This week was chaos. Sunday, on the way to New Orleans from Alabama, the bus started to overheat. We pulled over and coolant was GUSHING out from under the bus. We were about an hour outside of NOLA and 2 hours from the campground we planned on staying for a few days before attending a wedding in the city.

Scott crawled under the bus to see if there were any obvious issues with hoses or something that we could fix on the side of the road. It did not look like a fix we could do, so we called for a tow. It took them 6 hours to get a tow truck to our location since it was Sunday afternoon and most shops were closed.

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Since we no longer had a home to live in, Laura booked a hotel for the humans and took the cats to the boarding facility they had reservations for on Wednesday.

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We took full advantage of the extra days in New Orleans by checking out some of the sights. A few of our friends were in town for the wedding on Saturday so we got a chance to see them for the first time in a while.

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They figured out the issue with the bus was the water pump. They swapped out the water pump and she was good to go. We picked her up on Friday and drove to the original campground near Lafayette, LA. Round trip, it was a 6 hour drive from the hotel to the bus to the campground back to the hotel. Then the wedding was the next day! It was Halloween themed so they got to dress up in their finest. You can’t even tell they live in a bus.

We clean up nice.

Arley, Alabama! The calm before the storm…

We spent 2 weeks roasting hot dogs, relaxing, and even swimming on a couple really nice days. We spent an evening chatting with a couple full-time RV families.

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There is not a whole lot to do in Arley or nearby but we did check out the Natural Bridge park. If you are ever in the area, I would definitely check it out.

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Our first week on the road full time! We arrived in the suburbs of Chicago on Saturday at Camp Reinberg in Palatine, IL. https://fpdcc.com/places/locations/camp-reinberg/

We loved how secluded it felt but we still had a chipotle/target/panera within a few minutes from the campground.

Friday was the start of Riot Fest which was amazing! It rained a couple of the days but we had an absolute BLAST!

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We stayed at a hotel in the city to make it easy to get to and from the festival. With our temperature & humidity monitors and security cameras, we could check on the cats at any time. They didn’t seem to mind us being gone in the slightest. They might have actually enjoyed the peace and quiet for once. After all, this was the first time the cats were in the moving bus. They started out in the backseat of the car but after 3+ hours of Lord Beerus meowing like I was murdering him, I could not stand it anymore. So we put them in the back (with the A/C running) for the rest of the trip. They appeared traumatized after the few hours they were in there but were fine after 30 minutes or so when we made it to the campground.

We spent this week recovering from our trip to Chicago and the adventures of Riot Fest. We stayed at two separate campgrounds.

The first was a KOA in Lasalle, IL. Nothing monumental at this place. I had a work trip so I only spent one day at this place. Scott got some cool drone shots of the bus while we were parked here.

https://koa.com/campgrounds/lasalle/

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We also stayed at Buena Vista Farms which was a much needed escape. They had all the standard amenities of a good campground and it was a beautiful spot.

http://www.buenavistafarms.net/

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We spent our week outside of St. Louis, Missouri at the pin oak creek campground. https://pinoakcreekrvpark.com/

This campground had great wifi, mini golf, and our spot was quite big compared to other places.

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We took a day trips to Meramec Caverns to explore. It was very touristy but still fun to do something different.

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We rented scooters and overall covered 10 miles between where we got lunch to the arch to forest park and then back to our car.

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What should have been a nice easy drive from St. Louis turned into a bit more than expected. Yes, that is our solar panel hanging off the side of the roof.

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It always seems to be a rainy miserable day when things go wrong on the bus. We pulled over on the side of the interstate to take a look at what broke. As Scott was on the very slippery roof, trucks were flying past, I was trying to stay calm. Scott is much, much better at staying cool under pressure than I am. He somehow managed to secure the panel to the roof with a tow strap & zip ties we had in our emergency kit until we could very slowly make our way to a truck stop to repair it.

Once we got to the truck stop, he made a mad dash to the only hardware store in miles to get there before they closed for the day. He brought back punched angle iron which he used to attach to the side of the solar panels and to the bracket that was on the bus. Turns out the lovely (heavy sarcasm) people that built our bus used the brackets that came with the panels which were rated for house roofs. They could not handle the wind generated going down the highway. The actual frame attached to our bus is quite study so he just added more reinforced pieces to ensure it won’t come off again!

Thankfully, we had all the tools on the bus that we needed to fabricate the new brackets including a angle grinder which I thought was ridiculous to bring. We also have portable saw horses which again I never thought we would use on the road. Glad Scott is a tool packrat!

Unfortunately, we also realized our generator needed service when I tried to turn it on in the truck stop parking lot. It turned on but started blinking that it needed serviced. Upon inspection, it seems we should have changed the oil 200 hours ago… I added that to the list of things to buy and started sourcing the materials to get that straightened out. It was a hot day and no generator meant no A/C either. I quickly found a campground to stay in for the night so we didn’t all die of heat exhaustion. We cooked some of our favorite smoked brats by the fire at the campground and then proceeded to bed as that was a very exhausting day!

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The next day we proceeded to our originally reserved campground in Clarksville, TN at the Clarksville RV park.

https://clarksvillervpark.com/

While parked there, we also visited Nashville which was about an hour drive from the campground. We had some drinks in a real honky tonk, and rented some of our favorite electric scooters to see the rest of the city.