RV 2.0 Labor Day Fun!

The camp site here at Hannah Park has a charcoal grill. We are more familiar with our gas grill at home or the small charbroil outdoor grill we had on the RV 1.0 trip. But we wanted to serve grilled chicken to our family on Labor Day. Most husbands are all about the grill, not Dennis. So I purchased match stick charcoal. That means it is already saturated with lighter fluid all you need to do is strike a match and let it burn. So, I set it up and lite the coals and we were in business for a “cookout.” Our son David has some experience grilling so he was happy to grill the chicken. It was yummy! Dennis & I are going to continue to practice grilling over coals while we are here in Hannah Park.

While the chicken cooked we set up a dinning tent. Have you ever put one of these up? Well after reading directions, looking at the pictures and two very kind women walking their dogs stopping to assist (they have one and have experience with the process) the tent was up around the picnic table. Thanks to David & Dennis getting the tent up it was so nice to enjoy outside dinning minus the insects!

Ava, Peyton & Kat eating yummy dinner!

Our adorable granddaughters Ava & Peyton enjoyed our cookout. They were so helpful in setting the table. They are growing up so fast. They walked with me to the "Happy Camper" store and we purchased ice cream to go with our home made fresh white peach cobbler. It was very yummy they said ! We spent the evening playing and reading books. Ava loves to read about the past presidents of America. So I got her a book about them all. Ava loves the new book. She can't wait to go and visit some of the homes of the past president's some day.  Peyton loves "pigs" so her new book is "Oink." We are sure her love for pigs is due to the cute ones you see in the cartoons or great movies like "Charlotte's Web." They love Great Aunt Theresa's camper. They can't wait to come and camp with us.

Dave & Dennis looking tired after all the dinner prep! 

Dennis glad the "outdoor dinning room is done"

We are spending our mornings riding at least 10 miles per day on “Nellie.” In the evenings we walk the beach. The ocean less than .5 miles from our camp site. An easy walk or bike ride. For those of you who aren't familiar with the park it's an ocean front park with all types of camping sites available. It is ran by JAX, FL city department. We are only a bike ride about 5 miles or less from David & Kat's house. So our grand children are not far away. Fun times!

During the day we are studying, looking for employment via computer and researching RV'S and even going and looking at them. This experience in the fifth wheel is much like a home experience which is a great thing. The fun times of camping but not primitive camping! We are really enjoying the outdoor room we have created with all the stuff that was available. The two inside sitting areas are very comfortable. IKEA is the place to shop for all your needs for small places. I see a shopping trip to IKEA in my future. Even though the RV'S are large it is the cleaver gadgets that allow you to feel you have as much space as your home. The good news is you have less space to clean less to maintain leaving more time for enjoyment of your hobbies or serving others.......Software

RV 2.0 New Adventure

Well as you know we were only home 2 days from our RV 1.0 experiment. We were up to our eyeballs in laundry and unpacking when after a few phone calls decided to head to Florida. Our grandson is due to arrive very soon and our daughter-in-law has been very busy with home schooling, and the hectic life of balancing a home, children and due to have a third child in the heat of the summer.. She could use a break, put here feet up relax and sip some lemonade. So we are hear in Florida to help when they need us with our two adorable granddaughters.

As I mentioned in the closing blog of RV 1.0, Dennis's sister Theresa & her husband Robert have been more than gracious to loan us their 2003 Dutchman Classic 40 ft three slide 5^th wheel. They even took their whole afternoon yesterday and delivered it to our site at Hannah Park and set it up. That is true love. Robert made it look so easy. Thank you Robert your the best!

The fifth wheel! See the fans! So cool at the site.

The “camper” is very nice. It has all the comforts of home. As you see in the pictures Theresa made sure we got the outside setup. To most campers the outside is where it is at! You can enjoy the scenery or as we do sit in these amazing outdoor recliners (Theresa got them from Sam's), log into your clear spot and surf the net, study for your ALCS renewal or write your blog.

We will say this camper is much nicer than our rental. For one it is larger. It has very comfortable sofas and the bed sleeps well. However, if your 6 feet tall like Dennis you have to be mindful in the bedroom to duck. Part of the bedroom in the 5^th wheel is in the over hang. It is roomy because it has a slide out but the ceiling height is lower.

Main living area with slide oops can;t see flat screen!

Theresa has the camper stocked very well. She has done a lot of camping so you has figured out what you need to have the most enjoyable experience. We are making notes on all she has stocked with so we can add that data to our list of “must have's.”

Hide away bed and dinning area!

Well stocked kitchen!

Cozy queen size bed!

As we are waiting on the arrival of our grandson (by the way today is “Labor Day”); by the way, a good day to have a baby! HINT HINT!! So while we wait for the call to go and get our granddaughter's we are first studying and also looking for the RV to start our new adventures. We went a couple of days ago to a lot in the Florida heat and looked at about 8 or 9 Class A'. This was time well spent. It is allowing us to look at a variety of RV types and styles to assist us in our data collection. We will keep you apprised of how the looking goes. In the meantime we will be blogging about our 5^th wheel experience at the beach, Oh yeah did I mention that our camp site is a very short ride on our bike to the ocean. We rode there this morning. The ocean waves and breeze this time of year is great! This is the life!........Better close and get ready for a cookout.......Software

Final Stretch

Dennis relaxing after setup!

We arrived at Land Between the Lakes on Sunday August 22^nd. Again it was a beautiful drive in the mountains. We sat up camp and hoped for good cell and internet reception; but it was not possible. We were to far into the National Forrest that we could not get good reception. We decided to just complete the experiment then post on our blog when we returned. We did have TV. Well, 3 channels all of them KET. For those who don't recognize the acronym it stands for PBS. Even though Dennis & I are college graduates we had the opportunity everyday during breakfast to watch PBS and study to pass our GED. My how high school has changed! I especially enjoyed the chemistry & math classes. Wish my high school instructors would have been that entertaining. We also learned to paint with water colors during lunch. Of course we had no canvas but we are confident the instruction on PBS was so thorough that we could pick up brushes and paint landscape scenes. Watch out Kathryn & Ransom you have new competition in the world of art. Wow! PBS is now one of our new passions.

That South Welcome Station !

On Monday morning we decided to ride “Nellie” to the south welcome station. It was only 8.5 miles and we have ridden that amount of miles many times. When we finally reached the south welcome station we were ecstatic. You see we had no idea how hilly the ride would be. Who said “igorance is bliss?” Let me say we spent the majority of the time walking “Nellie” up the hills. We dreaded the ride back but the only way home was riding back up & down those rolling hills. Well we made it back safely. The deer, humming birds and the largest number of butterflies we have ever seen, along the way were so worth the agony of the ride.

Over those next 7 days we fished, rode our bike and read our books. It was again a great opportunity to enjoy the life style of RV living. We met so many people enjoying the quiet lifestyle. It is obvious that you can be as laid back or active as you choose. One interesting observation is how so many people living in RV's make an outdoor room to entertain in or relax. Dennis & I got some good laughs at the outside decors. They had any where from light up palm trees to Christmas lights to interior floor lamps, carpets, & patio furniture. The rooms seem to express the owners personalities. Dennis & I will have to ponder what kind of outdoor décor would best express who we are! It could be fun to let our imagination go wild for our outdoor room.

Where we fished "outside our front door"

We have a detailed list of the things we would need to make an RV home. We complied this list along the way. Every time we came across a situation or a problem to solve or something as simple as how much we missed out recliners we noted those things for our RV home on our list.

Over the course of the 22 day experiment we had ample opportunity to have “real life experiences in the RV.” We strongly agreed that this experiment was a great opportunity to discover how much we love a simple life style. The ability to have our front yard be a lake, a babbling brook, or mountain range, is amazing. Did we mention the Bison we saw at Land between the Lakes!

There were baby bison nursing! so cute

Upon returning to our home we thought we would have some time to unpack and evaluate where we are now. But, instead we are now doing laundry and repacking to head to Florida. Our third grandchild is apparently going to arrive a couple of weeks early. We are very excited about having time with our grand daughters while we await our grandsons arrival.

Dennis' sister Theresa has blessed us with the opportunity to stay in her & her husband Robert's fifth wheel. We have booked our stay at Hannah Park which is very close to our son. Stay tune to RV 2.0 as we blog about the experience of a 5^th wheel RV and of course our grand children ......Software

Clever Stuff

There is a skylight over the RV's shower. Nothing special, but I suppose that any skylight serves to add some "class" to a structure's appearance. But that's not why there is a skylight in the shower.

It seems that there is a lot of clever thought that goes into the design of an RV. Sure, some of it goes to save a few bucks, but much of it is about making the most of the available space. The space over the driver's cab is a bunk bed. The sofa isn't just a sofa, it's a hide-a-bed. Even the dining table can be converted into a bed. Many of us use the space below our bed at home to store things, but an RV makes that official. The space below the floor of the living area holds some of the equipment that doesn't need to be in the living area of course; like the water heater and the holding tanks. The rest of that space is referred to as the basement, and just like in any other home, it's where you store stuff. There's really a surprising amount of storage down there. Inside, there is an overhead wall cabinet just about anywhere you could possibly put one - not much space on the walls for hanging those photos of the kids and grandkids. (I suppose one would need to rethink how you hang a frame in a home that travels down the road.)

At first glance, it would appear that the RV's shower is open to the hallway. There is no door to separate the living space from the shower area. Haven't these RV designers ever heard of modesty? But there is something interesting about the tiny room where the lavatory and toilet are. Although the room is very small, its door is as big as you would see in a handicapped restroom. I wondered why. The first time I allowed the door to open wide, it made quite a clunk as it hit the wall on the other side of the hall. At first, I thought I had let it hit so hard that I broke something. Did I mention that the lavatory is right across from the shower? When you open the lavatory door just a bit beyond ninety degrees, a magnetic latch grabs it and holds it against the opposite wall. The door now serves as the barrier between the shower and the living space. Otherwise, you would have needed another pocket door and that would have wasted three or four inches of precious space. They even used a piano hinge on the lavatory door instead of the usual type hinges. This way, no matter what position the door is in - open, closed, or in between - you can't see through the crack between the door and the door's frame; thus ensuring privacy.

The popup we rented a while back had some pretty unique engineering in it. When it is traveling, it's only about three or four feet tall. So, the door that covers the entry in only three or so feet tall. How do you make a three foot door become six plus feet tall? The answer is that you don't. The travel mode door is latched fully open when the unit is popped up for use. Another door is velcroed into the door opening. That door is removed and suspended from the roof while traveling. The popup's kitchen cabinet is taller than the trailer is when traveling. So, it is actually sawed in half at about two and a half feet high. With hinges and flexible plumbing hoses, you fold the top half of the cabinet down into the floor in front of the cabinets bottom half. Pretty clever.

Most new RVs make use of slides. A slide, basically, is a moveable wall. The most common use is to provide additional space in the main living area; the wall that the dining table and sofa are set against slides out two or more feet when the unit is set up for camping. This provides a much bigger feel to the living area. When traveling, the slide is retracted into the unit. When in traveling mode, you can barely get between the couch and the kitchen counter. Some units will also have a slide in the bedroom. The more expensive units may even have two slides in the living area on opposite walls. This can make for quite a large living space in a vehicle that has to squeeze down to less than a 102 inch width while traveling.

Back to that skylight in the shower. The shower has to be built up on a platform that is several inches above the floor. This allows access below the shower should there ever be any problems with the plumbing. But since the shower is already in a part of the RV where the ceiling is a bit low, even only slightly above average height men would have to duck while in the shower. Skylight to the rescue. That raises the ceiling above the shower about five inches while also giving you something that is attractive. Win - win. Pretty clever..........Hardware

Down in the Boondocks

It didn't take long, only a day or two, to know - I just wouldn't be cut out for this. No, I don't mean that I would never trade my house for a 300 square foot RV. I mean that I would not be a boondocking enthusiast.

Boondocking is the term used in the RV world to describe camping without any hookups - no sewer connection, no fresh water connection, and no electrical connection.

Nearly all RVs have provisions to allow for some level of boondocking. There is a holding tank to store fresh water, batteries and propane cylinders to store energy, and holding tanks for buffering grey water and black water until you can dispose of it properly. Many units have generators and some even have solar panels for generating additional energy. But that doesn't make it easy. It takes a lot of conservation; a lot of discipline; to be successful.

For some, the motivation seems to be just the challenge itself; it's a game for them to see how long they can last. For others, there is a financial motivation. While the fees for camping in most national and state parks are very reasonable, I'm told there is a lot of Federal land where you can boondock for free. As well, I have read that most Walmart stores will allow you to boondock in their parking lot overnight for free. Apparently, a lot of people take advantage of this when travel between campgrounds requires an overnight stay.

So, how do you pull it off? You have to conserve wherever you can. You run the water as little as possible when you brush your teeth. When you are running water and just waiting for it to get hot, you capture the water instead of just letting it go down the drain. You use that water later to maybe rinse soap off the dishes or rinse shampoo out of your hair. If you have captured some grey water and you are confident that it is safe to do so, you pour the water out on the ground away from the campsite instead of putting it into the holding tank.

For electricity, you will need to run the lights as little as possible. Forget the TV, the microwave, and for sure, the air conditioner. Even if you have a generator, you'll have to be conservative since it is pulling fuel from the same gas tank that is going to get you back home or to your next campground. And those solar panels won't be helpful if trees are blocking their view of the sun.

It can help to plan your travel with boondocking in mind. Spend the summer months far enough north to get along without air conditioning. Alternatively, you might spend the summer at a high altitude. We spent a few days in Maggie Valley, North Carolina. At 3600 feet above sea level, the temperatures were ten degrees or so cooler than the places not in the mountains where we camped. Similarly, spend the winter somewhere south so that you don't need much in the way of heating.

I've read blogs where people say they are able to boondock for as long as two weeks. Good for them, but I just don't see how I could do it.

There are in betweens; partial hookups. As I write this, we are at the Piney Campground at Land Between the Lakes. The campground is quite large, nearly 400 sites total, but only about fifty have full hookups. I am thankful that we have one of them. At various campgrounds, you will find sites with fresh water and electricity, but no sewer. You will also find sites with electricity only. Of course, you get what you pay for. The fewer the hookups, the cheaper the camping fee. In anything other than moderate weather, I don't see how you get along without at least electricity to run the heater or air conditioner. For short stays, you may be able to get by without water and sewer hookups, saving a few bucks. By the way, a campground that has any sort of hookups, will have a dump station. If you've camped without a sewer hookup, you can empty your tanks at the dump station as you leave the campground.

But even short stays require conservation. Our previous stay was at an Army Corps of Engineers campground on Old Hickory Lake outside of Nashville. All sites had electricity and water, but no sewer. There were public restrooms and showers that we used for everything except one middle-of-the-night bathroom break. We tried as best we could to limit what went into the holding tanks with brushing teeth, cooking, and washing dishes. If we did not finish a glass of tea or cup of coffee, we captured the leftovers in a jug rather than pouring it down the drain. But in spite of our efforts, we still found ourselves disconnecting the RV on the third day and driving it over to the dump station.

Of course, the bigger the RV, the bigger the holding tanks. Our rental is probably in the middle in that regard.

You can purchase a portable holding tank in sizes ranging from maybe fifteen to fifty gallons. Some people use these to empty their holding tanks rather than disconnecting and moving the entire RV. They typically are roughly the size and shape of a child's wagon with four wheels and a handle. After you transfer the contents of your RV's holding tanks into the portable tank, you can actually pull the "wagon" behind your car to the dump station. Just keep it under five miles per hour and watch out for those speed bumps. But this is quite doable in a typical RV campground.

I suppose with time and experience, I'll get better at it. A larger RV will help. But, me going two weeks? I just don't see it.........Hardware

Fun Times in Nashville

We had a a great time this weekend now on the road for 2 weeks. We spent the weekend with family. We went to the first ball game of the season at Father Ryan High School. The evening started with a very tasty cookout on the grounds of the school. Then we watched the band march into the stadium. Our amazing nephew Ransom is in the marching band. He plays the baritone sax. He has been playing the alto sax but changed this year. His band is very good and has competed in many band competitions.

Ransom playing his baritone sax!

Anyway, the half time show was so awesome. He and his friends did a great job. Conlon who plays the baritone did a one handed cart wheel during the half time show. Where did he put that baritone?  Mac another friend plays clarinet. These guys have been friends since early in elementary school at Holy Rosary. The game was fun even though they lost to Overton. 

Halftime show

Nephew Will

Speaking of Holy Rosary our other equally amazing nephew Will attends there and is BMOC. He is in his last year. How time flies. Will plays drums and guitar at Holy Rosary. He and Ransom also have for years performed in the school plays. We look forward to returning later in the school year to see them both in a play. For years I have been coming to Nashville without Dennis to enjoy the many plays and concerts our nephews have been in. It is so much fun to enjoy this time with Dennis here in Nashville. At the game we sat with many of my brother Howard and sister-in-law Lisa's friends; the Griesmers & Pillons. Their friends always make us feel welcome.

On Saturday we had tickets for the DUCK boat tour. But, it had mechanical problems and the tour was canceled. Quack! Quack! 

Waiting for DUCK boat that never came!

We rode around town and saw the city. We had a great tour guide Lisa our sister-in-law who has lived here in Nashville most of her life. We ate lunch at local brewery. The food was great and the waiter was very entertaining. We wanted sweet tea. He said we only have non sweet! With a bit of humor he explained, "We brew beer not tea." So we had non sweet tea! Dennis had water. He was on strike for non sweet tea! We laughed but still enjoyed our great food. Later that evening we went to the RV and had a cookout. We served salmon burgers and brownies. Will & Ran gave 2 thumbs up to the burgers. We sat out under our awning with our camp light and citronella candles. Those pesky mosquitos have been bad with all the rain.  Will & Dennis played the guitar and we sang old songs. 

It was fun. 

The weather was stormy again on Saturday but we made the best of the weather and worked around it and all in all it turned out to be a GREAT DAY...... Our experiment is going well. We have now entertained at our RV and have realized it can be as fun as entertaining at "home.".........Software

Internet to Go!

You may be wondering how we are getting internet access while on the road. It's not amazing of course, the technology has been around for some time. If you don't own a laptop, however, you may be less familiar with the internet-away-from-home options. There are a number of internet on the go options available, and we are taking advantage of several, but let's start by talking about wi-fi.

Any relatively new laptop will include wi-fi as will many smart phones. Other devices that use networking but would be awkward to have to to use with a cable will have wi-fi as well; for expample, the Apple iPod Touch. Wi-fi is the common term for wireless ethernet networking technology. In your home, you can install a wireless base station which is connected with an ethernet cable to your DSL or cable internet system. Then you can use your laptop around the home without wires; the laptop communciates wirelessly through the base station. (You can also put a wireless network card in you desktop computer. We did this at home with a machine that was located in a place where it wasn't possible to run a cable.)

You have no doubt heard the term "Internet Cafe." This refers to a business, often a coffee house of some sort, which has intalled a wi-fi base station and make it available for their customers. These businesses seemed to be among the first to recognize that providing internet access could increase sales. Now many fast food and fairly upscale restaurants offer wi-fi, as well as hotels, automobile service waiting rooms, and much more including - yes - RV parks. Now, businesses are offering wi-fi because they just about have to; it is just part of doing business in the 21st century.

However, campgrounds in state and national parks generally do not offer wi-fi. Our first stop on this trip was at Fall Creek Falls, a Tennessee state park. This is remote enough that even cell phone service was flaky at our camp site. If you stepped outside the RV, it worked poorly. Inside the RV was hopeless, as were the non campsite places; the bike trails, the falls observation areas, and so on; but that is probably a good thing. Fall Creek Falls does, however, have an inn. The inn provides wi-fi service, but only the in the lobby, not the guest rooms. But that was good enough for us. It was about a two mile bike ride from our campsite. We loaded the laptop into our bike's saddle bag and made the trek to the inn, posted to the blog, and headed back to the campsite.

Traveling from one campground to another will often consume several hours of your time. It would be nice to be able to use the internet as you drive down the road. Of course, I mean the passenger, not the driver. The technology that will do this is commonly known as wireless broadband. The technology that provides digital voice service for your cell phone can also provide data service for your computer. The hardware required for this is rarely provided in a laptop computer. You will need to purchase a seperate device for this which usually (in 2010 anyway) connects to one of your USB ports. This modem device will probably cost somewhere between 75 and 120 dollars. You can get a full time service, but the monthly fee is pretty high for occasional use. I opted instead for a prepaid, no contract plan. Prior to our trip to Illinois in late June, I purchased a service through an internet merchant where I had purchased before with good results. Unfortunately, I did not research before I bought. Although the service is on the Sprint network (no problem there) the prepaid service I purchased was through a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) which contracts with Sprint for the physical network. The initial setup was painful and customer service was poor. Once setup, it worked quite well, at least for our first trip. When we took off for our next trip, it did not work at all. I called customer service and found it would be out for a week. A week later, I was told two more weeks. So, I looked elsewhere.

I found that Virgin Mobile is also an MVNO using the Sprint network. You can purchase a modem and prepaid cards at a variety of locations. We picked ours up at Walmart while enroute between campgrounds. I did have a couple of glitches with the setup, but by comparison to the previous MVNO, Virgin Mobile was a breath of fresh air. This first problem was that I had hoped set up the service while driving down the road. The setup procedure did not work as expected, I could not install their software. I called customer service but their first question was "What zip code are you in?" Well, I didn't know, so we were not able to complete the install. Once we arrived at our next site, I tried again. We still had trouble with the software, but customer service was very helpful. The problem turned out to be that I had to remove the software from the previous MVNO. Once that was done, the Virgin Mobile installation worked as expected.

For the first few days, the service was rather disappointing. When using a web browser, it would seem to hang frequently when loading pages. Sometimes the delay would be just a few seconds, sometimes fifteen to twenty seconds, and occasionaly so long that you felt the need to restart the broadband software. It did not seem to matter whether we were in a remote RV park, driving down I-40, or in the heart of Nashville, the performance was about the same. Today, suddenly, it is working quite well.

I don't know that I can explain what is going on, but perhaps it is a combination of service area and the weather. Since I started using the Virgin Mobile service, we have either been in a fringe coverage area, or in rain, often very heavy rain, or both. Today is the first day that we have had sunshine while we are in a fixed location and in what should be a good coverage area. Most types of radio transmissions are affected to one degree or another by rain, so perhaps that has been the cause of the poor performance. I'll keep testing and give you an update. By the way, this is what is refered to as a 3G broadband service.

There are other options out there. Clear Communications has a new service known as WiMax. It works using equipment deployed on cell phone towers, and is several times faster than 3G. The cost is about the same. Unfortunately, it is still in the rollout phase and is only available in a limited number of cities at this time; the current coverage wouldn't meet the needs of a serious business traveler, much less an RVer. However, coverage is increasing. The speed is fast enough that it may be the only service you need. That is, if you don't need internet service in your home when you are not at home, then if you have the Clear service, you could cancel your cable or DSL service. Clear works in my home town and in the cities where I visit family. I have it and it works well as long as you are in their coverage area. Clear is being resold by Sprint. You can get a dual mode modem that uses the WiMax service when you are in a coverage area and automatically uses 3G whenever you are out of WiMax range. Not surprisingly, the dual service is quite expensive.

Then there are satellite based systems. The equipment is very expensive, that is several thousands of dollars. It is also very large. I saw a HughesNet setup at an RV on the first day we were at our current campground. The dish was somewhere between two and three feet in diameter and was set up on a heavy duty tripod like you would see on a professional TV camera. The advantage of this system is that it will work in even the most remote areas, so long as you have a clear view of the southern sky. Of course, the most desireable RV sites are often the ones surrounded by trees which would interfere with satellite reception. Obviously, it does not work while traveling. Since I have not used it, I can't speak about the speed, quality of service, or effort needed to setup and aim the dish.

If you are desperate, some RV parks have POTS lines (Plain Ol' Telephone Service) available along side the power and water hookups. This would allow you to use a dial up analog modem at less than 56K speeds.

We will be at Land Between the Lakes soon for a seven night stay. I expect cell phone service to be similar to Fall Creek Falls, but without the backup of wi-fi in a nearby hotel. I'll let you know about our internet connectivity there, but it may be after the fact.........Hardware