What have we gotten in exchange?  Well, there’s lots and lots of space.  Too much of it, in fact.  There’s 1,000 square feet to rattle around in and to fill up with the evil of evils — STUFF!  And despite our best intentions, filling up it has been.  The most shocking part of our move is that we carried 45 boxes of belongings out of the RV into the new apartment.  That’s not counting furniture, large electronics, any of the camping gear or other things stored in the basement area, and none of the stuff in my small storage unit.  We had enough to fill up a 10′ box van plus several carloads.  Disturbing.  I think we may have been a bit over our max load limit…just a little.  Good thing our brakes didn’t give out entirely during the last two summers’ trips.

For all the junk we brought over, we still lacked furniture — no bed, no dining table or chairs, no sofas.  The only furniture I brought over were our two small desks, two desk chairs, a small end table, a small filing cabinet, two folding chairs, and two camp chairs.  Fortunately, Lex’s brother sells beds for a living.  We got a new one from him at a nice discount, and I also found a cute vintage formica-topped, chrome-legged, fifties-style dining room table for sale cheap.  A friend gave us some chairs to put around it (Thanks, Corrine!), and another friend gave us a futon.  Corrine also gave us a gorgeous rolling butcher block for the kitchen.  She’s made of Canadian-style awesome.  This was enough to let us limp through for a few weeks.

During those weeks, we bought out Ikea, assembling two dressers, two nightstands, two end tables, one coffee table, one entertainment center, and three shelving units.  I also bought a metal shelving unit and folding table for the kitchen.  And then, just last week, I bought a used sofa and love seat.  Now our house is full of furniture.  Mind you, there’s no theme working here unless it’s Early American Thrift Store, but there are places to sit and places to put all that crap that came over in those 45 boxes.

Oddly, I just couldn’t find enough room in the kitchen to store the exact same stuff we had in the RV.  What the heck is that about?  Too bad apartments don’t come with all those nice built-in compartments that RV’s do.

Aside from filling up our lives with more STUFF again, there are other trade-offs.  We don’t have to swap out propane tanks every week and a half during the cold months, and our third-floor apartment stays relatively warm, so we don’t need to run the furnace very often, but we do have to pay an electrical bill now.  That plus the water bill, the increase in rent, the added gas, maintenance and auto insurance for the longer commute, and the renter’s insurance (which we now have to carry in addition to RV insurance), we’re going broke $50 and $100 at a time.  Ouch.

For all that, we’re warm and dry, when things break, we can just call maintenance, a deep puddle of mud and dirty water does not collect outside our front door when it rains, we do not have a slightly creepy, overbearing groundskeeper, we do not have to worry about flooding or high tension power lines, and there are no small children running around and screaming right outside our windows. I also have a built-in dishwasher, a garbage disposal, a washer/dryer, and a storage unit.  These are very good things.

There are, however, neighbors, some of whom like to smoke in the hallway on the short walk between their apartments and their cars.  There are dogs in the building that like to bark at us whenever we take our own dogs out for walks.  There are a LOT of stairs to climb (well, by our big woman standards),  there’s much more carpet to vacuum and surfaces to dust, we have to battle for good parking spaces, especially in the evenings.  We also feel a little cut off from the outdoors.  While we do have a small balcony (where the bikes are currently being stored) where I’ve put a camp chair and folding table, it’s easy to spend an entire day inside, only going out to walk the dogs three times.  I find myself not knowing what the weather is and being unaware of the moon phases.  That always makes me feel a bit cagey.

The animals have had to get used to the space, too.  While the dogs like being able to run up and down the hall to chase their toys (something I’m sure thrills our downstairs neighbors), the cat hated this place for the first couple of weeks.  She’d spend every night walking around the apartment meowing nonstop.  I think she just felt lost.  In the RV, everybody had their little cozy spots that they called home.  Here there are lots of spots for a critter to choose from.  Fortunately, the cat hasn’t taken to sitting in the windows.  After all, she’s an illegal alien here.  We’re only supposed to have two pets.  We’ve already had to hide her away during one of the semiannual inspections. Don’t want to get evicted from our new digs because Anne Frank kitty doesn’t know how to hide away from the apartment Nazis.

I find myself concerned about the Big Blue Beast.  It’s not close enough for me to just pop over and check on it.  Corry is a six-hour drive away (when we aren’t towing the rig), so I’m worried that without us living in it full-time and without a resident cat, rodents are, as I type this, gnawing their way into my camper and burrowing into my mattress and sofa.  After all, in a NW Pennsylvania winter where deep snows are the norm, that insulated little box has to look mighty good to a critter.  The park owners winterized our rig for us for a minimal fee, and we’re actually free to come use the rig during the winter if we like, but that would mean flushing the water lines and then re-winterizing it again after we were done.  Plus, right now, we’re still trying to adapt our budget to all these additional expenses, so campsite fees are out of the question right now.  Besides, we still have to come up with the balance of the cost for the seasonal site over the next couple of months.  As a result, I’ll be picking up a couple of extra courses, so we can afford it.  Let’s just hope when we head up there in the spring to move the rig onto its permanent site, we find it in decent condition, with functional plumbing and lacking in rodents.

My semester is nearly over, and the holidays are upon us.  Despite having more space, I’ve not put up a large tree, just a tabletop Norfolk pine in the living room and a little artificial tree as a centerpiece. I also hung some lights on the balcony.  We’re about as festive as we can afford to be right now.  This is an exhausting time of the year with me doing the last of the grading and Alexis trying to get in her final projects and exams.  It should all be over next week, at least for a month when the cycle begins again.

Despite my misgivings about our new arrangement, I’m grateful for much.  I’m grateful to have the kind of job that lets me afford (if just barely) a nice apartment AND an RV.  I’m grateful to have healthy pets and a loving partner.  I’m grateful for the family I still have alive and the wonderful friends who fill my life, both here in Baltimore and back in Texas.  I’m grateful that our troops are leaving Iraq and coming home for the holidays (well, some of them, anyway.  Plenty are still in Afghanistan). I’m just plain grateful, even though my whining may not always allow that gratitude to shine through.

Merry Christmas, happy Hannukah, Kwanzaa, and Yule.  And to those who celebrate none of the above, just plain happiness and merriment to you.  If I don’t post again until 2012, a happy new year, too.

On Tuesday, I contacted our current landlords and let them know November will be our last month on the site, and I contacted the campground in PA to arrange for us to store our rig there throughout the winter.  We went to the leasing office where we signed the paperwork that allowed the current renter out of her lease and allows us to take over the apartment and the security deposit.  Since then, we’ve arranged for the electric and cable to be turned on and the mail to start being forwarded on the 1st of November.

We’ll be getting keys and signing our lease on Saturday, and depending on the weather and the hour, we may even start moving in then.  We certainly will be spending Sunday moving and waiting for the cable guy to show up. We’re hoping to have Alexis working from the new place by Monday.  Lex’s brother is a mattress salesman, and he’s helped us get a new bed for the apartment at a very deep discount. At least we won’t end up sleeping on the air mattress.

I think we have mixed feelings about all this.  Of course, we’ll be thrilled to have a washer, dryer, and dishwasher and to not be responsible for repairs, but we’ll really miss our cozy little nest right on the water with the groundhogs, foxes, geese and bunnies.  We’re giving up our privacy and quiet here on the peninsula, and I’m giving up being less than a mile away from work.  I’ve grown accustomed to the quirkiness that is life in Dundalk, and now we’re headed back to the ‘burbs.  Fortunately, we won’t be terribly far away.  In fact, we’re back in the same neighborhood where we lived before we moved into the rig.  It’s a nice area, and it’s close to a really lovely park with some good hiking trails and is closer to Lex’s parents.

The apartment is huge, more than three times the space we have now.  I don’t want that much apartment, but if we decide to renew our lease next summer, we can move into a smaller place if we are still of a mind.  We have virtually no furniture aside from our two desks, two desk chairs, a file cabinet, and an end table.  We’ll be living out of Rubbermaid containers and off camp chairs for a while.  It will be strange but doable.

On the upside, no more laundromat!  And I think I’ll be able to tolerate apartment living knowing that we have an escape hatch in our RV.  We can hop in the car and drive to PA whenever we need a break from the plain vanilla.

We’re going to be taking the rig to PA on the 12th.  Let’s just hope the tires hold up for this one last trek. We have to get to Corry before it gets much closer to winter.  They see a LOT of snow there in the winter. We don’t have snow tires and don’t want to careen off the side of a mountain.

So, yes, this is the end of our fulltiming adventures.  It’s happened more quickly than we’d planned, and who knows?  We may come to regret leaving the rig, but given that snow is already forecast for the weekend, maybe not.

This is the part of following RVing blogs that’s always made me sad — when the fulltimers go back to living in a sticks-and-bricks home.  I always feel a little betrayed when I read those final entries, and now, here I am, the betrayer.  Maybe one day we’ll be able to go back to fulltiming, but for now, we’re going to have to learn to adapt to life as we once knew it.

Once we get settled, I’ll check back in.  Until then, happy travels.

I brought the flu back with me.  I was back at work just a couple of days when I had to take a sick day.  My flu turned into bronchitis and lingered.  I stayed sick for nearly a month.  Lex got sick about two weeks after I did.  We would both get a little better and then get sick again.  Lex is still recovering from her latest bout of this bug, and  I still cough a bit at night and in the morning.  It’s much better than it was, though. I’m hoping we’re done being sick for this flu season.  I’ve missed more than enough work already.

Fall is definitely here.  Nighttime temperatures are starting to slip into the 40′s, and the leaves are beginning to turn.  That, of course, means it will soon be time to winterize.  I’m putting it off as long as I can, but November will soon be here.  Then there will be no denying the need to wrap the hose and weatherize the windows.  We’ve already turned the water heater over to electric, and I cleaned the furnace and vents.  We’ve had the furnace on a few times now, and I suppose it will kick on tonight, too.  Just today, I put the electric blanket on the bed, and two weeks ago, I swapped out the summer clothes for the winter ones.  The mornings call for a light jacket, and I’ve even worn a sweater once or twice. The saddest part of this time of year is how much propane we start to go through.  We managed three months on the propane we bought in Ohio.  Come the middle of winter, two 30-pound tanks won’t even last two weeks.

The owners of the campground in Northeastern PA where we spent a month and a half this past summer dropped us an e-mail letting us know they had a seasonal site available.  Their season begins the first of May and runs until the end of September, and they charge only about $1000 for those five months.  Given what we pay here at our site in Dundalk, that’s an amazing deal, so we put down our deposit right away.  Of course, we won’t be able to stay for the entire season.  We can probably drive up toward the end of May once my classes are over and then stay until mid-August when I have to be back at work.  I usually have a few meetings between the end of classes and the time our contract is up in mid-June, but I can always drive back for those meetings and stay with a friend for those days.  It’s a six-hour drive one way, so definitely not commutable.  Even with those trips, it’ll be well worth staying there.  Not only will we save on site rent, but we’ll be decidedly cooler, too.  Our A/C decided to break down on one of the last warm days, so before next summer, we’ll have to get that fixed.  The days do sometimes get warm enough in Corry that the A/C is necessary.

We’re back to thinking about moving into an apartment.  If we did that, then we could leave the camper in PA year round.  They charge very little to store rigs for seasonal campers, much less than the local storage places charge.  We’d save enough doing that to pay for the next season. So now I’m hoarding my pennies for first and last month’s rent somewhere.  I don’t relish the idea of apartment living again, but I think we’re about ready to give up fulltiming.The downside will be that we have to continue to pay for a place to live even when we’re not living there, something we haven’t had to do while living in the rig.

I keep wishing that I had the money to buy a little spot of land upon which I could park the camper.  We could live there while we had a little house built. Land here is so expensive and zoning restrictions so prohibitive that I doubt we’ll ever be in a position to fulfill that dream.  I would say screw this and go back to Texas where property can be had for much less and where RVs are more welcome, but, I’ve got my dream job here and would be profoundly stupid to give it up.

Meanwhile, the rig is nearly ten years old, and though we have a year and a half left on our warranty, we’re concerned about how much longer the Big Blue Beast will be roadworthy. As it is, we need new tires before we can drive her anywhere else.  A number of little things are needing fixing.  I’ve got three separate small leaks, all of them from drains, not fresh water.  Those will need fixing before things start to freeze.  So, leaks, the nearly-dead A/C, dry rotting tires, broken shades, the fried surround sound system — it’s starting to add up, so much so that it’s discouraging. Of course, some of this stuff is covered by the warranty.  But the tires and window shades are on me.

I have made one improvement to the place, though.  I bought another load of gravel and poured it down out front.  Then I bought a bunch of resin pavers and laid them over the gravel.  We now have a little “patio” that will drain rather than puddling up in a rain.  There hasn’t been a major storm since I put down the gravel, but I’m hoping this works.

While this has been a hairy couple of months, one good thing has been that I’ve been able to see a lot of my family.  While we were in Texas for the funeral, I stayed with my aunt, saw my cousins, and visited with my biological father.  My sister was in town last week, and now my aunt is here visiting another of my cousins in Pasadena.  We’re headed there tomorrow to have lunch with them.

Lex is working hard at her graduate studies.  After this semester, she’ll be only three classes away from finishing her degree.  I will be going back to school in the spring in hopes of getting all the credits I need to apply for promotion next fall.  Then there will be TWO grad students in the house.  Oh, boy.  Hope we can survive both of us procrastinating that much. I’m going to try and enjoy my last couple of months of freedom before school begins in January.

Now that the weather is cooling off, I’ve got the camping bug again.  Don’t know why I feel so compelled to camp in cold weather.  Seems like a bad idea, but I do rather enjoy it for some odd reason. I’ve also decided to take up hiking in earnest (as opposed to the rambling around the woods for a mile or so looking for a cache).  I have dreams of the Appalachian and North Country Trails — not the entirety of them, just sections.  First, I’ll work up to a couple of miles.  Then five.  Then an entire day’s hike.  The a two-day hike.  Once I’m comfortably hiking at least 8 miles a day, I’ll think about perhaps doing just the MD stretch of the AT.  It’s a long-term dream, but I think it may be achievable.  We shall see if I can stay motivated.

So Halloween is just around the corner.  I’ve got my pumpkin and am ready to carve a jack o’lantern and already have a costume lined up.  Wherever you may be, I hope your Halloween is sweet and scary.

Friday, July 22- Sunday, July 24

We drove up to Toronto, crossing into Canada at Buffalo’s Peace Bridge on Friday afternoon, arriving at our hotel around 10 p.m. or so.  We called up Lex’s friend, Gerry, to see if he was up to a late supper.  He was, so we met him at his apartment not far from our hotel and then walked a few blocks to a sushi restaurant.  I was in awe that Toronto’s subway stations are also small shopping malls, including grocery stores, restaurants, drugstores, and other specialty stores.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  The sushi was quite yummy.  By the time we were done, it was late, so we headed back to the apartment that Gerry shares with his friend (and Alexis’ friend), Brennan, and Brennan’s brother, Chad and picked up our truck so we could return to the hotel.

In downtown Toronto

The next morning, we got up, had breakfast at Tim Horton’s and drove back to the boys’ apartment where we left the truck and walked toward the metro station.  On the way, we convinced the guys to give their first geocache a try.  They were immediately hooked, and we spent a good part of the day searching for other caches in downtown Toronto as we walked through the city.  And walk we did.  And walk.  And then we walked some more.  Periodically, we’d hop on the subway or take a streetcar, but mostly we walked.  Just a reminder:  I’m fat and out of shape.  I was tired of walking before we even got to the first subway station, but there were still eight more hours of walking ahead of us.  By the end of it, I had blisters on my blisters and was wiped out.

Storm clouds gather behind the CN Tower

We’d had a great time, though, stopping for lunch at Smoke’s Poutinerie and frozen yogurt at Blushberry (oh, God that was good).  We also got to see a number of Toronto landmarks like the old courthouse (which also happened to be a virtual cache) and the CN Tower as well as the stadium where the Blue Jays play.  As we were walking, storm clouds started to gather and then burst over us just a couple of blocks away from the Korean barbecue restaurant where we had dinner.  We ate in our soaked clothes.  I’ve never been in a cook-it-yourself joint, so found the whole thing quite novel and yummy.

At the end of the day, Brennan and his girlfriend Jenny went off on their own while we followed Gerry back to his apartment where Alexis and Gerry got online and played a little WoW while I snoozed on the sofa.  When they were done, Alexis and I went back to the hotel where we crashed and burned.

The next morning, we had a greatly overpriced breakfast at the restaurant in the hotel and then went to meet Gerry to go to an early showing of the final Harry Potter movie.  It was so good, the best of the series.  After the movie, we went downstairs to the Loblaw’s to pick up some digestive biscuits for our Canadian ex-pat friend, Corrine back in Baltimore.  That done, we headed to a nearby Asian fusion restaurant, Spring Rolls, and had a regular dim sum feast.  They just kept bringing plates of food.  It got discouraging after a while!  Fortunately, Gerry can put it away (he’s 6’9″ tall), so nothing went to waste.  We finally bid Toronto and Gerry adieu around 5 p.m. and headed for Niagara Falls.

Neither of us had ever been to the Falls, so we had a magnificent time.  We rode the Maid of the Mist, of course, took loads of pictures, browsed the gift store, and left the area just as it was getting dark.  We rolled back into Corry around 10 p.m.  We were both sad to see the weekend end.  We’d had a wonderful time with Gerry and Brennan, loved Toronto, and were awed by Niagara Falls, but the work week beckoned.

MJ and Lex aboard the Maid of the Mist

Monday, July 25 to Wednesday, July 27

Lex grudgingly got up for work the next morning while I went to pick up our pups which we had boarded all weekend at a kennel in Corry.  The dogs appeared unfazed though we had missed them terribly.  The cat seemed absolutely indifferent to our return, but she did seem upset that we brought those damned dogs back into the house. I think she was hoping for a life as an only pet.

In Susquehannock State Forest

We had just three more days in Corry, so I had to hurry up and finish my last Allegheny Geotrail county, Potter.  So on Tuesday, I drove the two hours to the first cache in that county and got down to work.  I’d heard rumors that Potter was the most challenging county.  I had steeled myself for the worst.  It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t awful, either.  One cache took me into a park that was having a huge archery competition, and they weren’t letting non-archers in the gate, so I had to park across the road and bushwhack into the cache which meant forging a stream and slogging through some muddy flats before climbing up a pretty steep hill to get to the actual trail.  I wasn’t going to let some gatekeeper stop me!  Turns out the competition wasn’t actually happening that day, so they could have let me walk down the trail the easy way, damn them!  Another cache took me up a trail, through a forest of ferns, and atop a ridge overlooking the valley below.  What a view! It was about a mile roundtrip which wasn’t bad.  It was just the grade that got me.  I managed to get all six caches, though, and made it back to Coudersport, the county seat, to pick up my county coin and the master coin.  I was so proud of myself !  It had taken me a whole month (not the three days that some folks claim it took them) to complete the entire Allegheny Geotrail, but I did it!  I figured I drove about 2,000 miles all told and hiked at least 25 miles to obtain 60 caches.

Alexis berry picking

Wednesday was our last day in Corry, and I wanted to go pick wild blueberries, so Alexis and I hopped into the truck and headed for a site in the Allegheny National Forest near one of the AGT caches where the blueberries were supposed to be plentiful.  The bushes were everywhere, but they had been picked over pretty well.  Had we come the week before, we might have gotten more.  Clearly the locals know the treasure to be found there.  We walked away with about a pint of berries.  I froze them and hope to have Alexis make us some wild blueberry muffins soon.

Thursday, July 28 to Sunday, July 31

The rest of Wednesday was spent breaking down the rig and getting ready to travel in the morning.  We needed to leave by 5 in the morning to reach our destination in Ohio by 10 a.m., so we hit the hay early, rising around 3 in the morning to get something to eat, stow the last of our gear, hitch up the rig, and pull out.  On the way to Wauseon, we had a couple of scary moments when the pigtail that connects the trailer brakes to the truck managed to unhook itself.  Both times we got safely off the road and reconnected the line.  We also hit a downpour while negotiating Cleveland’s rush-hour traffic.  Lex did a great job, though, and got us through it all.  We arrived at the fairgrounds in Warren a little later than we’d hoped, around 11 a.m. and discovered that the site I’d reserved was far too small for our rig, so we got to choose one in an area of the campground that was empty.  As Lex was backing the rig into the site (we hate back-ins), she cut the wheel a bit too sharply, and before I could shout out a warning, the back window of the rig was shattered by the nose of the rig.  Oops!  Fortunately, we were covered, and for a $50 deductible, Safelite came out and replaced the window in a matter of hours.

We spent the next couple of days enjoying Midwest Geobash at the Fulton County Fairgrounds in Wauseon.  There were vendors, games (we entered the treasure hunt and I played geobingo), and fellowship.  We decided that Midwest Geobash is decidedly more fun that Geowoodstock.  It has more of a party atmosphere.  There is one part of the grounds set aside for an all-night party, Area 51.  The first night there was a tinfoil hat contest, but I was late getting there.  By the time I arrived, everyone was pretty well plastered.

My tinfoil hat

We saw a few Maryland cachers that we recognized and met a lovely couple from Indiana who were new to caching.  They had lots of questions, and we were happy to answer them.  I continued trading my paracord bracelets (of which I’d made many) for pathtags and came away from the event with another fifty or so.  Lex bought us a gorgeous custom-made wooden box to store our tags, and we both walked away from the event with t-shirts, new geocoins, and lots of miscellaneous cache swag.

We made a run to nearby Toledo on Friday evening to see about picking up a new desk for Alexis at Office Depot.  While we were there, we grabbed a few caches, including one across the state line in Michigan.  I had found a bike for sale on Toledo’s Craigslist that I wanted to check out, so we met up with the seller after finding our caches.  I liked what I saw, so plunked down fifty bucks for an old beach cruiser.  I discovered that the seat post was loose, and all my efforts to try and tighten it were in vain.  Sadly, this meant I didn’t really get to ride my bike around the fairgrounds for the rest of the weekend like I hoped.  It would need repair first.

My "new" bike

Alexis was so taken with the idea of having her own bike, that we went to a Wal Mart in a town about ten miles away and picked up a ladies’ Schwinn hybrid bike for her.  She just loved it!  Neither of us has had a bike in years, and we’re looking forward to breaking them in.

Midwest Geobash wrapped up Saturday night, and on Sunday we hitched up the rig and left for Sunny’s Campground about fifteen minutes away where we were set to spend about 11 days while exploring the area.  We got there and found out we had no cell signal (AT&T) and none of our broadband modems were working, either (Verizon, Virgin Mobile, and Cricket).  The park’s wifi was useless.  This is a problem.  Lex had to get back to work on Monday, so she relies on a cell signal and Internet connection to do her job properly.  We had to think fast.  With no way to research local parks — we couldn’t call around or Google anything — we decided to go with what we knew.  Harecreek back in Corry, PA had working Internet, we got a cell signal there, the park was nice, and we liked the area.  So I called the park owner and asked him if he had room for us.  He did, so we headed back to Pennsylvania.  On one hand, it was disappointing because I’d hoped to go on a caching trip through Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, stopping to see Chicago on the way.  Well, that wasn’t going to happen, but at least we were returning to someplace cooler with less humidity.  The weather had been miserable the entire time we’d been in Wauseon.  We’d gotten spoiled in PA!

We got back to the campground in Corry around 10 p.m. Sunday night.  The owner met us and guided us into our spot.  We got unhitched, and Lex was driving the truck back around to the rear of the rig to park it when there was a horrible noise.  She’d run over one of the fire rings they use here in the park, and it had lodged itself between her front tire and the front bumper.  The fire rings are rims from semi trucks, so they are indestructible.  The bumper, however, didn’t fare so well.  This meant ANOTHER call to Geico, our second in three days.  Oh, boy.  There goes the safe driver discount.  In fairness to Alexis, it was pretty dark out here; I don’t think she saw the thing sitting there.  The damage seemed minimal, but I would have to take the truck to an adjuster in Erie on Wednesday to get an estimate.

Monday, August 1 to Thursday, August 4

The first day of August depresses me.  It means that I have to go back to work in just two weeks and our trip will soon be at an end, both reasons to be bummed.  So I spent most of Monday on the sofa, moving only to go take a nap in the bedroom when I developed a migraine.  I couldn’t have done much less.  Lex put her new desk together Monday night, though, so the day wasn’t a complete waste!

On Tuesday, I got up, went into town, dropped off our bikes at a local cycle shop.  Lex’s chain had come off and she wanted to make sure it was properly adjusted.  Wal Mart isn’t known for its expert bike assembly.  I really wanted my seat post fixed.  The shop owner said he’d try to get them done by Friday.  I hope he can manage it.  I want very much to go ride part of the Corry Junction Greenway Trail here in town.  It’s a rails-to-trail hike/bike trail, and the first part is paved and relatively level, so it’d be perfect for the two of us. Afterwards, I rented some videos, picked up some pizza for lunch, poked around town for a while, and came back to the campground where I watched movies most of the day, pausing to get up and take my wash over to the laundry room here in the park.  I posted a sign up hoping to get rid of Lex’s old desk, but we haven’t had any takers so far.  It’s in pretty good shape except for the wobbly keyboard tray.

Wednesday morning I drove to Erie to meet the adjuster.  The estimate amounted to $857.  Wow!  Considering how little damage there was, that’s a lot.  It’s a quick fix, apparently, with only one or two hours of labor.  The body shop where I met the adjuster was too busy and wouldn’t be able to get the truck done by the time we needed to leave the area, so I called around to another shop.  He told me to get the adjuster to fax over the estimate, and he’d get back to me.  Well, okay then.  I did that and then headed back towards Corry.

On the way, I saw an RV dealership and decided to stop in and look at some rigs.  Alexis and I are seriously considering trying to pay off this rig quickly (within the next year or so), get back into a sticks-and-bricks place, sell the rig, and buy something much smaller and easier to tow.  We talked about a truck camper as a possibility (loads in the bed of a truck instead of being pulled behind it), but neither of us had ever been in one.  Turns out the dealership had a few, and I took a look around.  I decided that without a slide, it wouldn’t really be doable for the two of us and the pets.  Even with the slide, it’d be a squeeze.  Of course, we’d only be traveling a few weeks a year instead of living in it year-round, but with so little floor space, I’m not sure what Otis would do with himself.  The sleeping area is a bit too high up for him to jump, so he’d always be underfoot.  I also looked at a couple of smaller (under 19 feet) travel trailers, and those seemed more our speed.  As we get closer to paying off the fifth wheel, we’ll have to look at more small travel trailers.  We’d liked to Heartland MPG quite a lot.  I think that’s the size we’ll need.

I got back into town, stopped at the CVS and picked up a prescription I had transferred here, and stopped by a local body shop, Corry Collision.  Turns out they could fit me in and could have the parts very quickly.  I decided to go with them.  While they work on the truck, I’ll probably take Corry’s lone cab to and from the campground.  He’ll probably take the truck in on Monday and it’ll be all shiny new and ready to roll that same day (knock wood).

Wednesday afternoon was grey and rainy, so I spent most of it watching yet more movies.  I really should start to work on my fall classes, but I’m absolutely unmotivated right now.  There’s just so much to be done that I can’t bring myself to begin.  I’ll have to suck it up and get to work soon, though.  School is coming, whether or not I’m ready.  Doing actual work means acknowledging that fact, though, and I’m in denial right now.

Now here it is 3:30 on Thursday afternoon, and I’ve accomplished precious little today other than figuring out my bills for the next month.  This trip is leaving me dead broke, and I won’t have money for dining out or going to the movies or any such luxuries for the next several weeks.  In fact, it’ll be all I can do to muster the cash to get us home.  Let’s pray nothing goes wrong on the way (knock wood again).  We can’t afford it!  I wrote out the rent check for our site in Dundalk today.  We only pay for part of the month in June and August and don’t pay at all in July.  Thank goodness.  Site rent is so expensive there that we wouldn’t be able to afford to travel if we had to pay even when we weren’t parked there.  We pay $800 a month in Dundalk for what we can get for less than $500 here (we get more here, actually, since there’s a pool, laundromat, dumpster, propane filling station, etc. here in the park).  There’s also no grumpy groundskeeper here.

We’re not looking forward to pulling back into our site in Dundalk because last year Creepy Groundskeeper Chip actually yelled at us when we pulled in through the field instead of backing in.  Next week, I’m calling the park manager and explaining that we will be pulling through the field again this year and that she should inform Chip since we have no desire to be yelled at again.  I’m also going to tell her about how he stands right over me and stares at me while I hook and unhook my utilities.  He doesn’t help and in fact will refuse if I ask him for help.  Frankly, I think he’s just there because he thinks we’re a couple of dumb broads who don’t know what we’re doing, and I think he looks down my shirt while he’s at it.  I’ll make sure Diane knows this last part, too.  I’m hoping to scare him away so he’ll leave us alone entirely.

Well, there’s more laundry to be done, trash to be taken out, dishes to be washed, a catbox to be cleaned, and dogs to be walked.  See how different this kind of travel is from the usual hotel room or resort?  The chores come right along with us.

I spent most of last week getting us ready to go.  I found someone to pick up my mail, stored my car and little trailer at a friend’s house, refilled the propane tanks, did the laundry, got some groceries, unpacked the basement storage, and repacked everything securely.

Friday night, Lex and I hitched up the rig and moved it off its leveling blocks.  I had to use a tire iron to pry the blocks out of the dirt where they’d settled over the ten months we’d been parked.  Let me just say that getting all the spiders, bugs, and mud off of 50 leveling blocks is no fun!  I inspected the tires; they have some dry rot which is worrisome but not unusual for RV’s.  We pulled up the landing gear and spent the night packing up our desks and putting away everything that might shift during the trip.

On Saturday morning, we had some breakfast, pulled in the slides, unhooked the utilities, and we were ready to go.  Well, almost ready.  I had forgotten to turn in my library books, and since we were all hitched up, we just decided to take rig and all up the street to the library.  Fortunately, it’s located in a shopping center with a huge, usually fairly empty parking lot.

It just so happens that the library sits next to a Firestone, so after I’d turned in the books, Lex backed up to the garage, and we had our tires aired up.  The mechanic who took care of the tires said they should endure the trip but we should get them replaced ASAP.  I’m just hoping that he’s right and they make it through the summer.  We can get them replaced before we take the rig anywhere next year.

We were on the road by 11:00 a.m. The trip, according to Google Maps, was supposed to be about 6 hours.  Of course, that means six hours by car, not pulling 12,000 pounds of RV.  That always takes longer because we have to drive more slowly and stop more often for fuel.  As it turns out, this trip also took longer because we spent half of it on winding mountain roads, Lex’s least favorite.

Downgrades are particularly hard because they require near constant braking.  We had the truck equipped with a trailer brake controller, and Lex’s truck has a special tow mode, both of which help save the brakes and the transmission.  Lex got pretty good as working with the brakes while going across mountains last summer, but the Alleghenies presented their own challenges.  We knew we were in trouble when we saw runaway truck ramps every few miles.

After an hour or so on these downgrades (which inevitably alternate with challenging upgrades), we made our second stop of the day for fuel.  When I got out of the truck to start the pump, the brakes were clearly overheated, and the friction had caused a pretty awful smell.  Fortunately, the road after that point wasn’t quite as steep and in fact began to level out as we entered a valley, the Brokenstraw Valley to be exact, in Warren County, Pennsylvania.

After eight hours, Lex’s nerves were shot, the dogs were cagey, I was tired of being cooped up in the truck, and we were thrilled to roll into the gates of Harecreek Campground in Corry, PA.  Gary, the owner, greeted us with a smile and guided us into our campsite, a nice, wide, level pull-through just across the street from the office.  We were told just to get settled in and then head to the office in the morning and check in.  So that’s just what we did.

Once we got all the utilities hooked up and the animals walked and fed, it was about 10 p.m., but we weren’t quite ready to go to bed, so we took a short nighttime drive around Corry just to start to get the lay of the land.  There wasn’t much open at that hour, but we did note that Corry has a Wal Mart, a few chain restaurants, a nice town square, a library, and a little shopping center.  I knew I’d have plenty of time to explore all of this since we’re going to be in the area for a month, so we headed back to the campground and hit the hay around 11:00.

I must have been tireder than I thought because I slept soundly until 10 a.m. the next morning when a wide-awake Lex woke me up telling me the day was wasting.  That almost never happens.  When we can sleep as late as we want, I’m usually the first person awake.  Not this time.  Honestly, I could have slept for another hour or so.

Lex was chomping at the bit to go grab some breakfast, so after we were up and dressed and the dogs were walked, we went on a trek to find someplace that was open on a Sunday morning.  Eventually, we discovered a Perkins where we had brunch and developed a plan for the day.

The night before, we’d realized that there is very little data coverage in the area, so our iPhones, which we use to geocache, were operating on the Edge network, making pages very slow to load.  This could make caching pretty challenging without a regular, handheld GPS.  We haven’t had our own dedicated GPS unit for a while, so we thought we’d go in search of one.

A trip to Corry’s Wal Mart turned up nothing, so we struck out for the nearest population center of any size, Erie, which is about 20 miles away via some back roads.  There are a couple of big sporting goods stores there.  We struck gold at the first one we tried, Gander Mountain.

Though we were looking for the Magellan Explorist GC, we found something better — the Garmin Dakota 10.  It was on sale and had a $100 mail-in rebate.  The deal was so good, that we each bought one of the units.  These are $300 GPSrs, but after the rebate, we will have only paid $129.  Garmin recently came out with the Dakota 20, so I imagine they are trying to close out the 10′s.  The Dakota 10 has a touchscreen and supports geocaching files, allowing the user to see cache descriptions, difficulty ratings, hints, and recent logs.  Of course, these files have to be downloaded from a PC; the units aren’t wireless.  Of course, this is why they are ideal for this sort of remote location.  They don’t rely on cell reception.

Naturally, we had to see if our new GPSrs worked, so we pulled up some caches on our phones, plugged the coordinates into the new units, and discovered that there was a cache directly behind the sporting goods store.  We managed to find three caches in the parking lot of that same giant shopping center before deciding it was dinnertime. Somehow, six hours had slipped away since we’d had brunch at Perkins.

The nearest restaurant was Red Lobster.  We weren’t feeling picky, so Cheddar Bay biscuits and mediocre seafood it was. While we were at dinner, I reminded Alexis that we needed to stop for a piece of coax cable.  We discovered that the campground had cable, but we didn’t have a piece of coax that would reach the hookup.  We stopped at Best Buy to remedy the problem and were almost ready to head back to Corry when I pointed out to Alexis that we were only a couple of miles from Lake Erie.

Since I’d never seen one of the Great Lakes before, Lex humored me and drove me to nearby Presque Isle State Park.  We cruised around the island, stopping briefly at Budny Beach to enjoy the view and the cool breeze and to snap a few photographs.  It was a lovely excursion. I would have liked to have spent more time there, but our pups had already been home alone for quite some time.

On the return trip to Corry, we stopped at Tim Horton’s just to see what all the fuss was about.  Our Canadian friend, Corrine, raves about them.  We don’t quite understand it but suppose it has something to do with  fond childhood associations.  Ah, well.  At least we can mark that off our list of things to do before we die.

We got into Corry around 7:30, stopped for groceries at a local market, and then returned to the campground.  The dogs were thrilled to see us.  We got them walked and fed, Lex got the cable working, and I spent the remainder of the evening downloading geocaches to our new GPS units.  We’re now ready to get our cache on in Northwestern Pennsylvania!

Lex is back to work tomorrow.  We’re hoping the campground’s wifi network will suffice for her purposes.  The Virgin Mifi just isn’t cutting it.  I don’t have a lot of work to do right now.  My students are working on their research papers, so all I have to do is be available to lend support.  That means more time to spend exploring the area.

On Thursday, we’re leaving Corry and heading back down the road to Pittsfield, home of the Warren County Fairgrounds, site of Geowoodstock IX.  We’re meeting a group of my student geocachers there, and we’ll be in Pittsfield for five days before returning to Corry. We’ll stay put in Corry for another three weeks when we’ll head out to Northwestern Ohio for yet another major geocaching event.  While we’re here, we have plans to spend each weekend making day trips to Chautauqua, Niagara Falls, and Toronto. Another goal of mine is to complete the Allegheny Geotrail.  We’ve also discovered a 7.25 mile rails-to-trail, the Corry Junction Greenway Trail.  There are caches all along it.  We want to challenge ourselves to make the hike while we’re here.  It’ll probably take us an entire day to complete because we’re not exactly athletes, but we’ll give it a try!

For now, though, it’s late, and my pillow is calling my name.  Sweet dreams, Dear Reader.

As for our itinerary, I’ve worked in an overnight stay in Toronto and one in Chicago, two cities I’ve never seen. The Toronto trip will take us through Niagara Falls, another place on the bucket list. The Chicago trip will take us through Elkhart and briefly up into Wisconsin.  We’ll have to find a petsitter in PA and one in OH so we can do the overnights because we plan on leaving the rig behind, and traveling with them without the RV will be tough.  I don’t want to leave them alone in some hotel room somewhere.

In addition to the overnight trips, I’ve also worked in day trips to  Chautaqua, New York, Cuyahoga National Park , and Cleveland.  And of course we have the two big geocaching events, and those will definitely keep us busy while they are going on. Now that I can see that there are some other fun things for us to do and see, I’m getting a little more excited.

As I’ve worked out the money, I’ve also discovered that we should be able to afford the trip without much of a problem as long as we don’t have to deal with any major breakdowns or unexpected expenses. There will be a little cushion just in case, but I always get nervous about the possibility of being stranded in a strange town.

It looks like it’s going to rain all this week which is not good.  I have things I need to do with the RV before we head out, but I don’t want to try and do them in the mud.  Yesterday was dry, so I got in under the slides with some steel wool and silicone lubricant and sanded all the rust off the support arms and the cables and lubed them up.  I also lubed the rubber seals around the slides.  They haven’t been pulled in since last August, so they had all winter to be exposed to the elements.  Let’s hope when I go to pull them in on Friday night, they still work!  We might not go anywhere otherwise.  I’ve had supports underneath the big slide for the past ten months, so the weight has had something to rest on.  Let’s hope getting those steel wool particles all over me will pay off!

I still need to hook the fresh water tank and water pump back up, clean the fresh water tank out, find something to cover the underbelly, air up the tires, buy a new sewer hose, and make sure everything underneath and inside the RV is properly stowed and secured.  I also have to go park my car at a friend’s house. I’ll miss my little car; we drive it much more than the truck because it’s so much more fuel efficient.  It’ll be the big truck for us all summer.

In the midst of all this, I still have to teach my summer online class, and that means grading papers.  The next round of essays come in tonight, so that means spending time Tuesday and Wednesday reading and marking papers in time to get them back to students by midterm.  Yep, that’s right, midterm.  We’re nearly halfway done!

We pull out of here on Saturday and will be heading up to Corry, Pennsylvania.  It’s in Warren County near the Allegheny National Forest, not far from the PA/NY state line.  The weather will be cooler there, it seems, and that’s not a bad thing!

Let’s see what I can accomplish between now and Saturday.

That’s not to say I did NOTHING school related. On Monday I did take a group of students geocaching up to Northern Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, but that’s fun for me and in almost no way resembles actual work (except that I’m responsible for making sure other people’s children don’t die or get grievous injuries — always a little nerve-wracking).

So other than geocaching, I did manage to do some laundry, clean the house, pull all the excess stuff out and put it in our new storage unit (I still cringe to admit that), a storage unit which is now full. I can hardly believe I fit all that stuff inside the rig. We now have a half-empty basement space and some empty drawers and shelves. The trick is to NOT FILL THEM UP again anytime soon.

Today was the most beautiful day of the break. The sky was sunny and blue, and it was warm and breezy outside. I had one of my student geocachers over and paid him to wash and polish our rig and cut the branches away that were overhanging our roof. I must say he did a very nice job of it. We now have a pretty, shiny rig to pull down the highways.

It was so warm today, I had to clean up and turn on the A/C. We just had the heater on a few days ago! We probably wouldn’t have had to turn on the A/C, but all our windows were closed while the rig was getting washed.

Yesterday, in preparation for today’s washing, I de-winterized the rig. In this case, that means I stripped all the insulation and the heat tape off our fresh water hose, replaced the water filter, and hooked up the sewer flush hose again. Dealing with that water hose, more than any other aspect of RV living, has come to symbolize the changing of the seasons for me. I dread having to insulate it and rejoice at stripping that foam off it when it warms up again. I feel fortunate that we didn’t burst any hoses or pipes this winter and only had our water supply freeze twice (before I got wise and applied a second strip of heat tape to our pipes.

This coming weekend, we’re taking the students on another geocaching/camping trip, this time to the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I’m really looking forward to this trip since I’ll FINALLY have the chance to see the Atlantic Ocean, and not just the Chesapeake Bay. Yes, I’ve been here five years and still haven’t seen the actual East Coast. The weather should be much warmer for this trip than it was for our trip mid-March. We’re taking more students this time and a school van. Should be an adventure!

I’ve been doing more thinking about our trip. I think we WILL go somewhere, and I’m now leaning back towards our original plan to visit South Carolina. I think we’ll park ourselves in one place and use it as a jumping-off point for day trips and overnight tent camping excursions. I’m really looking forward to visiting the Sea Islands, Savannah, and Northern Florida.

Before now and our departure in mid-June, I need to call our service guy, Patrick, and have him come make sure we’re road worthy. I loathe the idea of spending the money this will require, but it’s necessary. We won’t feel safe otherwise.

Only three more weeks of classes to teach, followed by final exam week (which is grading week for me), then a couple of weeks of meetings and attendance at graduation. I should get a week between all that and my summer course starting, but I’ll need that time to prep for the class. So I really won’t be completely free of school responsibilities until about mid July, though I’ll be free to hit the road around mid June.

School begins early in the morning for me, so goodnight all!

I did laundry on Thursday, dragged the giant suitcases that hold our off-season clothes out from the basement space, and proceeded to do the twice-yearly swap. All our spring/summer gear is now in our closets, and our winter gear has been packed back in the suitcases and some space bags and delivered to the new storage unit.

In addition to the clothes and winter linens, I’ve also taken over all the knitting, crocheting, and spinning stuff since we don’t do much of that anymore. I left only my drop spindles, some roving, some yarn, and my crochet hooks along with our sewing and craft kits. Two big tubs of fiber and accessories plus the spinning wheel are now in storage.

I also carried out most of the books we had in the house. Mind you, we got rid of a LOT of books, DVDs, and CDs when we moved here, but what we had left still weighs quite a bit. Plus, I find we only actually pull out and use a very small number of those texts. And, despite my promises to the contrary, at least a dozen novels found their way into the house and are awaiting reading. I’ve been good about getting rid of books I’ve already read, but since I’ve taken up reading eBooks and listening to more audiobooks, I sort of forget that my print books are even there.

Since it’s raining this afternoon, I haven’t yet gone outside to dig out all the excess stuff in our basement so I can take it to storage, too. I need to move out the space heaters, the propane campfire (until I can sell it), the snow shovels, the Halloween and Christmas decorations, and the few boxes of old files, photographs, and mementos that we still have.

Once all this stuff is removed, I’ll feel quite a bit better about the weight of the rig. We haven’t weighed it since last year, so I don’t really know where we stand. We’ll have to run it over the scales before we leave on our trip this year and make sure we’re okay.

As for our trip, I still have no firm idea of where we are going or what we are going to do. I do know that some friends of ours from Texas are planning on being in Gettysburg mid-June, and that’s usually when we depart, so I think we’ll meet them there and spend a few days in the area checking out all the historical sites. Where we go from there is anyone’s guess.

Originally, we’d planned on going to South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Maybe we’ll still make it there. Who knows? With fuel prices skyrocketing and money being thinner right now than at this point last year, I’m doubting we’re going to be able to do as much as we’d like.

Before we even think about hitting the road, I need to call our service guy and have him come do an inspection of the rig. We haven’t moved it in nine months, so we need to see about the tires, brakes, axles, have the furnace, water heater, have gas lines checked, need to clean and fire up the A/C, and we need to do something more permanent about the missing underbelly pan. During a winter windstorm, the piece of corroplast I had underneath there as a temporary solution popped out, and it’s been so mucky, I never bothered putting it back. Maybe Patrick will have a suggestion for covering the bottom of the rig.

If the weather holds (we’ve had a very rainy week — my spring break no less), I have a young man coming over on Monday to wash and polish the rig for us. It hasn’t been touched since we went through that truck wash in Texas. That’s quite a long time ago, and the winter has taken its toll. I want to make sure we’re pretty and shiny before we start rolling down the road again.

I think I’m not as keyed up or as prepared for this year’s trip. In part, that bad news I got from my employer has me down, feeling like this is all a bit futile. I think our own disappointment with certain aspects of living in the rig has finally gotten to me. If it wouldn’t make me want to stab myself in the eye, I’d just say screw it, let’s stay here this summer and save our money. That’d just be horribly depressing.

I now have some amazing tent camping gear and would almost rather just hop in my little car, hitch up my little tag-along trailer, and start cruising the country, pitching my awesome tent wherever it struck my fancy. God knows that’d be cheaper. Lex doesn’t really like to camp to begin with, though, and she certainly doesn’t like to camp in the summer when it’s hot and all the bugs are out for blood.

I’m just so torn about it all right now…

The main reason we’ve become so stationary is that the rig, while a cozy little dwelling, is frighteningly large and cumbersome out on the road. Alexis really isn’t comfortable driving it or parking it (especially since it is our home and holds all our possessions), and if she isn’t comfortable, we’re not going anywhere. After all, you don’t see ME getting behind the wheel to pull this monster.

We aren’t really ready to buy a house right now, but I think I’ve figured out a way to get us out of this huge rig, into a more traditional dwelling, and to get a smaller rig so that we’ll be more inclined to take short weekend trips as well as the long summer journey.

So here’s the plan:

1. Pay off my car. If the IRS cooperates this year, that should happen in just a couple of weeks.

2. Sell my car. Anyone interested in a 2000 VW Golf with four doors, manual transmission, and only 60K miles? I’m hoping to get at least $3500 for it.

3. Use the proceeds from the car to move into an apartment or rental home and to make downpayments on both a new RV and a used tow vehicle. We’ll be looking for a place near school since we’ll only have one vehicle between us after my car sells.

4. Trade in the Big Blue Beast for a Heartland MPG. They are reasonably priced, are small and light, and have all the features we need if we aren’t going to be living in the rig full time.

5. Trade in Lex’s Chevy Silverado 2500HD turbo diesel for something much smaller and used that will tow at least 4,000 pounds. I’m considering Honda Pilots and Saturn Outlooks (leaning toward the Outlook’s vast cargo space).

6. Teach myself to tow the new rig without panicking so that Alexis isn’t the only one stuck driving on our long trips.

7. Hit the road at every opportunity!

I don’t know yet if this is an entirely feasible plan. I mean, steps 1, 2, and 3 are completely doable. I will be paying off my car very soon. It shouldn’t be too hard to sell, and if/when it does sell, we’ll be able to afford to move someplace else and store the rig until we’re ready to trade it in.

The tricky part is the trading in of the fifth wheel and the truck. We’re both upside down on our notes. Lex likely won’t have a problem trading her very nice truck in for a tidy sum, but I’ve never traded in an RV before so have no idea what I can reasonably expect to get in trade for this rig. It’s 9 years old, it’s worn around the edges, and I still owe quite a bit for it (though I owe less than what it’s worth retail, but dealers don’t pay retail for trades). RV financing is different from automotive financing, too. RVs are considered “luxury” items, so the banks are less apt to be flexible with their terms. Once the RV show is over and all the dealers go back to their lots, I’ll give them a call and try to feel out my chances of unloading the Beast.

If steps 4 and 5 don’t work out, I can always pay to store the fifth wheel when we’re not using it. It costs a lot less to store than to park on a campsite. We’d have to keep the truck in that scenario, obviously, because we’d have to be able to tow the thing. No harm no foul, really, because we’d still get to travel during the summers, but the rest of the time, we’d be in a dwelling that doesn’t feel like it is going to fly away in a high wind and we wouldn’t have to worry about things like running out of propane or dumping holding tanks.

One downside to moving out of the fifth wheel is that renting a house or apartment means still paying rent even when we’re not there in the summertime. That kind of sucks, but since we will hopefully be saving money by having smaller vehicle and lightweight RV (both in terms of the financing and the fuel usage), the travel itself will be less expensive, hopefully compensating for having to pay rent on an empty apartment.

We both will really miss living in the fifth wheel because we’ve grown quite accustomed to our little nook, but if we aren’t using it to travel regularly, it’s not serving its intended purpose, and instead is just a small, comfy, unconventional place to live. There’s nothing wrong with that except for the part where we really wish we could travel more.

But if you want to know the truth, I’m tremendously motivated to make this happen because the Heartland MPGs are so frigging CUTE! I really, really want a shiny, tiny travel trailer. GIMME! My preciousssss!

Ahem. Sorry for that. No, seriously, the entire transition plan is very pragmatic and has absolutely nothing at all to do with the fact that I am all agog for a cute, teardrop-shaped trailer that I saw at the RV show, one that I could practically put in my pocket and could kiss and hug and name Bubbles. Nothing at all to do with any of that. Really.

MJ gets handy

I got both the shore and battery power to the house shut down, broke out a screwdriver and unscrewed the existing fixtures.  That done, I figured out how to wire the new lights (white to white, black to black — not too hard) and screwed it all back in.  The only problem I encountered was that the new fixture was smaller than the old one.  This meant making new screw holes in the bottom of the cabinet, but such is the price of progress.

Got the fixture over the sink and the one over the kitchen counter replaced and fired everything up again.  Voila!  Nice, cool, high-efficiency LED lights!  So now 8 of the fixtures in my house have been converted to LEDs.  Mind you, that’s only a  few of fixtures in the rig, but I’ll get there eventually.

Lighting up the kitchen

You best believe when we sell this thing, I’m putting the old fixtures back in and taking the LED lights with me to install in whatever RV we get next.  These are too pricey to leave behind, and I doubt it’d add enough value to the resale price to pay for the lights.

I also tried to install a 12V outlet today, but I couldn’t find a decent place for it that wouldn’t involve me cutting holes in the paneling.  There’s no 12V wiring behind the plug for the TV in the bedroom, or I’d just get one of those combo 12V/110V outlets.  Oh, well.  This may just be a task that I need to pay a professional to do.  The horror!

In other news, we’ve had a couple of weeks of cold, snow, sleet, freezing rain, ice, and general nastiness.  The fresh water continues to flow and nothing’s leaking, but some big wind gusts that we got the other night almost shredded one of my new slideout awnings.  It ripped the ice that had accumulated on top of the kitchen slideout topper off and took some of the vinyl with it.  Now I can read the paper through that awning.  *sighs*  The things are only six months old!

The same day as the awnings were battered, the make-do underbelly pan that I rigged up popped out and spilled fiberglass insulation everywhere.  It’s been so wet lately that I haven’t wanted to crawl underneath the RV to fix the pan.  I’m hoping things will dry up in the next few days so I can take care of that.  I hope  the holding tanks don’t freeze in the meantime.

I’m not entirely sure what the designers of this model were thinking when they planned where to put the heater vents.  There is one directly below the thermostat that controls the furnace.  Said thermostat is also adjacent to the front door.  Between the cold air and hot air blowing at the thing, the furnace is never sure whether to be off or on.  To remedy this, I replaced the offending floor vent with one that opens and closes.  I’m hoping that will ensure that the thermostat gets a truer reading of the room temperature.  We shall see, I suppose.

MJ's new ukulele

Given the nasty weather, it should be no surprise that both Alexis and I are sick.  I started teaching again this past week, so I get to deal with lots of students and teachers and their germs.  Oh joy!  Apparently, I brought some of them home with me.  There’s so much that needs to be done this weekend – house cleaning, laundry, school work — and I don’t feel like doing any of it.  I don’t even feel like practicing the new ukulele that Alexis bought me, and she hardly feels like plucking away at the banjo I just bought her.

Yep, you heard it right.  Ukulele and banjo.  When spring arrives, we’ll be able to roll out the awning, put out our lawn chairs, and play our instruments as the sun sets.  All we’ll need is a couple of jugs of corn whiskey and some overalls, and we’ll be in business!