Thomas & Deborah - On the Road!

Thursday July 28

Hi again. We're Thomas and Deborah and we're on our way to Manitowoc, Wisconsin in a 2006 Monaco Executive. Please see our first blog for an introduction. More about us later, but we've completed our first full day on the road. The 550 miles today added to the 240 we covered Wednesday evening puts us in Green River, Utah. It's been a leisurely pace. Beautiful scenery, beautiful drive.

We've delivered coaches about 10 times for Curt and Paul Evert's RV Country and part of the fun is learning each coach and its accouterments. I've grown to appreciate many, like the interactive cruise control, or Smartcruise. It matches the speed of the vehicle in front of you. I wouldn't leave it on all the time because it can get confused, but on a two-lane road, when we couldn't pass for many miles, it perfectly matched the pace of the truck in front of us and I sat back and enjoyed the ride. It would be awesome if you were traveling with someone; you wouldn't have to keep adjusting your cruise to match theirs.

Another of my favorites is the HWH Computerized Leveling system. Press a button and the air suspension does the rest in seconds--flawlessly.

But my all time, can't-live-without option is the Aladdin. It's just what a former truck driver techno-geek loves. This system gathers information from everywhere and delivers it to the video screen by the steering wheel: temperatures, transmission performance, power output, cruise control set points, speed, tank levels, even compass heading. It has answers to a thousand questions.

Regardless of what we're driving, however, a road trip is a wondrous way to suspend time. We've been gone a little over 24 hours and already feel we've been on vacation for weeks. Travel; it makes life last longer, in a good way.