Bailey's Birthday and More

 

Today is Bailey's 3rd birthday so of course we had birthday cake for her!  Yes we are a bit crazy for our girls.  I'm sure you are all wondering about the cake and yes, it is a peanut butter cake with yogurt icing made from a cake mix for dogs.  I couldn't believe it myself but there they were in Mann's Best Friend pet store.  Red velvet, chocolate, carrot and peanut butter cake mixes.  They have a full doggy bakery so the paw cookies are from there as well.  Aren't the tiaras a nice touch?


Last night we were expecting to have severe storms here in Sulphur but watched OKC get hit instead.  We had absolutely no rain, wind or hail.  I was sorry to see that many folks in the city got pounded with hail.  While that was going on John and I and the girls were lying on our hammock under the stars enjoying a nice evening.  We watched a beautiful sunset and then the stars coming out while listening to the sweet sounds of our water fountain. 

Here are some pics of our little get away.  Today John put up a bunch more of the hurricane straps that we are continuing to add to the roof joints on our cover while I added some greenery to our new fountain and cleaned the front of the motorhome.  It's a continual job of cleaning dead bugs and bird poo from the windshield and front of the RV.  Our rose bushes are about ready to burst with color and I was hoping that would happen while we were here this weekend but not sure we will get the pleasure of seeing that.  They are full of buds ready to go. We definitely have the hummingbirds back.  They had emptied 2 of the 3 feeders since we were last here.  Well the sun has finally come out and we are going to take a walk on one of the trails in the Chickasaw National Recreation Area.  We saw that the herd of buffalo in the park have had little ones so we want to check them out.  Alas, we walked 1-2 miles around the area where the herd is kept but we never saw them.  Oh well, a good reason to take another walk around there on our next visit.

Our First Flat Tire

It's a quiet Sunday afternoon and we are still house and pet sitting for our friends so thought I would take time to share another story from our early RVing days with our fifth wheel. 

Tires rot from the inside out?  Really?  Nobody seems to tell first time RVers this type of information.  We kept our fifth wheel on our lot at Cedar Blue in Sulphur but did not have a cover over it.  Nor did we have covers on the tires.  So the sun and weather had their way with the the tires for some time.  These things cause the tires to rot from the inside out.  The silent killer so to speak as the tread looks great so you don't realize the tires are not in good shape.

We headed off for a trip to Carlsbad Caverns, Santa Fe and then home.  All went well until the day we were heading home from Santa Fe.  I was driving and shortly after getting onto Interstate 40 heading east to Oklahoma I heard what sounded like a shotgun blast.  Thankfully I didn't have any problem steering and pulled over immediately.  Lo and behold, we had blown a tire on the RV.  I had to admit, at that point I totally lost it and broke down in tears.  Of course John is cool as a cucumber.  He came prepared and out came a hydraulic jack.  Wow – where did he get that?  I pulled it together as I could see that John was working his way through this problem without any problem.  In about 15 minutes we had that tire changed!  Wow how awesome was that.  Of course now we are on the spare and have no other spare.  When we were finally headed down the road, the discussion went to where are we going to get another spare?  We at least realized that the RV had to have RV tires and we weren't going to find those just anywhere.  Add to the problem that it was Sunday and we realize we may not find anything open.  So the plan was to stop in Amarillo for the night if necessary.  I don’t think we drove more than 10 miles and there on the side of the road is a tire center for trucks and it is open.  We pulled off and, you guessed it, they had one RV tire in stock to fit our unit.  What a blessing. 

After getting the spare put on a wheel we were again headed toward home base – Sulphur, OK.    We traveled the majority of the way home without any further problems until five miles north of Pauls Valley, Oklahoma - BANG, there went another tire.  And again, in just a few minutes we had it changed.  Of course, now we are out of spare tires and have another 45 minutes of driving.  Decisions decisions – do we keep going or not?  Remember, it was Sunday and early evening.  Being so close to home base, we decided to take our chances and off we went.  We arrived safely and with no more blown tires. 

From that point forward we knew to carry an extra RV tire in the truck bed as well as the spare that was on a wheel.  Oh yes - and our big hydraulic jack! 

 

Our next big trip was to Disney World and we still had a couple of tires on the RV that had good tread and had not blown so we made the stupid decision to run them until they weren't good.  Wow how dumb was that.  Not only did we take a chance on hurting the RV but hurting others on the road.  What lead to the decision we made was that each time we blew a tire it was just a big bang, no steering problems and no damage so what could it hurt?  God was with us on that trip.  We had two good spares, one on a wheel and one in the truck bed.  We too two and half days to get to our destination and both evenings on the road about dinner time we blew a tire and just around the corner was a Walmart.  So we would change the tire and then have Walmart mount a new tire on a wheel.  When we arrived in Orlando we were out of spares but had all good rubber on the ground.  We did purchase two more spares before heading home but had no need for them, thank goodness. 

 

Now that we are in a large motorhome and cannot change those big hoggers ourselves, we have them checked out before we hit the road for wear and proper air pressure.  Oh yes - those big tires cost about $400 each and we have six of them so yes, we have a tire budget that is setup to buy new tires about every five years.

Helping Out Some Friends and Storms

Today I am writing about something a bit different but feel like sharing.  If you have been keeping up with our blogs you should remember that we had to put our RV into the shop for two weeks and go live with some friends.  Well while we were with this couple (Glenn and Priscilla Peer) Glenn was diagnosed with a very serious type of cancer.  So maybe it was God's design that we were there for them since John has had cancer.  We were able to give them some support since we understood what they were going through and we also provided them with a major distraction. 

Since that time they made the decision to go to MD Anderson for a second opinion and will be down there at least a week.  Well they have a large home with lots of plants, dogs and cats - oh yes and a bird.  So we moved back into their home with our girls on Tuesday and are taking care of the kingdom.  We have a bathtub for a few days and a real treat is they have a large hot tub in the back yard that is ready to go.  So we are loving on all the critters and enjoying their lovely home.

Please keep these dear folks in your prayers while they see the doctors.  We pray for some good news.

Last night lots of major storms rolled through the State and we stayed glued to the TV all night as they always seem to come through the Moore/SW Oklahoma city area where we were located and I truly hate wind.  Nothing like trying to round up 4 dogs and 2 cats plus ourselves into an interior closet if need be.  Yes, the closet is big enough for all of us and is buried in the middle of the house.  Tornadoes were hitting the ground in the Lawton area and lowerings were in Chickasha and headed toward the area where our RV is parked.  Then the sirens were sounded near there.  I looked at John and said well if we were home we would be headed for the tornado shelter at that point and yes I hear that about 12 others were there as well.  Where we are it just poured and poured, a short bit of small hail and wind occurred but the tornadoes, large hail and very high winds seemed to be north and south of us.  Thank goodness.  I think we had 2-3" of rain which we really needed for the continued long-term dought.  I had all our stuff in a pile near the hidey hole and kept the dogs in a confined area so they wouldn't be hard to round up but all was well and God protected us. 

I don't sit well during these storms so I did all our laundry which kept me up and down and hugging on Glenn and Priscillas' dogs and cats.  John felt sorry for them as they stay in the back area of the house but there is a TV back there so he turned it on for them and they really did seem to get some comfort from that. 

This morning it is very cool outside and once again winter seems to still be hanging on a bit.  Maybe by June we might see some consistently warm temperatures? 

I hope everybody has a great weekend.

My Contributions

Ok, I it's time for me to start contributing to our blog. While Maggie will focus on general RV'ing adventures, I will focus on my repair and maintenance experiences. I have found that this resembles the title of my sons's favorite child hood movie, the "Never Ending Story". My experience is that not only every time you travel any distance something breaks, but things just fall apart sitting in one location. After all, this is a home that travels down road and we all know how bad some of those can be. So stay tuned as I give you the benefit of some of my experiences.

Bringing Down the Money Pit

Today's story about a prior adventure is not really about the RV life but it's still funny.  We were at our lot at Cedar Blue and expecting friends, Mike and Cheryl Smith, for a day on the lake.  At the time we did not have the big canopy that covers our RV and boat now but we had erected one of those canopies that had a nylon cover on it for our boat to protect it from storms and hail.  We found this at an inexpensive price and figured it would give our boat some protection from the weather.  When we unpacked it and started to get a good look at it we realized that the poles it came with were not going to be tall enough for our boat and they were very thin.  So we purchased longer and more substantial poles to make it taller and sturdier.  Of course we couldn't find them in Sulphur so we had to drive several miles to Ardmore to purchase them.  This required a lot of hard work in order to make them work and we spent a great deal of time drilling holes through them so we could insert the smaller poles and screw them together.  We worked into the dark the weekend we built this.  This cover was still not a very permanent structure so when the boat was under it we had tie down lines from the cover to the boat.  Also, the boat was sitting on grass.  So as you can see, we had invested quite a bit of money, time and labor into this not very permanent canopy.

It had rained the night before the Smiths were to arrive so John was a bit concerned that we might not get the boat pulled out on the wet grass.  Our truck tires had a tendency to spin on wet grass with a load on it.  Instead of trying to get the boat out before our guests arrived we chose to wait hoping the grass would dry out a bit.  So with our guests watching, John had instructed me to give it all I could when he told me to drive the truck out with the boat.  He had untied the ropes to the canopy, or so I thought, and told me to 'hit it'.  I tromped on the gas and away I went.  The truck was slipping and sliding a bit and I was truly hoping the boat wouldn't sway into the canopy poles.  The truck and boat came out just fine and so did the canopy!  Yes, John had not untied all the ropes that were tied to the boat and the entire thing came with the boat and truck!

All we could do was laugh, untie it and head for the lake with our friends and worry about fixing it later.  The canopy top was still in good shape as were the thin poles that came with it amazingly enough.  So all we had to do was replace some of the larger poles and the boat was not damaged.  Boy, this inexpensive canopy suddenly got very pricey.  So much for trying to do something the inexpensive way.  In the end, however, the canopy served us well.  We had to replace the nylon cover once and finally we had a 45'x24' canopy erected over the RV that included a space for the boat and a deck. 

  

The Hummingbirds are Back

We are at our lot at Lake Arbuckle and the hummingbirds are feeding today.  They are so much fun to watch.  I have learned that if you only have a few you should place a few feeders around the lot as they are territorial.  Any boy are they!  I have watched them fend off the other birds when feeding  very vigorously.  If you have several hummingbirds, such as 10 or more, they cannot be territorial so you are to place a few feeders close together for them.  We typically have 4-5 so I have three feeders out and our neighbors have one as well.  I remember the first time I realized we had hummingbirds.  We had our lot for several years and never saw any.  One day a few years ago I was working on the deck and I heard what sounded like a sci-fi sized bug buzz by me and scared me to death.  I searched and searched for this enormous thing, whatever it was, and low and behold here comes a hummingbird.  Off to Walmart I rushed for a feeder and have had them ever since.  

Today we were at the nursery looking for some things and came across a nice water fountain we thought would be nice on our deck.  While checking it out we were told they had another one for half price that worked just fine but had a small crack in the structure so water leaked out.  Well that was an easy fix - clear silicone.  It works great in the corner of our deck so now all I need is some artificial greenery around it.  What a soothing sound.  The large piece of driftwood is something my mother got when I was a small child in northern Minnesota.  We traveled to this lodge for many many years while I was growing up and I remember having to haul this thing home.  The only place it would fit was in our boat.  My mother had it in her various homes until she moved to a retirement center late in life at which time she gave it to me.  Although it doesn't have the brown shiny coat on it anymore that she had while it was inside it continue to give me many fond memories. 


Just a few other pics I thought you might enjoy.  Bailey is such a good model.  Here she is with the squirrel next to our fountain and driftwood.  Isn't she adorable?

 

 

After a long and hard day (yeh right) John and April are taking a nap in the hammock.  John was flying his RC helicopter today and the wind took it and dropped it in a very tall tree.  Yep and now we have to figure out how to get it out.  We happen to have long handled items to was the RV and the windows so we taped them together to form a really long pole.  So with me holding the ladder and John sticking that pole way up into the tree we successfully retrieved the helpicopter.  Thank goodness - they are not cheap!

 It has been such a great day.  Sunshine and cool temps.  Not even any bugs.  We have our door on the RV open and the sweet tinkling of the new spinner wind chime is ringing sweetly in the wind.   

The Joys of Owning a New RV

Our plan after moving into our 2007 Damon Challenger was to live in it until John was fully retired and we were ready to hit the road full-time.  In preparation for that final (hopefully) purchase I was always looking at floor plans as those are critical when it's your primary home.  My thought was this would save us time as we would know what year, make and model to look for used when we were ready to make that purchase. 

In early January of this year we were out and about on a Saturday and as usual while John was driving I was playing with my phone.  I was searching Camping World's inventory and there it was - a 2013 Thor Challenger with a floor plan I had never seen and it looked very interesting.  So as usual we made a spur of the moment decision and headed north to check it out.  We had our dogs with us and yes Camping World loves dogs so we were able to take them shopping with us. 

We found a very nice salesman who took us out in the yard to check this unit out and we we fell in love with it at first site.  It had a 4-door refrigerator freezer twice the size or more than what we had.  The bath area had two sinks!  The commode was porcelain and in a room of its own and the shower was much larger than ours.  It also had a place for a washer/dryer that was not one of our clothes closets.  There were two slides in the living area and it had a fireplace.  There were so many other options that were much better than what we had and the price was greatly reduced.  We were NOT planning to buy this early but this unit was amazing and they were offering us every bit of what we wanted for trade.  So we made the decision to move forward and purchase it.

Now I have to tell you that once you but a brand new unit and actually start living in it you then find its short comings and it was probably a good idea to have this before we hit the road so we have time to work out all the kinks.

Once we had all the financing worked out and the pickup date set it took us hours of going in and out of the two units (they were side by side) move our stuff.  Lots and lot of up and down stairs.  The joints in these old bodies were really sore after a day of that type of activity.

So the first major problem was when we were ready to pull off the lot and they were closed.  We disconnected from the power and the cameras all quit working.  Obviously they were run by the coach batteries but when we pressed the switch to turn those on absolutely nothing happened.  I was driving so I had to rely completely on my side view mirrors and hope for the best that I didn't run somebody off the road. 

As I pulled onto the highway I then heard this loud banging and it was really loud.  It sounded like it was in the slideout right behind me.  I radioed John to drive around me and see if there was anything swinging around outside and he saw nothing.  So we went home and hoped for the best. 

Since this was the middle of winter it was cold and once we were home I plugged a space heater into the plug by the passenger seat to keep the front of the coach a bit warmer.  The front is always colder because of the large window and dashboard with some airy spaces.  Not long after doing this all the entertainment equipment shut down.  Well it took getting the manual out to figure out that the inverter was wired to that plug and the space heater likely blew a fuse on it.  So the hunt was on for the inverter.  It should have been close to the converter and accessible through one of the basement storage bays but alas it was not to be found anywhere.  We actually had to call Thor and give them our VIN # so they could tell us where they put it.  It was under the head of the bed!  I know - why in the world would they locate this under the bed?  Go figure but we found it, reset the fuse and on came all the entertainment stuff. 

In the meantime we still have not figured out how to get the coach batteries on.  I'm searching the web for anything I can find.  We are searching the manuals and absolutely nothing is helping.  About 2-3 weeks after the purchase John decided to push and hold the switch and after about 5 seconds on came the batteries.  Wow - how simple would it have been to put that in the manual.  So another problem solved.

Another problem we encountered right after arriving home was how to get the hot water flowing.  The hot water tank was also located under the bed - ugh!  I am the only one that can fit under there without taking the entire wooden top off and there is no other way to access this thing.  So under it I crawl and turn the 3 levers the way the manual shows they are supposed to be.  We are getting some warm water but it never really gets hot.  Finally we decide to call Thor and they tell us to reverse the levers and there it is - lots and lots of hot water.  They were installed backwards!  They levers are used to bypass the hot water tank when winterizing. 

Three weeks after arriving home one morning the refrigerator has a code on it instead of the temperature and when we open it it is not running.  I push the button to turn it off and on several times and it comes on each time but in less than a minute goes off and back to that code again.  I had to go to work so I just left and when I arrived home and tried to turn it on about 5 hours later it came on and worked fine.  This has happened three times and followed the same pattern over the course of four months now and still is not resolved.  The code is a communication code that says there is a communication problem between the two computer boards but who knows.  So today we are having the lower board replaced which is apparently the most problematic for this unit and we will see if this does the trick.  Thank goodness it only seems to warm up about 6 degrees so we are not losing food.

Each morning that we had condensation and/or frost as it warmed up outside we started to get a major drip of water on the dashboard from just behind the windshield.  This drip lasted a few minutes and then stopped.  It turns out that the seals around the driving lights on the roof were not done right and had to be redone.  No more dripping now.

The electric steps were making a horrible popping sound when they extended and that is now also fixed.

The final straw happened on a Saturday night after dark and below freezing.  All of a sudden a horrible sound from the heater brought us out of our chairs.  Apparently the plastic fan complete obliterated.  At that point we had no heat so we had to pack up us and the dogs, getting a hotel room that takes dogs and head out to town.  I packed us up for a week and on Sunday we came back out to the unit to pack the food into coolers with dry ice and drive the unit up to Camping World.

We decided to have them not only fix the heater but all these other issues we had come across except the refrigerator as we had somebody else working on that.  So now we know that we could possibly be in a hotel for several days which can get really pricey.  So note to self, you need to set aside some funds for hotel stays if needed.  After two nights one of our friends called us when they heard we were in a hotel and invited us to come and stay with them, dogs and all.  Yes they have 3 dogs and 3 cats as well so we were going to be one big happy family.  I kept telling her this could be 2-3 weeks and they weren't put off.  What great friends.  Their house design was awesome and it was very comfortable staying there.  Our pets could be kept separate and we had our own living space so we didn't have to be in each other's space.  As it turned out we were there for two weeks! 

Camping World had everything fixed in two days except the slideout banging problem.  They assigned an advisor to us that kept us informed all the time and she was great to work with.  Not sure she always had the right information but she was always very friends and willing to return our calls.  Over the course of the two weeks it was our understanding that Thor, Lippert and Camping World were on the phone with each other trying to figure out how to resolve the problem.  At one point our advisor suggested we call Thor as well which I did.  They were great to work with and immediately called Camping World after my call to keep at the problem.  Eventually they came up with a fix and it seems to have worked.  There has been no banging and the slideout seems to work just fine. 

So as you can see we have had our hands full with a variety of problems.  I find it interesting that the manufacturer doesn't do a better job of inspecting the units before they leave the factory as so many of these things could have been found there.  I actually sent them a letter with my thoughts and they called me to say they had received it and were reviewing it.  Not sure if any changes were made but I felt better!  You would think it would save them a lot of money in warranty work if they just did a better job when building and inspecting their units.  From what I can tell this is a problem throughout the industry. 

So by the time John retires we should have a coach that maybe is problem free?? 

Our First RV Trip

In 1998 we headed to Gettysburg for a McBean/Carter family reunion.  This was our first trip with our new fifth wheel which was also our first RV.  In an attempt to make sure that the trip was uneventful we took our older F250 diesel truck to a Ford garage to be checked over and service.  Mind you, we made sure we told the service folks that we were headed to the east coast pulling a 5^th wheel and needed to be sure all was in order.  Later that afternoon they called to say the truck was ready.  We had asked them to check the oil, brakes, and all the usual things and never received a call from them about any problems or cost.  We arrived to pick up the truck and were presented with a bill for over $800!  Yes you read that right – and no phone call prior to any work to let us know about this.  Needless to say, we left there pretty confident that the truck was in good working order. 

We decided to leave town after work and get a few hours on the road.  Our first trip out and you guessed it, there is a problem already with an RV tire.  Thank goodness we were still in town.  We drove to the dealer expecting the worst as it was just about closing time, but were pleasantly surprised - they were still open.  They dropped everything to fix it.  We were on our way in less than hour. 

The trip east was totally uneventful until we were about one hour out from our campground in Gettysburg.  Lesson One – when using a routing service you might want to tell them that you are pulling or driving an RV and to avoid mountainous drives when there is a more reasonable route even if it means a few more miles.  We were routed off the highway onto a mountain road with a very steep incline and practically no shoulder.  It’s about 2 pm and we are not far up the road when John notices smoke coming out from under the truck.  We pull over and there is actually a fire burning on the front axle.  Remember, we are totally new to this and cannot remember where the fire extinguisher is and did not have one in the truck.  Following that trip, in addition to the fire extinguisher inside the door of the RV, we carried one in the truck cab as well.  I was fortunate enough to have a very large glass of iced tea handy so I crawled under the tuck and dumped the tea on the fire successfully putting it out.  The transmission fluid apparently was too hot and was dumping out onto the axle which caused the fire.  We didn’t know what, if anything, was wrong but didn’t feel we could take a chance on driving as we must have dumped a good amount of transmission fluid for it to be overheating.

Remember I said there was no shoulder?  There just happened to be a long driveway coming out to the road where we were stopped so we walked back to the house to ask them if we could park on their property.  Of course we are in the mountains, they don’t know us and I’m sure we looked like major criminals so they wouldn’t answer the door.  We could tell they were home so we persisted and stood way back from the door trying to look harmless.  Eventually they came to the door and allowed us to explain our predicament.  We told them we didn’t need anything from them, just permission to back down their drive a bit to get off the road, which they granted to us.  We also had paid for a well known RV towing service prior to our adventure east.  Cell phones were somewhat new so there were expensive roaming fees and we didn’t have a phone charger for our cell phone.  After calling our towing service the company they called sent us a tow truck which was smaller than our own truck and this guy intended to pull both our truck and RV with this half ton pickup up the mountain!  Add to that the driver was hooking his truck up to the bumper of our truck.  John is remaining cool as a cucumber and I’m freaking out.  I told the driver to put the truck down as I watched our bumper start to bend.  He explained that their big tow truck had broken down and he had nothing else to offer.  So he left and we were back on the phone with the towing service.  The poor operator was becoming a bit frantic as she could not find anybody to help us so she sent us a sheriff’s deputy.  Not sure why but maybe that made her feel better. 

By this time we are realizing the towing service is not working too well.  So we decided to figure out if we could actually move forward or backward.  We started up the truck and put it in gear and didn’t hear anything bad and it moved.  We then placed a call to some of the relatives at Gettysburg and asked them to bring 15 quarts of transmission fluid and hopefully rescue us.  Yep - those big diesel rigs take 15 quarts of fluid and we had no idea how low we were.  We just knew we were way down.  When they finally arrived we had been stuck on that mountain for 8 hours!  While waiting on our rescuers we also called the KOA to see if per chance somebody there might be willing to come and tow our RV in if we could not get the truck driven in.  They told us they would check and call back and then our phone died.  Remember – no charger! 

When our help arrived with lots of transmission fluid we found we were down 7 quarts!  So obviously it was leaking somewhere and that’s what caused it to overheat.  We went ahead and drove the truck with the RV up and over the mountain top and hang on – you aren’t going to believe this.  Yes, just over the mountain top was a Ford dealer which had been open at least three hours while we were stuck on that mountain but not one single person put that together for us.  Not the towing service, not the local tow truck driver, and not even the sheriff’s deputy.   Odds are that if we had known and called the Ford dealer they could have helped us out.  As we passed through that town we encountered yet another mountain road that we had to climb up and over but thankfully we made it.  We arrived at the KOA at 11 pm but intact.  We found out the KOA had located somebody to tow our unit but could never get hold of us because our phone had died.

We were able to enjoy the family reunion and the KOA we were staying in sent us to an ASE certified truck repair shop in town on Monday morning which was the day we were supposed to be headed home.  These guys were wonderful.  They set aside all their jobs and focused on us so we could be on the road that day.  They found that the tube the dip stick for the transmission fluid goes into was broken.  Remember that $800 we paid the Ford dealer before heading out on our adventure?  They seemed to have missed this.  These folks in Gettysburg fixed that, replaced all the fluids we needed, and increased the size of the transmission cooler and only charged us $300.  What a blessing and answer to prayer.  This doesn't say much for the Ford dealer that never caught the broken tube nor did they suggest a larger transmission cooler.  I'm sure all this was in God's plan because those repairs would likely have cost hundreds more at the Ford dealer!

Our trip home was pleasant and uneventful but we did get a $600 cell phone bill.  We quickly learned that the old adage about your RV costing you at least $1,000 every time you leave town might be true.

How we got started in RVing

Our adventures began when we decided we were tired of tent camping in the Oklahoma heat.  Setting up on Friday night in 90+ temperatures and taking camp down on Sunday afternoons in 90+ temperatures was taking the fun out camping.  The boys were grown and it was time to start checking out RVs.  It was New Years Eve day in 1997 and we decided to make the rounds to the various dealers in town.  We agreed that we were not going to spend a fortune to find out that life in an RV was not for us so we set our sights low.  Our bit of research seemed to favor 5^th wheel hitches over bumper hitches for ease of towing and our older F250 diesel seemed able to handle the task at hand.  Of course whether you were at a truck dealer or an RV dealer they are going to tell you that the truck you have can pull whatever RV it is you are looking at!  Right!  I was glad I had done my homework on how much weight our truck could actually pull. 

We spent all day in the cold, dreary weather going from one dealer to another and ended up back at the first place we had looked that morning.  That 1998 Forest River Sandpiper 5^th wheel just kept calling our name.  The colors were so pretty, it had two slide outs, we liked the layout and the weight of it was perfect for our truck.  By the end of the day John and Maggie were officially RV owners!

Our first hurdle was where to store it.  We owned a pontoon boat and we could not pull the boat and RV at the same time.  So the hunt was on.  Miles of driving on the weekends looking for that perfect solution.  Maybe we could rent a boat slip and just haul the RV to that location on the weekends.  Do you know what folks pay for boat slips?  It’s insane!  Hundreds of dollars got us a piece of junk boat slip that did not seem safe to walk on at one of the area lakes.  Also, we didn't want to have to drive several hours on weekends to reach our destination.  As we were driving back toward the city from Lake Murray one weekend we decided to drive around Lake Arbuckle.  I have no idea why we decided to drive there.  We had camped there many times and knew there was no marina so why we thought a drive there might garner us something is beyond me.  I guess it was that still small voice that we so often ignore but thank the Lord we did not this time.  While wandering around the camping areas we were so familiar with we saw a road called Cedar Blue Road and decided to drive up it.  We had seen this road many times but never drove it.  Oh my!  What a huge surprise!  Just a short distance down this road is a huge private RV park where you buy your lot.  Were we dreaming?  As we pulled in we were given a map and a list of the lots for sale and sent on our way.  This place has a nice swimming pool, 24-hour gated access with a security guard 24/7 365 days a year, as well as its own volunteer fire department.  The annual maintenance fee included water, sewer, and garbage.  You paid for your own electricity.  After covering the entire park – all 600+ lots, there it was.  The lot we had been looking for.  Located on Razorback Drive in a cul-d-sac was a pie-shaped lot that was completely flat and treeless and owned by the park and it was a steal.  We got it for $1,000!  Yes, you heard that right - $1,000.  The cost of storing the boat and RV were well over that per year.  And so my stories start in the life of John and Maggie as RV owners.  From this point on I will be telling you about some of our interesting RV adventures in among my posts about our current time.  Hope you enjoy our adventure.  

It's Raining

It's raining!!!  We have been in a drought for so so long now but we have gotten some moisture in the past few weeks.  Well Easter Sunday morning we woke up about 5:30 am to rain and hail.  No damage but a lot of rain.  The rest of Easter Sunday and Monday were beautiful days and then the rain started in again Monday night and it hasn't stopped.  It's Tuesday evening now and it is still coming down.  We are supposed to have it until Thursday morning.  They are predicting upwards of 3" total which is awesome.  With a few more of these types of rain between now and the end of June the drought may actually be broken.  I sure hope so. 

We enjoyed Sunday just being lazy and spent a good deal of it outside.  The Easter service at First Baptist Church in Sulphur, OK was very nice as well.  They have a great preacher there.  I fixed dinner for us late afternoon and then we headed back to Blanchard in our RV. 

On Monday Bailey and I headed to OU Medical Center to visit inpatients for a few hours.  The patients and staff love the dog visits.  We love doing this but it is very tiring for both of us.  We visit for 3-4 hours and then Bailey comes home and crashes.  She is so well behaved during the visits. 

We have been running our DivorceCare ministry for the past several weeks on Monday nights at our church.  We have two more weeks left in the program and then get a break through the summer.  We do this 13-week program in the Fall and then again starting in January.  It's a great ministry and has helped hundreds of people.  We hope to continue this ministry when we are on the road full-time by either helping churches start it or by giving their facilitators a break and doing a 13-week session for them.

John goes on call for his job on Wednesday so we have to stay in the area for a week in case he gets any  patient calls at night or on the weekend.  So my big plan for the weekend is to cl