As we are wrapping up our first couple weeks here, we have had our share of fun stuff we have had to address, met more folks and got out a bit more. Without going into gory details, our campground happenings included still cleaning up the aftermath of 4th of July fireworks including sparklers and poppers, even though there are signs everywhere stating fireworks are not allowed in the park. Do you know how hard those little pieces of paper are to pick up with a grabber??? Rick has settled into being the firepit cleaner and I walk the site to pick up trash with my little grabber and grab the tags on the post. Rick loves to drive the gator, so I let him enjoy that task. It is amazing what people throw into the firepit and we recently had a site with mounds of peanut shells all around the firepit. That took some time to clean up and then Rick likes to also rake around the firepit, sometimes making pretty patterns. I think he misses his pattern making when he mowed lawn at the house. We have had some other camper assist issues like loaning out a battery jumper for a dead car battery, keeping an eye out for a lost wedding band, helping a flustered camper who was turned around find her site and a late night missing child search that ended before it began. We even had a site of drunk, singing young men at 3am. Thankfully we were told about that the next morning and not at the time. They did quiet down when another camper mentioned to them that this was quiet time and others were trying to sleep. Knock on wood, we have not had anything worse than that. We also have grateful campers who go out of their way to tell us what a great job we are doing to keep the campground clean and even gourmet smores made for us by a family who Rick helped to repair a bike. We also continue to have plumbing issues throughout the campground. It seems the piping throughout the park is pretty old and is in need of updating which is on the horizon. We met the maintenance person in charge of plumbing that had come by to fix our plugged sinks that we reported when we arrived. Only 4 days, not bad. I was expecting a week or longer. Those issues have seemed to subside, knock on wood. We did hear today at a camp host meeting that there are several improvements coming to the park. Exciting stuff but obviously, they do not happen overnight. As for outings, we got dressed up Tuesday night, the 17th and headed out for my birthday dinner. I am a Beef Wellington fan from way back to my days of bussing tables when I was 15 and I would beg the chef to make me a tiny Wellington on Sat nights after a long night. That usually meant that I would have to devein some shrimp for him, but it was well worth it! We went to the English Inn not far outside the park and dinner was wonderful! We were both soo stuffed walking out and promised that we cannot eat like that again for some time!!! It was a splurge since it was a birthday dinner. We are trying to limit our dining out to cheaper breakfasts or lunches, or not at all! We are really trying to get within a budget that we developed from looking at many other full-timers. We will see how July shapes up and we will share that on this blog as I know there are other full time dreamers that would benefit from the information, just like we did. Plus it keeps us accountable! Our other evening out was to see one of the musicals here at the Northern Theatre in the park. I mentioned in the previous post that we received complimentary tickets for all 3 shows. The first show we went to was Dairy Heirs. A funny, heartwarming musical about life on a farm in WI and coming back home. It was a beautiful evening in an intimate setting and the cast was very talented! After the show we grabbed a pizza and salad at Wild Tomato, which is a Door County favorite, right outside the park. OK, I just realized we have not taken pictures of any of this awesome food. Wow, that is not like us! We will try to rectify that in future posts. We have also had some visitors. Rick’s Army buddy from Germany, who lives north of Green Bay, stopped over with his wife for a delicious dinner creation that Rick just whipped up off the cuff. We then topped if off with a yummy cherry pie, baked with fresh Door County cherries. The next day friends of ours from home stopped by to say HI and see our new home and where we were working. It was good to catch up! We also have some others stopping by in August and topping our time off here in Door County with a big family camp out. Looking forward to it! By far the majority of our camper interaction has been with folks who are curious about our camp host position, our RV and our new lifestyle. We spend quite a bit of time answering questions from other campers about what our plans are, where we are planning to go and how the heck we can do this soo young. Some really entertaining conversations. One of the things we have had to solution for is the dumping of the tanks on the RV. Unfortunately, the host sites only have electric, so we needed to figure out how we would refill the fresh tank and dump the gray and black tanks. For us to pack up the RV and take it down to the dump station would be quite the undertaking, and that would also mean we would have to repark it. NOT! We talked with other camp hosts and they gave us some suggestions on what they do. For filling the fresh water tank, we were able to stretch all of our hoses, 85 ft worth, to the bath house clean up sink. Good deal. Now the crappy part…LOL. To dump the tanks, we have a man hole/sewer cover over by the bath house and Rick would fill up our lucy lu dump dolly and roll it over there and then dump. We picked midday to do this as that is when most of the campers are out and about. The black tank and one gray tank went well but the last gray tank proved to be our first big RV issue. The gray tank gate valve pull, which is a cable, would not release. Rick tried spraying WD-40, pulled off the back access panel to make sure the cable wasn’t binding anywhere, which it wasn’t. He then checked the manuals for info, called and left a message for a contact at the manufacturer, Grand Design. He then went to the Grand Design facebook groups and posted the issue, wondering if others had the issue and how they solved it. One suggestion was to spray PB Blaster, a penetrating oil, on the valve assembly by the pull handle. Rick then let that soak with a ziploc bag over the top. A tech from the manufacturer then called back and confirmed that what he was doing is what a repair tech would do. After a couple hours Rick went back to it and tried to release, hit it with a hammer, which didn’t release and then took two wrenches and twisted and it finally came loose. He then cleaned it off thoroughly and lubed all three valves and after all of that, a lesson learned that lubing the cables will be on the monthly list of maintenance things to do. Amazing how rusty it had gotten after only two weeks! Overall this campground host position has been a wonderful first workamping experience. The campers have been very friendly, it is a quiet and peaceful campground and the weather has been beautiful! We could certainly get used to this! Enjoy some pictures of the park. SHOP AMAZON HERE
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Holy smokes is it HOT!!! We are on our first road trip with The Grand Beauty, pulled by the Beast. Overall the trip has gone well, but long and HOT. We started off the trip at Harrington Beach State Park in Belgium with family. We had a great time relaxing and trying to keep warm. Yes you heard that right! Thursday night got into the very low 50's and with all the windows open, it did get pretty chilly! My cousin, Kassi, was a trooper and braved it out in a tent...with layers of clothes, a blanket and a sleeping bag. But we lived to enjoy another day at Harrington Beach on Lake Michigan. Friday after a little bit of rain, Rick, Kassi, our son Nicholas and I went for a nice long walk through the park. They do have some great picturesque trails on the lake, through the woods and around an old quarry which is now a lake. We even saw a couple deer who are not afraid of people or the pictures you take of them. Later in the afternoon, the rest of the family showed up and we had 7 sites in the non-electric section of the campground. We celebrated some birthdays and had a great night at the campfire, except for the darn hollow log that just wouldn't cooperate. Saturday morning we packed up early as it started to get warm and steamy. This is where the hot, hot begins! After saying our goodbyes and emptying tanks, we were on our way south. The drive through Milwaukee was uneventful, except for the bumpy roads that were pretty jarring at times. I wonder if I-10 across the south is really worse than these roads! Our first day was the longest drive from Belgium, WI to Springfield, IL. We left at 11am and arrived at the IL State Fairgrounds campground a little after 6pm. With 7 hours of driving, we were both exhausted and hot. It was 96 degrees when we arrived and very humid. We opted for full hookups with 50amp so we could run both air conditioners. Unfortunately, those sites were in the blacktop parking area. After setting up, Rick looked like a drowned rat! By the time we were done and the rv was cooled to a steamy 88 degrees, we decided to go get a quick dinner out. Way too hot to cook. We found a cool, hole in the wall gyro shop and had a relaxing dinner. When we got back to the RV, it had cooled considerably and we crawled right into bed, exhausted from the long hot day. Sunday we were up early, as it was going to be another hot day, with temps hitting 100. We went out for a Fathers Day breakfast and a quick fuel up at Walmart along with some needed items. We had originally planned to stop at Lincoln's home Sunday morning before leaving, but decided to forego that and get packed up before the heat of the day set in. We were hooked up and on the road by 11am. It was already in the low 90's and humid. Today was going to be another long day, with us looking to make it to Lebanon, MO where we had reservations at Happy Trails RV Park. Southern IL roads were in better shape and we sailed along. The landscape began to get a bit more hilly and trees were dotting the landscape rather than the flat, farm landscape of Central IL. Hitting St Louis proved to be a bit more challenging. We were wanting to go around STL on I-255, but due to construction and very confusing road signs, we missed that exit and ended up going straight through STL where even more confusing signage continued. When you are in a big truck pulling 42 feet of heavy metal behind you, it is almost impossible to make quick moves, much less change lanes on a dime like the other little cars were doing in front of us. Oh, and let's not forget the semi that decided he did not want to get on I-65 and cut back in front of us. Luckily, Rick saw he hesitated and gave him a bit of room to course correct. I think that proved to be the longest and most frustrating part of the trip thus far. Although, one other frustrating detail that proved to complicate things is that the new Tire Pressure Monitoring System(TPMS) for the RV continued to malfunction both days. This is a separate system from the trucks TPMS system and is monitored on a cellphone app. When working correctly, it is really cool and continuously monitors the temperature and pressure of each RV tire and alerts you to any abnormalities. The past two days however, it has continued to loose connection to two of the tire transmitters and then throws off an alarm on the app. Each transmitter has a flat, watch-like battery and initially we attributed it to the batteries going dead prematurely, so we changed them out with new ones that were sent with the unit. We soon ran out of fresh batteries and were getting pretty frustrated with it. Rick then decided to take the batteries out and let them sit when we hit a rest area, re-installing them before we left and that seemed to work for a bit, but then re-alarmed again further down the road. Our last ditch effort was to move the two alarming transmitters to different tires. We will see what happens there. We do have a communication into the company and an order for free replacement batteries. Perhaps it is faulty transmitters. If it is, we will need to wait to get those installed until we are back in WI. We arrived at Happy Trails RV Park around 4pm, which made for a 5 hour drive day. Many Fulltime Rv'ers stick to a firm rule of 3 hours of drive time or be off the road and set up by 3pm. I now can completely understand and appreciate that way of thinking! If we were not needing to be at our destination by Monday, I would not be pushing the drive time soo hard. After these two days of 5 to 7 hours of driving, not to mention in this heat, we are beat! Hopefully a good night sleep and only 3 hours of driving to our final destination tomorrow will be better. I will leave you with some pictures of our lovely full hook up site by the pond. SHOP AMAZON HERE
We participate in the Amazon affiliate program and we appreciate you using our Amazon link above to make your Amazon purchases. It does not cost you anything additional and helps us to support our blog. You can even save our link as a favorite and use that whenever you need to make an Amazon purchase. Thank you!!! Yes, as of today, Monday 6/11/18, we are full timers! So what makes it official??? Well that is a different answer for every full timer. It could be the day you close on your house, the day you retire, the first day you begin to live in your RV, or the day you drive out of your driveway for the last time. We have read many fulltime RV blogs and each of them had a different answer. For us, we have a couple qualifying reasons that add up to us declaring today as our first day as fulltimers. First off, it is the first work day that Rick and I are both retired. Rick's official last day was Friday and he has now joined me in the retired life. Secondly, this morning we signed the papers for the closing of our house, which will officially be on June 29th, however, we will be on the road in a different state. Finally, we drove out of the driveway for the last time. We packed everything up and have moved to our moochdocking location about a half hour away at my Dad's next to the barn. It was bittersweet, and a few tears were shed, but we are excited to see what the next chapter brings! After getting set up, Rick was off to a family fishing excursion on Lake Michigan. All of the kids went in on it for a Christmas present for his dad. Rick has many good memories of fishing on Lake Michigan with his dad when he was young so this was a great time for the family to get back out on the water together. It was a good time had by all and they caught a couple salmon and trout. After we spend a couple days here visiting with family, we are then off to our first camping spot at Harrington Beach and then making our way to SW MO to hold a mini Army reunion with Rick's buddies he was stationed with in Germany. SHOP AMAZON HERE
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