On the road with Buddy and Cally Cat too!!

I awoke to a wet morning as I prepared to leave Abilene after a great time visiting with my brother Jim and his wife Velma and Buddy had a frisky visit with their dogs, as long as he stayed in line, but that is the way that it has been with Buddy since I rescued him over twelve years ago, he is definitely not an alpha dog and is easily dominated by almost any dog, but you can’t find a more people friendly dog. Cally held down the fort or should I say the ‘Bird back at the KOA, while we had our visits, she is very content to just lay on the dash in the sun and relax, until we get back.

I headed north through on and off rain, almost all the way to Amarillo, where I stopped for fuel at the Flying J and also got to meet up with Jack and Liz Pearce and their grandson, they were on their way to Colorado in their ‘Bird, so we a had a short visit and I got to meet their cat Oreo, you can only guess what color the cat is by that name and then we were on our separate ways, they were staying in Amarillo for the night and I wanted to keep going north for a while longer. While I passed through Dumas, Texas I found out that there was a free overnight city owned RV park , so I ventured over to it and got the eighteenth out of twenty free sites left and it had free 50 amp service, so that worked out great for the night. They had a box there for donations so the next morning before we left I dropped in some $$$ for my overnight stay, this overnight parking area was located in the Texoma City Park just west of US 287 on US 87 right before the railroad tracks and it was exceptionally clean with a dump station and fresh city water to fill up your tanks with if you needed it, this is a very nice place to stay overnight and right in my budget......in other words CHEAP :o) I only heard one train come by at around 9pm and I didn’t hear anymore until about 8am the next day, so it was also very quiet while I stayed there.
Buddy and I had our morning walk on a beautiful morning around the perimeter of the park, ate some breakfast and did my walk around check of the ‘Bird and we were on our way. We had been steadily climbing in elevation from Abilene all the way up here and the ‘Bird was doing very well with a few exceptions of some long hills, but that would change as the day went on. US 287 was in poor condition in spots and very rough at times, with on area of construction that was limited to one lane only traffic for almost five miles and we waited approximately ten to fifteen minutes, for the traffic coming south to clear the lane so that our convoy of about twenty five vehicles could use the one lane going north, as soon as we cleared the construction zone I started looking for a place to pull off to get out of the convoy and found a rest area that we pulled into for about a fifteen minute break to let the traffic get by and then we were on our way, almost having the road all to our selves, until we got up over 4000 feet and then that was when I could notice a loss of power in my non-turbocharged Caterpillar 3208NA diesel engine, that only has 210 horsepower but over 600 foot pounds of torque, it may not be very fast on the hills, but it is a steady puller and some of the long steadily climbing hills over 5000 feet in elevation had me down to 30-35 mph top speed in second and third gear, but it didn’t get too hot, thanks to the fan override switch that I very seldom had to use.
I had installed a radiator mister kit to spray water onto the front of the radiator to help cool it down, but I’m finding that it makes very little difference in temperature when I use it, as it only has four jets for water flow and I believe that it needs a lot more than that to effectively get enough water onto the radiator to make a difference. The other thing is there is very little difference between where the thermostats open on a Caterpillar 3208NA at 195 degrees and where the over heating range starts at 220 degrees and on my gauge the engine normally runs at 200 degrees on a 95 degree ambient temperature day.

It does just fine running along at 60 mph once I top the hills and get on to relatively flat terrain, but it is slow going on the long hills, but I expected this to happen for the weight that the ‘Bird and enclosed trailer combined weight of 40, 160 pounds that it is trying to push down the road. My average fuel mileage so far has been 6.8 mpg and that is with the Perkins 4 cylinder diesel engine powered generator running 95% of the time, so that isn’t too bad considering things. There were very few slow traffic lanes to use, so at times I had up to six vehicles behind me, but they were very patient and as soon as they could get by I told the truckers on the radio that I would slow down even more for them to get by me, no one complained at all.

Last night I stopped at the KOA in Limon, Colorado, which is located directly behind the Flying J off of I-70, it is a very nice KOA and has great Wi-Fi unlike the one in Abilene. Tonight I hope to be at the FamCamp at FE Warren AFB near Cheyenne, Wyoming where I hope to be able to stay until next Monday. I have tried calling the famCamp but I always get a recording and when they have called me back they just leave a phone number, so we have been playing phone tag. I will be climbing in elevation up to there where it is over 6,000 feet, so I suspect that there will be more slow going in places, but time will tell, more later.