Westward Ho!

Ah, Columbus, Ohio.  Nice.  Kinda pretty.  Wish I could say more about it, but we didn't get to do much exploring while Old Gal was being fixed.  We might have been able to, except for one thing:  Freddie.  

 That's her in the front seat!  She was almost 13 years old when we started this trip, and I was a little worried about her.   Every time we stopped, we had to think first about what would be best for her.  We didn't keep her in the RV for very long without us (and when there was a cross breeze, she was quite comfy sitting up front in one of the captain's chairs, as you can see)!  At the truck stop, we sat with her on a leash in one of the few shady spots or walked around and made sure she had plenty of water.  So when Old Gal had to be fixed, we made a nice space for Freddie behind the driver's seat of the car.  But it's a little hard to "sight see" when the car is stuffed to the gills and there are kayaks on top.  One stop short and Freddie could be flattened!  

Instead, we found a place to park under a tree and waited for them to fix our house-on-wheels.  And waited.  And waited.  I read, did crossword puzzles, checked out all the new Chevys in the dealership out front, walked Freddie 4 times, and tried to nap.  We sat there for 7 hours!  It was so tough to be patient.  This was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime!  We should be doing something fun!  But making sure sweet Freddie was well taken care of was more important than anything else. 

A few hundred dollars later, we got back on the road and zipped down Interstate 70 through the rest of Ohio and Indiana.

We stopped for the night in Terra Haute, just on the border of Illinois, boondocking in a Wal-Mart parking lot.   Another night with no water hookup or electricity, and we were dirty, hot, and tired.  This feeling began to gnaw at me in the pit of my stomach.  What the heck did we do?  Is this one huge mistake?  What are we going to?  Albuquerque is some place on a map, in the middle of a rectangular state that I've never been to, and we are headed there why?  I couldn't remember.  

I should mention that Thursday morning I got a call from one of the districts where I was substitute teaching in PA.  It seems they wanted me to interview for an elementary teaching position!  The woman on the phone wanted to know if I'd be available the next day.  I told her I was currently in Ohio, on my way to relocating to New Mexico, so no, I wouldn't be available for an interview anytime soon.   Sometimes you just have to laugh and keep going!  What is there to say about that???

We pushed on through Illinois and into Missouri.  I saw the Gateway Arch in St. Louis from the highway, and Jimmy took a picture when traffic had stopped on the bridge over the Mississippi.

That's our tour of St. Louis!   Wish we could have stayed longer and looked around, checked it out, but that's what traveling with a 23 year old RV, a full car with kayaks on top, and a dog is like!!

Missouri was beautiful!  What an unexpected surprise!  There were really pretty mountains and everything was very green.  It was 95 degrees and oppressively humid.  From I-70 we got onto I-44 and went southwest to Carthage, MO.   We splurged and stayed in an RV park for the night.  Electricity!  AC!  Water!  Cable TV!  Showers!!!  For those of you keeping track, we hadn't showered in a few days, since Ohio.  Yuck!  

This meant showering for the first time in Old Gal.  J had used the shower when he first got her, but I had been dreading it.  It's this tiny little space - maybe 2ft by 3 ft.  There is just enough room to get the job done.  Plus, you have to take a "Navy Shower".  This is where you only use water to get wet and to wash off.  I had scrubbed the shower top to bottom before we left so I knew it was clean, but it still seemed icky.  Not so!  It was great!   Nice and cozy, and you don't get cold easily because it's a small space!   Why would you waste the water by keeping it on the whole time?  This process of moving and changing our lives continues to show me how things I thought I needed turned out to be unimportant in the end.  We had each other, Freddie, a shower, and a comfy bed.  What more do you need?  For the first time since our trip began, I felt completely relaxed, grateful, and excited.

In 2011, I Resolve To Continue Writing My Blog...

Hi all!  
It's been a looooooooong time since I've written anything, I know!  Many people have been asking me to keep writing, but for a long time I just couldn't do it.  First, because it was hard being in a new place, and we were spending all of our time trying to find work and having no luck.  I wasn't inspired to write about how scary things were becoming for us!  Then I actually got a job, and had to devote all of my time to it, and writing seemed like something I could skip in favor of a little more sleep or a little bit of fun.  

However, now that I am relaxing / convalescing after the hardest 5 months of teaching I've ever had, I think I'm ready to continue writing about our experiences.  **SPOILER ALERT**  For those of you who just want to cut to the chase, we made it here safely, I got a job, and we're surviving. For those of you who want to hear the story, read on!

Isn't she a beauty???!!!?

So...where were we?  Oh, right!  It's Tuesday, June 1st.  We were boondocking in Akron, Ohio.  Boondocking, for those uninitiated to the world of RVing, is when you basically just pull off the road and stay somewhere overnight.  You don't hook up to anything like electric or water, and most times, it's free!  There are also very few places where you can do it.  Camping World and Wal-Mart are two places that will let you park overnight in their lots.  So we parked in the Akron Camping World parking lot, and settled in for the night.  The only problem was that no electricity also meant no AC, which meant sleeping with the 2 tiny little back windows open and praying for a breeze.  We were trying to be as careful with money as possible, so we planned to boondock a lot during our trip.   I'm sure it's great in the spring and fall, but in summer, not so much!  


Feeling grumpy the next morning from lack of sleep, I settled into the difficult job of resting under a tree with Freddie (our pooch) while J worked on the RV.  It was having some charging problems and the batteries were getting low, and he wanted to see if he could get it running better before we took off and possibly broke down on the highway.  He worked on it for a good two hours, but still wasn't happy with it.  Time was passing and we were still only in Akron!  

J decided to keep going and get some more miles under our belts.  We got about a half hour down the road when J told me over our walkie talkies that we had to get off the road again.  I  felt panic rise in my throat.  We were still only 5 hours away from home!!  He said we needed to find someplace to plug in to charge the batteries.  We then spent a good bit of time trying to figure out where we were and if there were any campgrounds nearby.  We had hit a rural area!  We looked in our trusty Woodall's Camping Guide and found a place about 5 miles away.  J was really afraid that Old Gal would get stuck on one of the small country roads we had to travel to get there, but she made it just fine! 


The campground was quiet and serene.  I could see a pretty lake down the hill, gorgeous willow trees and oaks and many RVs in evenly spaced rows.   My first RV camp ever!  They had a pool, and I was dying to get into my suit and dive in.    But before I could do that, we needed to find our site, hook up the water, electricity, and the poo tank (more about that later!)!    As we were setting up outside, we heard a strange 'clop clop' noise coming down the road, but the foliage was so dense we couldn't see what it was until it went past us.  An Amish man driving a buggy!  It was an unexpected & cool sight that made me smile at the end of an otherwise frustrating day.   


We left early the next morning, ready to get back on the road.  We got about 20 minutes away from the campground when J pulled into a Flying J Truck Stop.  Apparently, even though we plugged in the night before, the electrical system still wasn't charged, and J decided it was time to call a professional.  This is where having an iPhone or other smart phone comes in handy!  We called around and found a Chevy dealership in Columbus, about a half hour away.  They said they could take us first thing the next morning.  J didn't want to run Old Gal anymore that day, so we couldn't go back to the campsite, which meant we spent  a whole day at the truck stop. 

For those of you who've never spent much time at a truck stop, I can tell you they're quite  interesting!  We perused the extensive Country Market, sat in the trucker's lounge and watched an uncomfortable 15 minutes of something on TV, then did a little laundry just for kicks.  The best part was at sunset when we walked over to the "pickle park" - the giant parking lot for the tractor trailers.  J used to drive a truck for awhile way back when, so be brought me over there to watch the semi drivers back expertly into spots with only 5 or so feet between them and the trailers on either side.    Pretty cool!  But did you know that in summer, every tractor trailer that stops off for the night will keep his or her engine running all night so they can run their AC?  We watched for about 15 minutes when I noticed that all the trucks were running, not just the ones coming in and out.  No wonder we use most of the world's fuel!  Do you know how many trucks there are on the roads at any given time???  I have to say, though, that we met quite a few truckers on our trip, and they were some of the nicest people we've ever met.  They work long, hard hours and they spend a lot of time alone, so they're a friendly bunch in general.  Finally, the smell of diesel was becoming overpowering and we went back to the front parking lot and sweet Old Gal, where we sweated through another night of boondocking. 

Back to Writing! To The Journey...

Hello!  I'm back!  Well, I was always here and giving friends little updates on Facebook, but I have not been able to bring myself to continue writing here until now.  All I can say to sum up the last 2 months is:

Whew!  What a long strange trip it's been!!!


For those of you who don't know (are there any of you?) we made it to Albuquerque!  We're here and living in our RV and ... well, let me start from where I left off...


So - it's Monday, May 31st, Memorial Day.  Jimmy & I had spent the entire holiday weekend filling bags of garbage, carting usable things to the Salvation Army, and packing the car and the RV.  It was meltingly hot and oppressively humid, and we talked little and stayed focused on getting done.  We both had this sense of being "late" for our departure - we had been ready to leave for so long in our minds, but the task of emptying the house was bigger than we could ever have imagined (and this from a girl who's moved a gazillion times!)  We were feeling dispirited and hot and exhausted, and just done, and yet the task was not yet done.  We ended up having to leave more things in the house than we wanted to, but if we waited to leave until we could clear out every last scrap, we'd still be there right now!  We left the few things we thought family members might want or might want to sell in a cluster in the living room, and left.   


At about 5:30 pm, we got everything on the bus, I jammed every last thing I could into the car, and drove away from our little house for the last time.  It might have been sad, but we had done that already so we focused on what exciting and interesting things lay ahead of us.  Freddie, as usual, just took things in stride - she hopped up into the co-pilot's seat in Old Gal and seemed happy to have a full view of the road ahead.  We drove past the beautiful and serene lake that marked the entrance to our little development, and began our epic cross-country journey.

45 minutes later, we arrived at our first stop - Avoca, PA, halfway between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre.  Okay, so it wasn't exactly a long trip, but the important thing was that we had FINALLY left!  I had a gigantic smile on my face the whole trip, and sang with abandon to a favorite CD.   At the Petro truck stop, exhausted from our long day of work and short bit of driving, we wolfed down some dinner and collapsed into bed. 


The morning proved interesting, as I had my first shower in a truck stop!  Jimmy had worked for a short while as a truck driver, so he was familiar with these showers, but I imagined some giant room with a bunch of shower nozzles, and a bunch of sweaty, hairy men all trying hard not to drop their soap! Clearly I've seen too many prison and football movies!  After Jimmy had a good laugh and spent some time assuring me that they were nothing like that, I agreed, mostly because I was so gross and smelly from the day before!  For a small fee, you get a towel and a key to a shower room.  It was pretty wonderful!  A very clean, big room with a nice hot shower, a bench on which to put your things and sit down while you're dressing, and a sink for brushing teeth and such!  We had been gone for less than a day and I had already learned so much!  Ah, travel!  


Our day of driving was relatively uneventful, but it was a nice rest and change of pace from all the work we'd been doing to prepare for our trip!  I'm sure many of you have driven the length of Route 80 across Pennsylvania, so you know that it's really a magnificent road!  It's long - about 310 miles from end to end, but what struck me most about it this time was just how unbelievably GREEN Pennsylvania is.  The most luscious and varied shades of green as far as one could see.  The highway meanders through rolling mountains and valleys.  I was also grateful to see that it has not yet been littered by endless billboards or lined with strip malls.  I followed behind Old Gal, who was journeying at a steady 60 or so miles per hour, and it was a relaxing and slower pace than the rest of the traffic.  Easier to enjoy the scenery!


We got to Ohio, made a left turn at Youngstown, and stopped for the evening in Akron.  We headed for the Camping World there, and camped in their parking lot.  We needed some parts for Old Gal, and had to wait until morning to take care of business.  One full day down, another 4 or so to go!  Unless, of course, we ran into technical difficulties...

Won't Be Long Now...

I just want you to know that we left!  We drove out of our front yard the other day and Old Gal was great!  Her springs were squeaking and there was some moaning and groaning going on, but she was awesome!   The engine sounds strong and her brakes are tight, and it was so cool to finally get her rolling!  


Then we drove around the block and came back, but our maiden voyage was a great success!

The fact that we haven't left yet must be pretty annoying to some of you who just want to hear about how the trip went!  Well believe me, it's annoying to me too, because I am tired of going through my things and packing, packing, packing!  A number of friends have called or emailed asking, "So where are you right now?  Are you on the road?  I hope you guys are ok!"   I feel bad when I have to burst their bubble and tell them we're still here.  I am very concerned about money and finding work as soon as possible, but we need to do this right, and rushing will not help.  Add to that the fact that we are both physically and emotionally exhausted, and wrapping everything up here has been more of a challenge than we could have anticipated.  


But we're getting there! 


Packing an RV with all of your belongings isn't like packing a moving van.  There are nooks and crannies in an RV, and in order to find a place for your things, you need to use as many of those as possible.  This means looking at a space, estimating its size relative to the things you have, and then actually putting things in there.  The first thing you try doesn't fit and then you panic about where you're going to put that thing while you find another thing to fill the space.  Then you find something else in the house that you need to bring and you realize that this thing will go better in that space than the other thing, and you keep putting things and taking them out and arranging until hopefully everything fits just so.   There are overhead bins throughout the RV, and those are relatively easy to fill.  I made sure that things we use regularly would go in the most accessible bins.  Music and DVD's?  All taken out of their cases and put in albums, which are stashed above the couch in the 'living room'.  No problem!  But there are also two smallish nooks under the couch that are only accessible by pulling the front off of it.  You really have to get down on your stomach to access that space, but I have put at least 20 books in there.  Nice!  In the 'kitchen' there is a lot of room under the bench seats at the table, but there's a water heater taking up part of the space on one side, and the benches have an aluminum frame that makes it hard to slide things in.  If it won't fit in between the frame rungs, it doesn't go there!  We also have space underneath the bed frame in the back (which J ingeniously built in 4 pieces that all come out).  It's a pain to wrangle the mattress out of the way to put stuff back there, so we have to put things there that we don't need to access very often, like winter clothes and photo albums!  She's getting pretty full, and we have to be concerned with weight - Old Gal won't get to New Mexico if we make her too heavy!  I'm almost done with the packing, and it can't be finished soon enough for me!  


We have to take some "after" pictures today, but very soon I will post before/after pics so you can get an idea of where we're living and how far we've come in making Old Gal a home!  It's pretty cool!  


We drove down to Wilkes-Barre yesterday to an RV parts store.  J. needed a new voltage regulator, which we think is what's causing the fridge and the electrical to go crazy.  He'll put that in today, and hopefully it'll take care of a lot of the problems we've been having.  I get to do all the packing because J has to take care of all the really important stuff!  I love our division of labor...
I fold towels and figure out where to put the Q-tips, and all J has to do is make the 3,000 parts of this rig run!  Nice!


We're planning our route, and for those of you interested in the journey, here is our approximate route:  we are going to Ohio via route 80, then making a left in Youngstown and heading southwest.  We'll be traveling on route 71 to route 70 and then route 44 to route 40 (old route 66) until we pull in to ABQ.  Along the way we will be going through Akron, Columbus, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, and then New Mexico.  Not the most exciting places in the country, perhaps, but I've never been to MO, OK, or TX (or NM!) so it should still be interesting!  We are going to stop in St. Louis and visit the Gateway Arch, and then maybe find the world's largest ball of string or something along the way!  


It's a bit of a bummer that I am going to be driving our car separately and following J in Old Gal, because we had hoped to be together on the journey.  But towing the car just wasn't feasible, financially or practically, so we'll make the best of it! 


My birthday is Saturday and J was hoping to have me in ABQ by that day, but I think we might not make it.  Just a hunch I have.  We're anticipating that it will take 4 or 5 days for the whole trip so we'll be on the road that day, but we'll celebrate when we get there!  


It should only be another day or two, tops, until we leave!   I think we should leave tomorrow, because we would be leaving on the 3rd anniversary of the day we met, May 26th, 2007.  That would be cool and meaningful in some sort of way, right? 

If we're going to do that, I'd better be off to cram some more stuff into those nooks and crannies!

Thursday

It turns out that the fridge is still working, and the electric is blinking on and off, and J doesn't know why - yet!  In the mean time, we're off to have work done on the car (I'm driving separately now - we're not going to tow it) and then he'll figure out what is going on, but the good news is that it won't keep us from getting on the road.  If the fridge wasn't working, that would be different!  

Slept in the RV again last night - boy it's fun and cozy in the bedroom!  Don't know why I couldn't sleep before, but now I love it!!!  Yay!

We went to an RV store yesterday for some parts we needed and checked out a bunch of new 5th wheels and toy haulers (for those of you who are not RVers, they are the kind you tow behind a truck; ours is a 'motorhome') and they were really nice and all, but I am happy with our slightly more modest and slightly older girl.  Or should I say 'gal'.  I can't believe it, but I'm falling in love with Old Gal! 

I'm feeling a bit rejuvenated this morning and ready for another day of errands, packing and preparations! 

Yeehar!

Moving In!

It's Tuesday, May 18th, and we have finally moved into our new home!!!  

We wrestled our mattress into the back of the RV on Sunday night, and slept in Old Gal for the first time.  It was - not bad!  We have a queen-size Tempur-pedic mattress (bought in better economic times) and it is so comfortable that it makes any space you put it in better!  Not that the bedroom in Old Gal is bad by any means.  When we got her the bedroom had two single beds and a small console in the middle.  J.  took out the beds and built a frame for a queen-size mattress.  He built it tall enough so that we have space underneath the bed for storage and for our pooch Freddie's crate.  It's like a cozy little nest back there!   Ok, I admit that at first I vacillated between feeling it was "cozy" and feeling it was "claustrophobic", but after only 2 nights, I'm feeling the cozy!   

Sunday night I didn't sleep so well.  J. was out in no time, but I have legendary insomnia, and it doesn't take much to keep me from sleeping.  If I come to your house to stay for a night or a weekend?  You can bet I'm up late, probably reading to help ease me into dream land.  Well this is no different!  Same mattress, sheets, comforter, pillows and husband, but stick them all in the back of an RV and there's no way I'm going to sleep anytime soon.  So, by 2 am I was back in the house.  Practically the only furniture we have left in the house are two reclining chairs, and I slept in one very happily.  I told myself that I was like the kid in the children's book who's too scared to sleep over all night at his friend's house, so when he calls his dad to pick him up, his dad tells him not to feel too badly about  it - they had a 5 hour sleepover the first time instead of an all-nighter.  I decided that I'm like that kid, and I had a 3-hour sleepover in Old Gal the first night.  I wasn't ready for an all-nighter.  

Last night was much better!  We cooked in Old Gal for the first time (portobello mushroom burgers!  Yummy!) and then I was the first one to the bedroom where I could stretch out my sore body.  And oh, was it comfy!  I was out in mere minutes and slept there all night!  And I have to say, I think it's gonna be great!

Packing an RV with all of your things is interesting.  I underestimated and overestimated how much space we would have for various items, and there's really no way to know what will fit until you're actually putting things away.  It's going well, but we're quickly running out of space, and still have many things that need to be packed.  Our house on wheels is 23 years young, so we're concerned about adding too much weight.  We only have a few days left here (cross your fingers!)  and we can't make her too heavy, so some of what I had my heart set on taking will not make it.  But that's okay!  I've had to prioritize and re-prioritize our belongings, and things I thought were very important before turn out to be mere trifles in the overall scheme of things.  We've taken our time in the packing, because everything needs a place, and certain things have to be more accessible than others.  This is such a huge life change - it's not like we're just going on a vacation, so if we do a good job now we won't have to repack, or forget where important things are and turn the place upside-down later. 

When we first hatched this wacky plan, I set April 1st as our moving date, more as something to aspire to than as a realistic deadline.  That only gave us 2 months to move and do everything we needed to do!  I knew it would take us longer to move, but I didn't think it would be this long until we were ready to leave!  We couldn't have planned for my surgery or any of the other snags we've run into along the way, and I guess it's good we don't have a deadline so that we don't have to take off in a rush and leave things here in total disarray.  I am anxious to get going so we can find jobs and start working again, but every day I have to take a deep breath and focus on what needs to be done now to get us toward our goals and not worry about what I can't control.  There's a constant battle going on in my head:  

"We have to get outta here!"  
"We can't yet.  We have to be patient and just focus on today and what we need to do.  We'll be fine".  
"We have to get outta here!"

I'm driving myself insane.  

We have to wait until Thursday to get the car aligned (long story but it's in the category of "things you can't control") and we have to have Old Gal ready to roll tomorrow for inspection.  She hasn't been on the road since J. drove her up from Florida, but he's taken this time to make sure all of her systems are working before she went for a PA inspection.  Other than that and packing the last of the stuff, we're really close to getting on the road!  

We're thinking Friday might be the day - but don't quote me on that. 

Tuesday

Yesterday was a busy day!!!  We took down the tent garage and gave it to some nice neighbors from the next block.  Then we went to register the RV but forgot to bring the papers!  Oops!  (That was my fault - I'm especially scatter-brained these days!)  

Most of our day was taken up with work on the RV fridge.  The part came in and it was huge!  That 'coil' is a mass of metal tubing the length of the fridge!  J. had to take the whole fridge out of its cubby hole, then figure out how to position it so he could work on it!   The bench seats at the kitchen table stick out far enough that we couldn't get the fridge past them, but then J. took out the table and the seat cushions, and we lifted the fridge over the back of the rear bench and laid it face down across the wooden seat bases.  Perfect!  We got the old coil off and put the new one on before it was time to call it a day!  Today we will finish attaching the new coil and putting the fridge back where it belongs.  Cross your fingers for us that the fridge will work now!  


We will try to register the RV once again (with the papers in hand, this time!) and we'll move the leftover furniture from the moving sale into the living room until we know where everything's going.  Then it's more packing the RV and that will be a full day!  

The hardest part of this last phase of moving is figuring out what to do with all the rest of the stuff we have leftover!  We can't just stick it all in some boxes and add it to the moving truck to deal with when we get to our new house!  We have to deal with it now, and frankly, it's just a pain in the butt!   

I think large garbage bags will help.