Repairs, Trees and Halloween

I have to thank Dave over at Flip Flop Vector as he started the whole "dark side" conversation that got flowing here, there, and everywhere :-). I always thought that my posts about the sights we've seen were the most popular, but apparently everyone does like hearing about our issues as well!

Al did find a crack in the galley gray water tank. It's on the top of the tank, and it could have been there for quite awhile and we didn't know it. This is the first time since last fall that we haven't had sewer hookups, and usually he leaves the galley gray tank open. Now that we fill it, up pops the problem. With careful management of the tank, we probably could have left it....we would just have to make sure it didn't fill to the top. But, I do have a handy man here, and he decided to fiberglass the crack to resolve the problem. We had fiberglass supplies leftover from the shower pan repair this summer. I don't think I wrote about that, but during the summer we noticed a crack starting in the bottom of the shower pan near the drain. Does anyone else have one of those shower floors that 'flexes" when you stand on it? That is really annoying, and I believe ultimately led to the pan cracking. Why can't they put adequate support underneath these things? Anyway, he had ordered fiberglass materials for that and fixed that up, so now he did the same thing to the tank. I felt like an operating room nurse, as I stood next to him and handed him the tools and materials as he needed it. It was especially interesting as he was on his back under the tank, and fixing the top where he could only see with the aid of one of those bent mirrors :-).

Meanwhile, while he was underneath the trailer moving things around, another issue cropped up. I noticed the power would blink off now and then. He traced that back to a loose ground wire in the electrical panel, and fixed that. And as I was giving the shower a super scrubbing, some of the silicon caulking was peeling off, so we re-caulked the shower. So the only thing left is the ugly crack on the outside fiberglass, and that will have to wait for professional help in Florida.

We also had a couple of physical things to take care of. Chelsea has developed a hot spot on her leg, and was busy chewing on it, so off to the vet she went. Antibiotics and some prednisone should take care of that.  He did say that she probably has some arthritis and that may have been what she was chewing at, and we noticed while she's on the prednisone she is perkier and her limp isn't as noticeable, so we may have to investigate some arthritis management this winter for the old girl. And I went for an eye exam, and they prescribed GLASSES! Oh no! So I picked those up and have been trying to get used to them. Bifocals. Ugh. I am having a hard time with reading my kindle with them. I can't make the whole page come into focus, and the edges of the page are a bit distorted, like a funhouse mirror. I sure could use some advise on using them!

We did go out geocaching a couple of times as well. We pulled out our SeaEagle Runabout for the first time this year, and went to Sportsman Lake near here. There's a set of geocaches placed around the lake, and you can only retrieve them if you have water access. It was fun, and a nice day, and felt good to be back on the water. We are really looking forward to doing kayaking down in Florida this winter :-).

We also took a day trip to The Bernheim Arboretum in Clermont, about an hour and a half drive from here. The campground is very busy this weekend, it is the "Halloween in the Park" festival taking place, and the campground is full to capacity. It seemed like a good thing to leave for the day :-). Little did I know I was jumping from the frying pan into the fire, as this weekend is "Colorfest" at the Arboretum, and it was jam-packed there as well! It was very pretty, though, but sadly the day never cleared off like the weatherman said it would, and it remained cloudy and chilly all day. The colors were beautiful, and I did take some pictures, although it would have been spectacular with the sun shining.

We did some geocaching around Lake Nevin. There were several caches placed here. There are many trails throughout the arboretum, and we hope to get back to explore some more of them when it is not so crowded.

Pretty colors

I really like these red trees in the lake

Closer look

Chelsea loves the grass!

 

We did a multi-part cache, and the last spot told us to go "20 feet straight from the thing". Well as we were searching for the co-ordinates, we kept wondering, what is the thing we're looking for? Well we knew it when we found it :-).

When we returned to the campground, it was almost dark and trick or treating was in full swing! I went out this morning and took some pictures of the campground and the decorated sites. Some of these folks really go all out.

This is our row this morning. By this afternoon, it will be empty except for 4 of us Amazon people!

Individually decorated sites

I categorize this under "really!!??". Looks sturdy to me, what do you think :-)?

These four pictures are all one site decorated. That's a lot of work for one weekend!

Another row with those beautiful trees at the end. 

Well, there's a mass exodus out of the campground now. The line at the dump station is rather impressive! Glad I'm not waiting in it :-). After this weekend it stays pretty quiet and peaceful here, and after November 1st its pretty much all Amazon workers here. Speaking of which, I go in for paperwork tomorrow, and start on Tuesday. I know I'm working the donut shift to start, Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday. Once peak sets in, we'll see what happens. I'll find out tomorrow which department I'm starting in, although we know from last year that can and probably will change :-). The key here is flexibility, and who knows better about that than RV'ers? 

That's about all from Campbellsville today. I really appreciate all the comments and well wishes from everyone. Mike and Anne, great to hear from you. Please drop us an email, we'll be going through Massachusetts next spring and would be great to meet up with you. Stay tuned for the further Amazon adventures to come!

Days of Wine and Roses?

I've been thinking a lot lately about a post I read a couple of weeks ago, by Dave over at The Flip Flop Vector. He's been on the road now for six months out of a planned 12 month trip around the country. Its been interesting to read his perspective on the RV lifestyle and how they are adjusting to it. Its still amazing to me the number of folks who set out to do this who have never RV'd before! He's finding it a bit different from the way they've imagined it, and the jury appears to be still out as to whether they will continue the journey up to and after the 12 months.

What was so thought provoking, though, was that he felt reading all the blogs of other folks, like us, that are living the lifestyle, makes it sound as if we are all leading an idyllic life of leisure as we progress through the country. And I've been trying to decide if my blog is guilty of this as well?  I certainly don't mean to :-)! Are we enjoying our life? Much more than we used to, yes! Our life in New York was great as well, and we will never complain about the business we had, it provided us a very nice life and gained us the savings we needed to get to this point. It became "not enough", though, and we wanted to slow our pace down at this stage, and enjoy our traveling while still young and healthy enough to do so.

Would we like to "lounge back in our leather recliners sharing a glass of fine French wine with our two AKC award winning Pomeranians fast asleep in our laps as we discussed how to invest our lottery winnings while viewing the seagulls outside of our Prevost coach scooping up their meal as the sunset disappeared along the Oregon coast".? (Thanks Dave, that's a beautiful visual!) Well, sure, it would be nice...but truly, how boring would that get day after day after awhile. More dollars would help, don't get me wrong on that count, but we all do whatever it takes to make our lifestyle work. There are many full-timers out here who don't work and don't have to, but I think for us, even if it wasn't necessary for us to work, we still would. So far, the experiences we have had have been good, and the friendships formed treasured. (well, except for the beets, didn't particularly care for that experience!)

Do we have problems? Sure do! Maybe I try to paint them as lighter than they are, I don't know. We've definitely had our share of issues with the trailer. When we first picked it up, we discovered a propane leak in the furnace. Not good! Especially as I have a phobia about propane (all electric in the sticks n'bricks, and oil furnace) and I had to learn to get comfortable sleeping over two propane tanks. Last fall while here at Campbellsville we had the black water holding tank crack, and it took six weeks before it was repaired. All I'm going to say about that is after working 10 hour shifts, towards the end it was getting harder and harder to rise up off the port-a-john! This fall we have two new issues that we have discovered in the past few days.  As we were leaving Hillsboro, and Al was cleaning the leaves and snow off the roof and slides, he noticed a crack in the fiberglass side going from the top of the living room slide towards the roof. That will have to get checked out as soon as we get to Florida and hopefully isn't anything extremely serious. And on today's agenda is a repair to a crack we found yesterday in the galley gray water tank. This repair he's doing himself. It is good to have a handy person around :-).

I did find the emotional toll of leaving worse than I had expected. We didn't have children or grandchildren as so many others have, but we've always been very close to our families and for the most part have lived close to them all the time. So that was difficult. We had attended the RV-Dreams Rally in Tennessee about 3 weeks after we had left New York...I actually had Linda tell me I needed to stop crying! :-). Well, I did, and as I see everyone is doing just fine without us, I've adjusted just fine :-). We both really look forward to visiting family and friends, whether we go to them or they come to us.

I wish I had a bigger refrigerator. I do miss my washer and dryer. There are definitely times I miss the fenced in yard where we could let the dogs out by themselves. Long hot showers are to be treasured. But as I sit here looking out my window at the beautiful lake (no sunset, its morning) I think its not such a bad trade-off. I really enjoy that our days off of work are really days off, not days to be filled with lawn mowing, leaf raking, chores and errands.

Anyway, that's just some ramblings I have as I wait to start here at Amazon. I start next Monday, and hopefully Al does as well. He is waiting on a background check, and then will be cleared to start. Let's all raise those wine glasses and have a toast to the good life, whatever it may mean to each and every one of us.

Another Waiting Game

Well, we are playing the waiting game once again, but we are in a much nicer place to do so :-). Here at Green River Lake S.P. we have several miles of hiking trails to explore, and the dogs, especially Casey, have enjoyed romping through the woods. I am also finding that the hills here that busted my buns last year are much easier to climb up and down this year! I guess I'm in a bit better shape, and there's much more oxygen down here than there was at 7700 feel and higher :-).

I do have a start date at Amazon, 10/22. Yay! And Al is awaiting his super-duper background check to be done, as he needs more rigorous checking than I do...he will be dealing with 'injured" people after all. We are hoping that it gets done as quickly as possible, so he can start at the same time that I do.

In the meantime, we are doing a little exploring and hiking. Last Thursday we visited Cumberland Falls State Resort Park, about 1 hour 45 minutes away from here. We were talking to our friend Joy, and she suggested this as a pleasant place to spend some time. And it certainly was. The main entrance to the park is lovely, and deserves kudos for being accessible to disabled folks. There are a couple of very well maintained paths that are paved, enabling anyone to have a great view of the falls.

Cumberland Falls, sometimes called the Little Niagara, the Niagara of the South, or the Great Falls, is a large waterfall on the Cumberland River southeastern Kentucky. This is the top of the falls, at the first viewpoint. 

The view downriver from the falls.

Continuing down the paved paths, you can view the falls from the level of the river. Cumberland Falls are also known for a unique feature called a "moonbow". The 125 foot wide waterfall has a 68 foot drop that showers onto the boulders below. The mist rising from these falls creates this unique natural phenomenon that is not visible anywhere else in the Western hemisphere on a predictable schedule. The falls are situated in such a way, facing north and flowing north, as to reflect the light of the moon and make a rainbow-like arch, an optical phenomenon called a moonbow. The moonbow can be seen here on clear, strongly-lit nights, usually the full moon.

We decided to hike to Eagle Falls, on the other side of the falls. This is the top of the falls from that side.

It was quite an uphill climb for awhile, and we ended up high above the falls!

The trail wound around and under several large rock ledges.

The trail went close to the river at one point, and it was beautiful with all the rocks and the leaves starting to change.

We reached peaceful Eagle Falls, and just sat and rested for awhile admiring the scenery. They weren't nearly as awesome as Cumberland Falls, but beautiful as well. 

We finally headed back to the truck. I was glad it wasn't warmer than it was, in the low 60's, as the hills definitely gave us a good workout, and we need to get adjusted again to the humidity levels of this part of the country :-). As we drove home we made a well-deserved stop at Culver's for some frozen custard :-).

Over the weekend we've been exploring some more trails in the park, and doing some geocaching. Geocaching doesn't seem really big here, there aren't too many caches and some haven't had finds since spring! We have dropped a couple of trackables though, and replaced some wet logs, so we're doing our part :-). An interesting thing happened yesterday though. As we were coming off the North Trail near Green River Stables, a truck approached, and then slowed down. Al and Casey were ahead of me and Chelsea (pokey puppy) and I saw him lean in and start laughing. As I approached, I saw it was Miss Vicky, who I worked with at Waldenwoods in 2011! It was so nice to see her again. Vicky and her husband Tim are working at Amazon this fall as well. They're staying at the Stables campground, so they'll be close to us. We visited for quite awhile, and hope they come over to see us again. One of those random meetings on a backroad that could only have been meant to be...we had to be coming out of the woods at the exact moment she was driving by, otherwise we probably wouldn't have crossed paths. 

Today its very windy, and a possibility of thunderstorms tonight. We hope they go around us! In the meantime, as we have another week to wait before starting, we are doing some projects, and trying some recipes we haven't had time to try. We'll let you know how the meals come out, and as for projects, hopefully at the end of the week we'll have a Mickey Mouse light pole to show everyone :-)!