EARLY MORNING PANIC AND SNOW

Last evening there were extreme winds in Lamar, Texas which rocked the RV like it was a toy instead of a 24,000 pound beast.  Today we began our pack up procedure, which started out normally until we went to bring in the bedroom slide.  Our RV is equipped with 3 slides (bedroom, kitchen, and living room) which move outward using electronic switches to give the RV more interior space.  This morning, the bedroom slide would not retract, giving us only a flashing error light.  Considering we were far from civilization, our thoughts went to the possible scenarios.  From Ann's computer days - READ THE MANUAL FIRST - Ann checked the RV manual and found the reset procedure.  We followed the reset instructions and we were able to retract the bedroom slide.  The kitchen slide came in like normal but the living room slide needed the same reset procedure as the bedroom slide.  We don't really know what caused the slide problem - just speculating that the RV systems thought we were no longer level because of the windy conditions.  Even with the delay, we were on the road by 8 a.m.; our bodies were able to adjust to the earlier hour since we just switched to Mountain time the day before.

Our morning journey took us past more farms/ranches with the only wildlife being small herds of deer every so often along our route.  Cattle, horses, goats, etc. don't count as wildlife.  We passed through lots of small Colorado towns that were long past their prime.  Ann often remarked, "can you imagine living here?"
 
We hit city traffic again in Denver, but it was a breeze compared to Dallas traffic.  When we stopped for a stretch near the Wyoming border, we noticed that the weather had turned considerably cooler - hint of weather conditions to come.  As we began to make the climb up the mountain between Cheyenne and Laramie, we saw the first patch of SNOW.  The higher in elevation we climbed, the more snow we saw lying on the ground.   As we crossed the summit at Medicine Bow National Forest, el. 8640 ft., between Cheyenne and Laramie, we even saw a few snowflakes on the windshield.  And I was still in my shorts, but not for long.

When we checked into the campground in Laramie, we were told that we could not hook up to water, as water would only be turned on at campsites when there were no more nights below 32 degrees.  Good thing we added water to our fresh water tank before leaving Lamar!  We are so accustomed to having city water hookup that this situation is a new way of living on the road. 

The temperature was 42 degrees at 7 pm when I began this installment.  The coach is rocking again in the wind like last evening.  Today we played it smart and didn't extend the slides, figuring we could exist in cramped quarters for one evening so that we didn't have another panic situation tomorrow morning.  Snow showers are forecast for this evening as the temperature is supposed to drop into the upper 20's.  Our first use of the gas heat since we owned the RV, and it works!