August goes out with a bang

For the most part weather wise, August 2011 was a mild year, but for us personally, it has been very busy. On the 20th of August, I told Carol to go outside, sit on the patio with her coffee and paper and enjoy a little warm sunshine. My charge in life at that particular time was to clean the carpets of the motorhome. We've had the rig almost a month now and that cleaning is well over due. We've had many homes during our years of marriage and this was by far the easiest to clean. I was done in less than an hour.

On Sunday the 21st, we had all of the family in Amador county over for a Bar-b-cue. It was a wonderful gathering with Sandy and Bill Ealy, Calvin and Joyce Waite, Brandee and Kevin McCann, and Katie and Russ. The extra bonus is that we got to celebrate Russ's birthday. We so love having him as part of our family! It was such a nice gathering and the weather continues to cooperate. Everyone brought a dish, and good food was had by all. Once again, just like during the holidays, we proved that you don't need a big place to entertain, you just need a little planning!

On the Saturday of the following weekend, we had a visit from Jerry and Mary read for a long awaited Bar-b-cue. It's been over a year since we had gotten together with them, so it was nice to sit down and visit with them and get caught up. Jerry and Mary brought their new addition to their family Zoey along to meet our heard.

On that Sunday, Carol went off to have a day with her good friend Cheryl for a girlies day out. While the girls were out playing, I kept myself busy while I washed the motorhome, got caught up on the Books for the TheRVITGuy business and did about 4, though they be small loads of laundry. I also treated the rubber seals on the Motorhome in preparation for winter, cleaned the windows, changed the linens and vacuumed. With a trip to the dog park thrown in for good measure, it was a busy day. I found I was sitting down to relax just before Carol got home around 9:00 PM. Where does the day go sometimes? :-)

Well, that is all for now, our next post will be about the start of our trip for our 12th wedding anniversary, to the San Juan Bautista area.

Happy camping! - Eric and Carol -

Our various RV's

Carol and I met in 1998, and in this month of August, we are celebrating our 13 years together. About 6 months after we started dating we moved in together in Carol's new home in Pioneer. Shortly after we were living in the house, we bought our First RV, a Dutchman Tent Trailer, this was the beginning of our RV'ing history.

Our first RV, the Travel Trailer was purchased because we thought it would be perfect for towing behind our Ford Explorer. After the first trip with the Explorer, we found out that it was too much trailer for that tow vehicle, so we then bought the Dodge pickup truck. While we had the Tent trailer, we took a number of trips with it including one trip to the Grand Canyon.

Not long after we bought the Dodge, we realized that we could tow a much bigger trailer. We found a Fleetwood Prowler Travel Trailer. We enjoyed many outings with this new trailer, including a week long trip, taking Carols dad, Calvin, to Mount Rushmore. It was a trip that Carol's dad would always remember. We all had a wonderful time. The trailer also served as our home away from home when we were escorting Carol's dad to various medical treatments later in his years.

We decided that if Calvin was going to join us on more trips, we needed a larger RV. We were also hoping that Katie would enjoy RV'ing more if we had a larger rig. Enter, the Mountain View Fifth Wheel. This was a trailer that we bought used from a previous owner. We used this trailer for only a few outings, but one of them was to Silver Lake. We found this trailer had a roof that was failing and we determined that the repairs that would be needed would cost more than the trailer was worth.

When Carol's dad passed away, we needed to get away from it all. Carol had been staying home with her dad for the last few months of his life. Carol was exhausted after her dad was gone, and I knew I wanted to get her out of town for a while, so I took her to her favorite place, San Diego. While in San Diego, we came across a Keystone Cougar fifth wheel that we completely fell in love with. The only problem was, it did not have a bedroom slide. The dealer had a Fifth wheel with a bedroom slide that could be delivered too us. Though that trailer had probably the largest number of trips for us, The most significant one was a great two week vacation up through Oregon and through the south western part of Washington.

In September of 2010, we traded in the Cougar on the purchase of our current rig, our greatly prized Allegro Bus. Though we lived for two years in the Cougar, we are ultimately more comfortable in the Allegro bus which we have traveled to Las Vegas for Katie's 21st birthday and most recently, our vacation to the Zion Utah area.

That is the chronology of our RV's. Hopefully, the Allegro Bus will be around for a number of years to come.

Happy camping! Eric and carol.

A speed trip to Oregon

About the only time we travel in excess of 40 miles any more, and don't take the Motor home is when we go to visit Eric's Sister Karen and her husband Mike in Ashland Oregon. Much of the time when we see Karen and Mike is when they are on the road or making the trip to central California. So, we thought it was probably our turn to head up to visit them.

We always enjoy the drive up to Ashland, there are so many beautiful areas between Sacramento and Ashland. Castle Crags and Mt Shasta just to name a couple. Being it is still summer, we got to enjoy both on the way up on Friday evening and back on Sunday. On Friday night, we got to enjoy a really beautiful sunset as we drove up Interstate 5.

While we were up there, we went to a dog park on Saturday morning and then we took Rosie and Lilly to get a bath at a local fund raiser for the local animal shelter. The visit to the Dog wash was very successful. Eric was a little concerned that Rosie might not do well being handled by strangers, but after a couple minutes, she did started to relax and did really well. Rosie played almost non-stop this weekend with her cousin Guiniess and she slept well the following two days. We also got to meet Adelaide, a 12 year old English Springer spaniel who is living with Karen and Mike now while her owners work in the city by the same name in Austrailia.

Saturday night we got to enjoy dinner with Mikes brother Chuck and his wife Terry. After dinner we got to see the video of Mike and Karen's southern Safari trip. http://www.oursouthernsafari.blogspot.com On our way home, we stopped by to check out the Blue Herin RV Park which is at exit 789 near Yreka California. While we were there, Carol made friends with a Filly at the RV park.

Though it was a quick trip to Ashland, we always have a wonderful time up there.

Happy camping!

- Eric and Carol -

Check out the governors mansion

Hi there everyone,

We went to the Governors mansion a couple of weeks ago. The post for that visit got lost in the blog, but has been found now. Go down a couple of blogs to check it out! .

Happy camping! Eric and Carol!

Family and sunsets

We've been able to slow down and enjoy life a little bit since I started my new job. The weather in the Sacramento area this summer has been really mild. The jet stream has been pushing weather systems south this summer. This has given us delta breezes which has been allowing it to cool off at night.

Because of the delta breeze, we have been seeing a lot of really neat sunsets. We managed to catch a picture of it recently with our new camera, a Canon digital SLR. Having the new camera, which also records movies, allows us to give Katie and Russ our old Film 35 mm SLR and our digital movie camera, which they were very excited to get!

We also managed to get the family to join us for a Family bar-b-que this last weekend. We had a great gathering of the family. We had Carols sister Sandy and her husband Bill Ealy, Sandy's daughter Brandee and her husband Kevin McCann, Carol's Brother Calvin and his wife Joyce and Katie and her main squeeze Russ. So it was a great gathering.

We also got to give Russ his birthday gift a remote controlled helicopter, which we understand he is enjoying immensely!

It is so wonderful to live in our 40 foot motorhome and still have a lot of enjoyable family events any time of year.

Happy camping! - Eric and Carol -

The Governors Mansion

Another one of the state parks that is scheduled for closure is the California Governors mansion in downtown Sacramento. Carol and I are trying to get out and see as many of the state parks as possible that are scheduled for closure sometime before the summer of next year. And, with revenues for the state being down from projections, the future for the parks is not bright.

That being the case, we are trying to get out and see the ones we can. The governors mansion was built by a hardware store owner back in the 1800's but became the governors mansion. The last governor to live in the mansion was Ronald Regan. It was because of the Regans that the mansion was given up. They felt it did not represent what the governors home should look like. They wanted something more opulent. That was an odd perspective for a family that purported them selves to be fiscal conservatives. In stead of the governors mansion, they wanted a much larger home built, at the cost of millions of dollars for the tax payers. Odd.

This is a beautiful home that we think speaks well for the governor and that anyone would be honored to live in. It is an impressive home. Beautiful in architecture and rich in history.

If you get chance, take a tour of this wonderful home.

Happy camping! Eric and Carol

Moving on to a new job

Hi there everyone,

Well the last couple of weeks have been very busy ones for us. On the week of the 18th of July, I started my last week of work at Volcano Communications. I felt like I got everything wrapped up that needed to be done. I also feel like I left those who are still there in as good a situation as I could. There are a great number of people from Volcano that I will miss, but I won't miss the commute or the oddities that go on there. I know the upper management of the company means well, but I sometimes think they are more worried about them selves, then the overall good for the company and the employees.

This last week, I started a new job working for the Department of Social Services. By the end of the week, I had started my second task at my new employer. I made one rookie mistake while working on the Mainframe environment, but I'm surprised how quickly a lot of my knowledge on Mainframe programming has come back. I work with a great group of people. Everyone is very friendly and helpful in getting me acclimated into the environment. The members of the Department of Social Services are very, very community oriented and organize countless activities in support of those less fortunate in our community. I am very proud to be at this fine organization. :-)

At the end of this last week Carol and I went to the California state fair here in Sacramento. We didn't ride any rides, but we got a lot of exercise walking around the fair grounds, checking out the exhibits and viewing the vendors wares. I also got to try out our new Canon digital camera. It's a digital SLR which is something I've wanted for a long time but was afraid to 'Pull the trigger' on. We're enjoying it though. We look forward to taking many picture's of all of our adventures going forward.

Happy camping! - Eric and Carol -