We had been visiting with my family in Iowa for 6 weeks, so it was hard to say goodbye. As we were leaving, my dad hugged me close and said “I love you. Now go have some GREAT adventures!”. My mom got teary-eyed, but knew that we will be returning soon.
We say our final goodbyes and shut the door. As we are pulling away, I continued to snap photos of my family waving and being silly. A few blocks away, I remembered that I had left my brand new Klean Kanteen water bottle (I lost my old one! Grrrrr…) on the counter in the kitchen. I call my mom and she meets us in the Wal-Mart parking lot so we don’t have to maneuver the city streets again. Moms are the best.
About ½ hour out, we stop at the rest stop to dump our tanks for the first time. It went well. If you’ve seen the movie, RV, you know that much can go wrong. Matt was a pro.
However, after an outside inspection, we realized that the brake lights that attach to our car (that we were towing) had stopped working again. Matt was having trouble with them back in Des Moines, but we thought they were fixed.
I took advantage of the free wi-fi at the rest stop while he worked diligently on them in the dark. We thought about just staying until morning, but unfortunately, we were in a position where we couldn’t back up and park. We could only pull forward onto the interstate or stay right there at the dumping station.
Matt finally figured out the problem with the brake lights. He came in, started the engine, and discovered that the dash lights were now off. It turns out that we could have either/or, but not both. Hmmmmm. He went back out and then saw that nothing was working again. He finally got everything working and we set off. About ½ hour down the road…we were too tired to continue. So we ended up staying overnight at the next rest area and waking up early the next morning to continue.