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Travel
Journal
We’ll start here in
Stafford, VA:
When? As soon as we
get the house
empty and up for sale.
Hopefully by September 1st, 2004
Where will we go first? Probably South. Or
North. Then
again,
maybe we’ll head West or
Southwest. (Northwest or Northeast
isn’t bad either.)
To be continued ……………
October 2, 2004 A
little late but we are back.
We
didn’t quite meet our September 1st deadline, but we’re finally on
our way. Obviously, we had
underestimated the extent of work it would take to get ready for our trip. Towards the end, we sometimes worked 14 hours
a day and then fell into our beds totally exhausted, or rather onto our air
mattresses because on August 26th we had taken our beds to our
storage facility in Fort Wayne. On September 15th we picked up our
RV from Fort AP Hill, VA where we had stored it while we were busy emptying the
house and moved the remainder of our belongings into it. The following day we moved out of our house
into the RV and parked at a nearby camp ground with full hook-ups where we
could try out and test all our equipment.
All beginnings are difficult and the first thing that went wrong was our
laptop, which we had to send back to HP for a new hard drive. After we had lived in our new home for a few
days, we noticed a strange odor which grew worse by the day. In the kitchen the smell was particularly
strong. Chuck checked for dead mice under the kitchen
cabinets but couldn’t find any. He sent
Renée’s sensitive nose on tour to locate the exact spot
from which the odor emanated. A small
box with mouse poison turned out to be the culprit. (We had had a mouse problem while the RV was
in storage.) The reason it smelled so
strong was that it had gotten wet. To
make the long story short: while we were moving everything into the RV we had
not removed the plastic which was on the carpet for protection and therefore we
didn’t notice that the carpet was soaking wet.
That did not have anything to do with the torrential rains which the
remnants of hurricane Jeannie had dumped on us on September 28th but
had been caused by the drain pipe under the kitchen sink which had not been
installed properly as we found out quickly.
For several days, every fan we own was working overtime, the plastic
film was removed from the carpet and slowly we began to dry out. Because the humidity was quite high after all
the rain we had had, it took a little longer but finally we were once again on
dry footing. The drain pipe under the
kitchen sink is now installed and sealed properly. However, we soon discovered the next
leak. This one was on the washing
machine (again!!) We had already taken
the RV back to the dealer once because the washing machine had flooded our
“basement” (= storage area underneath the living area) so this time Chuck fixed
it himself. He does better work anyway
than any handyman at the RV dealership who apparently is more interested in
keeping the work coming in to guarantee him a job than to hook up our washing
machine properly. Let’s hope that this
was the end of it and we won’t discover any more shoddy workmanship on our new
home.
We were trying to get the license plate “OUR HOME”
to put on the RV but someone beat us to it.
So we selected “DAHEIM” which means virtually the same in German.
We
have not yet gotten quite used to the relatively tight quarters of an RV which
Renée proved handsomely when she broke off the open dishwasher door with her
rear end while bending down to get a coaster out of a lower cabinet. She was so mad she felt like kicking herself
in her own destructive behind. The door is beyond repair and we had to order a
new one.
Back to the transfer from our house to the RV: Every day until September 21st we
drove from the campsite to Stafford to finish
up the house and yard. One afternoon
while Renée was cleaning the guest bathroom, Chuck kept a close eye on the sky
because a tornado was heading our way and the radio emergency broadcast system
kept advising us to head for the basement.
We saw the tornado go over Stafford and then it touched down North West of us. It did a considerable amount of damage, while
not quite as serious as hurricane Jeannie which was still doing its thing in Florida at that time.
Our house went on the market on September 21st. It has been shown to several people but so
far it has not yet sold. We stop by
every so often and pick up the mail and mow the lawn. The day after the hurricane, we drove to Stafford to check on the damage on house and yard but we
got off lucky. Yesterday, October 1st
2004, exactly one month after our planned departure date, we left for our first
“real” RV trip and headed towards Gettysburg, PA, where we had an invitation
from a camping resort for 40 free nights just for checking them out plus 3 free
nights to let them give us their sales pitch to buy and become members. The
presentation lasted about 2 hours. It’s
a nice resort with partner resorts for members to use for free or at much
reduced rates. They offer golf, tennis,
swimming pools, boating, horse back riding and all sorts of nice amenities but
they did not find us ready and willing to sign up. We have different plans! Besides, that kind of camping we find
extremely unattractive. It is too
structured for us with lots of group activities, such as Bingo, pot luck
suppers, dances, re-enactment evenings with civil war events, and the
like. All those retired old couples with
their Pekinese / Poodles / Dachshunds / … who have their humongous RVs parked
around us would otherwise die of boredom.
We can stand this for three days; after all, one must have experienced
it to be able to say that we find it horrible!
From here we’ll return to Stafford
and camp nearby while we take care of a few last errands. We’ll leave for Fort Wayne, IN
on October 15th to be there in time to celebrate Michael’s 35th
birthday with him on October 17th.
We’ll stay in Fort Wayne
a while because there is a lot of stuff that has to be moved from the RV into
our storage facility (we somewhat miscalculated on how many clothes and kitchen
appliances / utensils we could pack into the RV). Also, Chuck offered Michael to help him
convert an attic space into a room for Katja so we will be there for some time.
To be continued ……………
October 10,
2004 I
can only repeat: “All beginnings are difficult!”
We
encountered several unexpected difficulties when we departed from Gettysburg, PA
on October 4th but after we had located all electrical shorts and
replaced fuses and light bulbs, our tail lights and turn signals once again
functioned properly and we could start our trip back.
Before
I continue our travel report, I would like to relay an experience we had when
we took the 30 mile trip from Gettysburg to Carlisle, PA
where, for a few years, we lived 30 years ago.
One evening we drove to our former house and parked down the street from
it. After getting Lobo out of the car,
we walked back to the house, stopping here and there while reminiscing about
former neighbors and events. Lobo
sniffed around bushes and got barked at by two Golden Retrievers who had
spotted him through the screen door of the house next door to our former house;
however he wasn’t very interested in them or anything else in particular. Suddenly, when we got near the house where we
had lived 30 years ago, his demeanor changed and he kept pulling on his leash,
trying to get in the house. It was
almost dark, there were no lights on in the house, everything was quiet, but
for some inexplicable reason, he wanted to get into that house. It took some doing trying to convince him
otherwise. We probably had unexpressed
desires to look around inside the house and he somehow sensed it. It only made us speculate that there must be
levels of communication between species that humans still don’t understand. It was quite freaky!
We
then chose a Mexican restaurant for supper, but soon realized that Pennsylvania
Dutch or Amish would have been a better choice since the food was not very
authentic.
Back
to October 4th: We stayed two
nights on the bank of Lunga Reservoir near Stafford. The weather was beautiful and in dream-like
surroundings. Here are a few photos:
1.
From the RV door shortly after the sun began to rise
(Please click)
2.
View from RV to the lake (Please click)
3. Lobo guards the RV (Please click)
We
were parked on a small hill and it was quite a problem to hook up when leaving
since the approach was narrow and very uneven.
Chuck had to back onto a stack of five boards on one side to get the
pickup even enough to back into the fifth wheel hookup. Otherwise one side of the pickup bed would
rub on the underside of the RV. We are
learning and every new parking spot brings a new experience.
To
avoid making the same mistakes each time, we have developed a list. The distance from water, sewer and electric
hookups must be noted since the hoses and cables can only be so long. The RV is leveled during the parking phase by
a series of leveling boards which are driven onto to correct the deviation in
height from side to side. Since we have
three slide-outs, we also have to make sure there is enough space on each side. Once after leveling and unhooking the pickup,
we realized that the RV was too close to the water faucet and had to hook back
up and start all over again. That is one
reason why the list must be followed in the correct order.
After
leaving the beautiful lake we drove to Fort AP Hill which is about 20 miles
southeast of Fredericksburg. It is located inside of a wildlife
preserve. Although we couldn’t park
directly on one of the many lakes, we could take bike trips there or walk
through the forests and around the lakes.
Tomorrow
we will go back to Lunga Reservoir and stay until October 15th; then
on to Fort Wayne, Indiana.
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