Arizona? 2024: Day 1: All torqued up..

Hi, it’s me. Been some time. What’s new with you? We’ve been a bit busy lately. Doing some Canadian stuff like taking up Curling. It rocks! (had to). The most relevant thing is that we have been getting us and the van ready for this year’s spring trip. Destination planning flipped between Florida (closer to home) and the Southwest for the third year in a row. Florida contains Floridians. We appeased our need for Florida by going to Orlando for a week to celebrate offspring #2’s graduation in early Februrary. Florida, done. Southwest we go.

We picked a departure date of early March and hoped for everything to line up. Work: check! Weather: check! Van prep: check! Time to go.

A bit about van prep. This year we added a ladder/spare tire (not the one around my belly) holder and some other little bits. Had to acquire a spare tire so ordered a slightly used OEM aluminum wheel from Saskatchewan(you might call it a rim, but according to my Grandfather, Lloyd, the rim is the part around the edge that keeps the tire in place and the wheel is the whole steel / aluminum assembly). In order to acquire the tire (the rubber parts) we procured 4 new tires and took the best take-off and mounted it on the newly acquired wheel (don’t make me do that again!). Got it all mounted up during a few breaks in the weather in February. We also added tank heaters back in the fall.

Back to day 1. Plan was to depart at 0800 and drive to Sarnia. Not bad, departed at 0829 and drove to Sarnia. There was minimal traffic and we even saved the $77.00 by not taking the 407. We arrived at Mom’s RV Park around 1600 after dropping offspring #2 at her cousin’s place. Thanks niece!

I did the maintenance on the van which involved re-torquing the lug bolts (the van uses removable lug bolts). Well, isn’t that the strangest thing you have ever seen?

Turns out I was a tad sloppy when I torqued the wheels after getting the new tires. When I removed the torque wrench, the socket stayed on the lug and I drove 700km with it like that. You can’t make this stuff up (I miss you, Patrick). I finished re-torquing and made sure the socket was with the wrench and not stuck to a lug.

Post all this we had dinner with the owner of Mom’s RV Park. Headed to the van for an early night of route planning (did I mention we literally have zero camping reservations for this trip as of departure time?). Plan for tomorrow is to get to the Cracker Barrel in Terra Haute, IN. See you there!