RVing Curveball: Not the Weekend We Expected!

Things Don't Always Go As Planned

As is the case with life in general, things don't always go as planned when you're RVing. Sometimes you get a curveball that you aren't expecting. That certainly happened to us this past weekend, things didn't go at all as we expected, but we still had a great time...

Our weekend began on Thursday as we picked up our RV from storage and headed north to Dallas to attend the Southwest RV Supershow. Our plan was to spend the weekend in the Dallas area and attend the Show both Friday and Saturday. Unfortunately, just as we got to the north side of Houston, Tom began to notice a drop in accelerating power and the RV's check engine light came on with a big explanation point!

So we quickly began to brainstorm businesses in the area that might have a parking lot big enough for us to pull off into with our 35 foot rig and Jeep in tow. We were lucky to be near Gallery Furniture. You may be familiar with Gallery even if you're not from Houston. The owner, "Mattress Mack", and his company have gone above and beyond helping the community following Hurricane Harvey. This little unplanned sidetrip gave us a chance to shake his hand and say thank you as we promised we were only there to trace the engine codes and decide on our next course of action.

Conversations with Freightliner and Cummins helped us to find the engine diagnostics to obtain the engine codes which translated to fuel system issues. We were incredibly lucky to be within 11 miles or so of Cummins Southern Plains in Houston. We were able to drive our rig there for further evaluation and repair. We've taken our "DieselTex" to this Cummins shop before for generator maintenance and we were confident that it was in the right place. But, the shop had recently reopened and is in the process of recovering from flooding during Hurricane Harvey, so we thought it might take a while for the repairs to be completed. We piled everything into our 1999 Jeep Wrangler, complete with our kitty and 75 pound pup and headed back to the house on the other side of Houston.

On to Plan B!

We had really been looking forward to getting away for a few days and meeting folks up at the RV Show in Dallas, but now that the RV was in the shop we had to come up with a plan B. Our awesome neighbors (and fellow RVers) Scott and Judy agreed to watch after the fur babies for the day, and we set out early Friday morning in our truck for the 5 hour drive to Dallas. We spent all of Friday visiting with folks at the Southwest RV Supershow. This is a good RV show with 12 dealers and a lot of RVs to tour. The show happens every September and includes some vendor booths and daily seminars.

Y'all probably know by now that one of the things we love most about RVing is all of the great folks we meet. RVers are always ready to share their experiences and tips on things that they've learned, great places they've stayed and must see destinations. We love interacting with fellow RVers and folks considering the RV lifestyle via social media, but it is always so much fun to actually meet them in person! Many of the folks we met at the show are members of our RV Texas Y'all Community on Facebook (our Facebook Group). It's a growing community of folks who share their RVing experiences, RV tips and feedback on great places to stay. If you are not yet a member of our Community, we invite you to join us!

Big shoutout to everyone we met at the Show! We had so much fun visiting with y'all! And our apologies to everyone we did not get to meet because we didn't spend the weekend in Dallas as we originally planned. Because we didn't have the RV, we spent Friday at the RV show and drove back home to Houston late Friday night. The weekend didn't go as we had planned, but we still really enjoyed the time that we had in Dallas.

We also were happy to meet folks from the RV Disaster Corps out of Waco TX. This is a fairly new organization that puts together RVers who wish to volunteer their time to support communities during times of disaster. They've recently had their hands full with the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and are looking for more volunteers. Check them out if you are interested in helping out.

And we finally joined Escapees! We've heard nothing but good things about this organization (that's based out of Livingston TX), and we've talked to a lot of folks over the years who are members. They had a show special for membership, so no time like the present! We look forward to seeing what it's all about and will let y'all know about our experiences.

And Now For the Rest of the Story...

We really expected our motorhome to be in the shop for several weeks. Upon initial review of the engine codes it looked like it might be a major issue, and with the shop recently reopening we thought it would take a while before they could even get to us. But we are so happy to tell you that was not the case at all! The very next Monday morning (remember, we dropped it off Thursday afternoon), we received a call that our RV was repaired and ready to be picked up! The problem turned out to be a failed fuel actuator. Huge Thank You to everyone at Cummins Southern Plains Houston for the extremely quick attention and turn-around. We could not have asked for better service!! If you have a diesel motorhome and are in the Houston area, we highly recommend them. Thanks to their efficient service we'll be able to get back out camping a lot sooner than we expected (which is awesome since Texas is about to enter into prime RVing season!). We look forward to bringing y'all more park reviews and travel reports soon! In the meantime...

Visit Our Texas RV Shows Page for the full schedule of RV Shows in Texas throughout the year.

Visit Our #BeyondTX RV Shows Page for our list of RV Shows outside of Texas, but across the US.

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Items we mentioned in this video:
TireMinder Tire Pressure Monitoring System
Rand McNally RV GPS (newer version than we have)
Blue Ox Tow Bar

Safe Travels and Happy Camping!