Out Our Front Door (old log)

While on the Gulf coast we took a sight seeing boat ride and had a great view of the area and had company most of the trip.

 

 

As we followed the coast northwest we pulled into a public parking lot.  Kathy and our daughter wanted to stay in the motor home. 

 

Our son and I went out to the public fishing pier bought one crab net and 100 foot of line, took two buckets from our RV and paid to go out on the pier. 

1. We then went out and found some chicken bones in the trash and tied them to the center of the net.
2. Found an open spot midway out the pier and dropped the net to the bottom.
3. About every 3-5 minutes pulled it up and put the crabs in a bucket and dropped the net back to the bottom.
4. I walked the buckets back to the RV where Kathy had a pot of water boiling and cooked the crabs.
5. Once we had our limit we all sat down in the RV and had our fill of crabs, than cleaned the rest and enjoyed crab meat for a few more days.
6. We still have and use that crab net today when by the sea.

Out Our Front Door (Old Log)

The nice thing about an RV is your front yard view is where you park for the night.  I have had many ask why don't you buy another house.  I like the fact that when we are traveling the view out our front door keeps changing.  This is a view along the North Platte river in Nebraska in mid summer.

 

It is always nice to step outside and see some more of nature, here is a grasshopper in Wyoming taking a break.

 

 

Here is a Butterfly in Maryland.





Gearing Up for RVing Again

 

Here is our new (to us) motor home a 2002 Jayco Granite Ridge 27 with two slides.  Has just under twenty five thousand miles on it.  I am on a CPAP and oxygen at night so I added two additional house batteries (three total), a thousand watt converter and will add two hundred watts of solar panels in August.  I plan this to be able to recharge my house batteries daily.  I think I may need an additional two hundred watts of solar for total recharge without running the generator or plugging in. I forgot to figure in the draw from the batteries for other house uses.  I am hoping to be able to boondock for several days without running the generator. 

 

 



We had a 1993 Fleetwood Tioga until about 2005 and ran the heck out of it.  We covered 32 states in less than ten years.  This one was a little bit longer twenty nine feet, but with no slide outs.  Our son and daughter are sitting in the doorway, they are both in their upper twenties now.  We bought this one with about seventy thousand miles on it.  With the four of us we could easily do a boondock weekend with no hook-ups.

 

Photo Pending (looking for)

 



Our first class C motor home was a twenty one foot Colman RV.  We bought it in the late 80,s for a couple thousand (heavy hail damage) to see if we would like it and we did:)  We kept a log book and made notes of what we wanted in our next motor home, we have kept a log ever since now we will also use this blog.

 

 

Our first RV in the early 90s an old Coleman Pop-up!

 

Our first RV was an old Colman pop-up.  We moved up to this for two reasons; first we did not like keeping our son in a play pen (as a baby) when camping because or rattle snakes, and second it had a heater for those fall and spring evenings.

 

 



Our pre RV days were in a two or three room tents.  Here is a photo with our kids in about 1993 and our two room tent.  Tents are great but for us after three continues days of rain once and rattle snakes we wanted up off the ground and a built in heater that is vented. 

My goal with this blog is to share what we have learned from our part time days and to share what we learn with our new RV moving foreword.  I am looking at retiring sometime between next year and 2021.

I will start adding to this blog on a regular basis by the end of August.  Hope to get my wife Kathy involved with the blog as well by next summer, at the latest's.

Comments are welcome.

Out Our Front Door Down South (Old Log)

Camping along the major rivers is always an exciting stay.  Without our rivers and the great lakes cost of many goods would skyrocket up in price.  In the seventies I was stationed along the Mississippi River and enjoyed going down to the river and watch both commercial and non-commercial traffic.

 

Up and down our major rivers there are hundreds of great places to camp or at least park for a picnic.  I took this photo of a Coast Guard Tender coming in from working on the river.

 

 

 

Below is the Saint John River south of Jacksonville Florida, there is a alligator in the sun's reflection on the river going under.

 

 





Went by one of my old duty stations

Went by one of my old duty stations from when I was a Missile Launch Officer in Wyoming and Nebraska.  The photo below shows the above ground facility the launch crew is secured underground. 



Nice to drive by one of the old places.

 

My wife was a C130 Flight Nurse in the Middle East, we read the other day that these great aircraft were going to be retired from active and reserve service.  If this happens they will be missed.   Please note the below photo is old and not her plane.

 

Our front door keeps changing.   

Out Our Front Door (Old Log)

There are many canyons out west and each is different.  You can sit along the edge and as dusk falls you can see the deer and elk moving out from where they bedded down for the day.  When birds of prey are over the canyon looking for prey on the canyon floor they are often at your eye level.  Remember the canyon floor is three to four hundred feet below.

 

We find it interesting you can see a windmill pumping up water for the cattle and only a short distance away a canyon similar to the one above.

 



 

 Western lakes provide, drinking water, irrigation, recreation and more.  There is an old saying that goes like this "east of the Mississippi farmers  rely on thunderstorms and west of the Mississippi they rely on snow melt" for their crops and to fill the lakes and rivers.  Having lived in the east and the west I feel this is a fairly valid saying.

 

 

The views just keep getting better, below I am on a hill above our camp site looking over a section of a western national forest.  The black specks in the distance on the grass are cattle.



 What a view:)

The Wright Cycle Company - Dayton, Ohio (From Past Log)

On one trip back east to see family we stopped of at the Wright Brothers Cycle Shop.  It was a very nice visit and well worth your time if you are ever in the area.  Kathy and I along with our son in this photo in Dayton Ohio.

These past logs are all with our twenty eight foot Motor Home unless otherwise stated.

 

 

With this motor home we made no changes to it.  It had one house battery and one starting battery and four of us could do two to three nights unplugged with no problems. 

In the winter we uses it as a warming hut while cross country skiing.  We could not use the water system but everything else worked great during the winter months.  We uses a port-a-potty during the winter months and a water jug.  

Red Desert S/W Wyoming June/July 2014

It is over one hundred degrees and dry today as I walk through part of the high desert (over 6000 feet).

Up here even the hunters can fall prey to the high deserts of the southwest as you can see below.

 As you can see from these photos the desert is both beautiful and harsh if you go unprepared.  Whenever I go for a walk here I carry water in my backpack.  Since I need oxygen (Medical) at this elevation over 6000 feet I carry a small portable bottle in my backpack as well.

The red desert in S/W Wyoming is the second largest shifting sand desert in the world.  The pure sand starts about 20 miles away from here.