hope to stay at a local state park there called Fairy Stone SP. Sounded kind of interesting anyway. After that though I'm not sure which way I'm headed. Had planned on going over into NE Tennessee and check out the Folk Lore Center my friend Warren has been putting together there, but that is certainly in the wrong direction. Will just have to see what I feel up to when that time comes I guess. In the meantime here are a few photo's from my trip over to the New River Gorge Bridge the other day.

 

New River Gorge Single Span Arch Bridge near

 Fayettevill, WV - April 2013  

The New River Gorge Bridge near Fayetteville, WV. Started in 1974 and completed in 1977 it is 3,030 feet long and 876 feet high from mean water level of the river to the top of the roadway, making it the 4th longest single span arch bridge in the world and the 5th highest.

A view from road level. I like how it just seems to grow out of the side of the mountain with all of the trees growing up and around it.

It use to take nearly an hour to drive down to the bottom of the gorge, cross this bridge and then climb up the other side. Now days it takes approx. 45 seconds to cross from one side to the other.

The rest of these photo's just show different views of the bridge that I liked.

 

 

 

 

This one really makes it seem like it is just growing right out of the side of the mountain.

 

   Just to tired last night after 4 hours of dancing, to sit down and write anything, at least coherently anyway. Still tired today, but that is pretty much my own fault for getting up to early this morning and then not taking a good nap this afternoon.

    Getting back to yesterday a bit though; I met up with a friend of mine early in the morning and we headed for the town of Bleckly, WV, just south of Fayetteville. We were on a mission to go see the local coal mining museum they have there in town. Set on the site of an actual old time coal mine we got there just in time to be loaded onto a two car mining tram and transported inside the old mine. Of course it wasn't exactly like it had been when the mine was operating, for one thing they had come in and raised the roof from the basic 30" tall tunnel to one that was at least 8' tall. But the tour was lead by a 40 year veteran of the coal mines who was just a hoot with his down home way of speaking and his back country accent. He told us about mining in tunnels which were no higher than the 28"-30" seam of coal they were after and how you could make $0.20 for every ton of coal you could load into a 1-ton tram, and how most guys could load maybe 10 tons in any one day. He also talked about those 'mighty fine' carbide lamps they had and the canaries they actually all carried around with them at all times. Yes it's true, they did actually use canaries in the coal mines during that early period. And 'mighty fine' canaries they were too.

    A look at some of the techniques they used to mine coal and some of the tools they used before finishing up the tour by coming back outside into the sunshine and fresh air. Oh how glad I am that I never had to make the choice to go into a mine or not.

   They also had several miners houses of several types and sizes based on whether you were single or married and how many kids you had. Then of course they also had the superintendents home. Quite a difference of course.

     So a couple of hours there and it was soon time for lunch. We headed back to Fayetteville and one of my favorite places to eat 'Pies and Pints'. We ordered a pitcher of a nice golden amber beer, a Greek salad to share and a pizza featuring steak and mushrooms. Wonderful, wonderful food and drink and lots of pleasant conversation to go along with it.

    After lunch we took a short drive over to the far side of the New River gorge and drove to the bottom and crossed the river on the bridge down there. A nice drive up this side and then it was time to split for a while. I came back to the trailer and took a nice long nap before getting ready for the dance last night.

    Two bands and two callers performing this weekend of course. The local band, The Contrarians was up first and they were just wonderful. I have been listening to these guys for 3 years now and they are just getting better and better. Last night they were just hot with lots of standard tunes played in very un-standard ways. Lots of blues and rock influence with the use of the sax and trumpet and some really mean fiddling. Calling for that session was by Shawn and she did some really fun mixes.

    The 2nd half brought up Perpetual e-Motion with Gaye doing the calling. What had started out to be a fun dance just got better and better as the night went on. By midnight when it finally all came to an end we were all just exhausted. Just enough oomph to get in the truck and make it back to the trailer for a couple of ibuprofen and some much needed sleep.

    Should of slept in really late this morning but instead I was up at 7:00 and taking a shower in the cold of the morning. I met up with another friend out at the park where the dance is and we headed for Babcock State Park in order to go see the grist mill that is there and to do some hiking. This is the same mill as the one I was at the other day, but I wanted a couple more pictures of it and I found the lighting of it in the morning made it look a lot different. We wandered around the mill for a while and watched the water wheel turn, but they weren't actually grinding today as there was something going on with a piece of the mechanism. Still really beautiful there though.

    We walked up what we thought was one of the park trails headed for what I thought was this lake they have there in the park. But it turned out that we were just on some kind of access road there. So we put in several miles, most all of it in an uphill direction. At least an hour and a half of steady walking with no real resting along the way. We met a couple guys hunting turkeys up in the woods and they agreed to give us a ride back down to the parking lot as we were both feeling a need for some lunch and some water.

     A short drive back to Fayetteville and we ended up once again at Pies and Pints. This time it was spinach salad and a half-n-half pizza have pineapple and bacon and cilantro and jalapenos on it, among other things. Yum!

    Headed back out to the park and danced a couple of dances this afternoon. But mostly I just sat in the sun reading a magazine and trying not to snore while snoozing. So now it's time to get back on the road and get the heck back to the park for this evening's entertainment. Will try to write more tomorrow.
    

    Went through my standard morning routine faster than usual today, as I wanted to finish up doing all of my chores and get on to doing fun things once again. To that end it was back to Wally World to trade in the batteries I had picked up yesterday, as they were to long for the boxes and for the room I had on the front of my trailer. Two new batteries and then it was back to the trailer to get them installed.

    Nothing hard about swapping them out, just a matter of taking one out at a time, scrubbing the copper fittings clean with a couple finger nail files and then putting it all back together again. I ended up having to swap out a couple of old lead battery clamps on one of the batteries, but lucky for me I had a spare pair of those in the tool box. Also made sure to install a set of those green and red felt disc's that fit under the cable clamps and fittings. They are suppose to help prevent corrosion from forming so I always like to use them. The new ones also came with a little spray bottle of corrosion inhibitor with each package, so I liberally sprayed everything with that stuff before putting it all back together and turning the shore power back on. Nothing blew up, so I took that as a good sign that I got it all hooked back together correctly.

   Once that was all done it was time to go play for a little bit. Headed north on the highway and stopped at the visitor's center for the New River Gorge Bridge. The highest, 878' ?, steel arch bridge in the country, it is a beautiful piece of construction/sculpture that spans the New River just north of town. Took lots of photo's and hope to get a few posted in the next week or two.

    Once done there I was off to see the old grist mill I had visited last year. It is located in a state park about 30 miles from town but it was worth going to see it again. A beautiful day to be out taking pictures. I think there are a few that will turn out to be pretty nice and I want to compare them to ones I took last year when I was there while it was raining.

   I wanted to eventually end up in the old railroad town of Thurmond, but had my eye on a back road that I had never driven before. To actually call it a road would be giving it more credit than it is due. It actually turned out to be this dirt and mud trail up through the trees and along side the cliffs on the north side of the New River. Actually, it was very pretty in most places, but was thinking it might not of been a good idea several times as I realized that there were times when I drove more than a mile with nary a turnout to pull over in or to turn around in if a rock or tree was to be encountered, or god forbid, another vehicle. Indeed at one spot there was a small, 8" dia, tree laying across the road, but by going clear out to one side of the road and taking it slow, I managed to bump the truck over it with no real damage. There was probably a lot more damage being done by all the tree branch's and vines hanging down across the road. But it finally came out on a more decent road and eventually wound its way across the river and on to Thurmond.

    An old coal town, Thurmond was once the high revenue spot of the old C & O line, having more than 20 passenger trains alone stopping there every day. A large steam engine shop and engine house was also located there so it has tons of old railroad history. Not much left of it though. The original station is still there and still being used by Amtrak, but there are only 3 original stone or brick buildings left as well as the remains of the huge poured concrete coaling tower where the steam engines would load up on fuel. There is also the remains of the post office, but I don't think it is all that old, just based on materials. Anyway, I wandered around for more than an hour taking pictures and looking at everything that is left and wondering what it would of been like to stand there 60-70 years ago during the heyday's of steam power. I know it's just the romantic in me, but I would of loved to have seen those old 2-6-6-2 Mallets and 4-6-6-6 Allegheny's chuffing out of the yard with a load of coal cars, headed for the mills in Pittsburgh, or a 4-8-4 Hudson pulling a string of Pullman cars along the mainline. It would of been an amazing sight.

    Finished up the day by dropping my old battery cores back off and getting my refund for them before filling the truck up and heading back to the trailer for some dinner. Just been working on pictures and reading this evening. Not sure what I'm doing tomorrow yet. Am suppose to meet up with a friend and do some goofing off during the day, but so far I'm coming up blank for things to do. Will have to go on line I guess and see what else there is to see in this area. Otherwise the weekend dance starts tomorrow night out at the county park. Perpetual e-Motion and the Contrarians are playing with Gaye and Shawn doing the calling. Should be another wonderful weekend of music and dance.

    Right now though; a few people have expressed an interest in all things RVing so I thought I'd throw out a couple pictures of some of what I've been doing these past couple of days with long winded explanations for each of them. Not terribly exciting, but life on the road isn't always fun, fun, fun..... just most of the time. Take a look if it interests you, I'll be posting others periodically, but not all that often.

Trailer Maintenance and Use Photo's 

A look at my trailer hitch and how it attaches to my truck. The 'A-frame' of the trailer has the hitch cup built into it and it fits over and down onto the ball on top of the trailer hitch. It then has an internal tongue that slides down and locks it into place. The two crossed safety chains go from the trailer frame to two attachment points on the bottom of the hitch, and prevent the trailer from becoming a runaway missile if it was to somehow come unhitched. I imagine that would be quite some ride being attached to the front end of a 5 ton out of control 'rock'. What makes this hitch better than a stock hitch are the two large spring steel bars that run from the bottom of the hitch on my truck, to the chain attachment plates on each side of the A-frame. In this photo you can only see one of the bars. The chains allow you to tension these bars based on how heavy the trailer is. As they are 'tightened ' up they act as huge leaf springs that span the 'hinge' between the back of the truck and the front of the trailer. This causes this hinge to flex upward and level out this hinge causing the back of truck and front of the trailer to rise or equalize. In addition to the two bars, there is also a short metal piece that attaches to the right side of the A-frame at one end and the top of the truck hitch at the other. You can just make it out in the photo if you look close. Inside this metal enclosure is a friction plate similar to what you would find on a car or truck brake shoe. You can tighten this enclosure down and increase the friction on it with a large screw on the side of the metal piece.  The whole thing works to help dampen any sway that should occur because of the wind or a passing truck. Without it the trailer would have a tendency to whip back and forth behind the truck at times. Not a fun thing to have happen. Also on the A-frame, under the plastic shroud, are two 30 lb propane tanks. I find that I can pretty much do a whole year of touring on one fill up of these tanks, or at the most having to fill up one of them. If I cooked more, or went off line more often I would end up using much more propane than I do. In front of the propane bottles is my front trailer jack. I had a motorized one installed a couple of years ago and it works off of my batteries as needed. It use to be one of those you had to crank up and down by hand, but after needing to do that 3-4 times each time I hitched up or down it was time to find a better way. It is one piece of motorized gear I have never regretted getting.  

A look at the pipe repair I ended up doing to my front grey tank drain line. In the background you can see the bottom of the tank and the fitting that comes out of the bottom of it. I ended up pulling that fitting out of the 3" dia outlet in the tank and replacing it with a new 3" to 1 1/2" bushing. A short piece of new pipe then a standard long sweep 90 degree elbow. A really short piece of new pipe and then a new coupling fitting that attaches all the new stuff back up to the rest of the old piping.

The new work on the left with all the old stuff on the right. The grey water continues down its own pipe to a slide gate that keeps it either in the tank or lets it out through the cap you can see, and then into a flexible hose to some type of sewer system. In my case this week it will be a dump station here in the RV park that probably runs over to some type of septic system. The 'black' sewer tank on the trailer is right behind the grey tank and it has a 3" outlet with its own slide gate. When emptying the system I usually let the sewer tank go first and pretty much empty it before closing it back off and letting the grey tank loose to flush most of the flexible hose out before its final rinse.

The other major project these last two days was to replace the batteries that run every thing in the trailer when it isn't hooked up to shore power. By everything, that means it has the power to run the 12v DC system which includes lights, the gas controls on the fridge, it actually switches to propane for most of its cooling power, the water pump, a small electrical heater and the car style radio/CD player. It also keeps my propane gas detector from 'screaming' at 5:00 in the morning when the batteries have no more juice in them because they no longer hold a charge.

One last look. Besides new batteries I also really cleaned all of the copper or lead wire connectors as well as installing new anti corrosion disks under all the connections. The red color is from this battery spray stuff that they now include with the little red and green disc thing's. It is suppose to help prevent corrosion from forming. I hope this set of batteries with work for as many years as the last set did. They went for at least 5 years that I know of and maybe more than that.

    Another wonderful day in paradise.... no really. Warm temps, limited humidity and lots of sun, it was just a gorgeous day to be out and about. Wish I could say the day was filled with tons of fun things I did, but alas, it was a day to do chores around the place and work on some much needed projects.

    First up was replacing a hunk of the drain line for the front grey tank that broke a couple of days ago. That would be the tank which holds the water from the shower and lavatory up near the front of the trailer. Lucky for me it wasn't the 'black' tank which is the one for the toilet. That would of just been yucky!

    I had bought what I thought would be all of the supplies yesterday at the local Lowes here in Fayetteville, but upon closer inspection it came to light that the 1 1/2" diameter drain line had actually cracked in two places. Once right at the connection point to the 90 degree bend, that is the one I saw leaking, as well as right where the line exits the grey tank under the trailer. That is the one I didn't know about until crawling under there this morning to start work. Really thought I was screwed royally as the pipe snapped right where it entered the mouth of the tank. I had visions of having to... well I don't know what I would of done since I thought at that time that the last connection had been glued into the tank mouth like most connections would be. That would of required a real plumber at the least and a whole new tank at it's worst. But..... on closer inspection I saw that there were a couple of 3" dia hose clamps around the mouth of the tank and buried in all the dirt and grime under the trailer, and that made me think that maybe that wasn't the case. So it was off to get my biggest set of channel locks, since I don't routinely carry a 12" pipe wrench around with me, and with that I started twisting on the little bit of pipe that was still sticking out of the end.... and it all started to move. Yea!   A little bit of work and swearing at it and the whole thing finally came out of there and showed that it was a 3" to 1 1/2" bushing that had just been press fit in there with a little plumbers putty and then secured with the pipe clamps. I would of thought it was a stupid idea before today, but boy was I glad to see that fitting pop out of there.

     So it was off to Lowes again to see if they had anything even faintly like the piece I took out... and they did. So a couple of bucks for that and then another $20 for a ratcheting pipe cutting doohickey, as there is always a good excuse for a new tool, and then back to the trailer to see if I could put it all back together again. So the pipe tool works like a charm, cutting up to 2 1/2" dia pipe with one hand, but it did show me how brittle all of the piping down there is so it should be no surprise that a bump could of cracked it like it did. Anyway, the new bushing when in with a little persusion from my trusty hammer, a bit of cutting and fitting and it was time to glue it up after checking to see that it was all going to fit. So that took way more time than I figured on, but in the end it was all done and ready to go again.

   Once that was done it was on to the roof again to see if there was anything obvious I have been missing as far as where the leak is coming from. Nothing really jumped out at me as I've been over it inch by inch a dozen times. But I took the time to duct tape a portion of the very edge of it where the roof material meets the sidewall of the trailer. Will see if that has any effect on it next time it rains and if it seems to have lessened it then I'll go ahead and try something a little more permanent.

    A bit of late lunch and then off to Wally World to get the truck serviced. While there I picked up a couple of new batteries for the trailer. These are both pretty solid deep cycle style batteries, the kind you can charge and discharge over and over again. They are about the only kind you can use for most boats and RV's as a plain battery would soon burn itself out. Not cheap, but they come with a two year warrenty and they both weigh more than 50 lbs each. I just need to get them both installed and all of the wires and cables cleaned up before taking the old ones back to get my core charge back.  Couldn't get that done today, so it will be sometime tomorrow morning before that gets done.

   Tonight it has just been a lazy evening of reading and watching a movie. An old-new James Bond film with Daniel Craig. This was the 2nd one he did and I remember now that it didn't seem to be as good as the 1st one he did, and it still isn't. Still good enough to see again though and a very pleasant way to spend a quiet evening.