Friday the 13th … oh boy. No, I’m not superstitious, but … wake up and it’s raining. It sucks to put a pop-up away in the rain. Luckily, waiting pays off, and a bit after nine the rain almost stops, so we make hay while the sun tries to shine. By the time we get done, so is the rain, so the drive will start out dry, and hopefully stay that way. I do make one rather huge mistake – there is a brace that keeps the roof from falling on you should the cables break, and I forget to take it off. I start to lower the roof but only succeed in driving that brace about four inches into the hole the support comes out of. Not good. Drive the roof back up, but the brace is pretty firmly driven into that hole, and there’s not supposed to be room for it. It doesn’t want to come out. Great. Friday the 13th. Hmmm.

There’s a cover plate that surrounds the support, and that the brace is jammed on, and I remove it. Fortunately, this gives me JUST enough free room to slowly pry out the brace. Whew! Another crisis averted!

The drive goes well, though we see a lot of this:

Yeah, and that’s before we even leave SLC!

Some miles later, we see this:

Still cloudy … maybe there really IS something to this Friday the 13th thing.

Just before we leave Utah, I’m cruising down the highway, cruise control set at 79 mph … speed limit is 75 … up ahead on a long straightaway I see a white car on the right side of the road, just sitting there. There are three cars behind me, up close, but we’re in a no-passing zone, and I’m not about to go any faster. We get closer, and YES … it’s a cop. I tap the “Coast” button twice to slow to 77, and cross my fingers … I’m not about to do anything drastic, that’s a surefire trip to a ticket. Barri says “He’s puling out, and has his lights on … is he coming for you?” to which I reply “Well, my hope is that he’d rather nail the black Mercedes for passing in a no-passing zone”. YES! That’s what he does! He nails the Mercedes and lets me go! Whew! The 13th is lucky for me so far today, but the day is not done yet. Further East, more beautiful scenery, still in Utah:

Wow. Really spectacular. The rest of the drive is fairly uneventful, all the way to the KOA. We get set up, and one of the first things I do is paint the lower part of the brace a bright fluorescent orange – maybe that will remind me. I can only hope. All set up, go inside to wrap it up, and Barri shows me a small white cylindrical object that came out from under the slide-out. Not a good sign. Have to check that out later, see if it’s what I think – one of the rollers that supports the slide-out. Got to get it fixed, but we’ll see. Not but a few minutes after that, I get more good news – no 110 inside. All the outlets are dead … except for the one for the air conditioner. Hmmm. Well, long story short, for some reason the Ground Fault Interruptor got tripped, reset it and all is well. Whew.

Later, dinner, and watch TV. Unless we get struck by lightning or carried away by a flood, we should be golden for the rest of the day. An ok Friday the 13th.

I did forget to mention something in SLC. Look at this photo:

I can only imagine the guys at the KOA wondering among themselves: “I wonder why no one uses the hand drier, they all use paper towels”. I wonder why, indeed.