New Blog Location...

Monday, January 23, 2017

To all of our Blogger followers,

I have had 2 blogs going for the past year or so.  This one and https://ourgreatamericanadventureblog.wordpress.com/

I am going to close this one as the Wordpress Blog is easier to publish.  The 2 have been identical so nothing will be different, just the address.

Please click this link, https://ourgreatamericanadventureblog.wordpress.com/ and click on "Follow" and "Like" this page.

You will get email updates just like this blog.  Also when you comment on a post, we get notified right away.

Thanks for following Our Great American Adventure!

We Finally Made it to Quartzite, AZ...But What a Trip Out Here!

Our trip out here was pretty uneventful (until Dec 26)…thank God!  We stayed here and there when we left Brent and Ashley’s in St. Cloud, FL (just outside Orlando) on Thursday, December 22.

Thursday, December 22, 2016

River’s Edge RV Campground,  Holt, FL *****  $27 nt total FHU including cable

Friday, December 23, 2016

Walmart parking lot, Lake Charles, LA *** It was free and it was a parking lot.
 
We wanted to try out our solar so we found a Walmart around 6pm and landed there.  We were parked against a curb with a large grassy area.  I went in and spoke to the store manager to make sure it was ok.  He said it was and that if we parked next to the grassy area we could put our slides out on that side.  We only put the living room slide out.  They had a Subway there so we picked up a few things and got a couple of sandwiches.  We were beat so headed to bed around 9pm.  We would have been in bed sooner but a couple stopped by asking about our truck & 5th wheel.  We invited them in to look around.  They stayed about 45 minutes.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

North Llano River RV Park, Junction, TX ***** $35 nt total FHU including cable

Decided since it was Christmas Eve we would stay in a campground, cook a ham & scallop potato dinner and just relax.  We were so tired we had grilled ham & cheese then went to bed.

This was a nice park with large sites, a camp store, Laundromat & dog run.

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Chevron Truck Stop, Vado, NM **** It was a truck stop.

 

What a nice Truck Stop.  Huge parking lot.  We were able to park away from the tractor-trailers & put all of our slides out.  Pretty quiet but still very close to I-10.

We woke up around 6am.  Tori started in heat!  What a mess.  Blood everywhere- sheets, carpet, rugs, kitchen, etc.  Blood clots.  She had never had a heat like this.

Monday, December 26-Thursday, December 29

Left Chevron at 7:45 am.  Filled up gas for generator.  We were about 3 ½ hours from Tucson, AZ.

Tori was still bleeding…a lot!  Decided we should just go as far as Tucson then find a vet…today.

Found a campground, Prince of Tucson RV Park**** (only 4*.  Staff was wonderful, park was very clean & tidy.  2 laundry rooms with newer washer & dryers.  A few really old people that were unpleasant & seemed to live here all the time)  then found a vet a few miles away, St. Mary’s Veterinary Clinic.  They said it sounded like Pyrometra.  A disease in female dogs that hadn’t been spayed.  Cysts can form in the uterus and on the ovaries that are full of puss.  If they were to burst dogs usually die within 48 hours.

They could see us at 2pm.

We got to the rv park at 1:15pm.  Got parked & hooked up.  We didn’t even get the dogs out of the truck.  Just headed for the vets office.

The vet said he had never seen this much blood with a dog in heat…never he kept saying.  They did blood work.  It all came back normal.  She didn’t have a fever but the vet kept saying something is definitely wrong!

He said we could take her to a facility that did ultrasounds to see if there were any tumors or anything else that could be wrong.  He also said he could do x-ray’s.  It would show abnormalities but not specifics.  We opted for the x-ray’s.  They didn’t show anything abnormal.  The vet knew something was wrong, probably Pyrometra.

We scheduled surgery for the next day. 

We took her in at 7am.  The vet wanted to do one more x-ray before the surgery.  We got a call at 2pm.  Tori was out of surgery and in recovery.  She was doing well.  All her stitches were inside so we didn’t have to stay to have them removed.

It was definitely Pyrometra.  There was a large cyst in her uterus and a cyst on her ovary.  We were SO lucky to have found a vet that was carrying, knowledgeable and that could see Tori quickly.

We stayed another day, just to make sure Tori was going to be ok.  She seemed much better so off we were…to our destination…Quartzite, AZ.

Thursday, December 29-Saturday, January 21

Made it to Quartzite about 1:45 pm.  Staying at La Pose LTVA South (long term visitors area).

From September 15 - April 15 anyone can stay for up to 7 months for just a $180 seasonal pass.  There are many LTVA’s in Arizona and California.  This pass admits you into any of these.

We decided to stay in the South LTVA because they had potable water & a dump station.  Since this was our 1^st boondocking experience we figured we wanted to be close to these 2 “conveniences”.

Friday, December 30

Georgie’s eye started bothering him.  He put contacts in on Thursday before we left for Quartzite.  They felt fine.  He woke up Friday.  They were bothering him a little.  By late morning he decided to take them out & just wear his glasses.

He must have got something under his contact that scratched his eye.  His eye has been watering non-stop!  And his damn nose won’t stop running!  He’s gone through a whole box of Kleenex…in 3 days!  And his eye is killing him!

Thank God it’s been mostly overcast the last few days.  The bright sun REALLY hurts his eye.

Sunday, January 1, 2017

We can’t use our Keurig while on solar so we have a drip coffee maker.  We pour hot water over coffee.  It makes about 4-5 cups of coffee.  It has a metal filter that you put a paper filter in to put the coffee in.

The filter is on the right.  Somehow…not really sure how, but that filter was thrown in the trash.  We took the trash up to 1 of the 6 dumpsters they have here.

As I was straightening up the kitchen & putting everything in its place I noticed the filter wasn’t in the pot.  I looked everywhere for it.  I finally realized I must have thrown it out when I was throwing out the paper filter with the grounds in it.

Shit!  This is going to be a shitty job…dumpster diving for a metal filter!  Off to the dumpsters we go, ladder in tow.

We get to the dumpsters.  Georgie says he threw the trash in the 3^rd dumpster from the left.  He said the dumpster was almost empty so it would be close to the bottom.  OH YEAH!

To our surprise it was the shortest dumpster and there was very little trash in there.  No ladder needed.  Spotted our trash, reached in and pulled it out, found the filter and VIOLA…it’s a wonderful thing!

Got back to the rig…2 ½ miles from the dumpster by the way, boiled it for a while and breathed a sigh of relief!  We didn’t want to have to run to Parker, AZ (an hour away) to find another coffee pot.

So far, life as we know it is back to normal…except for Georgie’s eye…it’s still killing him!

Monday, January 2, 2017

We haven’t had a lot of sun since we arrived.  We need the sun to charge our solar so we run the generator a couple times a day to charge the batteries.  Our batteries stay between 12v-12.3v without the generator.

We watch 3-5 hours of TV (mostly at night).  The generator gets our batteries up to around 13.1v so we can have this luxury.

Starting Our 2017 Road Trip...A Little Early...

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Headed to St. Cloud, Fl to have an early Christmas with the boys and their families.  5 of our 7 grandbabies are over there, Trinity- 15, Tyler-9, Cayden-5, Lyla-3, Lucas-1 mo.

Parking at Brent & Ashley's.   They have 5 acres & 50 amp service.

Going to head out on December 22nd.  Making our way to Quartzsite, AZ before January 1.

While we were in Bradenton, Fl  (October 1-December 17) we had a new roof put on at Elite RV in Palmetto.   It's called RV Armor.  It comes with a lifetime warranty.

We also had solar installed.  3-160 w panels, 6-6v deep cell batteries, 3000 w inverter as well as a charge controller.  Hoping to spend 9-10 months boondocking  (dry camping).
We tried it out the other day and had several interior lights, 2 32" TV's & 3 Fantastic fans on. With all that on we were only running a 6% load.  We turned the air conditioner on with no problem but figure it would drain our batteries in a couple hours.  Figure we could go 5-7 days with no sun charging our batteries.  We also have a 5500 w generator if we need it.  We're so excited to be able to live "off the grid"!

Had a nice surprise when we got to Brent’s!   Josh Halligan, one of Brent’s best friends growing up, was parked out in the street.  He drives for Swift & just happened to be in the area dropping off a load.  Was really nice catching up!  He was a fixture at our house!

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Left Brent & Ashley’s this morning headed to Arizona.

Ashley, Lyla & baby Lucas

Brandon & Trinity came over.  He was on gate duty!

Had a great time as always.  Christmas last night at Brandon's.

Tyler, Trinity,baby Lucas, Lyla & Cayden 

This is all for now.  (Going to try to keep this updated better than before)

Luray, Viginia...What a Gem!

September 26-28, 2016 

 

Before I get started...VIRGINIA HAS A HELMET LAW!

 

We only stayed 2 days (at Jellystone RV Park http://campluray.com/rv-tent-campsites/#RVSITES, just outside of town).

We unloaded the Harley's & decided to take a little ride through town.  This is definitely a 1 stop light town.



 

As we're cruising through town at 25 mph we passed a cop sitting in a parking lot off to the left.  We didn't think anything about it.

We were almost to the end of town, which took less than 5 minutes, and Georgie noticed he was behind us.  No worries. 

We get to the end of town, pull in a parking lot to turn around, and the cop follows us.

We stop, turn off the bikes and get off.  He stops and gets out of his SUV.  Georgie asks, "Can I help you?"  The cop is smiling and says, "I saw you ride by me and I noticed you didn't have helmets on.  I was sure Virginia still had a helmet law but thought maybe I was wrong.  I called the station to double check.  Yep, we still had a helmet law."

Our faces drop, mouths wide open!  SHIT!  We had been so good about checking each state.  We had only been riding in states that didn't have any helmet laws. (We don't own any helmets any more)

The cop asked us if we can call someone to bring us helmets.  We explain that we were just visiting.  We didn't know anyone here plus we didn't own any helmets, that we were staying at Jellystone RV Park.

The 3 of us kind of chuckle.  He asked the same thing again.

Georgie asks him if he can just give us a warning. 

He takes our drivers licenses back to his car.  He comes back in a couple minutes.  He asks us the same thing...again.  Nope.  Nothing changed in the last few minutes.  We hadn't met anybody in the last 3 minutes.  We still didn't have any helmets.

He hands us our licenses and says, "I'm going to the station...this way (pointing to his right).  You go to your campground that way (pointing to his left).  I'll leave 1st."

Talk about luck!  We were damn lucky we got stopped by a really nice cop!

 





 

We rode straight back to the campground and immediately loaded the bikes in the rig.  Done riding in Virginia.

 

And now...the reason we stopped in this little town.

 

This is the little town of Luray, VA. (population 4,895)

http://www.townofluray.com/visitor-information.html

It sits in the Shenandoah Valley at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains, 90 miles west of Washington, DC, 10 miles east of I-81.

  

We traveled I-81 coming & going to Pennsylvania more times than I can count.  We never even heard of Luray or their famous caverns.  Guess we were always in a hurry.  Now that we are retired we have all the time in the world to pay more attention to all the sites...both well known and hidden gems...like Luray Caverns http://luraycaverns.com.

 



It took us about 1 1/2 hours to go through the caverns.  It was hard to pick just a few pictures so I didn't even try.  This is a MUST SEE if you are in the area.



 

 

They also had this really nice antique car museum.  These aren't all the cars by any stretch of the imagination, just some we thought were pretty cool!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

NOW we're headed to Florida...but this was a stop worth making!