Readying for our return trip north was a simple matter—morning coffee, a lite breakfast, unhooking the water and electricity, bringing in the slides, retracting the jacks, and hooking up the Honda.

Everything was going just great, that is, until the auxiliary brake in the Honda locked up, and the Honda began skidding as we towed it behind us.  This happened just a half mile before the border check station. We quickly stopped, surveyed the damage—all four tires had flat spots from the skid and were ruined for practical purposes, unhooked the auxiliary brake, and took off towards Victoria, Texas, the nearest town with a tire store.  At Victoria, we checked Sam’s Club, but they did not have the right size, but a tire store across the highway did.  We debated whether we could limp to Little Rock or not, and decided to buy new tires there in Victoria.  What had happened was that the auxiliary brake works on a pendulum and when it detects a significant change in forward motion, the pendulum reacts to cause a piston attached to the brake pedal to push in.  The Honda is peculiar in that the engine must be completely shut down to remove the vacuum in the brake line, and the anti-skid feature does not work when the car is in “Accessory” position—a double whammy.  I had installed the BrakeBuddy while the car was running—another requirement is that the Honda has to be shifted through its gears and then allowed to idle for 3 minutes—there is nothing in the owner’s manuals that say to make sure the engine is complete shut down before installing the auxiliary brake.  Another lesson learned the hard way.

With new tires we continued north to Colorado Landing RV and Trailer Park in La Grange, Texas, where we stayed on our 2nd night on the trip down to the Valley.  The trees had budded since we last stayed there, but otherwise, not much had changed.  We ate dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant and it was very good.  We watched television to end the day.