Tag Archives: RVing

On The Road Again

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This is where I belong… On the road again.   

Charlie is SO over the snow!

  We pulled out of Hillsboro a few minutes ago, headed south on I-29, the direction we SHOULD be going for sure! It was actually hovering around 32 this morning and not too windy, so it almost felt like spring!  

 We are going to have to get our bedroom slide checked out soon. We are pretty sure the motor must be bad on it. Since we left San Francisco it’s been really slow coming in and out. We have to usually try it a few times with Allen pushing on the outside to help it. But this time it’s still out about a 1/2″ too far. Good enough to drive as long as we don’t hit a downpour. But, good thing it’s still under warranty with Grand Design!

 Anyhow, we are headed for Council Bluffs, Iowa tonight. There’s a Horseshoe Casino with an RV park, and a bar with live music, so it should be fun! Tomorrow we are stopping in Oklahoma City at Abe’s RV Park to see our friends Karen and Bob – yay! Apparently a tower had some ice damage there so I’m hoping we can stay a few days… But either way, after that it’s on to the Dallas area to take down the tower at Fair Park that Allen worked on back in June.  

Allen’s view from the tower

  

My view from the ground

 
I think Allen won the photo contest…

Thankful for Freezing Weather???

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Never thought I’d say that! But I guess you learn from everything, so thankful I should be!

Here’s a timeline:

  • Wednesday night we hit Reno’s Sports Bar for some food and holiday shenanigans.
  • Got home and forgot to drip the faucet (even though our water hose is heated and insulated, it will freeze if it’s not dripping)
  • 4am Thanksgiving morning – woke up to a frozen water hose… Caught it in time, brought it inside, thawed it out. (It was only frozen at the connection point between two hoses, about a half inch was exposed with no insulation.)
  • Went back to sleep, with the faucet dripping!
  • Made a delicious Thanksgiving feast!
  • Black Friday: woke up to water in the kitchen sink and tub, and a frozen sewer hose!

    Frozen poop tube pieces… 

What I’ve learned:

  • No matter how much fun, or booze, we have: REMEMBER TO DRIP THE FAUCET!
  • When the temperature drops to 2 degrees, or thereabouts, we shouldn’t be camping!
  • Or we should insulate the doggone poop tube as well…
  • One grey tank is for the kitchen sink, and one grey tank is for the bathroom and washing machine.
  • The grey holding tanks have no back-flow preventer, and will back up into both tanks simultaneously if they have nowhere to drain…
  • And finally, roaster ovens are the way to go when Cooking Thanksgiving Dinner in an RV!

Maybe I won’t have to use this cold weather knowledge for quite a while because we might be heading south sometime this week… This whole “getting dark at 4:45pm” is for the birds! Come on summertime!

 

No Shave November… 

My mom got us these shirts! 

Football and food… 

I decorated for Christmas a tiny bit early! 

Our “kitchen table” since our “dining room” is currently housing a Suzuki Katana!

Thanksgiving tradition that I’m keeping alive! Cheers! 

And we will end with little Charlie…

IMG_3582

She was trying to drink my mimosa… 

Camping in 7 degree weather…

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Who camps in 7 degree weather?! 

Well, we do. The real question is: Who’s brilliant idea was it to work on a 2000′ tower in late November in North Dakota?? … Hmmm… 

 Allen is working all weekend since they were off almost all week due to crazy winds. We’ve been leaving the bathroom faucet trickling 24/7 so our water doesn’t freeze. He forgot to leave it running when he left this morning for work. I got up 2 hours later and caught it just in time! Crazy! 

We even put a pillow over the spigot to kind of insulate it…  Our ghettoness is showing. 

 I’m just glad we have this camper (2015 Grand Design Momentum), our old one (2009 Forest River Wildwood) would be so much harder to keep thawed out! I thought Oklahoma City was bad last year… That was nothing compared to this!

More snow is on the way for Thanksgiving. Yippee! 

I forgot to take my tape measure to the grocery with me today. I need a maximum 7″ high turkey to fit in our convection oven…. 

I wish we were in the Florida Keys…. !!! 🌴

In need of Hot Toddies!

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North Dakota! Oh how I love you and hate your weather! We have a light blanket of white this Thursday morning. Allen’s home, scheduled to replace a guy wire starting tomorrow (good luck honey). No matter how or what we try, our water is frozen!!! Hello giant, huge, all season camper: you didn’t think to help our HEATED, INSULATED water hose out there in the elements! We currently have our faucets open. The water pump works like a charm (and our fresh water is full-thank you Allen!) so we’ve determined it must be outdoors grrrr….. 

 On the plus side, this is a great town and I love the people who live here. (Even if the weather is making us drink more than usual…..) Shout out to Steve-o-reno and Audra for making our time a little more enjoyable! 

PS… I made a Monopoly game yesterday… Call me a dork, but what else is there to do when there’s 60mph winds and snow outside?! 

 

Mount Rushmore and Adam’s Birthday

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We got lucky enough to have time to stop at Mount Rushmore on the way from San Francisco to North Dakota.   
 It seems like so far, every time we see a national landmark it’s in inclement weather! When we saw the Grand Canyon it was snowing all blizzard-like, and it was chilly drizzly for Mount Rushmore. But it was still very neat. I’m pretty sure we were the first visitors that morning, we woke up early so we could have time to see it and then get on the road. I sprinkled some of my brother’s ashes there.   

It smelled SO good here to me after all those months in the city!

 

Today would’ve been his 32nd birthday. 

I also spread some ashes at the Salt Flats in Utah.  
 And in wide open Wyoming.  
I think he would like that. Happy Birthday Adam. I miss you so much. 

On more recent things, Charlie and I have been taking walks through Hillsboro. I’m so proud of her for being well-behaved in public! Usually we just take walks in the campground and she occasionally goes to the pet store to get her nails done, but we rarely walk through actual neighborhoods with sidewalks and what not. I felt like a mom taking her baby to a restaurant for the first time. I was so scared she was going to act like a wild banshee! But she acted like a lady and had some manners so I’m very proud! 

Little Charlie all tuckered out

 
Last night’s dinner was DIY shake n bake chicken with roasted carrots and potatoes. Yum!

Here’s the shake n bake concoction I used:

  • 1 cup Italian bread crumbs, 
  • 1/2 cup panko, 
  • 1/2 tbs salt, 
  • 1/2 tbs onion powder, 
  • 1 1/2 tsp paprika, 
  • 1 tsp sugar, 
  • 1/2 tsp garlic powder, 
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper, 
  • 1/4 tsp cayenne, 
  • 1/4 tsp basil, 
  • 1/4 tsp oregano, 
  • 1/4 tsp parsley, 
  • 1/8 cup vegetable oil. 

Just shake. Then bake! This makes enough to coat more than 4 chicken breasts cut into  smaller pieces. (I did 375 in my convection oven for about 35 minutes for two breasts and they came out juicy and delicious!)

North Dakota… 

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Oh my goodness, it’s COLD here!  

 If it were summer time I think this place would be a lot more enjoyable. As it is, there’s not much to do in town. We are staying at the Hillsboro Campground in Hillsboro, North Dakota. Hillsboro is 1 square mile, right off I-29 and almost exactly halfway between Fargo and Grand Forks. There’s a grocery store, a hardware store, and a sports bar.  

 There’s also a city park where they have a pen full of mule deer. We went to see them yesterday and feed them carrots. I dressed Charlie in her reindeer outfit thinking she would blend in. But she did not care for the deer and the deer did not like her. The park is pretty. The Goose River goes through it. There’s a swimming pool also.  

   
Joyce runs the campground. She also runs the motel. And the senior assisted living center. And the Chicken Shack (at the campground, which is closed now, I’m guessing for the winter). And she runs the Hillsboro Laundry, which is also at the campground. She is one busy lady. There is wifi but it only shows up on the computer, not on our phones.  

 Joyce will be shutting the water off to most of the park for the winter, leaving only about 8 spaces with water, ours being one of those. We had to go buy the noodle insulation and the heat cord (for water pipes) to make a longer heated water hose so it doesn’t freeze. We had a 20′ one but it wasn’t long enough. The water spicket and electric is pretty far away. They are either right behind the sites or off the side. The spaces are long enough but soft-ish gravel. I wouldn’t want to park a heavy class A here for sure.  

 Charlie is just shivering non stop, poor pup. We have compromised to keeping the heat at 64 degrees. We have to pay electric for everything over 525kwh so we turn our electric space heater and the fireplace off at night and when we leave. We are also going through some propane. Luckily there’s somewhere in town to refill our tanks. (All 5 of them). Most of the time we are keeping the garage door closed. We left the bike in there and Allen’s toolbox. So it’s definitely being used as a mudroom now!  

 I even went and bought some “utility” boots for this hard winter we are about to face! Although Walmart didn’t have hardly any winter stuff out and I’ve seen a lady in flip flops and a girl in a summer dress with just a little cardigan over it. Meanwhile, we are wearing thermals and hats and gloves!  

 We are heading into Grand Forks today to watch the Bengals play. It’s the closest place I think we will find NFL Sunday Ticket. (I definitely want to have a tailgater by next football season-it would save us a ton of money just not having to go to the bar and watch!) And since we are about 40 minutes from anything we are being very responsible and designating a sober driver. I got the unlucky straw this week so Allen will get to act like a drunk toddler by himself! 

We were also responsible enough to get our flu shots the other day when we went into town to go to Walmart. #adulting ! I never thought I could miss Walmart so much! But they still didn’t have our Scott RV toilet paper so I’m stuck with Campa-Chem. At least it’s 2-ply! *sigh*

Cheers to football Sunday! Who Dey!

We are South Dakotans!

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We “live” in South Dakota now and our brand new state is SUPER CRAZY windy and cold today!

38 degrees with a real feel of 29!

So we decided to just chill out and hibernate in the camper until tomorrow. Then we’ll hit the road again and head up to North Dakota. (Wrong time of the year to be headed north but that’s where the money is!)

We got to Camp America Campground in Salem, SD on Monday afternoon. There was one other guy with a little R-Pod camper and a puppy, and a lady camping in a tent (crazy in my opinion because it’s cold!) but they both left the next morning and we’ve had the park all to ourselves since.

Tuesday morning we drove to My Dakota Address in Madison (about 40 minutes away). Teri was really nice and helped us get all our paperwork in order. We filled out change of address forms for the post office and I did a voter registration card. She made copies of our campground receipt for each of us and gave us copies of the residency affidavit then sent us over to the DMV around the corner to get our new driver’s licenses!

The only thing we could register was the motorcycle because we didn’t have the titles for the truck and camper. Teri is getting those from the bank and then she will register them and get our plates for us.

Allen was bummed because South Dakota doesn’t let you personalize camper plates. Our Ohio plates were BIGRIGN… But we are getting those for the truck instead. At least they were available! I think he would’ve cried actual tears if they weren’t!

He’s such a brat sometimes…

After all the address stuff we had lunch at the Country Cafe in town then went and got the fuel filter changed on the truck. On the way home we stopped and got some beer and Jager to celebrate our new domicile! The gas station sells beer (18pks of 16oz. cans!) and liquor, also ammo and hunting licenses, it has a casino and a fried chicken restaurant inside that seemed to be really busy. South Dakota is awesome. So when we got home we let Charlie run around off her leash and enjoy the grass and fall leaves – she needed that after being in a parking lot for 4 months then the truck for 4 days!

  
We called Hunter at American Adventure Insurance and switched all of our policies over.

That part took way longer than it should’ve considering I gave him all the info about 3 months ago, then even called last week to make sure everything was good to go and still valid.

We called all of our credit cards and loans and what not and updated our address with them and Allen updated his address with work.

Changing our domicile took lots of planning and research (see this blog post), but we got it done!

I still have lots of stuff to write about from our trip (we stopped at Mount Rushmore!) and I want to review all of the campgrounds we’ve stayed at along the way. So that’ll be coming soon! Cheers from a blustery South Dakota! (We turned our tank heaters on for the first time!)

And the Quake HOLD! held perfectly… That stuff is amazing!

Utah the Beautiful! 

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The Bonneville Salt Flats are the first indication you’ve gotten out of Nevada and into Utah. You crest a hill, or mountain, and all of a sudden the landscape looks way different. There’s a bunch of water reflecting the sky and it flattens out a ton. At first it made me think of Louisiana, how it’s AT sea level so you drive through areas that are swampy and wet right next to the highway. Only this isn’t swampy. It’s more like dried salty sand so it’s hard and not squishy. We stopped at the first rest stop and took some pictures.   
 The Bonneville Salt Flats are where the land speed records have been set. From what I read, it’s ten miles long and you can’t see the other end because of the curvature of the earth. It’s really something to see.  
I also read that the whole thing used to be a lake. Lake Bonneville. It was a mostly freshwater lake and it eventually got so high that it all started to drain out, ending with only what is now the Great Salt Lake. The water evaporated and left the little bits of salt behind and now every year lots of salt flows into the Great Salt Lake from the soil and what not. The lake is 12% salinity, much saltier than the ocean and fish can’t live in it. There are brine shrimp that are harvested for fish food and brine flies that are obnoxious to people. Also because of the high salinity, people float really easily.  
After the salt flats and the lake we went through or around Salt Lake City. Once we passed that we came into this huge valley with farms and ranches and a couple towns. It was the most beautiful part of the country I’ve seen yet. I kinda want to trade my Texas ranch idea for a Utah ranch!  
Shortly after that we came upon a “viewing area” and I convinced Allen to stop. We took a couple of pictures and let Charlie out. While we were there the camper and truck got full of those brine flies I mentioned earlier! It was entertainment for Charlie at least! She’s a fly catcher.   
 Have you heard that commercial, “happy cows live in California” or something like that?? Lies I tell you! Happy cows live in Wyoming! This state is just wide open, unincorporated, natural goodness. Wikipedia says it’s the least populated state in the country and the government owns almost half of the land. We kept seeing these weird looking fences along the highway. I always expect Allen to know the answer to all my wonderings, but he told me to google it after about the third time I asked what they could be for. They’re snow fences. They keep the snow from drifting onto the highway. Good to know!  
We stopped in Rock Springs, Wyoming at a KOA for the night. I reheated some gumbo and made some rice while we swatted a ton of brine flies then we hit the sack.  
  
Friday when we got on the road the truck said we had 40% oil life and 40% oil filter life left. Then yesterday the filter all of a sudden dropped to zero and we were getting messages on the dash. So once we get to South Dakota we will have to get it in the shop and checked out. We are aiming for Hermosa, South Dakota today. It’s close to Mount Rushmore so I’m
excited to see that! 

And, Allen made us bacon and eggs for breakfast AND did the dishes! I love him!

Winnemucca = #winning!

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Winnemucca, Nevada. Who woulda thunk it’d be a booming little town?? We were definitely surprised.  
We pulled into the I-80 Winnemucca KOA Friday afternoon, checked in, got hooked up and walked Charlie. It was my first time staying at a KOA and it was pretty nice. We were excited to put our awnings out for the first time in about 4 months!  I’ll add a review in the next week or so. I should mention that there are a bunch of RV parks in this town. There was a brand new one across the street and one about a block down, so the KOA definitely isn’t your only option.  

Once we got little Charles settled in we headed to Walmart for some RV toilet paper (we ran out in San Francisco-crappy! *pun intended*) Then we went to Winger’s for food and drinks. It was almost right across the street from the campground. I think it’s a chain restaurant but we’d never been to one. We had some beers and some wings then headed home and called it a night. 

Charlie is climatized and used to mild San Francisco weather so we had to bundle her up!

 

Saturday morning we went to this 24/7 cafe for breakfast that Allen was seeing signs for on the highway. It was inside a casino. Love it. On the way there we passed a huge lot with buses pulling in and a whole bunch of parked pickups. We knew there had to be something going on in this little town down in a valley in the middle of the desert. We noticed Friday night that there seemed to be a lot of younger guys and Allen said there’s a lot of good looking girls for it being out in the middle of nowhere. Turns out there’s a big gold mining company in Winnemucca and they bus everyone to the mines. Pretty interesting…  

  

  

  

Anyhow, after breakfast we stopped at O’Reilly’s Auto Parts and got a new air pump.  

 We burnt our old one up on the fourth camper tire in San Francisco. (A Cobalt) This one is a little more powerful. It’s an MV-50 and it has little jumper cable prongs on it instead of a plug. We still have to find an attachment thingy to fill the dually tires but the camper is good to go!   

 While Allen was filling up the tires I spread some of my brother’s ashes. I just wish he could actually see some of this with me.  

  
But, we are on the road again, heading for Wyoming by this evening! (Even though Allen wanted to stay another night just to have another breakfast at the casino!) Moving on!

Goodbye and Good Riddance!

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We wiggled (kinda literally) out of spot #117 at Candlestick RV Park at 8:33AM on Friday morning. (Thanks to Marcus and Brad for their spotting help!)   
   
It took us a half hour to get past Oakland headed east on I-80. Not too shabby… I managed to narrowly avoid a panic attack crossing the Bay Bridge. (That thing just makes me nauseous!) But Allen is a fairly good driver (just kidding, he’s a beast) so when I get too scared I just close my eyes and get all religious and know that everything will be alright! 

my shaky panoramic picture taking skills

 
We are past Sacramento now and haven’t hit much traffic. (Knock on wood…) Our plan right now is to stop at a KOA in Winnemucca, Nevada. We have a while before we need to be in North Dakota so we may as well take our time! 

Happy Friday!