March 27, 2019

March 10, 2019

 Today Joyce and I visited the El Paso Holocaust Museum and Study Center.  I believe that for most folks the late 1930’s and early 1940’s is a time that we don’t study very much.  Oh, most of us have seen Schindler's List, the Steven Spielberg film about that era.  Yes, we may have studied about World War II in school and maybe read some books about that time as well.  Well, if you visit this great museum you learn a lot more about one of the world's darkest times.  God help us if we allow this type of thing to happen again, especially in our country.

March 13, 2019

 As I write this we are still in the El Paso area.

 I had been watching the weather here and the forecasts were not good.  The National Weather Service was calling for winds 30-35 MPH with gusts up to as much as 60 MPH.  We were scheduled to leave yesterday and head up to Deming, NM.  Winds up there were supposed to be about the same but with gusts up to 70 MPH.

 With all that great news we decided to hunker down at Fort Bliss and wait for better weather.  We called the RV park in Deming and changed our reservation for Thursday.  Then we had to cancel our appointment to get the refrigerator looked at at a maintenance facility there.

 Since sleeping in our RV in high winds is not good, we made a reservation at the Sunland Park Racetrack and Casino just north of El Paso In Sunland Park, NM.  As you can guess Joyce is a happy camper.

 Our plans now are to leave Fort Bliss in the morning and stop at a Walmart in Las Cruces, NM to have a RV technician look at the refrigerator.  If he can’t fix it right there he will get the necessary parts and come over to Deming, NM, our next stop. Looking at the service manual troubleshooting charts I think the problem is the control board.  However, since we had the modification done to help prevent fires with this model of Norcold refrigerators, there could be a problem there.  We’re just hoping the problem is simple and we can get back on schedule.

March 17, 2019

On Wednesday the 14th, while were in the Sunland Hotel our daughter Michelle called to tell us that her husband Harold Skidmore had passed away.  As you can imagine this was devastating news that Joyce and I never in a million years would have expected to get.

 After we got off the phone Joyce got on the internet and got us flight reservations out of San Antonio to Jacksonville, FL.  The reason to go back to San Antonio was due to the costs of flying out of El Paso.

 We left Fort Bliss and drove all day back to Hidden Valley RV Park where Mark and Terri put us up in one of their rental 5th wheel trailers and then had up over for a delicious smoked worked supper.

 Yesterday we again had to get up at o-dark-thirty for the drive to the airport to catch our Southwest Airlines flight to Jacksonville through Chicago Midway Airport.  Our son Justin picked us up there and we got to Saint Augustine about 6:30.  We will be here until next Saturday trying to do a our part to help Michelle and our grand children any way we can.

March 25, 2019

 We are now back at Fort Bliss, TX after the extremely exhausting trip to St. Augustine, FL.  I’m not going to go into a lot of details here but suffice it to say Joyce and I are physically and emotionally drained.

 Michelle and the kids are doing alright given the circumstances.  She has a huge support system there which has made this difficult time somewhat easier.  Please remember Michelle, Abigail and Skyler in your prayers.

March 27, 2019

 Larry’s RV Service came by the park to troubleshoot the refrigerator and quickly found the problem.  The cooling unit over heated causing one of the lines to rupture and leaking all the ammonia out of the unit.  I didn’t see this since the leak area was covered by insulation.  Thank God we had the emergency modification installed a couple of years ago.  If not for that unit Larry said it could have been a disaster.

Joyce and I discussed our options with Larry and we decided to install a residential unit.  We made some measurements being careful to insure there would be some room for air circulation.

 We drove to Lowe’s and Home Depot but didn’t find anything that would work for us.  We then went to Sear’s and found a nice machine that will fit in the opening and gives us the features we want.  We ordered it and it will be delivered to the store on Friday or Saturday.  Now we just have to find a way to pick it up.

 That is all the good news.  The bad news s that Larry is going to fly to Dallas, TX to visit his grand children and won’t be able to get to us until next Wednesday.  So, we get to hang around the beautiful city of Las Cruces a week or so.

 More later.

Barry & Joyce