Bittersweet

The new owners of our fifth wheel and truck flew in to town on Wednesday, spent the night in the trailer and had hitched up before we could make it over to help in the morning.  John and Carol were anxious, nervous and excited about heading out on the road to work their way back to Massachusetts.  Denny and I gave them a couple of last minute pointers, sprayed some silicon on the jacks which had been sitting in one place in the heat for two months after which I did my final walk around (old habits are hard to break) and then we waved as the happy new owners pulled out of the campground.

John and Carol aren't new to camping or rving, nor are they even new to us; we first met this wonderful couple in 2011.  The two of them had flown down a month ago to look at the rig again and assure themselves that they still wanted to purchase the combo of truck and rig and Denny and I showed them around The Villages while they were here.  When they flew back home a couple of days later, it was agreed that a smiling John and Carol would be the new owners of the The Beast and Black Beauty.

And so I've reached the final post in this eighth year of blogging.  One more and it would have been post 1998--the year we started our fulltime journey.  But that's okay--I've never liked things all neat and tidy anyway.  I've created a new blog but I have a sneaking suspicion that I won't be writing many posts for a while because I'm just a bit burned out on blogging.  We're still making the transition from rather irresponsible RVers to responsible homeowners (being a grown up isn't all that's it's cracked up to be) and realizing how in so many ways life on the road is easier.  But Denny and I are working on settling in and creating a new lifestyle here--heck, I've even gotten Denny to agree to a 7 AM tee time in order to beat the heat and that's quite a sacrifice on his part since 7 AM is normally about the time he's rolling out of bed.  Hee. Life is still good, it's just different and that's just fine with us.

Happy trails to those of you on the road.

The End

Hanging Up the Keys

Well, we've done it.  Denny and I have signed a contract to purchase a dollhouse in The Villages.

To many people the house that we are buying would be very small but after living in a RV for fifteen years we think it will be very comfortable and cozy with room to stretch our legs, which is kind of a big thing.

I have to admit, The Villages is not a place we would have thought to check out if it hadn't been for our friends Don and Vicki.  I remember years ago my parents requested information on the development but never came down to Florida to check it out.  I had always envisioned living by the beach or near the mountains when we finally settled down but after seeing all the healthy, active and youthful seniors here Denny and I decided that this would be a good place for us.  You see, we both have a family history of dementia and we wanted a place where both our minds and bodies would have the opportunity for stimulation and with 32 free nine hole executive golf courses on the grounds along with 2,000 clubs of various interests, swimming pools and rec centers in every village (plat) and plenty of walking/biking/golf cart trails we should be able to stay active.  

Originally we had given ourselves this final year to travel but housing prices are going back up as are mortgage interest rates so making a decision to purchase now seemed wise.  In addition, The Villages will stop building new homes within the next two years so home prices will only continue to rise.  Thus our decision (for once) was not a gut reaction but a logical one and boy is that weird for us!  That actually made it harder because Denny and I do go with our instincts and we had to sit down and discus all the pros and cons of this area versus what our dream location had been.  Because you see, at this point we won't be able to keep Black Beauty and The Beast so we won't be traveling for a while.  And that is a bit difficult to wrap our minds around.

So next month we'll be homeowners once again.  However I can assure you that at some point, the RV Vagabonds will hit the road for at least some part time travel on a much scaled down level.  Because we're still curious as to what is around that next bend in the road.

 

An Unexpected Bit of Treasure

The road from Reno, Nevada to Las Vegas, Nevada is long, mostly straight and occasionally hilly.  For Denny and I, it's way too far to drive in one trip so I chose the small town of Tonopah as our kinda halfway stopping off point.  The local chain hotel provides a few slot machines and about 20 full hook up RV sites in the rear at a reasonable cost, although the cost was mostly to our sleep thanks to a cadre of construction folks who fired up their trucks at 4:45 AM every morning.  

Denny had done something to his ankle (swearing I had kicked him during the night) so my planned day of exploring had to be put off for a day.  The next day was much warmer but since, as they say, it was a dry heat it was a nice day for wandering the grounds of the Tonopah Mining Park.  Imagine if you will land populated mainly by Native Americans who called the area Tonopah which roughly translates to "greasewood water", greasewood being a type of bush native to the area.  Local lore says silver ore was discovered when farmer Jim Butler was trying to round up a burro that had run off and grabbed a rock to throw at the critter.  Curious due to the weight of the rock, Jim had it assayed and discovered it was silver ore.  His wife Belle convinced Jim to stake out some claims which he later rented out and thus the area of Tonopah ended up being the "Queen of the Silver Claims" in the early 1900s. That, of course, is the extremely abbreviated version of the story.

A view of the town of Tonopah with the Mizpah Hotel dominating the center of the photograph.  Built in 1907 it is currently undergoing renovation by the new owners.

The Tonopah Mining Park is a huge complex of parts of four of the original mines owned by the Butlers.  Much of the equipment used during the 1900s still remains where it was left and you can go into many of the buildings on the grounds.

An ore crusher and other equipment.

The Grizzly is the building where silver ore was taken to be hand sorted into high and low grade ore; the good ore went into bins and the bad ore was tossed outside onto piles.

The remains of an ore wagon.  Before a special railway spur was built in Tonopah the ore was carried out on wagons pulled by teams of horses.


The visitor center houses a small museum, a gift shop and a small theater where you are shown a 15 minute video of the history of the mines and the original discovery of silver ore by Jim Butler.  There is a very nice display of the various minerals found in the area and in the state of Nevada and the volunteers at the visitor center are most helpful in explaining the various areas of the museum and will try to answer any questions you have.  The entry fee is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors, free to veterans.  If you are staying overnight and have your room/campground receipt the staff will knock a dollar off the fee.

You will find the grounds much as they were left when the silver boom was over and the miners all left.  While you can't crawl down into the mine shafts, you can see down into the stopes (hand dug trenches.)  This particular stope is at the end of the reconstructed burro tunnel and is 500 feet long.

The view from the area of the Mizpah mine.

The Silver Top mine hoist,used to lift buckets of ore from the mine.

One of the original miners' cabins near the Silver Top mine with the Silver Top hoist in the background.

Looking down at the Mizpah Mine Hoist and Hoisthouse.

Apparently with the dry conditions here one didn't worry about careful storage of explosives; this is the powder magazine where the dynamite and blasting caps were kept.

The park has several well marked trails leading to the Desert Queen mine, the Silver Top mine, the Mizpah mine, the North Star mine and the Montana-Tonopah mine as well as other areas of interest such as mill ruins.  The staff will warn you, however, that the park sits at 6200 feet elevation and many of the paths lead uphill.  You not only need to carry water with you, but you need to be aware of your physical limitations or of how the elevation might affect you.

There are picnic tables at the visitor center as well as some near the Mizpah hoist house.  You have a great 360 degree view of the city and the surrounding area while you sit and ponder the amazing tenacity of the miners who worked so hard to bring millions of dollars of silver and gold out of these hills.

And another unexpected gem for our travels.

A Crazy Couple of Days

There is no photo today, unless you want to picture us frustrated and irritated. Denny and I had left our campground in New Jersey three days early to avoid the hurricane, settling in at a campground in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Ron and Nancy also moved to the same campground and we went out to dinner at a local Amish buffet, stuffing ourselves and spending a good evening chatting. The next morning we ran into each other again at a farmer's market, Denny and I returning from a shopping trip and Ron and Nancy just starting out on one.

Around 1:30PM there was a knock on our door which turned out to be a campground employee notifying us that a decision had been made to close the campground due to the upcoming hurricane. They were closing the campground at 4PM, turning off the electrical power at that time. "Are you going to leave?", he asked. Well yeah, because we have no generator to create our own electricity! Denny went outside to start taking down our satellite dishes and put things away while I scurried to find a campground. I made arrangements at one campground about 200 miles away and then I called Nancy because I didn't see their car at their campsite and I wanted to warn her that they needed to pack up and leave. When Nancy answered I could tell that something was wrong; it turns out she was at the hospital with Ron who had exhibited signs of a heart attack and so he was being checked out. I hated to add to her worries, but told her about the campground closing. I explained that she could stay at the campground since their rig has a generator and leaving wasn't mandatory, so she didn't need to worry about that immediately since she had greater concerns with Ron.

Denny and I finished packing up and headed out. We got about two four miles from our campground when it hit me that the campground I had called to make reservations at was the one where we had blown our transmission out about four years ago due to the steep interior roads. Crap!!! Thank goodness for smart phones, as I have a campground directory app and was able to locate a campground in Gettysburg that was staying open and had spaces available, so we went there instead. It is a lot closer so we arrived before the rains became too heavy, plus it will be easier to return to Lancaster to finish out our stay over the Labor Day weekend if that campground reopens in time (most campgrounds are already booked for the holiday.)

Right now I'm listening to limbs falling on our roof because this campground has a lot more trees than our last one. I'm crossing my fingers that later today we'll avoid damage when the winds are really supposed to pick up. Hurricane Irene has lost power but there's still a lot of rain and wind left in her today before she moves on to the upper East Coast. Today we'll hunker down, hoping to hear some good news from Ron and Nancy. Right now our concern is more with them.

Next in the path are friends Brooke and Bob up in Maine. Sometimes living in a tin can on wheels isn't all that much fun.

Wannabees With Wine

This week I received an e-mail from a couple who live in Massachusetts. The e-mail brought up the fact that the couple was interested in Landmark fifth wheels, specifically the Grand Canyon model that we own, and that they are seriously considering selling off everything to become full time RVers. They had been unable to find a Grand Canyon model fifth wheel at any of the local RV dealers and wondered if they could make the hour's drive to our campground to look at The Beast and pick our brains a bit about our lifestyle.

Well! If you know Denny and me (or read my blog at all) you know we are avid proponents of living in a RV full time even if we aren't the staunchest fans of the Heartland RV company. Naturally I wrote back and said "come on down", so yesterday John and Carol made the trek to Rhode Island to see a Grand Canyon up close and personal. And they came bearing wine! Woot! Already they are my kind of people!

What often happens when people want to know about the fulltiming lifestyle is that they start asking questions about how we get mail, pay bills, etc. John and Carol have done their homework by reading some of the hundreds of RVing bloggers online and finding the (now) many web sites dedicated to explaining how to prepare for living in a RV. When Denny and I started researching the idea, there were perhaps two books written about life on the road and "blogs" hadn't hit the scene yet. We discussed letting go of "stuff", storing possessions versus selling them, dealing with ailing parents, traveling with pets. Talking with John and Carol was easy and they felt like friends right from the get go.

We toured The Beast, explaining why we made the changes we've made in the furnishing, modifications we've made to make the unit more liveable for us, the special touches available in the Landmark models. Denny and I didn't touch too heavily on the problems we've had; John and Carol had read some of the information on my web site and they've read many of my blog posts so they have an idea of what we've been through with The Beast. We explained that we seem to be the exception rather than the rule for the most part when it comes to having problems with Heartland products (see? I can be good!) Then we talked and talked and talked until Carol had to call "time out" since she had to work that evening and she hadn't yet been to bed since getting off work in the morning before driving out to see us. Whew! That was a sentence and a half!

Denny and I have no doubt that John and Carol will one day be out there on the road in a shiny new Landmark Grand Canyon wearing big grins on their faces. And when that day comes we'll find a way to catch up with them with a big bottle of wine to toast their new life! So until then, you two-- happy trails!

A Camping First

These days most campgrounds prefer that you make reservations in advance so I do. They always ask how many adults, how many children, do we have pets? I answer two adults, no children, one cat that I walk on a leash. That way, if the campground owner has a dog they allow to roam free (and there have been some campgrounds like that) the person on the phone can warn me of that. Fine.

We arrived in Rhode Island on Monday at our reserved site and I was handed a map of the campground and a brochure upon check-in. We were directed to our site and after we were all set up and had eaten lunch I settled back to browse the brochure, luxuriating in the air conditioning since it was ninety degrees outside and very, very humid. As a matter of fact, it was a three tee shirt day for Denny--he soaked through two shirts breaking camp in Massachusetts and setting up here. So imagine my surprise when I read rules #3 and 17 (see the brochure below, clicking to enlarge it.)

And yes, we are running our air conditioner and yes, I am walking the cat on a leash. And no, we haven't been kicked out....yet.

In Love With Lighthouses

Sometimes the weather gods gift you with the most absolutely perfect day and that's what Denny and I experienced yesterday when we made a drive up the coast to visit the Fort Williams Park in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

But first I made Denny stop at the Len Libby Chocolatier in Scarborough, Maine to see "the world's only life-size chocolate moose." Created from 1700 pounds of milk chocolate, Lenny the moose is on display with an 800 pound milk chocolate black bear and her two 360 pound each chocolate cubs. Even I could not eat that much chocolate! And of course the store was lined with candy cases filled with all sorts of goodies and a few made their way into our truck with us. Because we needed a bit of dessert to go with our picnic lunch, right?

Fort Williams Park is open from dawn until dusk and is free to the public. There is a museum at the lighthouse with a $2 charge for adults, but you can freely wander the grounds and take pictures of the lighthouse without having to pay any fees. There are picnic tables located throughout the park and a small hot dog vendor near the lighthouse was doing a booming business. There are large fields for the kids to run around and several people were flying (or attempting to fly) kites.
But of course, Denny and I came for the lighthouse. And a most photogenic one it is! I'm planning on making some calendars up this year and you can bet this photo or a similar one will be on it!


I had climbed down onto the boulders to get a better shot of the lighthouse and the granite ledge it sits upon and neglected to pay attention to the surf. I almost had a salt water bath as the waves came smashing up against the rocks!
Our picnic lunch was eaten under the shade of large trees while we watched crazy kids play in the cold waters of the inlet.A couple sat down at a picnic table nearby and soon had a repast for the gods set out; boiled lobsters, corn on the cob, beer and wine. Now that's how you have a picnic! The scenery was breathtaking and the air was fragrant with the scent of the wild roses growing all around.Lunch over and packed away, Denny and I wandered up the hill to the ruins of the Goddard mansion and over to an abandoned building that teenagers were crawling all over. The Goddard mansion is simply a ruin of itself, but you can see some of its original beauty in the walls still standing. Next to the park you can see the town of Cape Elizabeth in the distance and admire the view of the waterfront homes. On the way back, Denny and I saw our future house--the one we'll buy when we win the lottery. It's right next to the one being offered for sale by Sotheby's, so I'm assuming the price is a little bit beyond our current budget. But who wouldn't want to live in a house where you could toss a lobster trap out your back door to catch dinner?

Ready for a New State

Our time in New York is done. While the eastern part of New York is scenic, this week it's done nothing but rain and the mosquitoes are positively evil here. Denny and I won't be going that far, just over the border to Vermont where we'll be checking another state off our list of the fifty to be seen. We're whittling it down.

It was a quiet week for us, thanks to the rain. I did get one thing accomplished however. I was reading the blog of a RVing couple who lost their fifth wheel to a fire recently. It seems they had a wheel bearing or brake lock up which caused their tire to explode and that somehow sparked a fire. One small fire extinguisher wasn't enough to stop the fire and although the fire department got there quickly, the damage was done. The couple is now blogging about their experience with RV dealers and insurance companies and their emotions at the loss of their home. This got me thinking since we had a tire blow out on the interstate last month and by the time we were finally able to pull off the road our wheel was smoking very badly which means we could have been in the same position. All these years I have been talking about doing an inventory of our possessions (which while not extensive are too many to think of when stressed out) so this week I took the easy way out. I opened all the drawers and cupboards and took pictures of the contents. Knowing that we might not have time to grab the computer in an emergency, I then posted the pictures to a Picasa web album online and made the status of the album private so it can only be seen by us. This way I can pull up the pictures from any computer by signing into my account and at least have a pretty good idea of everything I have stored inside.

Next up, buying a thumb drive and scanning receipts on some of the big ticket items we have along with a password list and copies of important documents. I think that will go in my purse. Another rainy day project.

Change in Plans

I would love to send some of this rain to our friends and neighbors out west. My reasons are not entirely altruistic; we had a tee time to play golf today and had to cancel because of the rain and threat of severe thunderstorms. Which is not a good time to be waving a three foot long metal club around above your head. It has been years since Denny and I were in this general area and we were looking forward to playing golf here for the first time and also doing a little more sightseeing. We don't try to play golf on the weekends since that's the only time worker bees get to play so the two of us are hoping for some sunny skies so we can wander over to the Lake George area for some lunch and photo taking opportunities.

So instead of enjoying a nice day on the links I'm tentatively mapping out a route for us for when we leave Myrtle Beach this fall. I am not making reservations, I am not carving this in stone, because I know all too well what happens now when I make plans several months in advance; some sort of bad stuff happens and I'm am heartily tired of the bad stuff in my life. I haven't even really planned our route for exploring the seaboard states this summer, choosing to make my reservations less far in advance. Denny is worried that we won't find campgrounds if I don't make all my reservations and have all my ducks in a row, but recently my poor ducks have been shot down so I'm going to wing it a little more this camping season. I am booked up into July, but hey, it's late June already so that's okay. Normally I would have our reservations made until we are due to arrive in Myrtle Beach in October but not this time. Nope. No more tempting the fates. I'm done with that.

A side effect of all this rain has been the over abundance of mosquitoes. Even Patches has been taking short little walks because of the pesky things flying in her face and trying to bite her nose. Everyone here walks their pet carrying mosquito repellent and when folks do stop to chat their conversations are punctuated with flailing arms while swatting away hordes of mosquitoes from their faces and ears. That probably sounds like a petty annoyance to the people out west who are evacuating their homes due to the wildfires occurring everywhere. Hasn't it been a crazy year so far, weather-wise? Enough, Mother Nature!!!!

In the meantime, back to my maps....

Simple Pleasures

Although Denny spent several years living in the Cleveland area, this area of northeast Ohio is all new to me so when the rains finally quit for a few hours I suggested a trip up to Geneva on the Lake. (The picture below is not a creek in the campground but simply a low spot between our row of camp sites and the row of camp sites behind us) Geneva on the Lake has been popular as a vacation spot in Ohio since the mid to late 1800s thanks to the foresight of the Spencer family who settled here and built a tavern for travelers and businessmen. Sitting on the banks of Lake Erie, the area soon became "the" vacation spot for families who wanted to get away from the larger cities. Even Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller and Harvey Firestone would come here to camp, fish, swim and relax together. A small amusement park sprang up, along with campgrounds, followed by small cabins, motels and motor courts, restaurants and dance halls.
Like many small resort towns, Geneva on the Lake lost clientele when the larger amusement parks were built but the town hung in there and once again families have returned to wander the streets, play some golf, splash in the water park/amusement park, picnic at the parks and explore the many shops and wineries. I told Denny if a person couldn't find something they liked to eat here, especially if you're into fair food, then you're just too darn picky. There's a little something for everyone but the place to eat seemed to be Eddy's Grill which had a continuous line of waiting customers snaking outside their door and out onto the sidewalk.Denny and I chose instead to have a picnic at the somewhat soggy park looking out over Lake Erie. I might have wished for a sunnier day for taking pictures, but there was a nice breeze blowing off the lake and it was a very pleasant way to have lunch. We stopped for ice cream on the way back, where we saw this motorcycle that we've seen advertised on TV:One of the reasons I had decided to visit Geneva on the Lake was the fact that the town was sponsoring a flea market and the Old Firehouse Winery (which had no wines on display that I could see) was sponsoring an arts and crafts show on its grounds. The flea market was just getting started and was a bit on the small side due to the imminent threat of rain, I imagine. Denny and I were a tad too early for all the craft booths to be open but we did see a lot of unusual hand made items, a huge painting of birch trees and chickadees I would have bought in a minute if I owned a residence that had wall space and even some booths with Amish baked goods. I walked away with this: An unbreakable cocktail shaker with silver wire and blue glass bead decorations. Because I bet John D. Rockefeller had a snazzy cocktail shaker when HE camped up here!

You Have Mail!

As full time RVers who move on to a new location every week or so, people ask us how we get our mail. It's often the first question we are asked about our lifestyle. Denny and I belong to an organization called Escapees that is based in Texas and they have created a mail forwarding system for those of us who travel. We have all of our mail sent to them and once a week/bi-weekly/monthly/whatever we tell them by email where we're going to be and they will package up our mail and send it to that location or campground. Naturally over the course of the years we have winnowed the amount of mail we receive, cancelling all magazine subscriptions and catalogs and having automatic bill payments made so that we aren't paying extra to have unnecessary items mailed to us. But like everyone else, we still love that anticipation of opening up a big envelope or box to see what surprises await us.

This week I received a note from my cousin (handwritten notes--yay!) and she included a couple of snapshots she had found in one of her mother's photo albums. For years my cousin's mother and step-father spent several weeks camping at Myrtle Beach with my parents. The first couple of years my parents went along with them they stayed in my aunt's travel trailer but eventually they purchased their own pre-owned pop top trailer which they only used to camp at Myrtle Beach.

I had to smile when I saw these photos because my father was a perfectionist and a "children should be seen and not heard" type of person. We, his children, rarely saw a playful side so these two snapshots were a gift. Mom and Dad are both gone now; Dad died in 1996 from ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and Mom passed away two years ago from complications of surgery.

Thank you, Datha, for both the lovely note and sharing your photos with me. Thanks to your mom and thus later my parents Denny and I discovered Myrtle Beach where we too have passed many peaceful and joyous weeks.

Isn't mail fun?

Perspective

Perspective: Middle English perspectyf, from Medieval Latin perspectivum, from neuter of perspectivus of sight, optical, from Latin perspectus, past participle of perspicere to look through, see clearly, from per- through + specere to look

Each week or so Denny and I pack up and move to a new or different campground. When we first started our journey I based my location decisions on whether or not the campground was a member of Passport America (an organization that offers camping at half the normal price) and if the campground was located close to golf courses that honored the Golf Card, which offered greens fees at half off or free with the rental of a riding cart. As our health care costs started rising those type of campgrounds became more important to us. After the two of us joined a couple of membership campground organizations our camping was "free" after our initial buy in and the annual dues so we moved around a little more and experienced many different types of campgrounds; restricted to 55 and over, snowbird filled, family oriented, nature preserves, destination campgrounds, fish camps, etc. Sometimes our expectations of a campground are high based on their ads or brochures, sometimes they are low due to the reviews of other campers. I myself have posted reviews on an online campground website but I have backed off doing that simply because I realized what was important in a campground to Denny and me might not necessarily matter to someone else and vice versa. This was brought home to me today when we parked next to a person who is going to follow the exact itinerary that we're going to be following over the next five weeks and who just left the same campground we did. The difference in us is that the couple next to us left the campground early after moving to three different camp sites within the campground and were still unhappy so they cut their stay short. This particular campground has a store, a professional arts and crafts area, a pool, karaoke, a cafe, a horse stable, nature trails and is located on a peaceful river on several acres of land thickly treed with live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. There is a Walmart within 4 miles, several good restaurants, 2 golf courses, it's about 4 miles from 2 major interstate highways and is known for its musical concerts at various times of the year. Granted, Denny gets aggravated by the trees because they can block his satellite signal but we have gotten our TV and Internet all three times we've been to this campground (which is free to us.) I like this campground, Denny hates the trees, our neighbors hated it period. They have already told us that another member campground we have reservations at has changed ownership and is the pits. Don and Vicki were there a year ago, said it had gone downhill but had just changed ownership and it appeared they were going to be working to get the campground back in shape. So do we go, hoping for the best, or avoid it on the recommendation of a person who hated the campground I liked? Since it was Denny who had spoken to our neighbor I don't know why he hated the last campground or what his priorities are for a campground. He seems to like the campground we are in now, but we wouldn't come back to it because the golf courses are 24-30 miles away as are any grocery stores or shopping, plus there is no swimming pool here, no lending library and no activities. However, the sites here are long, level 50 amp pull throughs with few trees and ample distance between campers. It is not a free campground for us, although we're staying here at a discounted price, but when you add the cost of fuel we'll have to pay to get to the store then it's not really a saving with our large fuel guzzling truck. Since diesel prices (and gas prices) have slowly crossed over the $3 a gallon mark down here I'm going to have to start considering a campground's closeness to shopping now (or get a Vespa.) We don't have to be by restaurants or movies or big lights but we would like it to be a little easier to run out for a forgotten quart of milk. And as soon as I write that I remember that one of my favorite campgrounds outside of Benson, Arizona is a good ten miles from town but it has a great heated pool for water aerobics and the sunsets can be fantastic.

All of that makes me think that perhaps I should forget writing campground reviews because I can fall in love with a skyline and overlook unmowed grass but can't forgive places that allow campers to let their large dogs romp through the campground unleashed. Priorities and perspective--it's different for us all.

Summing Up

So typical of Bl*gger, I had this entire post finished, hit publish and it disappeared. Therefore the second version will not be as good as the first one; it never is. However, here goes an abbreviated version of what I just finished moments ago and lost.

Having purchased The Beast in mid-December of 2009, Denny and I started our travels on New Year's day of 2010 in the tiny town of Van Horn, Texas. Almost immediately the two of us wondered at times at what point the wheels were going to fall off our fifth wheel because as I've documented in several posts, we suffered one problem after another, both mechanical and structural. Despite all of that we somehow managed to travel 8,687.4 road miles, staying at forty-five different campgrounds along the way. Our travels took us from Texas to New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Oh, and there was that side trip to Alaska by plane, bus, train and cruise ship.

By exploring Montana, Wyoming and Alaska this summer Denny and I checked off three more states from the fifty we intend to visit. Yes, it took us twelve years to do it, mostly due to family health issues calling us back to Ohio during the prime travel months. We've also been checking off playing golf in those states which is a secondary goal of our travels. Of course in the meantime the two of us have been learning geology, geography, history, what all those states manufacture and/or produce and most importantly we've met people. Funny, aggravating, crazy, fascinating, wonderful people.

Denny and I have always appreciated and been in awe of the beauty of our vast country and the variety of its natural wonders. But we've also been fortunate enough to see it through the eyes of the people from other countries we've met at our national parks and well known tourist spots. We've listened and grinned at the variety of dialects and languages we've heard where the universal word of "wow" predominates when standing at the precipice of a canyon, the base of a thundering waterfall or the narrow, rocky path to the summit of a tall hill. Those who live in Europe and Asia may have a lot of history, but I don't think any country can beat the United States for the sheer variety and number of natural wonders we have.

This year we managed to see the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and I had the opportunity to stand in the Arctic Ocean (and froze my feet off!) It has been our most adventurous year as well as the year we put the most mileage on any of our five RVs.

Our intention for the upcoming year is to explore Vermont, Delaware, Maryland, Rhode Island and Connecticut which will mean we'll finally be able to check the final states off our list. Also in our plans are visits to old RVing friends who have sold their rigs and settled down as well as visits to people I've only met through blogging. And once we've done all that? Well, there are a lot of areas in all those states that we've yet to wander.

As the year 2010 draws quickly to a close, the RV Vagabonds wish all of you a happy, healthy and oh-so-prosperous New Year. And if we're lucky, we'll see you someplace down the road....

Why Are You Here?

A mid-level motorhome pulled into the site next to us last night.  The man--in his mid-30s--got out, did the electrical plug in, connected the water hose, put up the sewer hose--the normal chores that come with setting up.  Meanwhile his wife was busy pulling down every shade over every window and pulling the curtains across the windshield and side windows, totally closing off the outside world.  Her husband removed a scooter from a rack at the rear of the motorhome and having apparently forgotten something (probably his cell phone which from that point was permanently attached to his ear) went to the door only to have to knock because his wife HAD LOCKED THE DOOR, locking herself in and him out!  He came back out, tootled off on the scooter, came back and USED HIS KEYS TO GET INTO THE MOTORHOME BECAUSE THE DOOR WAS LOCKED AGAIN with her inside (no doubt quivering with fear).

Lady!  It's broad daylight and you are in a campground.  Do we all look like bandits and rapists and whatnot?  Seriously?  If you are that afraid of being in a strange place and of strangers, then you really need to stay home in your gated community with your security alarms and your barred windows and triple locked doors.  That is so sad.

Even thought at times we've been in some pretty isolated and sometimes dilapidated campgrounds, I have never felt unsafe or scared at a campground or anywhere in our travels.  Perhaps because I expect the best of folks and approach them with a smile and an open manner I get treated the same way in return.  But if I ever become that paranoid about being in a RV, then I'll know it's time to hang up the keys.

And after the husband has now slammed his 150th bin door since 8:30 this morning doing absolutely nothing, I am now ready for them to leave.  It's going to be a long weekend.

Meeting Blogging Friends

This afternoon we met Boris and Natasha. This young (younger than us!) couple began their fulltiming lifestyle about nine months ago after studying blogs and RVing websites for months and since they were in our general area today they stopped by for a visit.  Boris tickled me by mentioning that they build in an excuse for leaving when they meet fellow bloggers in case they don't "gell", which was a shame because we really, really enjoyed talking with them today and would have liked to have spent a few more hours with them just b-s-ing about the RVing lifestyle, places they've been and places they want to go.  And after all, who wouldn't want to spend a lot of time with a stranger (me) who has blogged about going into a spiral of depression after her mother's death?  What a way to spend an afternoon, right?  Denny and I did keep them past their time allotment as it was, so that Natasha missed going to her quilt shop as planned, but they still had to hit the local Wally-World so after a couple of hours we said our good-byes-for-now.  We were sad to see them go, but know that if they are ever again within a few miles of us we'll make a point of catching up with them and spending a few hours together because we owe them a Happy Hour--RV Vagabond style (which means lots of food and alcohol).

So Happy Trails, you two.  You know how to find us--in a non-stalkery way, of course.

A Response

Rich (Hi Rich! Welcome aboard!) commented on my last post that 1) he wishes I would update more often 2) where are we now? and 3) that we must be rich because we change RVs like shoes.  So in response...

I haven't been posting a lot because we haven't been doing a lot, most recently due to a bad toothache but overall because I've been suffering a bit (okay, quite a bit) of depression over the past year due to my mother's death and having to deal with her estate.  I haven't wanted to go exploring or doing much of anything, honestly.  But I'm working on pulling myself out of that.  Stay tuned.

Currently we're in AJ (Apache Junction, Arizona) which is one of my favorite places simply because of the Superstition Mountains.  They are rugged, distinctive and change appearance with the play of sunlight, the weather, the clouds.  We have friends here and simply like the area and the proximity to shopping, restaurants, theaters, etc.

Are we rich?  Far from it.  We live on Denny's pension which is by no means extravagant.  A fellow RVer/blogger once said that it takes however much money you have to full time.  Which basically means, if you have little money, then you will buy a used truck/car/RV, have it outfitted with a generator and/or solar panels, boondock on BLM land or Walmart parking lots or state parks or wherever you can find economical camping.  Buying a pre-owned campground membership works to keep expenses down too, if you find a deal with low/decent annual fees. You learn that you cook at home instead of eating out a lot, you search for the free places to see or visit attractions in the off season/off times for better rates, you borrow movies from the library or the $1 Red Box and watch them at home instead of going to the movie theater and hitting the concession stand.  In other words, you find a way to live within your means.  That doesn't necessarily mean that you are missing out on anything, it simply means that you learn the little tricks to making your money last longer than the month does.  Fortunately there are tons of RVers who write wonderful blogs, many of whom put their finances or a reasonable estimate out there for others to see and learn from.  And the switching RVs like shoes, yeah okay.  We have owned RVs since 1993. Have we owned more than many people? Yes.  Have other RVers owned more RVs than we have?  Absolutely.  But it doesn't matter what we do or what anyone else does.  You make a list of what you consider vital expenses; campground fees, meals out, playing golf/going to the theater/bowling/increasing your wine collection--whatever, insurance for your rig and tow/towed vehicle, groceries, maintenance for your vehicles, remembering that you no longer have yard maintenance and property taxes and house maintenance.  You research, research, research, you go camping and you find fulltimers and you talk to them and listen and you research some more.  And maybe one day you'll decide that maybe you'll never have enough money to do this.  And that's when you'll have to decide whether or not you want to live the lifestyle badly enough to find a way to make it work or you'll just walk away from the dream.

It's not irreversible once you do it--but you may just find it's the best thing you ever did.

Good luck, Rich.  Happy Trails.  Hope to see you out there someday.  We'll be the ones in the new rig.  Because we're going to be out here a while longer.

Almost Left Behind

When I got back to the trailer from water aerobics yesterday, Denny was standing outside talking to our friend Brian.  As I stood there listening to the conversation, I noticed a blonde cocker spaniel wandering around freely across the street.  I had seen the dog before but couldn't remember what its owner looked like but it was pretty obvious the owner didn't know or care where the dog was.  Three people stopped by to see if the dog was ours (I think because we were just standing outside and the other folks assumed we had our dog out with us) so no one had a clue who the owner was.  A man was preparing his motorhome to leave a couple of spots up the street, finally pulling out and stopping to hitch up his tow dolly to the rear of the motorhome.  I figured the dog couldn't belong to him, because who would leave without checking to see if his dog was there?  In the meantime, we realized the dog was blind, after he bumped into our truck tire and wandered off.

After a couple of minutes the man stood up from hitching up his tow dolly, looked down the street, saw the dog and called to it.  The cocker spaniel was indeed his dog and he had no idea that the dog was out wandering around.  Chances are real good if the dog had gone behind someone's RV or car the fellow would have gotten into his motorhome and driven off none the wiser.  The dog had no collar or tags on to tell us who owned him nor giving a phone number to reach an owner.  Scary.

Our most recent issue of the Escapees (a camping organization) magazine has a notice in it of a lost cat.  A lady had been boondocking in Quartzite (with 100,000 other RVers) and the cat apparently slipped out the door behind her at some point.  Despite much searching, the cat was gone and the lady figured someone had picked it up as a friendly stray and left with it.  The reason for the lady's ad was not just to get the cat back, but to know that it had found a good home rather than ending up as a meal for a coyote.

It only takes a moment for our pets to slip out--we've learned that ourselves.  Patches alway wears her collar and name tag with our phone number on it.  Someday while we're at a veterinary office I may even think to have her microchipped.  Accidents happen, but I surely wonder about a pet owner who has a blind, aging cocker spaniel with no tags who doesn't take the time to assure himself that his dog is secured in his motorhome before he starts to take off for his next destination.  How sad for the dog.....

Poo On You

One of the differences between living in a stick built home and a RV is that in a RV sometimes you get up close and personal with stuff you'd rather leave alone.  And that stuff would be in the sewage tank in the RV.

The set up of the toilet system in a RV goes something like this; the toilet flushes into a big square box that fastened underneath the floor of the RV.  It has an outlet leading to the outside of the RV, controlled by a push valve/gate system.  You attach a 4 inch accordion pleated hose to the gate valve and the other end goes into the campground's sewer system in the ground. Once a week or so, one needs to empty the "black water" (that stuff you flush down the toilet) into the campground's sewer system.  A simple process normally.

Not so for us this week; when Denny pulled the gate valve, very little came out of the black water tank, meaning something was blocking the hole leading out of the tank.  Sigh.  Stories have been told of plugs of plastic/flooring/whatever being drilled out and dropped down into tanks to be left there, free to float around and jam themselves into the exit hole.  Okay.  We have a spray wand that is inserted down into the toilet that helps to flush out debris and clean the tank, so I started trying to flush out the tank but it didn't seem to be working.  That's when Denny shoved the wand WAY down the tank and got it stuck.  Really, really stuck.  Like the only way to get it out was cutting the sewer pipe OF OUR TWO MONTH OLD TRAILER stuck.

So that's what we did.  Two 16 mile round trips to the hardware store because ABS pipe cement sets up faster than I believed possible so I didn't get the pipe shoved down into place soon enough so Denny had to saw the repair apart and do it again.  Five hours later the sewer wand was out and the black tank water was flowing, albeit less than we expected.  What I'm not mentioning was the efforts to go in backwards up the system with whatever long pointy things we could find which necessitated placing a large empty container outside the gate valve to catch whatever would flow out the black water tank should the obstruction clear.  This is not a pleasant process folks!  We'll know next week how the fix worked when it's time to dump again.

Man, we know how to have fun here at the RV Vagabond's house!

We've Had Better Days

We have arrived in California and things aren't going well.

When we rolled down our windows to talk to the ranger upon arriving at our campground, we noticed a loud squealing noise as we were pulling up to the ranger kiosk.  Once we settled into our temporary site, Denny and I felt the wheel rims on either side of the trailer only to discover that we had a hot rim on each side, neither on the same axle.  Uh-oh, that can't be good.  Which means we'll have to find a local authorized Landmark dealer and have that looked at.

Today we had to wait for the full hook up site picks; you are supposed to check out the sites that are going to be vacated that day, pick several that you like and then wait with that day's incoming campers to have your name called and hope that the people before you on the list don't pick any of the sites you've chosen.  Naturally, the site we really wanted wasn't chosen until the lady whose name was just before ours, so we picked our fourth choice (the others had been picked by campers ahead of us) and then went back to our temporary site to wait for the site to be vacated.  Finally at noon the folks moved out and we moved in.  And it went badly, because there is a big live oak tree on the site and one big limb hangs twelve feet ten inches above the ground.  The bad news is the air conditioning unit on our rig is thirteen feet above the ground.  You figure it out.  There were words flying, tempers flaring and a lot of careful maneuvering to get into the site without further damage.  Eventually we got all set up, although not before the rains started.  What was forecast to be light showers is now a possibility of 2 inches of rain on top of already saturated grounds due to the heavy rains that occurred here last week. The flood warnings are out for rivers and streams and those in low lying areas.

And guess who is parked backed up to the creek?

*Sigh*

At least it's scenic here.

And there were neat places to explore in our temporary site.

And I've crossed off the Oregon Junco from my bird list.

Road Warriers

Yesterday Denny and I were settled fairly early into our campsite in the middle of Nowhere, Texas as I had the short drive of 170 miles of all highway driving. By late afternoon new fulltimers (on the road for 2 months) had pulled up near us, bustling about sweeping up all around the exterior entrance side of their rig. We thought that they were being anal about their parking area; it turns out when they stepped outside to register at the office for their campsite, their Plexiglas screen door exploded sending plastic shards all over. Never heard of that happening!

Denny and I were sharing a dessert of tiramisu (we highly recommend the tiramisu and bread pudding at the Pizza Shack in Willis, TX) when other folks started arriving-- at 8 o'clock at night! Understand that these folks pulling up aren't young, working couples; no, these are retired folks who should theoretically be relaxed and enjoying life and instead are apparently driving 12 and 13 hours a day. Why do I figure that? Because these same folks who arrived at 7:30 and 8:00PM last night were leaving at 6:30 and 7:00AM this morning! That's insane. Granted, Texas is a BIG state. It's almost 1,000 miles across Interstate 10 from border to border (we'll have put on 1,200 miles by the time we reach St. David, Arizona from Willis, TX). But to try to do it in one or two days? Crazy. Plus, it's never fun to try to navigate a strange campground in the dark--there's too many things you can't see, like overhanging limbs or stray decorative boulders that jump in your way.

I like our way much better.