Catching Up....

Things are a bit hectic here but I know everyone is wondering what's up so here's the short version.

• Drove from White Sulfur Springs, MT to Colorado Springs, CO with only one teensy little defugalty. Hadn't towed in a while (almost 2 months) and forgot to turn off the key at night. Ended up in northern CO with a dead battery in the car. Got that taken care of at the Longmont Camping World where I stopped to get tire covers.
  
• Spent a quiet night in the campground, got gas, argued with the bottle of Sta-bil that didn't want to transfer to the gas tank, moved the RV to the storage lot.
  
• Unloaded the rest of the stuff out of the RV into daughter's car, stored my bicycle in the RV, then got the winterization done.
• Went to visit some old friends who stored my rifel & handgun and took possession of the spare set of keys (in case I need something shipped to me) and had a great lunch at a local Chinese restaurant (best Chinese food in years).
• Went to the airport to pick up the rental car (daughter took possession of my old car), found out their lot was off-site, finally got the car, headed to the hotel for a rest before dinner.
  
• Nice dinner with some other friends, almost closed the restaurant while we chatted (daughter & grandson there as well), headed back to the hotel to find about 30 kids in the lobby registering.
• Woke up realizing that 1) I had forgotten some food in the pantry and 2) the generator never got serviced. Called the RV folks to get the generator done and headed back to the storage lot. Had hoped to meet some friends in Colorado Springs but by the time this was all done it was too close to time to turn in the rental car (2pm deadline).
• Plane took off for Chicago on time, not full so I got to move to an empty seat with no one beside me. Flight attendant gave me the wrong gate, fortunately I checked the monitor. Walked - LONG walk - to the next concourse.
• Half hour late out of Chicago to Baltimore (BWI) and full...cramped flying but finished reading my book. Arrived close to on time, met Stu in the baggage claim.
  
• Since then it has been a whirlwind of sorting my stuff into his stuff, finding spots for everything, mailing another box of stuff back to my daughter, tossing a few things topped with meeting a TON of family & friends. Been eating out WAY too much. Tonight? Out to meet more friends for dinner....LOL!
• Tomorrow we load everything up and head to Gettysburg. We'll be meeting up with other retired firefighter friends for a weekend of fun as well as a lunch with some of my motorcycle friends on Sunday. Monday we move to a different park in Gettysburg and relax a bit before heading to Highland NY to meet with my late husband's youngest daughter & her family (Micki, Eric & the kids - Matthew, Abbi, Zoe & Luke). After that we'll wander somewhere in eastern PA till the 24th when we get the RV serviced in Pottstown, PA.
  
• Back to Stevensville where we have another motorcycle friend lunch in Prince Frederick on the 27th, will attend the Renaissance Faire on the 28th (something I've never done but always wanted to), do the Red Hats ride in honor of Fallen Firefighters on 10/4 and somewhere in the middle of all that have a homemade pizza night for the family (Stu makes it from scratch....).

I will blog when I can but for a while things will stay pretty hectic...as you can see! Having an absolute blast....LIFE IS GOOD!

Till next time - keep on rollin',
Froggi/Donna

Halfway.....

Just a quick travel note....I left White Sulfur Springs at 3:30 pm on Tuesday afternoon. I spent Tuesday night at the Old West RV Park in Reed Point as planned. I got an early start (for me) and hit the road at 7:45 am.

Traffic was light, skies clear for most of the day, comfortable temperatures and I made good time. I ended up in Wheatland, WY for the night at Mountain View RV Park (after my GPS lied to me...LOL!).

This put me about 80 miles ahead of my planned stop for the night so I can sleep in a little tomorrow. I'll stop at Camping World in Longmont, CO to pick up tire cover for the rig. Then will meet with my daughter at the Park and Ride north of Denver and close to her house. We'll load up the car with refrig/pantry/cleaning goods and take them to her house. She'll take me back to the RV and I will head to Colorado Springs. She'll arrive later in the day after picking up my grandson from his 4H meeting.

Friday and Saturday will be FULL-FULL-FULL days so I doubt I will be posting again before Monday (at the earliest). I don't arrive in Baltimore until almost midnight on Saturday. In the meantime, just know that I'm having FUN-FUN-FUN!!!

Till next time - keep on rollin',
Froggi/Donna

Reading between the lines....

Since I have been staying too busy to quickly catch up my back travel blogs (will still do, promise!), I thought it was time to update everyone....at least those that haven't been reading between the lines.

You may remember my mentioning meeting Stu at the Escapade and doing some traveling together. Shortly after my workamping started, Stu headed east for the birth of his second grandbaby (born 8/7/08 & a beautiful baby girl). Being separated for a while was good for both of us, but it brought out the obvious. We wanted to continue our relationship to see where it goes.

So, once I am done workamping, I will put my RV in storage in Colorado Springs (reason being that 1) I have friends there who can retrieve & ship me anything I've forgotten and 2) it's an area we can see us visiting next summer), sell my car to my middle daughter and hop a flight to Baltimore.

Yup, we are officially a couple! We're both widowed so this is the start of a great new adventure for both of us. We've notified all our kids & other family as well as good friends. Everyone is anxious to meet the new person in our lives. This means we will be spending the fall in the east because that is where most of our family is located.

We will be traveling in Stu's 41' KZ Escalade toy hauler, pulled by a small Freightliner (no, I don't know any more details about the truck than that...LOL!) He rides a Harley-Davidson converted trike and I'm perfectly content on the back. We discussed my getting another bike but for many reasons I've decided that it's just not what I need or want right now.

Here are some photos of us, the trike and my new home...I promise some inside photos at a later date. It's really nice, lots of amenities.



So the next few weeks will continue to be busy as I get through the final sorting of stuff to stay and stuff to ship to Baltimore. I'm getting down to the wire, I will leave the campground the afternoon on September 2nd, make it as far as Reed Point, MT (where I have already stayed twice), then halfway to Colorado Springs on the 3rd, finishing the trip on the 4th.

In closing, here is a shot of the full moon over the campground that I took this week. It was the first time I had played with the shuttering settings and left it open too long so it almost looks like daylight....until you notice the lights that are lit around the campground. It was beautiful!!



Till next time - keep on rollin',
Froggi/Donna

Let's see...where were we....

Let's see...where were we....oh yeah, I was leaving Tra-Tel and heading to Camping World to get my slow leaking air bag looked at. Been a few interesting moments since then....LOL!

Pulled out yesterday morning to head to Camping World....since the Brake Buddy 12 volt plug was broken and thus not set up, I watched my speed and braked carefully. Pulled out and got onto the frontage road and a huge OH NO crossed my mind. When I unhooked the Brake Buddy, I automatically turned the key off. Praying that I wasn't damaging the car, I slowed down more and more till I could find a turn off (one where I could get in and back out easily). Found a spot, jumped out, started the car, then turned it off to ACC as it was supposed to be. Some of this stuff is just counter intuitive for me....got to get my check list finalized with all this new stuff and print it out. Phew!

Arrived fifteen minutes early, found the locking pins I needed for the car side of the tow bar as well as a couple of spare linch pins (round snap pins that someone could maliciously remove while parked...figured I should have some spare ones). I may still need some padlocks, just been too busy to look into it further...added to the TO DO list. LOL!

So, the tech watches me unhook the car from the RV and put up the tow bar and cover it. Success! Unhitching seems easier than hitching....maybe because I'm so paranoid that I'll forget something. They headed off in the motorhome and I headed into the campground behind the repair facility, Beaudry RV Resort, to book one night there. Not knowing how long they would need for work, I wanted a place set for the night and possibly longer if needed. It's a VERY nice park but a bit pricey for my normal stays. (They have free Wi-Fi so I used that to download the 120MB Open Office, rather than eat up my Verizon bandwidth....heh, heh....)

After finding my alloted site, I headed back to the customer lounge to wait for word on my rig. Decided to give my youngest daughter a call, the time zone difference and her busy schedule with three little ones have made it hard to chat much. Managed to catch her....and got her bad news. On Sunday she and her hubby were doing some much needed yard work. She managed to mangle two fingers with the electric hedge trimmer. Over two hours were spent to put in 10 stitches due to the uneven cut pattern. She was really hurting and since hubby was heading out of town on business today, she couldn't take her Percocet. OUCH!! Anyway, we chatted for a bit and got caught up to date.

Just before lunch the tech came to find me....the couldn't find a leak on the air bag. They had filled it and sprayed it. There were some bubbles around the top where an L fitting screws in but other than the initial bubbles, there was no movement. Nothing showed anywhere else....plus, it was holding the air they put in. We decided to wait till after lunch to see if it lost any air. During this time I got on the computer in the customer lounge and contacted a local Brake Buddy dealer as well as the manufacturer. The local dealer wouldn't do anything since I didn't BUY it from him...but he would install the direct to battery connection. He told me to send the Brake Buddy back to the folks in TX where I bought it. Yeah, right....

So I sent in a request to Brake Buddy to find out how to get it serviced....after all, I had just bought it and only used it once. I explained all that had happened and the local dealer's response to me (without mentioning who it was). Lunch over, the tech found me again and said it was still holding air so he wasn't going to charge me anything (thank you!!!!) since they really didn't do anything. (NOTE: wondering now if it's because it was up in the air on a lift without the weight on the motorhome on the suspension - time will tell.) I drove the car up to my site, walked back and got the motorhome and headed to the site. Backed in, hooked up the power and not much else done when my cell phone rang.

It was Casey from Brake Buddy....after going through the whole scenario of what had happened, he opted to OVERNIGHT me a new unit (shipping out Tuesday) with a return label for the old one. Now that is service! Since I knew Tra-Tel accepted mail/packages, I gave him their address and called to let them know I would be back Wednesday for one night.

Had a nice peaceful evening....MUCH less dust here...very little, in fact....no trains going through all night long either. Of course I did hear a plane or two since I'm much closer to the airport here. Set the alarm to get up early to take the car to the aforementioned Brake Buddy dealer to see if I needed the battery direct connect done. They were really nice (maybe they felt guilty about their attitude yesterday...LOL!), tested my outlet and said it was just fine. So all my problems appear to be related to the actual Brake Buddy unit....Phew!

So, I head to breakfast and the proceed to Wally World for a few needed grocery items. Also found the perfect folding aluminum side table and a set of inexpensive hiking poles (yes, I AM going to do more walking and hope the poles will help me do more without aggravating my arthritis too much). Good prices, found all the food on my list, didn't get lost, didn't have to pay for the battery connect.....nice start to the day. I should have known....

Got back to the RV and the deadbolt lock won't unlock. I bang, I pull, I push, I berate it...nothing budges it. Wouldn't have been so bad except that I have yet to organize my keys since getting the car and selling the bike/trailer. I have the RV ignition key ring which also has the padlock & hitch/coupler lock keys on it. I have the key ring that I normally took everywhere with me...it has the deadbolt, the other door lock, the storage bin key, my Fire-Safe key and a couple of keys that I'm no longer sure what they are...oh and a recently added car key. They there is the car key ring that has only the car key and the deadbolt key. Toss in a key ring with only the car key on it, that's the one that will be in the ignition when towing. Then there is the SPARE key ring...it has all the duplicates. That used to travel in my purse since I really only had the motorhome.

Soooooo, yes, I need to go through these and have a set of everything on two rings, one for the car and one for the motorhome. But right now it didn't matter....the key(s) to the motorhome truck door were all INSIDE the locked motorhome. Okay, I have road service....I just switched from RV Roadhelp to Coach-Net and although I haven't gotten my cards yet, I had written down all the pertinent information (never knowing how important that would be).

I walk over to the campground office and get their street address, knowing that would be needed. I settle down in a corner of their patio and call Coach-Net and get a nice lady named Joyce. I explain my situation and the first thing she asks me is if I am safe. Finding out that I am, she gets all the pertinent information and tells me that I should see someone in 45-60 minutes. If I haven't heard from someone in a hour, then I should call back so they can check on it. We hang up and I go back to reading. About 10 minutes later my phone rings, it's Joyce again. She wants to clarify that if they open the drivers door so I can get it, will that be sufficient. I hadn't even really thought about it that way (thank you Joyce), but yes, it would be. I had anticipated paying labor & materials to get the lock out and fix out.

About 30 minutes after we hang up for the second time I get a call from the lock service, they are coming in the gate of the campground and wanted to find me. I go outside and they follow me to the RV (maybe 1/2 block away). He quickly unlocks the passenger door (for some reason it's easier on that side) and used the power lock to unlock the driver side (the passenger seat is full...). Then he took down all the information he needed - VIN, tag, driver license - I signed his ticket and we were good to go. Coach-Net just paid for itself!

So now I'm waiting for the mobile tech that adjusted my door to arrive late this afternoon to see what we can do. Yes, I can get in and out the driver door but that is just not convenient. It also means I lose the breeze coming in the side door. Sigh...never a dull moment!

Since I will now be here through Thursday, I am revisiting my travel plans. I have to be in Williams, AZ on May 7th. I've decided it makes no sense to RUSH up to northern AZ/southern UT when I would have to limit my time sightseeing. Instead, I will go a little further south and visit Sierra Vista, Bisbee and Tombstone before heading northerly to end up in Williams on time. I'll be doing a lot of boondocking and don't know when I will/won't have Internet so don't be surprised if I'm not blogging.

I will spend a couple of weeks in northern AZ/southern UT after May 18th...I'll already be in Williams and it makes more sense to do it that way. I will miss meeting up with friends who are camphosting at Arches but know we'll meet up eventually. I will also miss meeting up with other friends who are boondocking in various places in southern AZ, but again, I know we'll meet up eventually. These plans make sense for me....for now....isn't full-timing flexibility a WONDERFUL thing? ;-)

Till next time - keep on rollin',
Froggi/Donna

Can you find me now?

If you have been following my blog, you remember my post about passing out and hitting my head one night while sick. Several folks made comments about setting up a way to have others local to you check in on you, nightly/daily check-in phone calls, etc.

None of these are perfect...if you like to boondock in the middle of nowhere, there isn't someone you can ask to check on you. And if you're a solo lady, that in of itself is a bit scary (asking someone you don't know....). A daily check-in by phone can be difficult as well...you might be out of cell phone range is the first problem. The second is inconveniencing someone on a daily basis.

In one of my favorite motorcycle forums they have been discussing Personal Locator Beacon solutions.

"The PLB (Personal Locator Beacon) is a pocket-sized emergency 406MHz beacon, a scaled down version of the EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) and ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter) that boaters and pilots, respectively, have had available to them for years."
~ Landfall Navigation

These items were brought up in a boondocking session I attended at RV Life on Wheels recently. While a nice option, they are pricey...VERY pricey at $500-700 although there are no annual fees.

Recently some new products have come into the marketplace. One is the TracMe Beacon, only $99 and again, no annual fees. Note that this is not satellite communication and it does not automatically start a search & rescue operation. Not does it allow you to notify someone that you are okay. But it is one newer solution to be considered.

The new product now being discussed in The Motorcycle Tourer's Forum is the SPOT Satellite Messenger. Priced at $170 by the manufacturer, it is in the affordable range. (The cheapest price I found was at Amazon.com, at under $135.) There is an annual fee of $99 for the basic services with a couple of upgrade options. But for the $99 you get a lot...

• ALERT 9-1-1:
  Dispatch emergency responders to your exact location. Unlimited usage included.
• CHECK IN:
  Let contacts know where you are and that you’re okay. Unlimited usage included.
• ASK FOR HELP:
  Request help from friends and family at your exact location. Unlimited usage included.
  

This means you can easily use it to notify family/friends that you are okay. Run into a problem, then you can ask for help via the SPOT Messenger. And in an emergency you can send a message to the control center who can notify your emergency contacts for you.

It's not perfect...like any satellite solution it needs a clear line of sight for the best signal. It can take up to 20 minutes to lock onto the signal. Too many trees or other obstructions and the signal may not go out. But if you have been using the CHECK IN feature, then your last location sent is available as a starting point.

Here are some reviews I found, Lets Go Mobile and Wild Snow, as well as a good FAQ page on the emergency service. One of the motorcyclists has sent check in updates to his blog! I really like this product and think it will only get better. I think I see one in my near future....

UPDATE 5/12/08: I have purchased a SPOT Messenger - see the link in the sidebar or click HERE for the best price including Priority Mail shipping.

Till next time - keep on rollin',
Froggi/Donna

Life at its best and its worst....

What a day....woke at 3 am (and 4 am and 5 am and 6 am) to rain starting & stopping. Nothing serious but enough to change my sleep pattern. I finally rolled out of be at 7:30 and grabbed a shot of what should have been sunrise.



Doug came over around 9 am, we chatted for a bit, ate some breakfast and made plans to hit the local solar vendor that many were recommending. The night before he and Doc had laid out what should be a good working solar environment for me and we wanted to get a quote from these folks.

We visited them and got what we felt was a fair quote and set an appointment for next Wednesday. It will take most of the day for the installation and on Thursday the system will start charging and I will enter a new way of boondocking.

From there we got diesel in the truck, grabbed a quick sandwich and hit a couple of little auto parts stores trying to find a decent quality, flush mount 12 volt power outlet (cigarette lighter style).

Nothing found, we continued over to the main event. I wanted to see if the better quality roll-up tables had arrived as well as check out the catalytic heaters (running the big furnace is counter-productive to the energy efficiency of the solar lifestyle ). Doug wanted to talk to the SHURflo pump folks. After parking what seemed to be 2 miles away (even though attendance was much lower than my last visit), we headed in to see if we could locate our vendors.

On the way there I managed to find a LARGE table full of hats! Yup, still searching for a good mesh hat for warmer weather. I managed to actually find one that fit close enough to satisfy me and looked decent enough to buy. Continuing into the tent we wandered a bit and it felt to me that the vendor I wanted was on the midway outside so we took the next exit. Voila! There was the one I wanted. The tables still weren't what I was looking for but I did find the catalytic heater I hoped would work. If it was too large, I could bring it back and exchange it for the smaller one. I then asked the salesman if he happened to know where the SHURflo vendor was. He did...since it was their space as well...we headed there and Doug got his questions answered.

Time to head back to the truck but as we passed an ice cream stand....who wanted a real dinner anyway! LOL! Super double scoop (one flavor or two) ice creams cones hit the spot and we got to sit a bit and rest our legs before the last stretch of walking.

The final stop was at Herb's Hardware where we managed to find a 12 volt outlet that would work (so I can get a small inverter to run my laptop during the daytime), a cap for my trailer ball and a small bottle of Gorilla Glue. But the best part was locating a young gentleman who will come out to my rig and install the shut-off and quick-connect for my catalytic heater.

A quick trip to the campfire for social hour where I continued to really enjoy the Boondocking group. They have made me feel very welcome and I look forward to many more good times with them. Finally back to the rig where I snapped a couple of sunset shots.




Shortly after returning from the social hour, my cell phone beeped that I had voicemail. Strange since I never heard it ring but that seems to happen out here, sometimes it never rings for me but goes right to voicemail. Anyway, my good day was about to go bad.

The call was from my youngest brother in Florida. One of my cousins and her family live in the same town...and everyone also rides motorcycles. On his way to work this morning, her husband was killed. The details aren't important but he was not at fault. A co-worker was just behind him and was almost involved as well. This was not the way to end what had been a good day.

As I said, today was life at its best and its worst....Tim, you will be sorely missed. I know you died doing what you loved, riding, but we are left here without your shining presence. DTFR...forever. What a ride it's been...

Folks, tell your loved ones how much you care about them....you never know when the final moment will occur.

Till next time - keep on rollin',
Froggi/Donna