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 1st 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 3rd
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.
