Hi there everyone,
Well, this has been one of the wettest February's in my memory and we have been fairing just fine in the RV. Despite the rain today, we took care of several chores today. The vent over the stove in the RV has a flapper in it to keep bugs out of the exhaust hood. I had removed the vent cover a year ago and painted it to match the trailer. Well, when I reinstalled it, I heard a crack of some plastic, but I couldn't figure out what it was. A month or so ago however, the flapper came loose. So, that must have been the plastic that cracked and it finally gave up the ghost and fell out. So, I went to our local RV dealer and picked up a new cover for the exhaust hood. I extended the awning from the trailer which happens to be over the vent hood which provided me with a dry work area. I removed the old vent cover and installed a new one, all in a driving rain storm.
I also vacuumed the carpets in the trailer and took out the trash and flushed out the black water tank in the trailer. Carol helped me to remove the screens and clean the vent fans today. A little bit of spring cleaning if you will. This is the first time that we have cleaned these out since we bought this trailer 3 years ago. They were pretty yucky!
We are all enjoying our new life style a great deal. The cats seem to be doing just fine, the dog have always been great RV'ing companions and Carol and I are have not missed a beat at all in our new environment. There really hasn't been any sort of adjustment that has had to take place in moving from a stick and brick to the Trailer.
I've been fighting a cold the last couple of days, but despite that, yesterday, we went to Sacramento for a very busy day. First we went so I could get blood drawn at Kaiser Hospital. We joined the Kaiser network this year and have found it to save us a great deal of money over our HMO that we use to have. After I had my blood drawn (which came out great by the way) we went down and dropped off the Honda at Elk Grove Honda to get an oil change done on it. While they did the oil change on our Honda, Carol and I went to Katies work and I figured out the problem with her headlights was the fact that both bulbs were burned out. After a few minutes at Kragen, we had her back up and running with head lights.
Well, I guess that is about all for now. We hope you all are doing great. Happy Camping! Eric And Carol!
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
One Month and we have snow!
Well, Carol and I have been living in the RV for a month now with our three dogs and two cats. Everything has been going very well. We are very happy in our new digs in the RV in Plymouth. There have been a few challenges here and there, but nothing differnt from living in a 'Stick and Brick' house.
We did have something happen today that we didn't ever expect. We had snow on the ground this morning! A series of storms moving through the central California region have brought a lot of water and wind our way. We were surprised that the storms brought about two inches of snow on the ground here in Plymouth.
We are expecting more storms through the weekend. We may even get more snow before all is said and done.
Also this last week or so we've been able to enjoy a couple of special events. We attended a Super bowl party at Hoot 'N Annies resturaunt which is run by our nephew Kevin McCann.
We then got to enjoy my birthday dinner at the Lone Wolf Cafe at the Jackson Rancheria. All in all, 2009 has been a good year for us and we are enjoying it to the best of our ability.
We then got to enjoy my birthday dinner at the Lone Wolf Cafe at the Jackson Rancheria. All in all, 2009 has been a good year for us and we are enjoying it to the best of our ability.
Stay posted for more developments as the Presidents day weekend proceeds.
Happy camping! - Eric and Carol -
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Life in the RV
Hi there everyone,
Well, we moved into the RV around the 12th of January. We've been living in the RV for almost a month and things have been going very well for us so far. Yes, there are still the chores to do, but they don't take near as long as they did while we were living in any of our Stick and Brick houses. Aside from the fact that we are living in the RV now, life pretty much continues to be going along just fine. We still get together with Family. We've even had our first house guests. Calvin and Joyce came by and visited one evening.
We went to Hoot 'N Annies for the Super bowl festivities last Sunday. We had a great time. It was great food and a great game. If you haven't had a chance to check out Hoot 'N Annies, you gotta do it. They have a great location, great food and TV's everywhere.
My work is going fine. We did get the 6.0 version of Telesphere installed. We went live with it on the 26th of December. For the most part, things are going fairly well. Carol is continuing to plug away on her Medical transcription training. She will probably be done with her formal training in April if all goes well.
Well, we hope you are all doing well. Take care! Happy Camping! - Eric and Carol -
Well, we moved into the RV around the 12th of January. We've been living in the RV for almost a month and things have been going very well for us so far. Yes, there are still the chores to do, but they don't take near as long as they did while we were living in any of our Stick and Brick houses. Aside from the fact that we are living in the RV now, life pretty much continues to be going along just fine. We still get together with Family. We've even had our first house guests. Calvin and Joyce came by and visited one evening.
We went to Hoot 'N Annies for the Super bowl festivities last Sunday. We had a great time. It was great food and a great game. If you haven't had a chance to check out Hoot 'N Annies, you gotta do it. They have a great location, great food and TV's everywhere.
My work is going fine. We did get the 6.0 version of Telesphere installed. We went live with it on the 26th of December. For the most part, things are going fairly well. Carol is continuing to plug away on her Medical transcription training. She will probably be done with her formal training in April if all goes well.
Well, we hope you are all doing well. Take care! Happy Camping! - Eric and Carol -
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Life on 30 Amps
Hi there everyone! Well, we have been living in the RV now for about 5 days, not a life time by any stretch of the imagination, but so far so good. We seem to have settled into a routine for our daily schedule of events. I still get up and go to work in the morning and Carol gets up and studies for her Medical Transcription training. The last few weeks have been a little un-focused for us as far as a regular routine, but I'm thinking that this next week will be one where we really get back into the swing of things. Today, was pretty much a regular weekend day. Today was the day that we focused on chores and shopping. This is pretty much the norm for us. One day on the weekend, we play, the other we do vacuuming, laundry, shopping and the such. And, this weekend was no different. The only difference was that the cleaning took a whole lot less time than it did when we lived in the house on Snooks lane. The main reason is we have a whole lot less square footage to clean up. The house on Snooks lane was 1300 square feet, and the RV has a whopping 300 square feet to clean up. When it comes to consistency though, there is one thing that is still the same, the amount of dog hair that we vacuum up. We still have three dogs and two cats, and they all still shed, so that amount of hair we vacuum up is still the same.
We use a whole lot less energy in our new dwelling. For the most part, we can heat the trailer with two ceramic space heaters. Each one of them draws about 1500 watts, so if we run much more than the two space heaters, circuit breakers start to blow. But, we've had this RV set up for a couple of years now, so we've pretty much figured out how to manage our appliances without blowing any circuits. Heck our Furnace would draw almost that much power just to run it when we were heating the house, and the propane use was on top of that.
We also use a lot less water than we did in the house. Because of the way RV toilets work, they only use about 1 quart of water to flush. Home style toilets use 1 gallon to flush. Now, there is some water used in the flushing of the black water tank, so toilet use may be a wash. But, shower use is much less. Carol and I both take 'Navy' style showers. Turn on water, get soap wet. Turn off water. Lather up. Turn on water to soak wash cloth, turn off water. Scrub a dub, dub. Turn on water, rinse hair and body, turn off water.
Even the water that runs while waiting for the hot water to get to the shower head is not waisted. We run it into a water bottle via a funnel and use that water for the dogs drinking water. Are we perfect, not by a long shot, but our carbon foot print is a whole lot smaller than it use to be. Some day, I'd like for our rig to have solar panels so that we can live even more off the grid, but, we have to take this one step at a time.
When you get a chance, check out our videos of our new digs. Many of you might think we are out of mind by doing this, but if for nothing else, the shear economics of it really work for us. Our rent went from $1250 a month to $880. Cable TV, Electric, garbage and water were not included in that $1250 a month. It is included in our Space rent, so we are going to save a fair amount of money with our move.
The animals are all doing fine. They all seem to adjust to the new digs just fine. Our setup is pretty simplistic, so we still plan on getting out to RV at least once if not twice a month.
We'll keep you posted! Happy camping! - Eric -
We use a whole lot less energy in our new dwelling. For the most part, we can heat the trailer with two ceramic space heaters. Each one of them draws about 1500 watts, so if we run much more than the two space heaters, circuit breakers start to blow. But, we've had this RV set up for a couple of years now, so we've pretty much figured out how to manage our appliances without blowing any circuits. Heck our Furnace would draw almost that much power just to run it when we were heating the house, and the propane use was on top of that.
We also use a lot less water than we did in the house. Because of the way RV toilets work, they only use about 1 quart of water to flush. Home style toilets use 1 gallon to flush. Now, there is some water used in the flushing of the black water tank, so toilet use may be a wash. But, shower use is much less. Carol and I both take 'Navy' style showers. Turn on water, get soap wet. Turn off water. Lather up. Turn on water to soak wash cloth, turn off water. Scrub a dub, dub. Turn on water, rinse hair and body, turn off water.
Even the water that runs while waiting for the hot water to get to the shower head is not waisted. We run it into a water bottle via a funnel and use that water for the dogs drinking water. Are we perfect, not by a long shot, but our carbon foot print is a whole lot smaller than it use to be. Some day, I'd like for our rig to have solar panels so that we can live even more off the grid, but, we have to take this one step at a time.
When you get a chance, check out our videos of our new digs. Many of you might think we are out of mind by doing this, but if for nothing else, the shear economics of it really work for us. Our rent went from $1250 a month to $880. Cable TV, Electric, garbage and water were not included in that $1250 a month. It is included in our Space rent, so we are going to save a fair amount of money with our move.
The animals are all doing fine. They all seem to adjust to the new digs just fine. Our setup is pretty simplistic, so we still plan on getting out to RV at least once if not twice a month.
We'll keep you posted! Happy camping! - Eric -
Friday, January 9, 2009
Our new lives as full timers begins
Hi there everyone,
Well, Carol was correct in pointing out to me that I haven't updated you all lately with the fact that tonight we will be moving into the trailer and in four days we will be pulling up and moving off the property.
Over the last few weeks, we have been busy giving things away to family members, placing some stuff in storage, making copius trips to the local Hospice thrift store and making donations, and the occasional trip to the dump.
Though we are running a little close on time, we are making good progress to getting our lives moved over to the trailer. On Tuesday of next week, we will be moving into a local RV park. After that, we can start to really get a handle on our Full timing budget and then plot our course from there.
We are very excited. We have a kitty zone set up in the trailer and one of tonights projects is to hang a few critical family pictures in the rig for a little homey touch. As for the dogs, well, they are old pros out of living in the trailer, so they are ready for anything, just as long as we don't leave them behind.
We'll keep you posted. Happy Camping!
Well, Carol was correct in pointing out to me that I haven't updated you all lately with the fact that tonight we will be moving into the trailer and in four days we will be pulling up and moving off the property.
Over the last few weeks, we have been busy giving things away to family members, placing some stuff in storage, making copius trips to the local Hospice thrift store and making donations, and the occasional trip to the dump.
Though we are running a little close on time, we are making good progress to getting our lives moved over to the trailer. On Tuesday of next week, we will be moving into a local RV park. After that, we can start to really get a handle on our Full timing budget and then plot our course from there.
We are very excited. We have a kitty zone set up in the trailer and one of tonights projects is to hang a few critical family pictures in the rig for a little homey touch. As for the dogs, well, they are old pros out of living in the trailer, so they are ready for anything, just as long as we don't leave them behind.
We'll keep you posted. Happy Camping!
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Happy New Year
Happy New Year everyone,
We got to spend new years eve with Karen and Mike my sister and Brother-in-law. We got together in Red Bluff at the Durango RV Resort. We got to spend three days together getting caught up and just spending time hanging out. We really enjoy this rv park. They have everything here, a Pool, a rec room and lots of area to let the pooches go running.
We got to spend new years eve with Karen and Mike my sister and Brother-in-law. We got together in Red Bluff at the Durango RV Resort. We got to spend three days together getting caught up and just spending time hanging out. We really enjoy this rv park. They have everything here, a Pool, a rec room and lots of area to let the pooches go running.
It was really nice to have 4 days off in a row so that I could recharge my batteries a little bit after the installation of the new version of Telesphere. The install was rocky, which was to be expected. We still have a lot of work to do, but I needed a break. This trip was a great one to get away from work and have a nice distraction from it all.
We brought the three pooches with us on this trip to Red Bluff. They were all doing so great. We have three of the best dogs in the world. Roxy is still hanging in there, pretty well. We are still blending her dog food down for every meal, and she seems to be handling it well.
Well, that is all for now.
We hope you all have had a great Christmas Holiday and a safe New Years Celebration.
Happy camping! - Eric and Carol -
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Merry Christmas to all!!!
Hi there Everyone,
Just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. We were so lucky to have so many of our family join us for dinner on Christmas eve. We were joined by Brandee and Kevin McCann, Marge O'neil (Kevins Mom), Daniel (Kevins Daughter), and by Sandy and Bill Ealy. We had plenty of food for everyone.
We were especially lucky that Katie and Russ were able to make the trip from Elk Grove to join us. They spent the night here, so we could empty our stockings together on Christmas morning. Thanks guys! You are the greatest!
Just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. We were so lucky to have so many of our family join us for dinner on Christmas eve. We were joined by Brandee and Kevin McCann, Marge O'neil (Kevins Mom), Daniel (Kevins Daughter), and by Sandy and Bill Ealy. We had plenty of food for everyone.
We were especially lucky that Katie and Russ were able to make the trip from Elk Grove to join us. They spent the night here, so we could empty our stockings together on Christmas morning. Thanks guys! You are the greatest!
We hope that for each and every one of you that read this, that you and your family have a safe and happy holiday season.
A week from now, Carol and I will find our selves joining Karen and Mike in Redbluff California for new years eve! Take care all!
Love Eric, Carol, Katie, Russ, Roxy, Lilly, Tyson, Spot, Angle and Cat Man
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