Got to sleep in until 7 am.  Woo hoo!   Greg only has 3 hours on his clock today (thanks DOT).   Looks like we will be spending most of the day in a truck stop somewhere.  

DG:  And that somewhere is Laramie, Wyoming.  Got here around 11:40 local time this morning. Local time being Mountain Standard Time which means for you folks in the East, 1:40pm.  

Nice spot with a good view of the Rockies.  Plenty of parking, showers, laundry and a restaurant.  

Got a shower, did laundry, watched some football, back in the truck for a nap, maybe a movie. 

Add another title to Annie’s already extensive list of things she does on this truck. Now she is maintenance supervisor.  Heck with supervising, she is the maintenance department.  We have two sources of heat on this truck. One is the engine of course. This works by way of the idle manager system.  Start the truck, put gears in high range, hit the cruise control button then adjust heat or cool via a thermostat control in the bunk area. What this does is allow the engine to run only when needed to cool or heat the cabin shutting the engine off when the preset temperature has been reached and then starting it again when temperature falls four degrees below or four degrees above preset temp depending on whether you want to be cool or warm.  

This method of course uses fuel. Not as much as a steady idling, but about a tenth of what you would use running down the road.  

Well, there is another, smaller control panel in the bunk area that operates another system that mostly uses the electricity from the batteries, and a little fuel, but very little, about 10% of what the idle management system uses, but we’ve never been able to get it to work properly.  Well, now that we are traveling in areas that really get cold Annie figured we ought to explore alternative methods of heating rather than using so much fuel. So we tried little 12 volt space heaters. One barely knocks of the chill. We bought one last night at the truck stop and I didn’t notice until we got back to the truck that it needs to be hardwired, no plug, so I took that one back in and got a cheaper one, but with a plug. Open it up, plug it in and wow, heat, for about a minute.  Fuse blown. Let me say something here that should be obvious to everyone but escaped my attention, if an electrical appliance blows a fuse in one outlet, it most likely will blow a fuse in the next one. Well, I had to prove it to myself. 

So I took that one back. 

So on our drive to Laramie, Annie gets on the web and finds some videos showing how our electrical heater is supposed to work and how to reset it. You can finds anything on the web. 

So the electrical heater is now working superbly thanks to my multitalented wife except for one little glitch and it may not even be a glitch, but the upper bunk lights have to be on for the heater to work. No big deal. I tell ya I don’t know how I ever made it without her. 

Annie – He is so funny.   You can find anything on YouTube these days.  

I have gotten such a kick out of Greg in this cold weather.   One would think he had grown up in Florida instead of Kentucky with the way he talks about the cold.   

This is him when we went in the truck stop.  Of course it is only 14 degrees. 

  
We took a shower and while waiting on the laundry to dry we decided to watch some football.  This is Greg watching it. 

 
And this is me.   Haha 

DG:  She’s so funny. 

Well, now it is like 4 degrees, feels like -4.  It’s the kind of cold that follows you inside and lingers for a while. Brrrrr!!!!!

Went inside for dinner. BBQ Buffett. Not bad. However, it is still cold. And even inside I could feel it waiting for me out there. Ready to cut through any protection I might feel adequate to hold it at bay. At this point it is a living entity bent on the destruction of all mankind. I really don’t like the cold. 

Back in the truck the newly discovered, working, nare before used heating system is working like a charm. Oh, it is so toasty warm inside. The monster cannot penetrate our defenses. Our barrier to its wrath holds firm. Mmmmmm…..

Annie – Getting up early so turning in. Goodnight y’all.