Saturday, October 12, 2013

Kept them doggies rollin’…. Rawhide!

As we have traveled almost daily, I have been trying to keep our progress posted on Google+ in my RVBudds circle. It is just too hard to always setup the computer each night (no laptop ATM) and blogging from the tablet is too hard. I may see a laptop or ChromeBook in our future instead of a second tablet.

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We have crossed from Sioux Falls, SD to Rapid City, SD, Custer, SD (Nice area), Dubois, WY, Grand Tetons National Park for a week, Yellowstone NP (Stayed in Gardiner, MT) then on to Helena, MT for a week.  Phew!  I have to ck my maps to keep it all straight.

While still in Gardiner at the north entrance to Yellowstone NP, Amazon put out another Workamper hiring notice and since we had been toying with the idea of working for one of their facilities. 

Although our long term destination is still Southern Coastal Oregon for the winter, the recent costs of new trailer tires and the electrical problems on Clifford have left us feeling the need for some supplementary income. The Amazon facility in Fernley, NV is not too far off-track so Merrily took a shot at a job. 

We really had no idea how long the process would take or if she would get the job so we decided to hang 7 in Helena. If a job came through we would head down to Fernley, NV. If not, we would head on over to the Oregon coast.  Either way, the weather (and government) has been getting too unpredictable to follow our original plans to trek up to Glacier National Park before heading to Oregon so a short holding pattern in Helena was a good chance to catch our breath, strategize our possibilities and see if Amazon was going to work out.

It did!

Our trip from Helena to Fallon, NV has been fairly direct. We swung through Dillon, MT, ARCO, ID and drove through the Craters of the Moon National Monument (closed, of course.. dumb government management style!) to Twin Falls, ID.

Yesterday, we left Twin Falls (would have liked to have stayed there a few days because there is lots to see and do in that area) and arrived in Elko, NV mid afternoon.  The Pacific TIme zone runs east/west across the northern Nevada state line so it was odd to be traveling south but setting clocks back another hour.

Here, at the Iron Horse RV Resort, the weather is very pleasant as it has been on our whole trip.  We skirted around behind one big storm as it swung around south of us headed to Denver so we have had no rain, no snow and nighttime temperatures have been above freezing for all but 2 nights.

Today, we move on the 288 miles to Fallon, NV to get setup for Merrily’s gig at Amazon in Fernley, Nevada. She still does not have a starting date but all the prelims are done but the drug test which will be on Monday.  (UPDATE:  She starts the 19th.) We got reservations in the Fallon RV park, about 22 miles from Amazon’s Center. It’s not as close as we would like but it is a lot closer than the 35+ miles to the RV parks in the Sparks and Reno areas.

Amazon just started placing workampers in this park so I think that we were fortunate to get in with no lead time. Amazon approves and pays the parks, directly, so we must stay where they will pay. We will see how it goes.  Amazon does allow folks to switch campgrounds so after we have time to spec out other choices we may have something open up, closer to work. If not, Fallon is not a deal breaker distance.  The good news is that there is a WalMart in Fallon so we are gold.

ttfn

Budd

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Things Change…

imageNorth By Northwest is a Hitchcock movie (1959) that has held a spot in my memories ever since the first time I saw it. Staged at Mount Rushmore and in the surrounding areas, its scenes are the first to leap forth whenever Mount Rushmore is brought up. Growing up in the flatlands of central Florida,  the real mountains were a dreamland of evergreens and massive views.

In 1960, my family took a “Summer Vacation”, not unlike National Lampoon’s movie. My brother, Smith, had passed early that year and Daddy had an Army reserve class to attend in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. We all needed to be together but needed a break from our reality, thus this vacation trip with him to Kansas.

We crossed the US on route 66 from Florida to Los Angeles then up through Yosemite NP to San Francisco and back across the northern route via Yellowstone and Rapid City to Ft. Leavenworth Kansas.

Our stop at Mount Rushmore was a perfect match to the North by Northwest movie scenes. image

The café where Cary Grant was shot by Eva Marie Saint, the terrace outside and those irrepressible faces.  All indelible memories tied to my life events of that time.

 

In 1966, I again visited this memorial on my drive from San Francisco to Rochester, Minnesota on business.  It was the same. All that was missing was Cary Grant.

As we have planned out this trip over the past few years, Mt Rushmore has always been a pivotal point on our route. I have even watched North By Northwest a couple of times to refresh the nostalgia. MMmmmm  good stuff!

Merrily, too, has fond memories of this place from visiting it many years ago with her parents.

Yesterday, Merrily and I finally visited Mount Rushmore together.  We both remember vividly how beautiful the surrounding mountains were with all the exposed rock and deep green trees. Our anticipation of seeing those faces was finally peaking after so many months of planning.

But as we drove over to the monument from Broken Arrow campground just south of Custer, SD, we were stunned at the vast stretches of dead ponderosa pine trees.OL3OL4 There are massive acres of standing dead for mile after mile. Some trees had obviously been killed some years ago but the majority of these dead trees still have the characteristic brown needles of freshly killed trees. We saw miles of house-size piles of cut dead trees along SD 89 in less vertical terrain.

When we moved from Boulder, Colorado in 1983 the area was beginning to show signs of this Pine Bark Beetle scourge but the vast landscapes of brown and grey trees we see here are heartbreaking. These are not the mixture of green with occasional brown tinges we remember. There is little green at all in many of these areas. Whole mountainsides are now flash kindling waiting for a lightning strike.

It was just not quite the same experience as we remembered so vividly but we pressed on following the signs to the monument and occasionally glimpsing the eternal faces when we got close to the park.

As we turned into the entrance something was definitely different! Instead of a winding narrow gravel road to the parking lot, there is now a massive row of toll booths for collecting parking fees. It looked as though we were entering the Jersey Turnpike instead of entering a favored National Monument.

Merrily audibly choked when she saw the price; $11 per vehicle and no discounts accepted.  She was ready to skip the whole thing but I could not abort my nostalgic needs over a few dollars more so we paid and tentatively entered the park.

Driving the quarter mile to the parking decks was indistinguishable from entering the parking complex at a major US airport but the signs, arrows and curves eventually got us into the multilevel concrete parking deck.

As we left the car for the parking deck elevator to the top level we carefully noted, as directed, the level number where we were parked.  Once topside, we began the very long uphill walk towards those enigmatic stone faces. A long, long walk.  I felt we were entering Disney World.

OL5Even with a sidewalk that was 20 yards wide, the myriad of folks trying to take pictures of their companions with the mountain were frustrating our progress all the way up to the visitors center.

The massive granite columns and the runway-sized sidewalk guided us as the faces slowly grew larger yet, somehow it all seemed a little different.  Any moment we just knew we would be synced with our memories when we walked out onto the viewing patio outside the café…. any moment, now….

But the massive curved building ahead was not quite right. It was sort of in the right place and similar but not what I remembered.

We walked on uphill through the center of this structure of gift shops and headed up the avenue of flags. The columns of granite containing the carved names of the states and the dates they had joined the union, looked more like monuments in a cemetery than celebratory benchmarks.

Hmmm.  Now that’s different for sure….. Here we are at the viewing area but no restaurant. Just an expansive patio of granite pavers showcasing the mountainous faces above.

We snapped pictures and wandered around trying to get our bearings eventually seeing a sign mentioning a theatre presentation. We took the elevator down to the level beneath this huge patio and as the doors opened, there was the view we had been straining to see!  The massive faces viewed through roof high glass windows!

… But it imperfectly matched our 40 year old memories. The anticipated view from the café had morphed

OL2OL1

But wait, there’s more…  2 theatres showing the carving of the mountain and an exhibit hall full of historically related artifacts and information stretched out to our left…. but no café?

As we watched the movie I struggled with this paradox of being where I expected to be and seeing what I expected to see but things were different at the same time.

As we left the theatre I chatted up a Ranger about my earlier visits, the movie and the changes since 1966. She helpfully pulled out a photo album and explained that the café, viewing patio and all the old buildings that I remembered, had been torn down.  We were, indeed, standing on that same ground I so vividly remembered but these huge granite halls had replaced those buildings in the 70s. The old facilities could not handle the millions of visitors each year but their replacement could handle Disney World quantities.

On the long walk back to the car I felt a little disappointed as I mulled over how different all of this is now.  Somewhere, somehow something was misplaced.  It was not lost as I can always watch North by Northwest, again, but it is just not what I remember and that has left me slightly unsatisfied… and $11 poorer.

The good news is that I can hang onto my parking pass and use it anytime I want all of the rest of this year…. NOT the same thing.

ttfn

Budd

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Time for a little moseying music

We are taking a few easy days as we make our way from Sioux Falls, SD to the Custer / Rapid City area, reflecting on what has happened so far and what might yet happen. Blowouts and engine problems tend to make one instinctively duck at just the thought of something unexpected happening. A few two hour driving days help settle us back into a calm confidence so we stayed the night in the Kennebec KOA and tonight will be in the Badlands KOA.

I am not a connoisseur of KOAs but they are a pretty sure thing as decent stays go and always overpriced. This one is fine for overnight but surprisingly, they have a butt load of sandspurs. Poor Katie could hardly take 4 steps without picking them up in her paws.  Merrily finally had to walk her on the other side of the highway. None over there. Who woulda thunk it?

Plans (right now) are to mosey on over to Hart Ranch Southeast of Custer for a couple of days before moving on to Big Pine Campground just west of Custer. A couple of days ago our next door neighbor, Phil, was really adamant about how nice Hart Ranch is. Since we are Coast to Coast members (have not made back our investment, yet) we could stay for $10/night w/FHU.

We had originally planned to stay there but it seemed to be farther from most of the venues than we wanted to be so we changed to the Big Pine Campground.

BTW, this is one of the drawbacks to Coast to Coast: You are limited to a reservations window of 3- 60 days before you want to stay. This plays hob with a spontaneous camping style ie. “Where shall we stay, tonight”. Most C2C parks won’t accept walk-ins by members.

There is a lot to see around the area besides the Mount Rushmore monument so we are planning to see the Crazy Horse Memorial (at least as much as has been finished), Custer State Park, maybe the Rushmore Caves, and  long time friends we have never met, Mike and Pat McFall who live in the area.

More as we progress.

ttfn

Budd

Friday, August 30, 2013

Trying for some perspective

The events of our journey towards the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Northwest Coast have really stirred our mettle. Though the tire blowouts in Tennessee and Iowa had been anticipated, they were not expected. The technical issues that Clifford has struggled with had also been foreseen but were not really expected to  become a problem.  They were just a few of the many, many “what-ifs” we considered in our planning.

Since leaving ST Augustine, Florida May 18th, 2013, we have experienced a really wide scope of emotions and situations that have upped our game of presence and purpose.

We found our extended time spent with close familyPhoto in Florida had given us irreplaceable joy and contentment so the personal power it has taken for us to leave that comfort zone to venture west to flesh out a life long dream has both surprised and empowered us to continue. 

 

It all began in the early 1990s in our growing awareness that economically, our retirement years could never fulfill the expectations being promised for decades by economic prognosticators and pundits. Our chances of living the promised life were less likely than our winning a lottery.

The short story is that as we studied this and sought solutions it became clear that there was no scenario that would let us stay in the home we had bought to raise a family and live out our years.

The inescapable conclusion was that we would not even be able to afford to live anywhere near Raleigh, NC after retirement. We realized that downsizing was inevitable and to do it without financial and emotional whiplash was going to take a lot of time and planning.  Eventually, it was obvious that we needed a means of transitioning between a work a day family life and our end stage lifestyle.

We both had always loved to travel in the western US and wanted to see a lot of the Pacific Northwest and east to the Rocky Mountains.

Clearly, our transition solution was going to be a lifestyle of living in an RV of some sort and using it as a home to search out our Shangri-La.

We formally engaged this plan in 1998 to transition from a full family middle life existence through a rescaling lifestyle of travel and eventually find a suitable end-life settlement.  Through that process, we expected to live an extended self contained life in a recreational vehicle and to that end we began the search for a suitable RV and vehicle to tow it with.

In November 2003 we found our prize, a 40’ King of the Road Crown Marquis fifth wheel trailer in Stillwater, OK. We eventually named it DaKotR because we got tired of saying “I’m going out to the King of the Road” ( aka Da-KOTR.)

That purchase decision took nearly 6 years of studying everything we could find on full time life in an RV and which vehicles were more compatible to that lifestyle. Much of that time was spent virtually “living” in any RV we could find at RV shows, on RV dealer’s lots and online. The hours and days we spent paid off and we have been very pleased with DaKotR and we have been very comfortable living in it for the past 6 years.

Now, our Steel Steed, the 1999 Volvo truck (Clifford) was also the result of a number of years of studying forums, websites and dealers. I even spent 8 weeks in July/August 2004 in the North Carolina Truck Driver Training School in Smithfield, NC to become a Certified Professional Driver. I wanted to develop the skillset, knowledge and muscle memory necessary to safely and confidently handle whatever vehicle we would find necessary to tow DaKotR. 

Believing the used truck salesmen motto, “A 1 ton dually can pull any RV on earth” we bought a 1999 Ford F350 CrewCab 4x4 dually. It was a great truck but after pulling a half a dozen different 5th wheel trailers weighing 10,000 to 16,000 lbs it was a no brainer when we dropped DakotR onto it in Tunica, MS to pull it back to Raleigh, that this just was not enough truck, period.

But, a year later it was a love fest when we found Clifford in West Memphis, AR in November 2004. He is a handsome brute with only 562,000 miles on him and all the recommended maintenance and parts replacements had already been done to him.  He was definitely a gem to score.

Our original expectations in 1998 had included using the truck as a daily driver but as the costs of diesel fuel kept rising that became a fading hope. We had to have something to run around in wherever we stopped that would be comfortable, cost effective and not too large to wander small byways and trails. 

At that time, quite a few Full Time RVers were double towing (pulling a small car or Jeep behind their 5th wheel trailer). This seemed to be an efficient solution but it was always a very risky scenario to me. The previous owner of DaKotR had done it so I was sure that DaKotR could handle it. We seriously considered it for along time, but this never developed into a palatable solution for us.

Finally, along came Smart cars!  They were only 98” long which was short enough fit crosswise on a bed between the cab of the truck and the front of the towed 5th wheel Trailer.  I just had to find a way get it up and down from there. 

PhotoA few other RVers also caught this idea and built a variety of mechanical platforms to ease the process of winching a Smart car up onto the bed. However, we chose to design a bed and a system using a couple of ramps that would allow loading and unloading from either side without winches, extraneous mechanics or hydraulic lifts.

Finishing this bed in 2009 gave us this solution and it completed the construction of our caravan. All that was left to do the logistics of planning and initiating the start of our quest. 

The obvious similarities of our efforts to those of many of the pioneers and settlers of the western United States are clear. They had to think about what they wanted to do. Think about what they would have to be prepared for and plan their journeys with a strong focus on contingencies for the unexpected. Making the end goal for their journeys set a direction for their travels but their contingency planning is what defined their benchmarks and way stations along the way.

Today, as I sit and relate life to this point, the parallels that pop out at me are even more personal. Each time one of these unexpected events have happened, there has been a small sense of very old déjà vu as though somewhere, sometime in the past this same event happened but just involved different technologies.  Instead of a horse throwing a shoe our cargo carrier on the back of the trailer fell apart.  Instead of a broken wagon wheel, we blew a tire… and then another.

Instead of a horse coming up lame or with colic, Clifford had a loose pin on a connector to his engine computer.  For some of the pioneers, their events could have been show stoppers  They certainly felt like they might be to me as they happened to us along the way.

Last Sunday as we limped the excruciatingly long slow 2 miles to the Sioux Falls KOA in a broken Clifford, I was suddenly starkly aware of the similarity to events our ancestors may have experienced  in this same place many decades ago.  On impulse I proposed this similarity to Merrily with the question; “I wonder what the settlers would have said if their team of horses suddenly died here?”  She shot right back with, “We’re HOME!”

So now, Emery, South Dakota is officially our home base… for now…

ttfn

Budd

Thursday, August 29, 2013

In a Holding pattern

Today we became official South Dakota residents!  Got our home address at MyHomeAddressinc.com in Emery, SD, became registered SD voters and swapped our North Carolina CDLs for South Dakota’s versions in Mitchell, SD. home of the world famous Corn Palace.

This was a really big benchmark for us to reach.

But, we are still in the Sioux Falls, South Dakota KOA. It has  Killer Wi-Fi  (6 Megabit download rates) and this has really helped us work out a lot of the unexpected kinks. However, it is really hot (90s – 100) in the whole area so it is not as much fun as it could be.

Clifford is still in the shop with his electrical problems.  It is unlikely that they will have him working before next week so we are here over the Labor Day Weekend. This will give us some “free” time to focus on a lot of little things we have been putting off for months while getting ready for this trip.

A lot of “stuffed here and there” paperwork that needs to be handled and filed properly and a few RV things to fix. We are comfortable, cool and happy despite the frustrations and apprehensions about Clifford’s ailments and the eventual costs to put him right. Things happen and there’s no point getting all twisted up about it. Just take care of business and make the most of the unexpected opportunities that have come with these things.

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One of these has been a visit to the Falls Park in downtown Sioux Falls.  It was quite hot when we went there and I was not expecting much besides rocks and water but it is really beautiful and a very pleasant place. Although they do have formal sidewalks and a pedestrian bridge crossing the river, it is all open spaces to sit, wander or play in.  Very pleasant experience. Of course, temperatures in the 70s and 80s would definitely be nicer.Photo

Monday, August 26, 2013

Clifford’s got the Colic…

Clifford is now waiting for a mechanic at the Sioux Falls, SD Kenworth/Volvo dealer. My steel steed has a bit of colic and is not doing so well.  

He went to the Volvo shop in Champaign, IL to have a few things checked out and an estimate for doing the work and to get the A/C fixed. When I paid and got the keys, he was really sick. Would not shift. Gave me error lights about the brakes and other things and really balked at the bit.

I shut him off, took the keys back to the service desk and left it there for 3 days (over a weekend+) and when I came to get him back, they said he needed a new transmission computer…. gulp!!! A heart lung transplant would have seemed a less drastic prognosis.

Anyway, I haggled down the $700+ bill and left. He was working just fine after that.  We left Champaign for points west.

Blew the tire near Newton, IA and got those replaced per previous blog and then on to Des Moines and finally to Onawa, IA for  a 3 day rest. The 2 hour drive from Onawa to Sioux Falls, SD was easy and pleasant and things were fine until we pulled into the FlyingJ to refuel and hit a horrendous DIP entering their driveway.

Shook him to his teeth.. and us, too.  Ever since then, he has struggled against the bit and balked at everything.

Poor Clifford.  I can sort of manually shift from gear to gear with the buttons but it is not a reliable way to go far. 

Fortunately, we were about 3 miles from the Sioux Falls, SD KOA and that is 4 blocks from the Volvo Service center.. God works in mysterious ways, doesn’t he?

I guess for some reason we are supposed to spend some time here.  Interestingly, I have had all my bills handled for the past 20 years by Paytrust, a Sioux Falls, SD company. What are the odds?

ttfn

Budd

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

KA-Bloooooo ieeeee !!!!!

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Ok, so I knew the Trailer tires might be iffy but I pressed on, anyway.  Should have just changed the whole set while sitting for a month just a block from a good tire dealer in Champaign, IL.

Sometimes I am just too tight for my own good.

Heck, I really can't complain, though. These BF Goodrich LT235/85 - R16 tires were made in 2006. 7 years for an RV tire with virtually 100% tread left is still pushing it. No cracking or glazing. No UV damage but sitting loaded for many months at a time and then traveling 500+ miles to sit again, is very hard on the best of tires.

I have to say that I am very impressed with these tires. That age and those circumstances and the other two still hung in there very overloaded.  Having now lost one tire on each side on the highway has pretty much guaranteed that the remaining tires, no matter how good they were, aren't anymore.

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I can see a very slight linear crack parallel to the tread on the sidewall of the tire right behind the last blowout, indicating that the sidewall has really been overstretched and the surface rubber has separated. Had we not stopped when we did I am sure that I would have lost that tire, too, in a few more miles.

A Couple of things I have been monitoring were pressures and temperatures.  IMG_20130821_143634Using my Infrared digital thermometer with real time readout, I immediately  checked each tire's temperature around the sidewall and along the sidewall around the tread seam. Each of these older tires have warm spots that varied 6 degrees or less from the rest of the casing once they had been rolling awhile.

On a 93 degree day the typical sidewall temps were 115 - 119. Hotspots were 121 - 125. The tread temps were running more like 125 - 132 with the higher numbers on specific tires and at hotspots but most of the tread temps were pretty even from tire to tire.

I run 80psi cold in them all. That is the max pressure for these tires and since they have been scaled at 90% of their max rating, this is the right pressure according to the manufacturer’s load/pressure/speed tables.

The good news is that I found a local tire dealer, Magnum Automotive in Newton, Iowa, that can get me 6 new tires by tomorrow and at a better installed price than Sam's Club. I am all for that.

I won’t tell you it was fun changing that blown tire but fortunately, I discovered it in a rest area and it was on the shady side of the trailer. Doing it in 95 degrees in the shade on hot concrete is not a recreational activity but it is part of the journey. I had just checked the tires less than 50 miles before and all was well so that tire had blown awhile back.  After I stopped in the rest area, a guy came up and said he had tried to get my attention quite a ways back, so it blew out way back there. The stresses on the tire could have been exacerbated by the strong cross wind from the driver’s side which added additional loading on the curb side tires. I Just don’t know for sure.

Other than cost (pay me now or pay me later, thing) it only delays us a day which we are trying to lose a few, anyway, so we don’t hit Jackson Hole, Wyoming before Labor Day. yes, it could have been much worse. We could have been in the wilds of Montana in 100 degree heat and many miles to anything that could help… but it didn’t… this time so maybe this was close enough that I won’t let the risk get so high ever again.  

I do really try to stay aware of the risk factors and keep ahead of them but I sometimes have other problems too, that whispers sweet nothings in my ear to distract my attention from the risks of reality.  I think it looks a lot like that old Ben Gay Gremlin:

Cory Doctorow at 7:58 am Tue, Nov 15, 2011 •

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The Kellogg RV Park is a pleasant place other than the road noise (upwind of us to the south). Level spots, a few trees for smaller rigs and good water/power/sewer for $20/night – Good Sam’s price.  The tire dealer is about 9 miles away so when he calls we should be able to get over there fairly quickly in the morning.

Yaay!  He called about 3:30pm and has the tires and verified the dates: last week in 2012. Not as current as I would like but current enough.  We will get them installed in the morning and then head on out.

ttfn

Budd

Monday, August 12, 2013

A Prairie Schooner is more than a wagon

imageAs we prepare to launch towards the great continental divide I am frequently reminded of the pioneering settlers of America. They had not been there and done that but each was surely waking each morning stressing but excited about the unknown prospects that lay before them.

They were also probably sore from using muscles that many did not know they had before beginning these preparations. Everyone from outlaws to accountants and farmers to financiers had to do a lot of very physical, mental and emotional activities to get “on the road”.  This has been no less true for us and we count the last few days before “D”eparture day!  Each is filled with “Did you fix xyz?” “Have you filled abc?”  “Where are my glasses?”

We have been planning and working towards this “D” day since the late 1990s…. and perhaps even longer than that.  It has been an individual dream of ours much of our lives. When we actually made the decision to choose the Full-Time RVing lifestyle as a transition to our ultimate retirement life we knew very little about it other than our mutually and frequently expressed love of the Great Northwest and the mountains.image  Heck, we got married in Boulder, Colorado in 1979 and spent our honeymoon in the Tetons around Jackson Hole, Wyoming. One does not get much more of a Rocky Mountain high than that.

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Here, in Champaign, Illinois, not many miles from great jump off points of the pioneers, like Nauvoo, IL and St Louis, MO we see the wide western horizon, incredible sunsets and feel the tug of the unknown journey ahead of us.

Are we scared?  Sure!  Are we excited? Certainly but we are also humbled when we think what it must have been like for all those pioneers and settlers that went from the conceptual security of a fixed community of family, friends and convenience to launch into a vast and unknown life with little more than a wagon load of hopes and dreams.

I have to wonder, how many of them worried about the technical aspects of their wagons, the welfare and maintenance of their horses and their own personal safety?  I am sure they had heard many stories about possible attacks from Indians and outlaws and the threat of an early winter had to always be hanging over their preparations.  Should I wait until next year and get an earlier start?  Should I bring warmer clothes? Will I need a gun, … a toothbrush? 

imageWhatever their choices, their solutions had to fit in a rough riding, weather permeable wooden box on wheels or on a horse or mule’s back. No matter how poor they may have been each surely had a lot more precious property than it was wise to try to bring with them.

DSC01234We have been living in our “Prairie Schooner”, DaKotR, for the past 7 years. It has been wonderful and has rarely been too small. Granted, much of that time was in our own back yard of our Sticks and Bricks house, but still, it has been a real pleasure to have the convenience of  our essentials at our fingertips while living year round in comfort. (Honestly, it does not look like this all the time.)

We have had a lot of practice for this journey. Few of the pioneers had more than a few months to prepare and I will tell you that it is not a simple or straightforward cookbook process.  Even with the experiences of hundreds that have gone before and have been expressed in their many books and Internet forums and blogs, it is not an easy process.

Refining our own check lists from those of many others was the easy part. Understanding how important or frivolous each line item would become, not so much.  Even with our years of experience living in our future environment there has been a huge amount of angst about the journey to come.

We know that we don’t know it all and that there will be a lot of unexpected cost and inconvenience… but we are committed to this journey. Our checklists have become part of us and our intended destinations are our bucket list.

ttfn

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Frazzled but delighted!

A bit of a gap from my Raleigh post in May. In my defense, I have been too sweaty, wet from rain, tired and in a lot of bone deep pain to make much sense in print.

 

Ever since we got to Raleigh I have been fixing and tweaking items and issues on our rig. Time does take a toll and my list of work and changes had gotten quite long.  Worse, most of these items were outside. Things like fixing roof issues including putting Eternabond tapePhoto on the end cap seams and skylight, take a lot of outside physical effort and time.

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PhotoPhoto   In the Raleigh summer climate this might as well be in Haiti. One is going to be perpetually soaked from the effort of just thinking but adding actual physical activity turns one quickly into mushroom fodder.

Most of the major items did get done in Raleigh but summer time was leaking away and we were already very late getting there from Florida. Our plans included a visit to Champaign, IL to see our youngest son, Randy, and wife, Shawna. From there we would go on west to the Rocky Mountains, Glacier National Park and other parts of the Pacific Northwest before settling in Port Orford, OR for the coming winter…. That was the plan.

We are still in the plan but somewhat skewed in time as we have just arrived in Champaign, IL.  Between Raleigh and here was a stop to see daughter Carol Ann near Charlotte, NC.  Her recent job change now has her living and working in that area and she is still in the settling-in process so we really wanted to be a part of this event in her life.

IMG_20130714_174210-MIXWe took her out for lobster on her birthday and it was really great to see her so happy and adjusting so well to a totally new environment, life circumstance and job.  I can now move on and not feel that I am leaving something unfinished or unsupported.  She is productively engaged in being her own person and she and Samantha have some excellent times coming.

We stayed in the Cross Country Campground in Denver, NC while visiting them. It is on the north end of Lake Norman, west of Mooresville, NC and although it is listed as Denver, NC it is actually in Sherrill's Ford, NC.  I mention this because the Butcher Boy Buffet is an excellent place to get a nice all you can eat meal for a reasonable price and it is right across the street from the campground. The campground was ok but not great. The weekly pull through sites are near the highway (NC 150) and while it is not terribly busy there are a lot of motorcycles and loud cars on it. After all, this is NASCAR racing country.

Our move from there to Champaign took us through Raccoon Valley Escapees RV Park in Heiskell, TN for 1 night (that was enough) and then on to Mammoth Caves area of Kentucky. 20 miles out of Raccoon Valley I blew a tire on the trailer. It was shredded completely!  Fortunately, nothing was really damaged but the Tennessee mountains are not great cell phone areas so it took a few hours on a Sunday morning to get Good Sam’s  Emergency Road Service guys to me and swap in my spare.  Yesterday, I just got the blown tire replaced but still have to remount it on the trailer before we leave.

Our trip was planned to next go to Campbellsville, KY to checkout the Amazon fulfillment center and campground for a day then on to Mammoth Caves but I tore something in my calf muscle wrestling with the blowout situation and was just not up for walking. We just skipped Amazon and landed in the Singing Hills Campground in Cave City, KY for a night before moving on to Champaign.

PhotoThe Air Conditioner in the Truck is on the fritz and though I had put some Freon into it before leaving Raleigh, we have not had it working to this point.  A good note here is that the weather has been very, very non-typical for the southeast and with the exception of a couple of hours on the way to Cave City the drive has been very pleasant with the windows open.

I don’t expect this good weather fortune to last so I really do have to get that A/C fixed before we leave here.

 

We are now in the D&W Lake Campground and RV park in Champaign, IL and it is wonderful!  A little pricy but worth it for its location to both our kids and our suppliers of food and materials (restaurants, Home Depot, Aldi, etc). The sites are quite level, gravel and the grass is well maintained. It’s on a great little stocked lake, too.  Just hard to imagine all this in the middle of Illinois. The owner’s live onsite and are really great, too. They bent over backwards to accommodate our unexpected arrival to stay for a month.Photo

This is pretty much the view we have from our site.We will be here for a few more weeks as I finish up the gotta-do’s before heading on westward to the Rockys.  I have a few slideout issues that I may stop by the factory repair center in Grand Island, NE to get fixed… if it’s not too expensive.

Beyond that, I’ll let you know.

ttfn

Budd

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Back to Raleigh for a moment in time.

This issue is dedicated to Merrily’s friend, Judy, who is, as far as I know, my only confirmed reader.  Sure, the stats say others are looking at it but so far, almost the only comments that I have ever gotten were from spammers.

Oh well, it Is a good thing I am neither motivated nor deterred by the acceptance of others. That does not mean that readers don’t have to hold up their end, too, and occasionally leave a comment.  Would it hurt?

As for us, we are still in Raleigh, getting Dr. Appointments out of the way, doing a few repairs and replacements, restocking some things hard to find on the road, like Smithfield’s Chicken and Barbecue (SCNB for short) BBQ sauce.  Nothing really like it anywhere else, so far.

Emery and Christi have really got the house looking terrific with flowers, retaining walls, grass and a general “neatness” about the place it has lacked for years under our management.  Way to GO, GUys!

Big deer in the backyard today, just looking out the big rear window to my right, a slight movement brought my attention to bear on a huge doe (for around here). Must have been at least 55” to the shoulder.  In the past, we have often seen two or three, sometimes with young ones, grazing but this is the first one I have seen since we got back on 5/18.  They really come out once the acorns start falling.

I really love being able to deposit my checks through my Cell Phone. I just run the Android app, take a picture of the front and then the back of the check, type in the amount, pick the account and Shazam! it is in the bank!  This is really handy for those occasional checks we get in the occasional  packages of forwarded mail. So far, only 1 check could not be deposited this way and it was due to the amount. We just found a co-op bank where we were and made it through them.

All other banking is done electronically including billpay. I use Quicken and do all paying through PayTrust. Really simplifies our life to have it all handled automatically for $12/month. Well worth it to us.

As soon as we get the rest of these little bothers caught up, we are off to see Randy and Shawna in Illinois.  Although they are right in the middle of tornado alley and many of the really severe storms that have gone through Oklahoma City and Kansas City have zoomed in on them, too, they have all dissipated by the time they got to the Champaign area… at least, so far.  They did spend a few hours last week in the small center bathroom with 2 dogs and 2 cats. No one had fun that night.

Back to the work at hand.

ttfn

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Bloggers block is often about what not to say

I find I often struggle to put content in these blogs and not for the reason one usually thinks.   I have a desire and content to post but the content I can afford to allow into the public eye may be too hard to work around.

For instance, if we have been involved in detailed struggles with an entity and I post about it, I may skewer my future choices if things go sideways.  Once it is over, I may still not want to put it all out there, just in case it comes back on me at a later time.

Sure, I suppose I could rattle on about not sleeping last night, getting up, doing the bathroom dance, eating breakfast (when I do), etc. but those are pretty much what everyone does in their own way… boring stuff.

When we have life happen around us that involves other people I am also hesitant to get into much detail. While I want to be personally connected with friends and family, I don’t want much public access to those relationships.   Again, someone may get hurt and it might turn out that it was me that threw the damaging stones with my view or attitude.

So finding palatable content that is not hum-drum daily fodder for most people, whether they are RVers or not, is not such an easy thing to grab and use.  Sometimes it is just not possible to even mention it.

Any suggestions from you folks are certainly welcome.  If you find some of my content interesting (that does not necessarily mean that you like it) please let me know.  It really should help the progress.

ttfn

Budd

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Aha! They are moved!

Merrily’s brother and wife have been trying to get downsized from a rental house to a more affordable (and more convenient) apartment.  With ongoing struggles with neuropathy and the big “C”,  they have both needed a level playing field. Unfortunately, these struggles have also limited their individual physical abilities to actually “do the moving”. 

A bad fall and a broken arm has made even just packing up boxes pretty impossible for Bette.  We have been “supplementing” their manual skills for the past several weeks and they are now moved in at their new diggs.  Settled in???  Not quite but the boxes are slowly disappearing so it should not be too much longer before they will be.

As for other stuff of the day…  The 8” convex mirrors mounted on Clifford’s fenders have long been frozen in a poorly adjusted position and are not repairable so I bought 2 replacements from TA for about $13@.  Merrily and I depend on those a lot and neither one was aiming much where we needed to see.

I still need to fix the kitchen slide out.  The tree that the tornado 2 years ago knocked down on it did no obvious damage but now it appears that it punched the support roller up into the floor. This causes the slide to drag so I need to fix that. I figure a 12” plate of 16 gauge steel should make a decent surface to support the weight on that roller.

I actually washed the Smart car day before yesterday.  We had a rare 3 days of Off/on rain with reasonable air temperatures so I washed the truck, RV and the Smart in the rain with Simple green.  It goes much faster this way, uses a lot less spigot water to rinse and keeps me cooler while doing the work.

As previously mentioned, our plans for the summer include going to the great Pacific Northwest. To this end I have been building travel scenarios to compare various routes and costs. It is a work in progress but so far, it looks like our best plan is to get to the “banana belt” of the southern Oregon coast, find a place to spend the coming winter and then just explore whatever is within reasonable. 

Next spring we should be in a great jumping off spot to start exploring to BC and Seattle to the Rocky mountains until the following winter.

Meanwhile, I still have a few chores here, so TTFN.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Time Warp–I feel like I am on Fringe

So much for last year's resolutions.... A whole year has disappeared and it’s time for another update.  Honestly, I really meant to keep up with this. … Maybe starting now, I will.
 
First, a little history:
 
  • The 2.8cm (that’s 1.1 inches to Americans) football shaped kidney stone I had a year ago is history.. if you wondered.  it was plugging the outflow of my right kidney and threatening to shut down the kidney if it completely blocked it off for more than a few hours. Just one lithotripsy, though, and it was gone.  The only bad side of it was that it apparently contained Enterococcus Faecalis, a really nasty antibiotic resistant bug which put me into the hospital for 5 days. Once busted up by the lithotripsy the bugs went wild and really buggered up my life. I have to give big Kudos to Flagler Hospital and its doctors for their effectiveness in finding and eliminating this threat to my life. Had this happened out in the vast expanses of the great NorthWest I could not have survived. The slow recovery took a number of weeks but I am back and better than ever.
  • We went back to Raleigh in September for a few weeks. We needed a "kids fix" and despite a really major effort by Emery and Christi, we still had a lot of unfinished "basement" stuff to deal with.  After more than 2 years of research and procrastination we hired Blue Moon Estate Sales to get rid of it. They took 35% of the gross as commission but it was well worth it as an auction would have taken 50%. We got more than we had hoped for by a large margin.
  • Emery and Christi are doing well and have made really great improvements to the house and yard.

    As I write this, they are building a nice retaining wall along the driveway to finish up the major exterior home improvements. They have repainted the whole house and we love what they have done with the place.  Work has really picked up for Emery since the middle of 2012 so he is staying very busy and we appreciate every moment of time and effort he and Christi spend to maintain the house.
  • Randy and Shawna have moved from Raleigh. Randy got a job offer from Volition Software in Champaign, IL and started there December 2012. Although he was never unhappy at Red Storm Entertainment he felt he needed a broader industry experience base for his career growth. So far, it has been a very positive move for him.
  • Katie-the-Poo is doing great, seems happy and her seizures are averaging about one per 50 days. The Zonisamide Seems to keep a good balance without making her a zombie or hyper. Usually one per day is enough.  
  • We are still living in the Stagecoach RV Park in St Augustine, FL and loving it. The weather has consistently been milder (year round) than anywhere north, west or south of us.
  • Merrily's Brother and his wife are doing well, just completed a downsizing move of their own and her cancer seems to be controlled.  It will take 3 clear PET scans that show no sign of any latent cancer before they will say she is in remission but she has had 2 in a row so maybe by her birthday in July, she will have great news and can finally move on.
  • Last summer, while in Raleigh, we traded our 2009 Smart Car for a lease on a 2013. Though nothing was wrong with the 2009 the warranty was gone and it had 46,000 miles on it so all maintenance was going to be on us.  The 2013 rides better, shifts smoother and has a 4 year / 50,000 mile warranty by Mercedes so this is a significant comfort factor for us.  Our monthly payments also dropped $115 and it is identically equipped to our 2009... plus Cruise control!!!! That is  a real biggie to us.
  • Carol has gotten a big boost at work and is very excited. It will involve a move from Raleigh to Charlotte, NC, and since Samantha is just graduating to Middle school the timing is very good. Other than being very, very busy, their lives have settled down enormously in the house they are currently renting. I know another move will be a lot of work but it sure sounds like it will be really worth the effort to make it happen.
  • Smith has now become a member of the million mile club. He is rolling 1 million miles of over the road professional driving for TransAm Trucking. He still loves the work, has stayed employed and now is getting good miles every week so he has paid off all his debts.  He is looking forward to actually having a little money to spend on some electives.... after they get the roof on their home fixed.
Moving forward: We are preparing to head out for the Pacific NorthWest in about a month. We will stop in Raleigh for a week or so then pause in Champaign to see Randy and Shawna before heading straight for the Rocky's.
 
Our plans are pretty loose but basically involve seeing Glacier National Park and points west. Just how far we can go and how much we can see will depend on how much good weather we have left this year as well as how the money flows. Obviously, the cost of fuel is a huge factor and since we have some interest in spending a few years out that way we need a place to winter in the RV without driving all the way back to Florida or even the Texas coast.  We have been looking at the southern Oregon Coastal area, sometimes called the banana belt, as an area that should be mild enough. According to Sperlings Best Places to live, it appears to have about 30% less winter overcast and rain than even 100 miles farther north.  This we will play by ear depending on how our summer goes.

Merrily has a cracked molar and is getting a crown in a few weeks. I also need to fix 2 slideouts that are dragging / hanging up. I need to put in a new Fuel Temperature sensor on Clifford, too. Once these niggling little annoyances get cleared, we are gone for awhile....  Hopefully, I can get all of these cleared up while we are in Raleigh.
ttfn