The Gauntlet – On the Road with Don and Paula

The Walmart of Fredericksburg (Texas) Parking Lot has never looked so good! We stayed here once before, when it was so hot that we need to run the air conditioner full time.

Now it is the cold.

We were finally able to be rescued on Tuesday. The roads were passable enough for the Service Crew to be able to venture out, drive for 3 hours, and replace our alternator.

Luckily, that was in fact, the problem. Until then, it was only a telephone diagnosis. Servicing anything motor related on one of these diesel coaches is problematic.

There is no “hood” to open and work under.

In most cases, you either need to lift the entire coach up in the air or have a garage “pit” to be able to work under it.

I had to disassemble the entire rear vanity in the aft bathroom which gave access to the motor from above.

And even that was a tight squeeze for John, the mechanic. It was a good thing that I had prepped for this event the previous day because it took me several hours to complete the task. It’s interesting that in the Motor Coach Manual, they give the instructions to accomplish this operation as, “Remove the screws from the cabinet face and set the entire assembly aside.”

There were 35 screws that needed to be “removed” and it took me the better part of three hours to complete this task. Had I waited for the guys to get here to start the process, we may still be on the side of the road!

We weren’t really aware of the extent of the hazardous road conditions until Paula left on her expedition to get gas in the Honda Lifeboat. We stupidly had only a quarter of a tank or so of fuel when we hooked up the towbars on Saturday morning. We really didn’t give it a second thought.

We were towing it, not driving it!

Little did we know that we were soon to be at Ground Zero for ‘The Great Texas Snowmageddon Massacre of 2021.’

That is literally exactly where we were.

All of the epitomes of meteorological excesses converged in that area just as we were passing through it and breaking down at the same time.

I’ve always said that if there is going to be an event of catastrophic proportions that you may as well set a record for all of your troubles. What good is getting 30 inches of snow and having the record at 31 inches? You may as well get a few more and at least have the bragging rights for a “Record Setting Event”!

Who knew that way back when we set our sights on Texas for the Winter that my old thought process would bear itself out! It brings to mind another old saying,

“Be careful want you wish for!”

So here we sat at the intersection of Interstate 10 and Texas 290.

“Safe Camp” at Interstate 10 and Texas Route 290

Here is where the next services of any kind were located:

Kerrville, 40 miles to our East.

Junction 21 miles to our West.

Fredericksburg, 41 miles behind us.

There is NOTHING in between these areas, so with 49 miles left on the tank of gas in the Lifeboat, Paula set out for Junction as soon as the repair guys got there. The weather was sunny, the temps around 19 and we could see the vehicles moving nicely in front of us on I-10. Junction is good sized town, it does not have a Walmart, but there are amenities galore for a town on the Interstate.

It had everything that we could want except gas.

Yup! You heard me. No Gas!

The entire town was bled dry as folks abandoned the highway and sucked up every drop of fossil fuel they could during the storm. And of course, the re-supply trucks were strewn about on I-10, so no fuel was forthcoming.

Who knew?

Paula limped back to our relatively safe break-down spot with only about 10 miles left on the tank. Now there were no ifs, ands, or buts about it, Lifeboat really needed to be towed!

The unsuccessful expedition out and back to Junction was apparently quite harrowing. Unbeknownst to us, who only had a small view of I-10 from where we sat, the road was, in fact, a disaster zone. Paula lost track of ditched cars, jack-knifed tractor trailers, and overturned vehicles with their wheels straight up in the air , looking more like dead animals than anything else on her fruitless sojourn into the unknown.

She was quite shaken when she finally arrived back at camp.

The guys finished up around noontime and we started the process of extricating ourselves from, what were to unfortunately find, were the relatively safe environs of our ‘Four-Day Camp.”

Little did we know what was ahead of us but were soon going to find out.

While we sat for those days, there were some vehicles that came down Route 290 from Fredericksburg to access I-10. They were moving along nicely so we did not think that reversing our course was going to be a big issue.

It was a big issue.

No, it was a huge issue.

Maybe that doesn’t even do it justice.

It was a gargantuan, humongous, massive, immense, and colossal issue.

That may be overstating it a bit, so feel free to remove just one of the aforementioned excesses from my narrative.

But just one.

For before us lay the Route to Salvation, to the next Oasis, to Fredericksburg, Home of the Walmart Parking Lot and all of the safety and supplies that come with its opening arms and snuggly parking spaces that await weary travelers like ourselves.

But first we need to “Run the Gauntlet”

Texas Route 290 Eastbound, towards Fredericksburg

Not just any feat of winter driving skills mind you, this test had requirements.

You needed to be in a large motorhome, weighing at least 26,000 pounds, with air brakes, (not as smooth as hydraulic brakes) towing a car behind you and only one lane partially open on the wrong side of the road.

Oh, and the road needs to be ice and snow covered the majority of the way.

And it needs to be 41 miles in length.

It took us three and a half hours to arrive at our destination. Most of the way our speed varied between 12 and 16 miles per hour. There was one dry stretch for may be a quarter mile that I was able to get up to 24 mph, but the key is that you need to slow down from 24 mph when the road becomes dicey again. The problem with towing on slippery roads is that when you go around a bend, on a hill, and its banked, the towed vehicle wants to “slip” sideways and drag your rear end with it. So, one needs to keep up enough momentum so that it tracks behind you, but not so much that you start to skid to the opposite side which would require either a too rapid turn on the wheel or applying too much of the dreaded “air-brakes”.

The fun part was playing “Chicken” with the oncoming traffic in the other lane which was the lane that was “open”, and we were travelling in. I would wait until I was sure that the approaching opposite vehicle could see me, (it was evident that I was endeavoring to stay in the traveled tracks on their side of the road) and in enough time, gently alter my course to take me up and over the snow hump in the middle of the road, and travel as smoothly as I could on the ice and snow of the lane I was supposed to be riding in.

Whew!

You may be asking yourself by now, “Why in the name of all that is Holy are they putting themselves though this?”

We were asking ourselves the same question, but the answer is simple.

We had no idea that the road was in that bad of shape when we started out.

And there was no turning back.

There were times when I wished that we were still back at “Safe Camp”, but the road was only one lane and there was definitely no room to even attempt a turn around. So, the only course was to forge on, hoping that there were no hills too steep to climb, or worse, to go down.

We finally pulled into town, which only had partial power, found our Walmart, and proceeded to get gas in the Lifeboat and do some shopping. The Walmart‘s condition reminded us of the Dark Days of Covid, shelves bare and not much hope of anything getting through for re-supply.