September 2023: We were so excited for our big 6 week trip to Colorado and Utah. We got out of the house smoothly and weighed the truck +/- the RV and saw that we were not overweight, but heavier than we wanted to be considering we had no water in the tank. We stayed at a Harvest Host Alpaca Farm south of Syracuse, NY, for the first night. Jordan loved the alpacas and there was a very nice sunset. A solid, great first night.
And then it happened... right after we left the text stop lunch break. We were driving along I-90 and the low coolant alarm lit up. After a quick debate about what was going on, we pulled off at the next exit where there was a repair shop. A helpful guy told us that the radiator hose had previously broken off and been epoxied back on (a big no-no in the repair world). This truck was brand new so this made no sense. Anjuli was able to find an open spot at the nearby Waterloo KOA miraculously (Labor day weekend) while Bruce was dealing with the truck. We tried to top off the coolant and limped over to the campground, with the coolant empty again by the time we arrived. We were relieved once the RV was parked since it was 90F+ and Jordan needed a nap urgently. We were thankful to have full hookups both for the A/C and to not lose our fridge full of food.
We explored every part of Waterloo that we could by bike (since we had no vehicle). We were lucky that we had the bikes and bike trailer. Our first adventure was to the Cheese factory where Jordan had her first official cheese tasting experience. We even returned again a week later. On the way back we made an important discovery... the local pizza shop. It was delicious. We returned like 5-6 more times over the course of the 10 days there.
We explored 5 different excellent playgrounds in the area. Who knew Waterloo was a hot spot for playgrounds!
Jordan caught up on some busy work of writing postcards to fans, mailing them, and changing out the battery on the door lock.
We spent a lot of time roaming the campground, which was nicer than expected. Jordan made some friends and got to check out the campground equipment. My bike was a little small for her so she stuck with the trailer.
We did our fair share of hanging out in the RV and had our first movie night.
There were two different ice cream shops within a short walk, and we checked out the Waterloo outlets. One day Anjuli drove back to her hometown which was only a couple hours away and offloaded some excess weight we didn't want to carry for the whole trip, so that was a bonus that came from the radiator mishap.
After two truck breakdowns with Bruce at the wheel, we had to get a new driver. Her record speaks for itself... 0 breakdowns while she was driving. So after 10 nights in Waterloo and 3 new radiators, our truck was finally fixed. The first 2 radiators broke in shipping which kept delaying the repair. When we got the truck back and drove back to the campground, the coolant light alarmed again and instead of freaking out, we were just defeated by this point. We called the truck shop and they reassured us and said it was probably an air bubble so we topped it off with some more coolant and it has been solid ever since. So after that additional disturbance, we were off across the country...
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