The Texas RV Trip - National Museum of the Pacific War and Scarlett Breaks Down

Today we rode Scarlett over to Fredericksburg, TX, almost 80 miles away, to visit the National Museum of the Pacific War and the Admiral Chester Nimitz museum that are located there.

The ride over was in temperatures in the high 50s, much cooler than yesterday but still quite comfortable with just a fleece liner under our riding jackets.

We got there shortly before Noon to find the historic portion of the city swarming with tourists.  After we got lunch away from the downtown area, we returned to the museum and after some cruising around, found parking for Scarlett.

We found the museum to be very nicely put together but there was just too many people trying to see all the exhibits and such to make it very enjoyable to us.

Some pics from the museum:

 Scale model of a Missouri Class Battleship

 B-25 Bomber on a portion of the flight deck belonging to the Coral Sea

 USS New Mexico

 Japanese Float Plane

 Fat Man Atomic Bomb Replica

My favorite of the covers painted by Norman Rockwell

There was a whole room dedicated to his covers on the

Saturday Evening Post.

We then spent some time walking through the Admiral Nimitz Museum, no pics from the inside but here's a picture Martha took of a statue of the man standing outside:

As we were leaving town, Martha took this picture of the submarine the designers of the museum had cleverly situated so that it looked like it was surfacing from beneath the ground.  Cool.

On the outskirts of Fredericksburg, there's also the Texas Ranger Heritage Center.  We stopped briefly for the below pictures.

The ride home was almost without incident.  About five miles from the RV campground, I started noticing a sporadic new noise coming from the engine area.  As you might imagine, after so many issues with different rigs, I tend to pay attention to new noises.

This one wasn't quite metallic, to me it sounded like a cupping noise or perhaps a rubbing noise.  To Martha, once I asked her if she heard the new noise, it sounded like a strap striking a surface perhaps.  

The noise occurred whether the rig was in gear or in neutral so that eliminated the gearbox.

Nursing the engine, I hoped to make it back to the campground so I could examine things in a safe location.  We were in the middle of heavy city traffic when I first noticed the new noise.

It was not to be however.  The noise got more and more frequent though not in sync with the RPMs of the engine strangely.  That is, until the last few seconds when it suddenly turned into rapid metal clacking noises and the engine stopped.

I pulled in the clutch and we coasted to a stop at the side of the road, several cars behind us had to go into avoidance mode and luckily, no one got hit.  

Martha and I carefully maneuvered the rig down the slight hill we'd stopped on, got Scarlett rolling up another slight hill to a parking lot.

A young fellow in a pickup truck stopped and asked if I needed a ride/help.  I took him up on his offer and he took me the last 1/2 mile or so to the RV Campground's entrance.

I got Uma, the URRV, all packed up in a hurry, disconnected from shore power and city water and headed back to Martha and Scarlett.

I positioned Uma so that the slope of the parking lot's entrance way aided our pushing Scarlett onto the trailer.  We got her onto the trailer with no issues and once she was secured, we made our way back to the campground.

Feeling bummed of course.  But we still went out for a planned dinner outing with a friend of Martha's from her Army Nursing days:

iPhones really suck in low light conditions don't you think?

Here's Anne, on the left, and her family.

Needless to say, the trip is being cut short.  The plan had been for Martha to fly back to Denver on the 2nd of January but now she'll drive back with me back to Denver starting on the 31st of December.

More to follow on Scarlett once I get her back to the Ural dealer in Fort Collins, CO.