September 18, 2014

We are in Goshen, Indiana, attending an RV Dreams Rally.  We first heard of RV Dreams from Roger and Diane, Robison cousins.  They have a blog, Travel with Whippets and link to the RV Dreams blog.  Howard and Linda run RV Dreams, which along with a blog, also holds several rallies a year.  These are mostly geared toward those who are thinking about being full time RVers (which we are not).

The seminars talk about pros and cons of full-timing, but also cover the basics – hooking up, tank maintenance, etc., so we are still learning a lot.  But we really chose to come to this rally because the RV Driving School is here.  We are signed up for driving lessons Sunday and Monday.  I’m going to learn how to back up the rig (I already drive it forward) and Steve hopes to learn some tricks to make it easier to back up.  Our instructor is a former ice road trucker.

We find ourselves among the old timers at this rally, since we’ve had our rig almost a year.  About a third of the attendees don’t have a rig yet and are still thinking about full timing.

For RVer’s, full timing means living in your RV all the time and not have a home somewhere.  We don’t intend to give up the house and expect to spend a fair amount of time in West Lafayette, so we don’t qualify as full-timers.  Someone called us part time full-timers, since we plan to be in the rig for extended periods. 

We’re here in Goshen this week and then back home for a week.  Then we take a six week swing to the east coast to visit both our parents and other family and friends.

We’ll then be back in West Lafayette for the rest of football season and Thanksgiving.

After Thanksgiving, we start what we think will be our longest RV trip.  We head out for Orlando first, to spend a week with Darci and her family at Disney World.  Then it will be a slow journey to Dallas for Christmas, making several stops along the way to visit and sight see.  We’ll be stopping at the Villages in Florida to visit with Steve’s Uncle Eep and our friends, Joy and Sam.

Christmas will be in Dallas with Natasha, Mike and Maria.  We expect to be there about a month – both Steve and Maria have birthdays in January.

After that, we’ll drive along the southwest border to California and follow spring up the west coast.  In June we will join up with an RV caravan to Alaska.  We will be back in West Lafayette for the first football game of 2015!

It will be an exciting year and I’ll try to keep you posted.

Deb

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Sorry it’s been a long time since I’ve blogged.  We seem to have plenty to keep us busy.

The current big project is new windows in the pool.  The windows that were there were original to the 1960s – aluminum jalousies.  Not exactly energy efficient.   But the sliding glass door actually precipitated this project.  We believe it was installed in the 80’s and had a wood frame.  It was rotting away and was not repairable.

 

So, energy efficient windows and doors are being installed.  We are also finishing replacing the aluminum siding on the house with vinyl.  When we added the front porch on in 1997, we replaced the aluminum on the front of the house with vinyl due to cost.  Now the whole house will have the same siding.  By the time we get around to selling this place, we’ll have it in good shape!

Last week was a busy week for us.  There were several things going on in Indianapolis, so we kenneled Obi (poor boy!) and headed there for a few days.  Our first stop was at our hotel, the Springhill Suites, where Betsy had helped us get a reservation.  She’s got good taste.  The hotel was within walking distance of two of our destinations and we had a GREAT view of the White River State Park.

Reflections from the JW onto Springhill Suites.  

 

Views from our hotel.  Thanks, Betsy!

The Eiteljorg Museum was across the street and we headed there to see an exhibit of Ansel Adams photographs.   He was a master photographer, but also a master developer and printer of photographs.  I have always wondered how great pictures were captured, as I don’t take great pictures. I once read an interview with a National Geographic photographer who said it was not unusual for him to take 25 rolls (36 exposure) of film to get one publishable picture.  In this exhibit, I found that Ansel Adams manipulated his photos during development and printing.  He photoshopped!  There is actually a short film of him printing a picture and manipulating how much light reaches various parts of the negative for exposure.   (And for those of you who don’t remember anything but digital photos, count your blessings!)

He did have an amazing eye and saw pictures that others didn’t.   His pictures of Yosemite National Park are iconic.  I hope to see the park next spring. 

Leigh joined us for dinner and stayed for the rest of our trip.  The next day, we walked over the White River to the Indianapolis Zoo.  The zoo opened a new orangutan exhibit this spring and I was interested in seeing it.  Unfortunately the orangutans were not making the most of their new environment.  But a lot of the other animals were active, as the weather was near perfect.  We fed a giraffe, watched the cheetahs get fed and the penguins get fed.  The polar bear came out of his den and posed nicely for us and the brown bears were playing in their pool.  The lions were awake and active, too.  It really is a nice zoo. 

   

Momma and baby wart hogs.   

Tiger training demo.  He gets a treat if he does what the trainer wants.  (They are separated by a thick glass wall.)  This particular "trick" is so his stomach and paws can be inspected for any problems.

I managed to last until mid afternoon, but headed back for the hotel while Steve and Leigh toured the White River Gardens and followed that with a Segway tour of White River Park.  I love Segways, but my back bothers me if I stand too long and an hour on a Segway is too long.  So I was glad Leigh was along to go with Steve.

Since we had all been on our feet most of the day, we just headed next door to the JW for dinner in their sports bar and crashed early.

The Children’s Museum was on the list for our last day in Indy.  They are hosting an exhibit of the terracotta warriors from China. 

“The Terracotta Army or the "Terracotta Warriors and Horses" is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BCE and whose purpose was to protect the emperor in his afterlife.” – Wikipedia

As expected, The Children’s Museum did a terrific job with the exhibit.  Along with many artifacts from the excavations, there were numerous hands on exhibits.  There are 8000 life size warriors in China, each with a unique face.  The bodies were molded in pieces and assembled and the museum has several places where you can “build” a warrior with rubbery replicas of the molded pieces.  They have found the fingerprints of some of the sculptors inside some of the figures. 

 One of the things that amazed me was the armor.  If you look at some of the soldiers, you can see armor made of connected rectangles.  I assumed that for a real soldier (not a clay one) these would have been squares of metal joined in a manner allowing some flexibility.  In fact, they would have been squares of stone.  In the excavations they found piles of these flat square stones drilled for connecting.  Metal was available, as many metal objects have been uncovered there, but the armor was made of stone.

The warriors were originally painted in bright colors, but the paint started to disintegrate upon exposure to air.  They had to develop a technique to preserve what was left of the paint and spray each uncovered warrior with a special concoction within 15 seconds of exposure to air.

 The soldiers were discovered in 1974 and we had read about them several times over the years.  It was exciting to some of the artifacts of which we had only seen pictures.

We also got a chance to visit one of my favorites at the museum, the Chihuly Ceiling.  This is 3200 blown glass pieces laying on glass panels lit from behind.  It's gorgeous!

The Chihuly Ceiling is under a large hanging Chihuly sculpture and they were cleaning it.  That's not a job I'd like to have!  He was using a swiffer.

Our final activity of the week was back in West Lafayette on Friday night.  We went to a performance of a Beatles tribute band, 1964 the Tribute.  They were formed in 1984, hoping to perform a few shows and are now into their 30^th year.  I was never a great Beatles fan, but it was fun to hear the music from my junior high years and reminisce.  The Bains and the Davis’ joined us and the weather was perfect.

On the bad news front, we have recently found out that Obi is diabetic.  We are in the process of changing his diet and he is usually ok with the shots.  Doesn’t like them, but usually accepts them.  He is much perkier, but still isn’t much interested in walks.  So we have some new routines.

I'll close with two of Steve's flower pictures from the Zoo and White River Gardens.

And I promise to try and update more frequently!

May 23, 2014

The miracles of modern medicine - I had sinus surgery yesterday and am almost back to normal today.

I have had headaches almost continuously since we returned from our big trip.  While I'm no stranger to headaches, by the time they had gone on for three weeks,  I knew this was different.  A sinus cat scan showed several problems and surgery was scheduled.  The surgeon is not convinced the problems he saw were causing all my headaches, but the problems did need to be fixed.  

They gave me pain pills after the surgery, but I really felt better than I had for weeks and only took a few.  So keep your fingers crossed that this solves most of the problems.

I don't know how this surgery would have been performed years ago, but it's remarkable to me that there are no scars or bruising or much of a recovery period.

When I was a kid, I very much remember cancer being a death sentence.  The adults would mention the diagnosis of a friend in hushed tones and there was little that could be done.  Today, I know many cancer survivors.  I remember taking one of the first polio vaccines - they gave it to us on a sugar cube.  And polio was such a threat that I think we got it in a mass inoculation set up in a local school gym.  Today, polio is unheard of in this county and very rare in the rest of the world.  And transplants - I remember the first heart transplant.  The recipient only lived a short time, but it was a miracle and paved the way for many other transplants.

While we have a long way to go on many medical fronts, it's wonderful that we live in a time of such medical progress.

Our last road trip was to an RV boot camp that was being followed by a big RV rally.  We had other plans, so we didn't stay for the rally.  We did get our rig weighed on Sunday and we are below our weight limit and mostly balanced.  Yeah!

The rally that started the next day was going to be huge.  Motor homes and trailer rigs were pulling in all day Sunday.  I had to move our truck to give someone more maneuvering room.   I don't know how many of the 900 sites there were filled but there were a lot of people there.

Coming home, I was reminded of how long we've managed to stretch out spring with our travels.  In northern Indiana, there were still some bare trees and the redbuds and dogwoods were still in bloom.  We experienced that down south months ago.  It's been pleasant.

The trailer is off getting it's own "medical" attention.  Last fall when we had the satellite system installed, the installer said that our roof caulking would probably need replacing this spring.  So the trailer is in the shop, getting caulked, along with a whole list of things Steve wanted fixed/installed.  I have a bit more staining to do on some support blocks for the desk and I've been ordering some things that we'll need in duplicate (measuring spoons, etc) so I"m not moving them from the trailer to the house and back.  I still have work to do to make moving back and forth easier.

We've also gotten some work on the house.  I finally got plants into the planters out back.  When we moved in (23 years ago)  the back yard looked like the before of those yard improvement shows.  We had two concrete slabs that didn't look like they belonged together; one had been the base of a dog kennel along the back wall of the garage.  Zebra landscaping did a wonderful job of tying the areas together, creating planters and steps down to the grass.  We still have a ways to go, but with perennials in the planters, we can at least work on other areas.  

Steve wanted some roses, so we got some roses.  My Dad is a rose lover and had found a brand of roses (Knock Out) that requires much less care than most roses.  So the house on Rose Street has more roses.

We're working on planning our next big trip for next winter.  We have some shorter trips planned before then, but next winter will start with Disney World and may end up in Alaska!

More on that as plans develop!

Take care,
Deb

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Wow!  This boot camp is rather amazing.  Remembering that this is for newbies, I was surprised that there seem to be between 75 and 100 attendees.  We are camped at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds, which has about 270 permanent RV sites, and can accommodate up to 900 rigs.  We had to wait in line to get parked.

Some one came by and said they had a fifth wheel being pulled by a semi with a driver that had never pulled it before.  Kinda slowed things up.  But since we've had our share of parking problems, we sympathized.

We're parked on grass, and have water and electric.  This is one of their temporary sites, but the fairgrounds does this often enough that everything is working fine.  

We are, however, about 50 yards from a very active rail line.  Steve, of course, takes out his hearing aids and sleeps like a rock.  The trains didn't really bother me, except last night during a storm.  Thunder woke me up and it was raining.  The wind was blowing, although the motorhome next to us was taking most of the force.  So I'm about to fall back to sleep when I hear the roar of a train, which is the sound they warn you about during tornadoes.  It took a few beats before I decided it really was a train and went back to sleep.

There is a stream between us and the rail tracks.  It looks like it's just a drainage ditch, but its a clear flowing stream.  Yesterday there was a family of mallards gathered there and tonight there were Canadian geese.  It seems to drain the field we're in quite well, as there is no mud, even though it has rained the last couple of days.

Our view out our window is certainly not our best, but gives you an idea of the variety of vehicles people full time in.

On the left is a semi truck with sleeping quarters that is licensed as a motorhome.  On the right is a box van that  resembles a moving van and may be an old homemade motorhome. Farther ahead you see trucks towing fifth wheels and motorhomes.  There are also truck campers, van campers, and maybe a car camper or two.  I would say the majority of vehicles are motor homes.

The Boot Camp precedes an Escapees's rally that they call an Escapade.  It's a week of classes and social events.  The classes cover everything from insurance to legal to medical to crafts to maintenance.  They repeat a lot of the information covered in the boot camp throughout the week.  Steve will be heading to Dayton, Ohio, at the end of this coming week, so we won't be staying for the Escapade.  If we did, we'd definitely be on information overload.

There is another RV group, RV Dreams, that is holding a rally here in the fall.  They will offer driving classes before the rally and we're going to try and get signed up for those.  This group was recommend by Diane and Roger, cousins of the Robison clan.

We will get our rig weighed tomorrow and find out how out of balance we are.  We don't think we'll be overweight, but we'll find out.

I did finally take some better pictures of our new desk and table.

We're really happy with the way they turned out.  They work well for us.  The picture below shows the desk and how the chairs will fit under it when we bring in the slides.  The desk is permanently installed, while the table folds up.

We've learned a lot this weekend and I know we still have more to learn.  But so far we haven't found out that we've done something extremely stupid and expensive, which is good news.

Obi's fast asleep on Steve's lap while Steve's working on the computer.  My lap just isn't level enough for him to sleep on.  He likes to rest his chin on the desk while he sleeps.

Time to get to bed so I can get up for an 8 am class.  Fortunately tomorrow's the last day of class and I can sleep in a little on Monday before we head for home.

Take care,

Deb

Thursday, May 8, 2014

On Sunday we had a family birthday party at the McDaniel's.  Rich, his niece, Angie (?), his grandson, Ben, and his grand niece, Ella, were all celebrating birthdays.

Rich was also celebrating finishing the 500 Mini Marathon the day before.  Go, Rich!

After the party, I went home and continued working on the desk and table  for the trailer.

I finished staining and varnishing the desk and table around  5 on Monday, but they had to dry for 24 hours before installation.

Luckily, our friend Greg was still in town.  He helped Steve get them into the trailer and into position for Steve to install.   Here they are set up as we'll use them.

I'll have to take another picture when it's not so bright out.  But they are working great!  Steve found these contraptions and installed one in each corner.

Each has two electric outlets and two usb ports.  No more crawling under the desk to plug stuff in.  Way cool!

We're at the Pla-mor Campground near Bremen, IN.  Here's the view out our window.

This is a large RV campground.  It has two fishing ponds (catch and release) and one swimming pond, plus playgrounds, horseshoe pits and mini-golf.  And a driving range.  It's in the middle of Amish country.  For early in the season, there are a number of rigs here.  There are some permanent residents, but everything looks well kept.  They appear to be spacing out us transients so that we're not parked right next to each other.  There's no one on one side of us and there are 3 or 4 spaces between us and the next rig over on the other side.  

We'll move to the Elkhart County Fairgrounds tomorrow for the RV Boot Camp.  It's supposed to be just a gravel lot with hookups, but it's close to the seminars and that's what we're here for.

It's warm and the air conditioner seems to be working, but there's a really strong wind.  The wind is whistling around the trailer and sometimes shakes it.  This is the precursor to the storms and tornadoes that are hitting the middle of the country.  We're supposed to have thunderstorms tomorrow, which will also cool us off.  High today was 88.

Steve's trying to take Obi for a walk and he's not exactly enthusiastic.  Poor Obi.  He was okay to leave the house with me this morning, but planted all fours when he realized we were headed for the truck!  While he's still not happy about riding in the truck, he no longer shakes and usually naps on our trips.  He is getting older though.  He's slow going up the stairs at home and sometimes needs to be carried.  I'm trying to train him to stay downstairs if I tell him to when I go up to move laundry or make some other quick trip.  He's beginning to catch on. (I think.)

That's all for now.  Take care!

Deb

Friday, May 2, 2014

I'm still struggling with sinus headaches, so I'll use that excuse for not blogging.  

We got the house ready for Easter and had a great time seeing everyone.  Total attendance ended up being 32.  The wonderful thing about being a part of this "family" is that everyone pitches in.  I provided the house and the ham and everyone else brought something.  We had two kinds of cheesy potatoes, asparagus, corn, several salads, deviled eggs, jello eggs and more desserts than you can imagine.  No one went away hungry.

We only had 3 little ones attend this year - Ben who is almost one, Ella who is almost 3, and Haleigh who is 4.  So the Easter eggs were "hidden" in the front yard for them to find.  The Easter egg hunt has been going on for a long time.  We haven't missed many years, even when no one really qualified as a kid anymore.  I was busy showing the trailer to people and Steve already had the camera on the tripod for the family picture, so we don't have any Easter egg hunt pictures.  We did get a good family shot, but not before Betsy, Reston and their friends left.

Ben, middle of the front row, was fascinated by Steve running to get in place and was always watching him, so we never got a shot of his face.  But everyone else, except Obi the dog, managed to smile for the camera!

The family photos have been going on at least as long as the Easter Egg hunt and it's always fun to look back over the photos and see how everyone's changed.  Here's one from 1992.

Steve's been working hard on the trailer and I don't even know all the projects he has going on.  With the help of Greg, who's visiting from Bellingham, he got all the cuts made and the edges routed on both the desk and the table.  Now it's my turn.  I'm the finisher in the family and need to sand, seal, stain, and polyurethane both pieces.  I got them sanded this evening and hope to keep moving on the project all weekend.

Steve would like them finished and installed by Thursday.  We'll be heading to Goshen, IN, to attend an Escapee's RV boot camp on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  We're going up a day early so we don't have to rush on Friday and we'll head home on Monday.

The boot camp should help us learn about RVing.  Yes, we should have attended one of these before we went on the road, but better late than never.  Maintenance and safety will be two of the items we'll be focusing on.  We'll also get the rig weighed.

A big part of safety is not pulling more weight than your tow vehicle can handle and not having more weight in the trailer than it can handle.  Weighing can help you balance the weight better for a better, safer ride.  When we were driving Leigh's car across country last summer, we stopped at a bed and breakfast in Cody, WY.  The owner did some RV restorations and told about restoring an Airstream trailer.  He finished and on their first trip out, the trailer started fishtailing, he lost control and totaled the trailer.  He didn't have a tow vehicle sized for his trailer.  Which is why we have a one ton diesel truck.

We think we're okay on what we're carrying in the trailer, as we still have some empty shelves and drawers.   I'm sure we'll remedy that over time, but it will be nice to make sure that we are under weight.

That's all for now.

Deb