Travels with Gunther and Kara

Well…today was one of those good news and bad news days. We got up about 0500 for coffee and waking up and after making a couple of wraps for lunch headed off about 0720 for our day’s activities. First stop was the Ford dealership in Plymouth a couple miles south of here to get an oil change for BAT. Everything else was still fine on the standard inspection although we’re getting towards time for a scheduled transmission flush and fluid replacement…but we’re leaving that for this winter after the trip to Alaska. It takes a couple of hours and we didn’t have enough time for that today.

After that it was time for Fun Stuff™ as opposed to Fun Stuff© which was our former designation. Connie and Neil were talking about it today and since copyright is generally for text you write and trademark is generally for a slogan or logo or whatever that using ™ was more appropriate. Just wanted to answer any burning questions you may have had when you noticed the change.

Anyways…on to Fun Stuff™. First stop was the town of Hastings MN about 25 miles southeast of here right on the Mississippi river…it’s a quaint little midwest town that was supposed to have shops and other cool stuff to see. We had to wend our way through traffic a bit as it was 0930 or so when we were headed that way and it was still the end of rush hour. We got there, found a place to park and wandered around the historic/restored part of town…but quickly found out it was about 3 blocks long on both sides of one street. There’s supposed to be 60something buildings in town on the National Register of Historic Buildings…but mostly it was a bunch of antique shops and empty storefronts. We did get a few shots of the historic buildings that were cool and wandered over and got a few shots of the Mississippi as it flowed by.

A guy paddling his canoe downstream for some fishin’. I hope he has a trolling motor in the bottom to get home as the current was running 5 or 6 knots and it would be no fun paddling upstream.

We headed next to Vermillion Falls Park which contains…naturally enough…Vermillion Falls and is about 3 miles from downtown Hastings. Got a nice shot of the waterfall which is in a side channel next to a hydro electric plant on a tributary to the Mississippi. You can just see the brick wall on the lower right that is where the plant is…and you can see where the top cascade has been reconstructed a bit to add a lip to prevent erosion of the falls. The larger cascade you can see appears to still be a natural flow.

We were getting hungry by this time but it wasn’t lunchtime yet…so we stopped for a Blizzard (Neil) and milkshake (Connie) from a DQ we passed. Good thing we saw it as they were really good and we were running out of gas…we ended up missing breakfast this morning before we headed out.

Second stop was at Hidden Falls Park a bit north and west from Hastings on the Mississippi. Unfortunately the road down to the falls was closed for construction vehicles only so we didn’t get anything from there. We did get a short video of the fast current in the Mississippi River at St. Paul MN.

Our third stop was another 2 or so miles north from Hidden Falls…Shadow Falls State Park. Again, right on a side creek flowing into the Mississippi and while it appeared to be a nicer falls than Hidden Falls would have been…Connie declined to either hike down the path in her street shoes or change into her hiking shoes to go down. So instead we sat up at the top of the bluff and had our wraps for lunch, then took a couple photos of the WWI Memorial to the county citizens that died during the war and the flowers in a small garden nearby.

Finally; we headed home and on the way out of the residential area along the river we happened across Cretin Avenue. Since we’ve long thought that most people are cretins we thought this was appropriate.

From there we had a 30 or so minute drive home then we had a short nap. Woke up and it was getting warm inside as the high today is supposed to hit 90…so we fired up the A/C unit. We can only run one at a time as we only got a 30 amp site here at the KOA…we figured it would be June but it was MN and it wouldn’t be too hot. We can run one A/C fine and we’ll just run the living room one during the day and the bedroom one tonight if it doesn’t cool off.

For dinner we’re off to Mama G’s. It’s a local dive bar that has craft beers for $2.50 during happy hour and decent food according to the reviews. Our original idea was to go over to a place on Lake Minnetonka nearby named Maynard’s…but we decided that although it looked great and it was recommended because of both the food and the great views over the lake…it is 30 miles away and the allure of a 3/4 of a mile back home rather than 30 overcame our desire for the view. Hopefully the dinner will live up to what we had last night…Neil grilled some duck breasts that we needed to get rid of before we get to Canadia and made some maple/berry/balsamic/mustard sauce to go on it and Connie whipped up some mashed sweet ’taters with brown sugar, cinnamon, and pecans. Quite yummy I’m tellin’ ya. 

I also ran out and got a shot of our site here at the KOA…sorry I didn’t do it the last couple of places but we were sort of overwhelmed with the brake issues and Neil didn’t get around to taking one. I got on him about that…after all his iPhone is always, always in his pocket so how hard can it be to just take the darn photo already! Here’s site 43 here at the KOA Minneapolis NW…a nice little park albeit the sites are a bit tighter than we like.

Oh yeah…the good news was that Vermillion Falls was pretty neat and the bad was that Hidden and Shadow Falls turned out to be a bust. Oh well.

Cyas.

Ok, as I reported in my last post it looks like our brake issues are done. Everything on the trailer worked just fine on the way from Elkhart to here at the KOA Minneapolis Northwest in Maple Grove MN but we did have an alarm on our brake controller in the truck that we eventually (after we found the correct manual, New Horizons gave us the wrong one that wasn’t for the ABS brake system we have) determined to be an alarm saying that the driver rear wheel ABS sensor had failed.

As you may recall…we had the guys at MORryde see if they could reroute the ABS cables for more slack…we hoped that they would open up the underbelly access panel and actually reroute the cables. What they did was yank on the cable until they got a little more slack and call it done.

We figured we had a bad cable and were making arrangements to get some replacement ones shipped here to Maple Grove when Neil decided to be smart, crawl under the trailer and make sure that he could actually access them to replace the bad one before we spent the bucks to order one. On visual examination…the connector for the driver rear wheel was disconnected from the sensor. The sensor has about a 2 foot cable on it that plugs into a longer cable up in the underbelly, the longer cable leads over to the brake controller. It turns out that the longer cable is tie wrapped to the frame members and wiring bundles so when you yank on the sensor wire you get some more slack in the short sensor attached cable but when you pull the connector comes undone and hence the ABS system detects no sensor. Neil plugged everything back up and got some tie wraps and rerouted the longer cables a bit then dressed everything up nicely so all is good.

That was Sunday afternoon’s job…the morning we went to Mass. Afterward we had some of Neil’s famous Fusilli pasta with bacon, caramelized onions, garlic, pecans and cheese for dinner along with a couple of wine coolers. After that we watched TV and went to bed early to finish recovering from the time zone change.

On the way over from Elkhart we got the ‘time for an oil change’ alert on BAT…so we’ve slightly rejiggered our plans on that one. Originally we were going to get it changed in Dawson  Creek before heading off but we have another 1700 miles to go and we didn’t want to push the oil change interval that long. So…we’ve got an appointment for Tuesday AM to get it done and we’ll just skip the one in Dawson Creek. If our calculations are correct…we’ll need another one right as we get back to Prince George so we’ve scheduled one there. We’ll watch the mileage on the way up and if necessary we’ll get it changed in Anchorage as we’ll be there about halfway through the trip. However, 1,700 miles to Dawson Creek plus 4,800 towing miles on the trip to Prince George plus another 1,000 for driving around miles is just about 7,500…which is about when the BAT computer will want another change…so we’ll play that one by ear.

With that scheduled and the non-need for an ABS cable replacement we did some planning yesterday. Today our goal was to visit downtown St. Paul…the sister city to Minneapolis and the other half of what is known as “the Twin Cities”…basically it’s the part of Minneapolis on the east side of the Mississippi. Tomorrow we’re off southeast of the city a bit to the Hastings area for a quaint little town visit with a waterfall nearby…then we’ll stop by Minnehaha Falls which is right in downtown Minneapolis on the way home…I’ve got some neat info about this fall that I’ll report on when I have the pictures tomorrow. Wednesday we’re off to Fort Snelling for a walk around a pre Civil War fort built back when Minnesota was being settled. Tomorrow night we’re going to a local dive bar for dinner and who knows what for dinner Wednesday night. 

Thursday we’re doing some of that home stuff…which is ok because it’s gonna rain anyway…laundry, groceries and the like and Connie has a bit o’ work to finish up. Then we’re off on Friday AM to somewhere west of Fargo ND and then continue Saturday to Teddy Roosevelt NP (national park) before heading northward into Canadia.

Ok…a report on today’s mission.

We headed off about 0930 or so and drove to downtown St. Paul heading for the Landmark Center…which was the old Post Office and Federal Building until the early 1900s. It then fell into disrepair for a couple of decades and was scheduled for demolition to provide a parking lot in the late 1920s. The locals convinced the Feds to turn it over to the city and it was refurbished to it’s former appearance and turned into a cultural center of sorts. To  give you an idea of how bad it was…many of the solid marble walls had to be stripped of your standard Federal government green paint during the rehabilitation process. Who would paint a marble wall?

There’s some photos below of the building and the nearby river…but by the time we were done with it we (a) only had about an hour left on our parking meter and (b) had only another 90 minutes until the scheduled 1300 tour at St. Paul’s Cathedral so we headed off to our destination for lunch…the Great Waters Brewery.

Great Waters is built in the old Hamm Brewery headquarters building and brews a variety of great craft beers. The site was also the physical location of one of the 3 cathedrals in St. Paul that predate the current structure. When Great Waters opened…they found a natural spring underneath the building and they brew their beer using this water…they call it holy water since the cathedral used to be here. Anyway…we had a pint each of St. Andrew’s Cross Scotch Ale…and I gotta tell ya it was mighty, mighty good. We toyed briefly with the pizza of the month for dinner but on further reflection decided to just split a sandwich as it was an early lunch and we don’t usually eat big lunches anyway. After some discussion and on a recommendation from Kristin our bartender (natch we sat at the bar and were the only customers as it was only 1100 in the morning) we ordered the Grilled Pork Sandwich with French Fried Onions and Bacon Jam…because…hey…Bacon Jam. We figured that bacon improved anything and I gotta tell ya’…the combination of bacon, sugar, vinegar, and onions into a sort of marmalade consistency made a pretty stellar spread for the sandwich on a toasted baguette. Of course…you could have put that Bacon Jam on a cracker, dead lizard, or a bumper and it would taste delish of course…Neil’s already looked up a recipe to make some for using around here. We tried to get our bartender Kristin to pose…but she wasn’t having any of it so we settled for a shot of our pints and the window and brew tank behind the bar.

We passed on dessert as we were headed off to St. Paul’s Cathedral…which turned out to be a pretty spectacular place.

A vertical shot looking at the bottom of the 186 foot high dome.

Looking from the vestibule up towards the sanctuary…the baluscade over the altar is bronze and supported by 6 single piece Italian marble columns.

A shot of the rear window and organ…which we just happened to hear last night on our favorite public radio program Pipe Dreams…which features only pipe organ music…the host Michael Barone calls it the “King of Instruments”.

Here are a couple of shots from our earlier visit to Biltmore Castle while down in Marion, the Linville Falls, and the Mash Creek Falls we saw while at Camp Creek State Park WV. The Biltmore Castle and garden photos are all from Connie.

Overlooking Linville Falls.

Mash Creek Falls at Camp Creek State Park WV.

Butterfly at Mash Creek Falls.

That’s about it…I should have some more photos including waterfalls in the next couple of days.

Cyas.

Well…we’re out of the service bay and back into site 3 here at the MORryde facility in Elkhart IN…and hopefully our brake woes are behind us.

After our pretty uneventful trip from the rally in Marion NC to Elkhart IN we got parked, checked in with the service manager Rob, and headed over to a local Chinese restaurant for dinner. Our first choice was our favorite place to eat here in Elkhart…Iechyd Da Brewery but they were closed on Tuesday and we had a hankering for Chinese…so she found the Mandarin Kitchen that had good reviews. We drove over there and walked in the door…followed by walking out the door as it was a take out place with a couple of tables in the front; not our idea of fine dining. The other Chinese place in town Jade Garden was our second choice and it turned out to be a good one. Great food and $30 including tip.

Wednesday we finally backed the house into the service bay in the late morning and Rob’s guys Sergio and Keith started looking at our problems. Here are a couple of before photos of the failed parts.

Rotor…this turns with the wheel, the surface is supposed to be shiny and smooth like glass.

Caliper…this fits over the rotor and does not rotate. Notice the arrows pointing to what used to be little rubber boots that help keep the brake fluid in and the dirt out.

And finally the pads themselves…you can see in the shot of the caliper above that the top pad of the two in the middle doesn’t have any brake material on it. Here’s what the pad that was rubbing on the rotor looks like.

Some discussion with Rob and others here at the factory revealed that back in early to mid 2012 Dexter (they make the brakes) had a problem with pads in that the material separated from the backing plate. The material is epoxied on so it’s either bad epoxy, bad mixing, or bad curing…sure seems like a manufacturing defect on Dexter’s part to us (and Rob as well)…but rather than owning up to the problem they just say “24K warranty and it’s normal wear and tear” so they save money.

So…after some evaluation by Rob, Keith and Sergio here’s what we ended up needing: (a) 2 complete new brakes for the rear wheels, turns out that an entire kit is cheaper than the individual parts so we have a few leftover parts from the two kits in our spare parts bin now; (b) we also needed new springs installed on our IS (independent suspension) since we’re pretty heavy (although still well within the rated capacity of 7,000 pounds for axles…our heaviest axle is 5,700 and heaviest wheel is 3,100) and the original springs (well, they’re actually rubber plates but they call them springs) were fully compressed and Rob replaced them with stiffer/stronger springs to both give us a little more headroom as well as pick up the rear of the trailer just a bit; (c) we needed to have our IS welded to the frame to make it a little stiffer; and (d) a little dress up of the wiring for our ABS system that New Horizons didn’t leave enough slack in.

We told them to fix it right and also check our bearings as that was on our original work list for the Alaska trip…the good news is that the bearings look fine, no excess grease in the caps and nothing looks out of order there. They got to work and finished up the welding yesterday…and since we were up on blocks (like any good redneck, ya gotta have a house trailer up on blocks) we just spent the night inside the service bay which essentially meant that we were inside the 3 shifts per day factory. Luckily they don’t do too much noisy stuff at night. After the day’s work we headed over to Iechyd Da for dinner…and it was another rousing success.

We had a pint each of Stiff Wind Scottish Strong Ale (7.2% alcohol, stronger than most brews)…a dark brown ale similar to Newcastle Brown Ale…quite tasty. Along with that we split a Kidwelly pizza…Rosemary oil, ham, smoked Gouda cheese, mozzarella, arugula, and balsamic vinegar…again quite tasty. We were still a bit hungry so we split an order of Sticky Toffee Pudding with caramel sauce and whipped cream and a snifter each of Walloon Belgian Dark Strong which is a fruity dessert type beer and even stronger at 9.2%. It’s served in a smaller glass…the snifter was about a half pint but it was heavily flavored and that’s about all you would want of it. Here’s a shot of the Stiff Wind.

After dinner we came home…sat in the rig in the factory…and watched TV until bedtime.

Today we were up at 0500 as we had to be ready for Keith by 0600…had coffee and breakfast and got dressed then headed over to the office while Keith and his helper got to work. About 1400 we were finished and ready to pull out of the service bay. After we did that Keith measured our over all rig height as the stronger springs did pick us up a bit…he measured it at 13’6” which is about 2 inches higher than before but he and Rob said the springs would compress an inch or so over the next couple of days so figure we will end up at 13’5”…just an inch taller than before. Not a big deal…we’ll just reprogram the height in our truck GPS and head on down the road.

The final bill for our troubles was almost 3400 bucks…787 for the original repair at Restless Wheels Trailer in Manassas VA a couple backs, 583 for the parts Bill Napier and Neil picked up at Redneck Trailer Supply (what a great name) in Lincolnton NC and another 1990 to MORryde for the parts, labor, and alignment of the IS we needed after the spring replacement

We pulled over and parked (again) back in site 3 and got power on and the A/C fired up as it’s about 80 today. Neil stored away all the spare brake parts we ended up with…along with some spare lug bolts for both our friend Bill Napier and ourselves and some spare hydraulic hoses and limit switch for our Quadra BigFoot jacks that level us when parked and unhitched. The spare hoses will help ensure that we have no issues with hoses on the Alaska caravan.

We also figured out our route between Elkhart IN and De Forest WI (right outside Madison) for tomorrow. We have to pass Chicago and want to (a) miss the traffic, (b) miss downtown Chicago, and (c) pay the least amount of tolls we can get away with without driving 100 miles out of the way. Connie found us a convenient way that does all of that and will only cost $16 in tolls…we could have had no tolls but it’s 100 miles farther and we’ll waste more than 16 bucks in fuel going that way. We’re having dinner tonight at Heinnies which is local bar and steak house…then we’ll get hitched up, tested, and on the road tomorrow morning with an underway time of about 0900 for our 270 mile trip to De Forest. We’ll park overnight at the Madison KOA then head out again Saturday morning for the remaining 270 miles or so to Minneapolis where we’re staying at the Minneapolis NW KOA which (strangely enough) is in Maple Grove and not Minneapolis. Then we’ll do Fun Stuff© along with probably a little work for Connie until we leave next Friday for a 2 day drive via Fargo ND to Medora ND where we will stay at the boon docking campground at Teddy Roosevelt National Park for a couple days…then it’s off to Saskatoon and points west in Canadia.

Cyas.

Well…the rally was pretty wonderful all week; albeit very, very exhausting. Saturday Bill and Neil got under the rig and pulled the calipers and pads off of the rear wheels while capping the brake lines so that the fluid wouldn’t leak out. Then we partied with the rally folks and Howard and Linda Sunday. The highlight activity for Sunday afternoon was a walking dessert tour around the town of Black Mountain about 30 miles away. We met our tour guide and went to 5 different restaurants and ate dessert…then came home to the rally park for a late afternoon ice cream social. Talk about a sugar buzz…we were seriously bouncing off the walls by the end of the campfire Sunday night.

Monday it was back to work on the brakes…we found a place called Redneck Trailer Supply over toward Bill’s house in Belmont NC that had parts available. So…we drove over there and picked up a caliper and a set of pads then came home for…you guessed it…more installation later in the week.

We crawled underneath on Wednesday morning and replaced the bad caliper and pad on the front left wheel and the pads on the front right wheel…we thought they were damaged but it turned out after removing them that they were just slightly misaligned with the rotor and were actually fine. Reconnected the brake lines and bled the system and we had 4 working brakes. That gives us 16K of brakes on the trailer and 14K on the truck which is just about enough for our overall weight of about 30K.

Neil and Bill went out and had some training on how to tow more effectively…Neil has not been using engine braking on the rig so Bill taught him the tricks of the trade to do that and save wear and tear on both the truck and trailer brakes. Afterward Neil rejiggered our route to Elkhart for fewer long mountain downgrades albeit it with another 100 miles…so we decided to change our plans and leave Sunday instead of Monday…which would still get us to Elkhart on schedule.

Wednesday was a fun day for Connie and Linda…they went over to the Biltmore mansion for a tour and lunch. Pictures are on the file server which Neil didn’t startup today as we have to hitch and get into the service bay tomorrow so I’ll post them later on for ya.

Thursday was a work day for Connie while Neil, Bill and Linda headed about 40 miles north for a white water rafting tour on the Watauga River just over the border into Tennessee. After a nice lunch we launched and floated downstream about 8 miles with up to Class C rapids in a couple of 6 person rafts. The water was really cold…we knew because each raft was equipped with Magnum Super Soaker water cannons with which we pelted the other boat throughout the afternoon. We made it to the take out point right in front of the storm…it poured rain on the bus ride back to where we parked the cars then poured again on the way home to Marion.

Friday was a nice hike with Bill and Linda up at Linville Falls about 20 miles north. As expected in the NC mountains…it rained off and on and the hike was pretty steeply uphill then back downhill to the visitor center. We got some great photos of the Linville Falls…but again they’re on the file server so I’ll have to post them later when it’s started up.

Saturday was scheduled to be the grand finale for the rally…so mostly we rested after a continental breakfast until the luau scheduled for the evening. After a great dinner of slow cooked pig we sat around the campfire until dark then hit the sack early.

Sunday we were up for the final rally activity…another catered breakfast at which we (again) ate too much…then Howard and Linda said their goodbyes to all of us and we to them…then there was a series of “Cyas down the road” as most of the 61 rally attendees headed for their next stop.

During the week we had 3 catered dinners, 3 breakfasts, ate dinner up at the Swiss Chalet restaurant on the Blue Ridge Parkway with Bill and Linda as well as our friends James and Cindy, had pizza at a local place with Bill and Linda, and grilled burgers with Bill and Linda the other two nights. We went to about half of the official campfires and spent the remaining evenings outside our rigs talking mostly with Bill, Linda, James, and Cindy.

We finished packing and hitching and hit the road about 1000 for our 220 mile trip to Camp Creek State Park in Camp Creek WV for the evening. We had one small navigational issue on the way into the campground causing us to have to drive another 12 miles or so on narrow curvy mountain roads…but they weren’t nearly as bad as Connie thought they were (says Neil anyway). On arrival we did minimal setup…power only, ate left over pizza and went to bed. Up early the next morning…we had a quick breakfast and were on the road by 0830 for a 350 mile day through Charleston WV and Dayton OH to our overnight stop in Wapakoneta. We were pretty tired so just had bacon and frozen Eggo waffles for dinner then watched TV until bedtime. Both of these stopping spots were pretty nice…Camp Creek a nice spot on Mash Creek and a nice little KOA campground in Wapakoneta.

Tuesday morning we hit the road about 0900 for the remaining 180 miles to Elkhart and pulled into the MORryde parking lot about 1330. We filled up with water and parked in the free spot they provide for customers. Neil did a few odd jobs around the house for the afternoon then we went over to a local Chinese restaurant for dinner. Our first choice would have been Iechyd Da Brewery but it was closed today…Connie picked this place that had several rave reviews named the Mandarin Kitchen. Unfortunately…this turned out to be a take out place so we walked in the door…and then walked out the door and headed to the other Chinese place in town…Jade Garden. Soup (egg drop for Connie and hot and sour for Neil), a Kirin for her and a Tsingtao for Neil, an order of steamed pot stickers (steamed dumplings) and an order of Crispy Orange Beef quickly were ordered, delivered, and just as quickly disappeared. Truly great food and the bill came to a total of 24.30 (30.00 with the tip)…can’t gripe about that price for dinner especially as we have leftovers for lunch one day.

Tomorrow we’ll get the rig into the service bay and get things sorted out…it appears that there is a common cause for our failures…I’ll elaborate more on that tomorrow after the service guys look at things to verify. Our current plans are to head out from here Friday morning for an overnight in Madison WI then onto Minneapolis MN for 6 days.

We do have a few photos for ya today though…after our arrival and setup at Camp Creek State Park we wandered over to the Mash Creek Falls and grabbed a couple of shots of them as well as a blue and black butterfly we spotted on the way back to the rig for our leftover pizza dinner.

Cool little butterfly or moth…I have no idea which it is and no idea how to tell which is which.

Mash Creek Falls.

I’ll get the file server up in a day or so…process the Biltmore and hiking pictures…and post those as well.

And a couple of funnies we ran across this week.

Cyas.

Man we’ve been busy. As of my last post we had transited to Midlothian and gotten settled in for our 6 day stay to visit the human kids, see grand baby Alex, drop off some stuff at the storage unit and drop off our Mazda 6 with the kids while we’re off to Alaska.

After our brake repairs last week things proceeded pretty normally and we got to Midlothian in short order.

We spent the week soaking in as much Alex time as we could…photos below… and working on our various other jobs. Stayed pretty busy at it too…dinner with the kids a couple of nights (Neil cooked once and we got a pizza the other time)…went out to a bar named The Hard Shell for Neil’s birthday and had raw oysters, crab dip, and Legends Brown Ale which was pretty outstanding.

We dropped off the Mazda and did laundry on Thursday before the birthday dinner, said our final CYAs to the kids, gave Alex too many hugs and then packed up the house in the afternoon for our 330 or so mile transit to Marion NC for the RV-Dreams Family Reunion Rally. RV-Dreams is run by our friends Howard and Linda Payne who went on the road as full timers at the ripe old age of 42 and have been it 10 years now. In 2006 they started doing educational rallies to essentially teach people how to become full time RVers…nothing like that was available when they were figuring it out and they wanted to pass along their lessons learned for other people to realize their dreams.

They do 2 or 3 educational rallies a year and in 2013 started an annual boondocking rally to teach folks that already have RVs how to boondock or park without hookups…learning to manage power, water, and waste water tank capacities to extend their ability to park at really beautiful but out of the way spots.

Naturally…there are a bunch of folks that have attended numerous of these educational rallies despite long experience in the RV life…they keep coming back because they like Howard and Linda who are good people as we say and because they’ve met friends at the rallies and want a chance to catch up.

This year…Howard and Linda decided to have a reunion rally…the only criteria for attending was that you had to have attended a previous educational or boon docking rally (Neil and Connie have been to 3 prior to this one…2 educational and the 2015 boon docking rally). This one is different in that it’s entirely social oriented…no seminars, no training, just Fun Stuff©, paddling, white water rafting, zip-lining, cookouts, potlucks, campfires, and various organized tours.

We arrived Friday afternoon about 1600 and parked next to our friends Bill and Linda Napier…with some planned work on our rigs. Things were going well until the folks that were checking rigs in came over and told us that we had some grinding noise coming from our wheels…and that a brake pad had fallen out on the road on the way into the rally park area here at Tom Johnson RV Park.

Neil and Bill hopped under the rig…and sure enough…more brake problems. Both of our rear trailer wheels have lost the inside brake pad and caliper as well as damaging the rotor…eerily similar to the failure we had fixed up in Fairfax 2 weeks back. One other wheel has a bad caliper and almost gone pads and one other one (for a total of 4 out of the remaining 5) has the initial signs of damage.

All appear to be the same…the calipers locked up somehow and wore away the inside brake pads. Our immediate solution was that Bill and Neil disconnected and capped the brake lines for the 3 known bad calipers and pulled the calipers off the wheel…this reduced us to 3 brakes out of 6…which while not ideal should allow us to limp up to Elkhart IN to get them fixed properly. We did modify our planned route to Elkhart to eliminate all the long downhill mountain grades and will leave Sunday after the rally instead of Monday and take 3 days to get there.

Tomorrow we’re going to order parts (or perhaps pick them up semi-locally if things work out correctly) and we’ll get up to 4 brakes working for the trip to Elkhart. Then it will be up the the MORryde folks to figure out why the inside pads are failing and fix things correctly. Bill and Neil ran down numerous ratholes this afternoon trying to figger out why but came to no definite solutions.

We’ll continue rally activities around the repairs…yesterday we went on a dessert tour around the city of Black Mountain NC about 20 miles away…ate way too much sugar over the course of 2.5 hours but it was a really good afternoon. Our reward was ice cream for dinner:-)

Connie and Linda are going over to the Biltmore House on Wednesday for a tour and lunch…Neil and Bill don’t are about it so they’re skipping. Thursday Bill, Linda, and Neil have a half day white water rafting trip scheduled and we’re going hiking on Friday if it doesn’t rain. The brake repairs will get fit in there somewhere depending on parts arrival, rain, and rally activities.

You may recall that Ozzie the Fort Myers eagle was injured back in April before we left and was at the Crow Rehabilitation Center. Neil checked today and Ozzie’s wing has healed sufficiently that he’s been moved to the large flight enclosure so that he can fly and 

Ok, on to the photos.

With mom Jen.

Cutie Pie.

Doesn’t quite know what to make of Neil’s Granddad beard.

Wondering what’s goin’ on.

He’s got a secret…it’s poop:-)

Laughin’ at Grandma.

I’ll go ahead and post this for now. We’ve had some interesting times at the rally and went on a white water rafting trip and hike…I’ll do another post tomorrow for those and get more Alex photos from Connie.

Cyas.

Well…for not doing anything it was a really busy week. I figured I better post and let ya’ll know that we wuz still alive and give you the trials and tribulations of our week.

As mentioned in the last blog…we had the center left brake caliper fail on our trip from Dam Neck to Fairfax last Friday. We got it looked at on Saturday and the parts came in Wednesday; so Thursday AM while Connie went off to the college for a lunch meeting Neil headed over to the repair place and got the repairs completed.

Sunday we drove down to Midlothian to have dinner with Bryan, Jenn and Alex as well as both sets of Jen’s parents…Tom and Marilyn and Wayne and Kim. We had an excellent dinner at The Melting Pot…first time Bryan had his Mom for Mother’s day since high school and the first time all of the parents were together with them since the wedding.

Monday we headed off to our dentist Doug Wooddell for cleanings and a scheduled crown on Neil’s lower right rear molar. When we got there…turned out that he actually needed 3 new crowns. Lower left rear molar the porcelain had chipped out and food gets stuck in it so that one needed replacing…upper right rear molar had a cavity under it and so it needed replacing. The insurance declined to cover that one as it was only 5 years old…doesn’t make much sense to me but that’s the insurance company leeches for ya. He went ahead and got those two crown preps done for installation on Friday. Dr. Wooddell had him come back on Tuesday morning for the crown prep on the one that was originally scheduled.

While all that was going on Connie took BAT over to the Ford dealer to get a recall completed that required some reprogramming of the computer system. Easy peasy for her.

Wednesday we stayed home…Connie worked and Neil laid around and hurt from the dental work on Monday and Tuesday.

Ditto Thursday except for the brake fix and Connie’s meeting and lunch down at the college.

Friday Connie worked again and Neil went off to get his 3 new crowns installed and finished up his cleaning…that got rescheduled from Monday as Dr. Wooddell needed the time that would have been cleaning to do the second crown prep.

With all that done…we came home Friday and just rested the rest of the day from our very busy but not much fun week.

This morning we got up and checked out of Bull Run campground…hitched up and were on the road for our 140 or so mile trip right around 0920. We battled serious traffic on I-95 south…stop and go with construction, merges, idiots, and general unfriendly drivers. We finally got here to Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield near where their human kids live about 1420 and discovered that coming into a state park campground on Saturday is generally not a good idea. There were a total of 4 sites (between already empty and leaving today by 1500) available. One we wouldn’t fit in, two we would have fit but had a heck of a time leveling and had no satellite visibility and then there was site 121. We almost stayed in this one last time but weren’t quite sure that satellite visibility would work fine. 121 had somebody in it but he was packing up to leave so we parked at the front office and had lunch then came back just as he was leaving. We got pulled in to a tight entry quite nicely and parked with the best satellite visibility chances we could get…turns out that we get 2 of 3 of the DirectTV birds so we still get most of the channels we watch.

It was seriously hot so we setup, turned on the A/C, cooled off, had a shower, and ate leftovers from Connie’s lunch on Thursday and are now resting until bedtime. I’ll get Neil to take a shot of our site tomorrow and put it in the blog later in the week.

Ok…only one more thing to report today…and it’s kind of an interesting story.

Last Sunday night after our Mother’s Day dinner we were headed up I-95 on the way home. Got stuck in two really serious accident backups and about half way through the second one we looked up and noticed that we were passing the exit for US-1…we were due to get off at VA-234 which is the next exit past US-1. So…we decided to jump off the freeway and take US-1 up to 234 to get out of the backup. Turns out that US-1 actually runs through the US Marine Corps base at Quantico. We turned up the road and started accelerating. Came around a bend at about 35 or so and passed a speed limit 35 sign. Neil says that we might have been going 35-40 but definitely less than 40 since he was still in third gear in the Mazda. Well, the blue lights lit up and these two cop trucks start chasing the 4 cars that had just passed them. All 4 of us stopped…we actually thought that the cops were going somewhere and were trying to get out of their way. They sent the other 3 cars on their way and got our registration and Neil’s license and military ID as they were military police.

While the one guy was looking at the paperwork the second one asks Neil if he knew what the speed limit was. He replied 35. Cop says how fast were you going. He replied he thought 35 but definitely less than 40 due to the gear he was in. The cop says with a straight face “well, you were going faster than the car in front of you.” Neil says “I didn’t know that was illegal.” Pretty soon the first cop comes back…noticed that Neil was a retired officer and sent us on our way.

Long story short…no idea why they stopped him. He didn’t notice that he was going faster than the guy in front of him…and that’s sort of a self limiting thing anyway since you’ll run into the guy in front if you don’t slow down. No idea how fast we were actually going other than 35-40 in third gear (manual 5 speed transmission). 

Very, very strange I’m tellin’ ya. Never knew that driving faster than the guy in front of you was a vehicular violation on a Marine base…live and learn I guess.

Sorry no photos in here…but as we did no Fun Stuff© this week there aren’t any to post. I will get a shot of our site 121 tomorrow for ya.

Tomorrow is Mass then we’re off to the human kids to see grand baby Alex.

Cyas.

Bad I’m tellin’ ya…Bad with a capital B.

Everything started off so well though…

We got up, had breakfast, hitched up and hit the road about 0930 or so for our planned 240 mile trip up to Northern VA. Heading up I-64 and then US-460 we arrived at I-295 around Richmond right on schedule and  turned north. Stopped at the TA for fuel right north of Richmond and filled up BAT along with grabbing some lunch. So far…so good.

Continued up 95 to VA-234 and exited heading westward toward Centerville and then the fun began. After 10 miles or so we approached a red traffic light and NEIL DISCOVERED WE HAD NO BRAKES.

Yup, no trailer brakes at all. He was able to get stopped by downshifting BAT and using the truck brakes and we pulled over to check things out. Tested break controller…seemed to be working. Checked brake fluid…sure enough, empty. Looked under the rig at the brake calipers and discovered a leak on the center left brake assembly.

After a bit of discussion we decided to continue on to the campground as it was only another 10 miles or so. We kept the speed to about 35 mph max and Neil kept an eye out ahead to start slowing with engine braking and the truck brakes as necessary and we made it to Bull Run a little later than originally scheduled but without hitting anything.

Checked in and pulled into our site 113 (sorry, no picture as we were frazzled but 113 is the same site we were in last time so if you really want to know what it looks like look back around September or October last year and I’m sure there’s a shot in there). It turned out that we had parked a little too close to the power pole…we had plenty of clearance but that was a more steeply angled section of the site so we were unable to get the jacks to level us…it kept complaining about excessive angle. Sooooo…we ended up having to rehitch BAT and jockey forward and back to get into a flatter portion of the site and then used manual leveling instead of auto and finally got leveled.

Today we got up and called a local trailer maintenance place and they had an opening…so that meant hitching up and limping over to their location with no brakes. We left the hazards a’blinkin’ and got there fine. We spent a couple of hours there while they troubleshot the problem. Turned out that somehow the caliper had gotten stuck with the pads against the rotor. This wore the pad completely away and the pad metal backing plate gouged/grooved the heck out of the rotor…then the piston came out of the caliper and all the fluid ran out which meant no brakes. We need a new rotor, caliper and pads of course plus labor. They thought it might be covered under warranty and will call and check on Monday as well as ordering the parts.

The tech pulled the brake line off of the broken caliper and capped it…which meant that after he refilled the brake fluid reservoir we again had brakes on the rig…only on 5 out of the 6 wheels but 5 out of 6 is way, way, way better than 0 out of 6 I’m tellin’ ya.

We came back to the campground, got reset up which went pretty quick as we had marked where to park the rig in the site before we left and left all the hoses hooked up to the site utilities but out of the way. Came in, had a nap for a couple of hours, and went out for sushi for dinner…we had originally scheduled a visit to our favorite restaurant but Neil was feeling kinda down with the mechanical troubles and we decided that spending that much for dinner he wouldn’t enjoy was nuts…so went for the sushi instead which was cheaper and closer.

Looks like we have a plan though…it’s a couple hour repair job once the parts are in hand and we’ll adjust our schedule as necessary if we need to…but hopefully it won’t be necessary.

Tomorrow we’re off to Midlothian for Mother’s Day…Bryan and Jen invited us so we’re heading down to eat out with them.

Monday we’ll continue with our previously scheduled appointments here in the Fairfax area.

Cyas.

And about time too…it’s Wednesday and she started feeling bad 2 weeks ago tomorrow. What started as a chest cold shifted into her head/sinuses about a week into it but Sunday she finally started feeling better and has continued to improve a little each day. She finally actually feels pretty good although her sinuses and head are still stuffy but even that is getting better slowly and the coughing fits are spacing out so even she thinks she’ll live. 

We went over to Mass at a nearby parish Saturday evening…tried to go on the base at first since it’s only 300 yards from the RV sites but found out that it was closed for construction for the weekend so we quickly regrouped and found another parish we could go to so we headed over there. Found out that it was completely packed to the rafters and had to stand in the back…turned out that it was First Holy Communion day for a portion of the second grade class. No worries there but a little more difficult since Connie had to stand the whole time and her improvement didn’t start until mid afternoon Sunday.

So…on Sunday she decided she had been sitting at home long enough and we were going out to do something…so we headed off to the first of our 3 Fun Stuff© destinations, two of which were NWRs and the third was a pair of lighthouses nearby. Sunday was the Back Bay NWR and they had a short 1 mile boardwalk that was our intended destination. She decided she could handle a mile…and it was a good thing it wasn’t a mile and a half or Neil woulda had to carry her at the end but she just kept at it and we had a nice walk through the marsh. Here are a few shots from our walk.

Grey Catbird.

Osprey with lunch.

Yellow Bi-bird.

Connie was getting tired after this so we came home.

Monday we headed off for our second visit…this one was a lot easier as it involved practically no walking. Our destination was to visit Fort Story which is on the south side of Hampton Roads, which is where the James River and Chesapeake Bay empty into the Atlantic…Norfolk’s harbor and several Navy bases are up the James River just a bit. Fort Story is located on Cape Henry which has both the old and new Point Henry Lighthouse which guided mariners around the northern end of the NC/VA Outer Banks islands and shoals into the harbor at Norfolk. Hampton Roads played a pivotal but largely unknown role in the Revolutionary War…in 1781 General Washington was desperate for a major victory over the British after 6 long years of war. He left the New York City vicinity with his army and headed toward Yorktown where General Cornwallis was fortifying the city. Simultaneously Admiral de Grasse sailed from his anchorage in the West Indies to challenge British naval supremacy in the Chesapeake Bay…and Admiral Graves sailed the British fleet from New York to Chesapeake Bay. Admiral Graves arrived after the French fleet and had the advantage of both wind and tide…but failed to prosecute these advantages and instead depended on the standard British naval tactics at the time. Graves allowed the French fleet to escape the bay and late in the afternoon of Sep 5, 1781 the fleets exchanged fire for several hours. The fleets sailed on parallel courses into the Atlantic for 4 days and then the French slipped away in the darkness and returned to Chesapeake Bay, joining up with additional French warships that came independently from Rhode Island. British Admiral Graves decided his ships were too damaged to return for another fight with the French so he returned to New York. This action…which involved no American forces and with relatively light damage or casualties on both sides…gave the French fleet control of the Chesapeake Bay and allowed General Washington to surround and eventually force General Cornwallis to surrender…which effectively won the Revolutionary War. Strange how we never learned this in school…I vaguely remember that the French blockaded relief for Cornwallis from the sea but had knew none of these details. 

The original Point Henry lighthouse was built in 1792 and is both the first federally funded lighthouse and the first federal construction project after the adoption of the Constitution. It is a 90 foot stone octagonal tower 26 feet in diameter at the base. In 1881 it was replaced by a slightly taller structure about 350 feet to the southeast after it was struck by lightning and damaged in the 1770s. The original lighthouse was left standing as a day marker and unlighted navigational aid. The new light is 157 feet tall with a more powerful light…but since the original was built on a small hill the new one is only 20 or so feet higher effectively.

Fort Story was established in 1916 and used as a coastal defense artillery station through WWII…originally with a 16 inch howitzer battery and then in the late 1930s with 155mm mobile artillery, 6 inch naval cannon and 16 inch naval cannon…the latter two being repurposed naval guns and the 155mm being the standard Army artillery piece for shorter range coverage across the Hampton Roads while the longer ranged naval artillery covered the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. The artillery was replaced by a Nike antiaircraft battery for defense against potential Soviet bombers in 1957 and the missiles were retired in 1974. In 1946 the Fort was converted to a Navy base despite but retained the Fort designation and was used as an amphibious forces base until 2001. The base is today a subsection of the amphibious forces base at Little Creek and houses primarily EOD, logistics, transportation, and naval reserve units. 

Interestingly enough…Fort Story is right next to First Landing State Park here in VA Beach…First Landing is the original landing spot on April 26, 1607 of Christopher Newport and the Virginia Company colonists. They stayed here for just a few days before moving another 40 miles or so up the James River where they established the Jamestown colony on May 14, 1607 since Newport decided that a location more sheltered from the ocean would be a better spot.

Here are a couple of HDR shots of the original lighthouse…Neil got a new version of Lightroom a couple weeks back and it includes a new feature to render HDRs directly rather than exporting them to an outside program like the older version. The good news is that it’s easier…the bad news is that there are essentially no options for how the HDR is rendered as opposed to Photomatix Pro which is what he normally uses for HDR rendering. The first shot is the new Lightroom version…the second is the Photomatix version which as you can see he varied the  settings to get a more vibrant depiction. Photomatix can do anything from minimal processing all the way through making it seem moody or stormy all the way to what is commonly called the grunge look where the image is heavily modified and starts to become more of an art thing than a photo thing…so he prefers to (mostly) stay away from heavy handedness with the HDR processing. What do ya’ll think…do you like the easy but no poetic license approach or the slightly harder but easier to get better results with approach of Photomatix Pro? The firsts one brings out the shadow detail a bit but the second one looks closer to what the sky actually looked like with the eye although the second one also has a little brighter green in the vegetation than the eye perceived. He’s leaning toward the latter because the eye will almost always give better results than automation, particularly as no two lighting situations are the same. Let me know in the comments and I’ll pass them along to him.

Here’s a shot of both the old and new lighthouses…the two of the old one above were taken with the new one just behind and to the right of where he was standing.This one was also done in Photomatix Pro but with a different preset combination for a visually different rendering.

We then walked over the dune that was behind and to the left of Neil when he got the above shot of both lighthouses and Connie got a shot of one of the breakwaters on the beach to prevent erosion along with a container ship that has exited the Gulf Stream to the east of the cape and is headed into Hampton Roads…but no idea whether it’s going to Norfolk or someplace further on up the Chesapeake…likely the former though. Neil got a shot of one of the amphibious forces ships tooling around as well but no idea what he’s doing out there but likely headed into the Navy Base based on his position and heading. He also got a shot of some flowers along the boardwalk over the dune that Connie liked.

After that we headed home.

Tuesday Connie was feeling pretty good…so we headed out for a short hike and then a planned 3 or so mile bike ride around the dike at the Mackay Island NWR which is on the coast just south of here and across the border into NC. There were a couple of overlooks and a short hike around a pond that we planned and did…but the bike ride got truncated to just about a mile or so as Connie had a hard time breathing still once she started pedaling. Some sights from this mostly driving trip.

Tree Swallow.

Juvenile White Ibis and and Osprey that flew by.

A pair of nesting Ospreys…one of them is leaving to hunt while the other stays and guards the nest…it stayed sitting nearby for awhile then moved over to the nest to brood.

And the one that went off hunting as it circled by us a little later.

A Red Winged Blackbird displaying his epaulets to attract females and warn off other males.

Some turtles sitting on a log…Connie got this one out the car window with the bird lens as they’re pretty skittish. Neil’s gotta learn her how to use a little smaller aperture to get a bit more depth of field for shots like this.

The pond we hiked around.

We then tried our hike after driving as far out the dike as we could…and after turning around due to Connie’s lack of being able to breathe we headed back in the dike towards the NWR entrance. We spotted this Osprey on the other side of the canal…he gave Neil the Stink Eye then flew off to another tree…then after hovering right over the canal caught itself some lunch. It flew about 10 feet from the car down the canal with the fish in it’s talons but we couldn’t get the camera up fast enough…so had to settle for some shots of it sitting in the tree eating…Neil likes the one with the bit o’ fish flesh hanging out of it’s beak. Pretty good sized fish though…looked like it was having some difficulties carrying it.

As he got back in the car after the Osprey photos above Connie the Spotter spotted (naturally) this Nutria swimming in the canal…she had no idea they were as large as they are. Most are in the 30-40 pound range and probably 2 feet + long.

With that our day was done…she was about of gas so we headed back to the rig. Neil checked the pressure in all of our tires on BAT and the rig and added a little air to most of them…then we had dinner and a shower.

Today Connie’s working and Neil ran over to the credit union branch to get some more cash and to the package store for more brews…we’re almost out and since this is the last base we’ll be on for awhile we wanted to take advantage of the slightly cheaper prices (albeit the slightly cheaper base price was partially offset by the slightly higher package store at the beach prices). Tonight we’ll have some leftovers for dinner along with some Italian sausage and a baked winter squash…Neil’s calling it fusion cuisine instead of leftovers and what-have-you.

Tomorrow is laundry day and probably more work for Connie then Friday we’re off to Fairfax where we’ll park at our favorite site in Bull Run Campground…one of the few that has satellite visibility and the utility connections in the correct location for easy hookup. Sunday we’re driving the Mazda down to Midlothian…Bryan is taking his mother out for Mother’s Day for the first time in recorded history along with Jen and Jen’s mom and step-dad. We’re going to the Melting Pot which is a fondue place…Bryan likes it and we’re easy. Most of next week we have things to do/people to see…dentist, financial guy, folks at the college. We do have a dinner scheduled for one of our favorite restaurants in the area…the Renaissance Cafe which is a small French place in downtown Vienna. Not cheap but we haven’t had a romantic, dress up dinner in quite awhile. We’ll be in Fairfax a week then it’s off to Midlothian where we’ll be at Pocahontas State Park for 5 days to visit grand baby Alex and offload some stuff from the basement that we won’t need on the trip to Alaska.

Before I go…a couple of funny ones for ya. First two is apropos for our upcoming trip to Alaska…this one is “What’s a bear gotta do to get a beer around here?”

And “hello, anybody home?”

This one…just in case you wondered…baseball really is a simple game ya know…all ya gotta do is score more runs than the other team.

Cyas.

Just a quick post to let you know we’re still alive but have really done nothing since my last post on the 29th.

Connie’s still sick…coughing and nose running and no energy. She doesn’t have any fever and so far hasn’t felt like going to the clinic on base was worth it as her cold pills are mostly dealing with the symptoms.

It’s also been rainy and windy the past 2 days…temps only in the 60s at best and 25-30 knots of wind constantly until today when it died off to about 10 or 12 knots, the sun came out and the rain stopped…but it’s still not very warm. So…we would have not done much even if she did feel better.

She did feel well enough…mostly because she had to…to go ahead and do what she needed to get done for her students going out soon and for the webcast with her first year students to give them the presentation on how to behave when you go out on clinical.

Neil took the Mazda over and got the A/C fixed…it needed a new high pressure hose so that was 530 bucks down the drain…and he got the part and fixed the broken sun visor clip on the drivers side while he was at the Mazda place.

Other than that we’ve done nothing…eating dinner in every night, watching TV, and lazing around during the day. Neil did get out and sewed up the rip in our LR slide topper…that’s kind of an awning thing that extends over the top of the slide as it extends outward and it keeps the leaves and trash off of the top of the slide and hence out of the inside when you pull the slide back in. The only drawback is that when it’s windy the slide topper bangs around and makes a lot of noise but that’s better than the alternative. If we spent lots of time out in the west then leaves aren’t as much of a problem and lots of people that RV mostly there don’t have slide toppers. Here’s a shot of where he did the repair so you’ll know what a slide topper looks like…the white section is where he sewed it up.

That’s about it…we might run out to the commissary later on this afternoon.

Cyas.

Well, we successfully made it to Dam Neck VA on Monday…but it took pretty much all Connie had to get here and she’s just been vegetating ever since.

After our last hike on last Friday she continued to feel worse and worse all weekend and then even worse on Monday. Naturally, this meant that we had to move on Monday which we weren’t too happy about but ya gotta do what you gotta do. Luckily it was a short day…just 221 miles and Neil did all the getting ready parts except for those that needed hands farther apart than 4 feet or so as he’s just not able to do those alone. We started getting ready to leave around 0800 Monday morning and pulled out of the Onslow Beach CG at Camp Lejeune a few minutes before 1000. Our trip was mostly up US-17 and I-64 but it was four lanes most of the way. We made a quick stop at a rest area for a bathroom break and another one in a shopping center parking lot to have burger from the Golden Arches…but other than that we just chugged along with Connie just wanting to be there. We made it to Sea Mist RV Park at the Dam Neck Annex Navy base in Virginia Beach VA around 1500 and got backed into site 7. Neil put out a recliner for Connie to rest in as she was pretty much done in…and only got her to help with the things that required two people. We got setup in site 7, Neil ran over to the Subway on base and picked us up a couple of meatball subs for dinner, then we just rested until bedtime.

Tuesday was more of the same…except we ran out of cold pills and ran over to get some more…we picked up one that had a decongestant in it as well and luckily by Wednesday she’s feeling a little better. Not good by any means and not over whatever it is she has…but she’s on the upswing at least and although tired is able to do a little more around the rig…but no Fun Stuff© yet as she’s not better enough for that. She’s working today and it’s raining tomorrow and Friday so she hopes she’ll be better enough by the weekend to actually do something she wants to do instead of just sitting around feeling lousy.

Neil went on a bike ride and we got an appointment to get the A/C in the Mazda checked…discovered the other day it isn’t making enough cool so he’ll get that looked at tomorrow while she does some more work that needs doing.

He’s been giving her cold pills and taking care of her as best he can…but unfortunately the only thing that’s really going to make her better is time passing.

Sea Mist is a pretty nice spot…$254 for our 11 nights here and pretty much right on the beach although we’re behind the dune and can’t see the water unless we hike up to the crossover to the beach at the end of the campground. Here’s a shot of our setup in site 7.

That’s the road behind us…not the beach, the trees are across the road which is about 10 feet below the level of the campground. The beach dune is behind where Neil got this shot from.

Yesterday he climbed up and repaired a small tear in our LR slide topper material…sewed it up and sealed the stitching with some silicone sealant along with repairing an area where the edge seam stitching is coming out. Other than that…we pretty much done nothing since we got here but given how Connie feels that isn’t surprising. Jen and Alex are supposed to come over to visit on the weekend…but we’re thinking of canceling that since we’ll be in Midlothian in another 2 weeks anyway…since Connie won’t feel like doing much we’ll save her the 2 hour each way drive.

Sorry if it’s a boring post…but sometimes that’s just the way it is.

Cyas.