Smoke and the Water

I didn’t sleep real well last night.  I had just drifted off into a good sleep when a commotion outside woke me back up again.  Lots of booming and banging noises.  It took a bit for enough synapses to fire to realize that this was the start of New Year’s Day.  Fireworks. 

 

Happy New Year, I think.

We were greeted by some sunshine this morning which was a nice change from the typical Michigan gloom.  Temperatures right around freezing however so I turned a heater on in the RV as we loaded the last of the supplies.

We got underway a bit earlier than expected as our lunch date was cancelled by a cold and sniffly nose.  We didn’t want to risk traveling with a cold so we took a rain check on the lunch date and managed to leave at just after noon.

Driving along the lakeshore we experienced the classic Michigan lake-effect: driving snow at one moment, bright sunshine the next moment, and sometimes, both at once.  Let’s keep moving south...

We set our sights on Carmel, Indiana, just north of Indianapolis for dinner, at Flowing Well Park, whose main attraction is an artesian well.  There were also some trails through the park, a welcome diversion after sitting in the driver’s seat for four hours.

As we were exiting the main highway towards the park, I glanced in the rear view mirror and noticed the rear marker light was off and wondered just how many other lights were off.  When we got to the park, I walked behind the RV and got my answer:  all of them.

Being the good engineer I checked the breaker under the passenger seat first.  It was tripped.  I pushed it back in and walked behind the RV.  All the lights were back on.  However, the smoke now pouring out from the rear of the RV told me that something else was going on.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on the perspective, I knew exactly what was going on.  After taking a walk on the trail in the park, Deb set about heating up some soup for dinner and I crawled under the back of the RV.

Yep, the molten black goo oozing out from the wiring module that controls the trailer lights was the same problem that happened two years ago. This was the only time I had rented the RV out on consignment and the poor guy had to return to base three times because all the lights in the back stopped working.  Later on he got stranded on the side of the Ohio Turnpike when the rear wheel speed sensors destroyed themselves because of a problem with the parking brake.  But that is a whole ‘nother story.  I learned then that consignment rental was just not in my wheelhouse.

This is probably the only fix that is accomplished by cutting wires.  Just cut the wires to the trailer module, reset the breaker, and we’re good to go.  The rest of the drive today was done without incident and with all the lights on.

Flowing Well Park is a popular place and lots of people come here for the water.  And not just little bits of it.  Whole minivans full of five-gallon jugs that are all filled and piled back in the car.  We filled our water bottles before leaving the park.  It is good water.  Deb says it doesn’t have any wrong notes.

Two hours farther down the road, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel just north of Louisville, Kentucky for the night.  367 miles covered today.  Not bad for leaving after noon.