Month: June 2018

Getting the hang of this

We have now been at Pleasant Creek Recreation Area for 8 nights. It was lovely. Some of my kids came out a few times for dinner and boating, and we were close enough to home to pick up a bunch of things we needed for the motorhome. I made two racks of beef ribs in the Instant Pot one night that my son in law finished on the grill. We also grilled burgers one night. It has been nice!

One of the things I have gotten organized is my sewing area. I tried using the machine on the dining table, but that just didn’t work. It was the wrong height, and the chair just wasn’t right there. I brought my little Gadget table from home, and it is perfect sitting in front of the TV. I will put my supplies on one end of the sofa, and the machine can travel on the sofa using the seat belt there.

Notice the little Ott light on the left and the purple Sip and Snip on the right. I love both of them! The Ott light provides just enough light from the back of the machine to make sewing much easier. It just sits wherever I want it. The Sip and Snip has a big cup holder and a trash bag for thread and other items. It is clamped on the edge of the table. I not only finished a baby quilt top but I also made some bowl cozies for the coach using some Native American pot fabric I bought in Arizona near Ft. Huachuca. I slightly rounded the corners of these, and they were easier to sew that sharp corners.

The site here is really lovely. There was hardly anyone here until the weekend. Three fourths of the sites accept reservations, and they are pretty empty during the week. We took one of the 7 non-reservation sites which were luckily not occupied.

The last picture shows the motorhome in a much truer color than the other one I posted. Most Tiffin paint schemes have black on the top. The lighter red should be somewhat cooler. Besides we like bright colors!

We are headed back home today. We won’t head out again until a couple of days after the 4th when we see friends in Ely, MN for a week then head west to Gillette, WY for a FMCA rally. It will be fun!

Back in Iowa in the motorhome

We left Alabama intending on staying at Cuivre State Park in Missouri, basically between St. Louis and Hannibal. We got there, but we didn’t fit! The park website said we did, and the reviews on RVParkReview.com said we would, but that must have been before they stopped trimming the trees above and next to the road. We actually scratched the coach, something that made me very sad. We then headed back north, but we couldn’t find a nice campground with openings. The campgrounds in the Hannibal don’t have good reviews, and Mark Twain Lake, a great place, was just too far off the road. We ended up staying in the Hannibal Walmart parking lot, running the generator pretty solid because it was so hot. I didn’t feel too bad because everyone else was doing the same thing!

We stopped at Center Point, Iowa, about 45 miles from home, to dump the tanks at the Travel Plaza. After we finished, we realized we were within 5 miles of one of our favorite camping spots – Pleasant Creek State Recreation  Area. We decided to stop there for 6 days. Luckily it was Monday so the few no-reservation campsites had openings. It is a huge pull through site with 50 amp service at the princely cost of $16 a night. We decided to stay here until Sunday morning.

It was miserably hot on Monday, and Tuesday and Wednesday were rainy and hot. My daughter, her husband and son, and my second son came last night for dinner. I used the Instant Pot to make pulled pork (cut into 1 pound chunks, use vegetable broth, garlic, and onions as liquid, pressure cook 70 minutes, natural pressure release after 10 minutes – delicious). I also made my daughter’s favorite chocolate cherry dump cake. I usually make it in a Dutch Oven, but the rain put a kabosh on that. I made it in a 6×10 baking pan I had. Put 2 cans of high quality cherry pie filling in the pan, spread about 1/2 a package of chocolate cake mix, and apply liquid margarine in a cross hatch pattern. I baked in the convection oven for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

Today it was absolutely lovely most of the day with mild temperatures and just a bit of wind off and on. I tried to sew just to see where things would work best. I have already decided I don’t like seeing at the dinette table, so tomorrow we will pick up my little portable sewing table and see how that works.

In summary, it was awfully nice to have a comfortable place to really try out the coach. We are close enough to home we can pick up things, and we have packed a number of things we will be wanting to take with us.

We are ready for the road!

We finished our 2 day RV driving class today. It was very helpful. The saleswoman at the dealer had done some quick instruction, but we found out quickly that it didn’t work for all situations. The instructor (Jimmy Johnson from RVDrivingschool.com) showed us all kinds of methods to doing turns, backing, and just moving around in traffic. Both of us feel much more confident in traffic now, so I think it was well worth the money.

One nice thing about being with a local is finding all kinds of good places to eat. Yesterday at lunch we ate at Fiesta Mexican in Tuscumbia, AL which was very tasty. Last night we ate at Swamp John in Florence, AL, a hole in the wall fish place. I had a nice meal of fried catfish, fried okra, and hush puppies along with sweet tea – a truly southern meal like I grew up with. Today at lunch we ate at Smokin’ on the Boulevard in Florence, AL with the best smoked chicken I had ever had. Wow! A whole smoked chicken was $10, and it was worth every penny. Kevin got a smoked pork loin that was also good. We were disappointed they were out of brisket and ribs, but we can try them if we ever get here again. I ended up buying a second chicken that I will piece apart and freeze for later.

The motorhome is doing great. We closed the bedroom area off and ran the generator so we could have the air conditioner in the “living room”. The dahs air is cold, but there is a lot of space to cool down, so it is common for motorhomes to drive with their generators running when AC is needed. It was well into the mid 90s with a dew point of 70+, so I was quite pleased at how comfortable the coach was.

We head back to Iowa tomorrow morning. We plan on staying at a state park in Missouri tomorrow night then being home on Monday. It turns our Mississippi only gives 7 day temp tags, so we won’t be legal after that. It will be an expensive trip to the DMV!

More about the new motorhome

We made our first drive in the motorhome successfully. The Jeep followed behind us just fine as a “toad”. My toe was killing me since I stubbed it badly on the raised section of the floor by my side of the bed, so Kevin drove here from the dealer. I did drive about 20 miles with the saleswoman we had though including rural highway, town, and interstate so I am not worried. We are at a small campground in Tuscumbia, AL until Sunday morning.

We can successfully hitch and unhitch the Jeep using a Blue Ox brand tow bar and a AirForce One air brake system (installed on the Jeep). The instructions for setting the transmission correctly in the Jeep are complicated enough that Kevin wrote them on an index card. We bought this particular Grand Cherokee (Trail Hawk model) because it could be towed “four down” – all four wheels on the ground – but it takes some fussing with. The OTA television antenna works fine. We didn’t bring enough cabling to try the cable TV at the campsite. I even ran three loads of laundry in the washer and dryer! I really like the Splendide brand washer and dryer we have.  The guy doing our PDI (Pre Delivery Inspection) warned me that they took a long time to wash and dry, but it wasn’t terrible. The washer on PermaPress took 1 hour 28 minutes after I added a second rinse, and my big washer at home takes 58 minutes for the same thing. The dryer certainly is slower, but I dried 5 pair of Kevin’s heavy jeans in about 100 minutes. The dryer only runs on 110 v instead of the 220v at home, so I wasn’t surprised it took longer. The washer and dryer are also smaller. The five heavy jeans was a full load whereat home I wash 7 pair at once.

I even used the convection microwave to make brownies. The oven itself walks you through the button pushes which was handy since it took a series of them. The brownies turned out nicely though. I also used the convection oven to roast potatoes for dinner and to brown the boneless country ribs I cooked in the Instant Pot. I am definitely “RVing”, not “camping”!

Not everything is good though. Lily is not happy with me. She has a tendency to hide under the bed, and she hasn’t come out for her normal lap time with me. Kevin says it is because I didn’t bring a lap quilt for her to lay on, and I hope that’s what it is. I was the one who put her in her crate a lot on the trip though, so I worry she is mad.

Tomorrow and Saturday we have an instructor from RVDrivingSchool.com, Jimmy Johnson, coming out to take us through our paces. There will be a total of 12 hours of instruction, and we should be very confident with driving the 40 foot beast when we are done. I have no trouble remembering his name. It is the same as an Oklahoma State University football coach when I went there who later became coach of the Dallas Cowboys. The coach Jimmy Johnson was an ass, but I have heard good things about this instructor. Guess I won’t hold his name against him. 😁

 

We own a motorhome!

We headed to Sherman’s RV in Sherman, Mississippi on Sunday. We made it to Holly Springs, MS before we gave up. Eleven hours of travel, and I hit my limit! Monday morning we made the last 45 miles, and we bought our new Tiffin RED 37PA. I love it, but it has been tedious getting it ready. The dealer was late getting started, and a few things still needed to be done. We also had our Jeep Grand Cherokee modified to be towed behind the motorhome, and that also took longer than planned. Sigh. We still don’t have everything done, so we are staying a second night in the dealer’s full hookup site. It is just a gravel parking spot, but it looks out on a lovely pond.

Here are some pictures:

Living room has a sofa air bed and a movable recliner
Lots of televisions, and even a fake fireplace which is a good electric heater.
We got a table and chairs instead of a dinette.
Bedroom with a RV king. It is 6” narrower than a regular king.
Really nice bathroom with big shower and two sinks.
It is much brighter than this picture taken under overcast clouds.

We eventually got all the gear unpacked we brought from the travel trailer. Lots of room left! Lily seems to be adjusting well.

Sold the travel trailer!

We just kept lowering the price until someone bit. We were willing to go lower than we could have gotten if we had more time because we want to spend time traveling instead of staying at home and trying to sell a camper. It still wasn’t a bad price, and the new owner was very happy. He drove all the way from the Nevada/California line to get it. In a way it was sad because we had so many good times in it. We still have to sell the pickup, but we have time for that later.

We are now planning on what we will take to pick up the new motorhome. Kevin kept thinking all the things we needed to live in the motorhome for two weeks would fit in the back of the SUV, but he has realized that just won’t work. We will rent a little U-Haul trailerso we can be comfortable while still leaving poor Lily some room. She loved traveling in the SUV when we moved here, probably because she can see out of all the windows. It is about 700 miles, and we can do it in one long day.

As for the house, we have put up pretty much all the blinds finally! Both guest bedrooms are pretty much put together. They are smaller than my old guest rooms, as is the dining area, so we gave away quite a bit of furniture. None of the kids are interested in things like china cabinets, though I had one take our big dining room table. We bought a much smaller expandable table and a very small buffet/hutch at IKEA. It fits much better with my modern decorating style.

We have also worked a lot on the outside of the house. The yard is odd shaped, and it needs a lot of water. We tried some different sprinklers, and we ended up with a tractor type that follows a hose. Luckily there are outside hose bibs on both sides of the house so we can water the entire yard in one day. It has been so hot and dry I am afraid the “seams” of our sod has died. They weren’t pushed well down onto the dirt. The seams will eventually fill in, but we will have to be careful with watering.

Since I don’t have any house pictures, here is one of Lily being her adorable self. She cover s her eyes like that all the time. You can just barely see her pipe cleaner and feather play toys.