JULY 2010

TEXAS

July 2nd we left to pick up the RV. We had about 10 days to get there, prepare the RV for towing and get back to Lake Arrowhead.
And that is exactly what we did. It took us 3 days to follow the 10 through Phoenix, El Paso and finally Forth Worth, Texas.
The weather was sunny but actually on the cool side since there had been a big storm in the south which made it perfect for traveling. Traffic was mostly light since we somehow managed to avoid most rush hours.
There wasn’t much time for site-seeing and the view from our truck was mainly one of endless desert, scraggly vegetation and the dusty outskirts and shopping malls of unattractive looking towns. We did see some nice cloud formations tough.

                                                                       

At arrival in Fort Worth the temperature had risen to around 100 degrees and daily thundershowers made for 80-90% humidity! Boy, were we miserable! We were very happy with our air conditioned hotel not too far from where our RV was stored. After a true Mexican BBQ at a restaurant and a good night rest we thought we were ready for everything and headed to the RV.

Well, to say it nicely, it was a little bit of a shock! James thought it looked fine right away but I only saw a very dirty 5th wheeler, looking old and tired and did I say dirty? And that was actually before we opened her up because the inside was an even worse disaster!


There was stuff laying everywhere, wooden and aluminum trim in different lengths, drawers on the floor, cabinets half open and trash everywhere, the fridge was so dirty it was black and full of mold and the bedroom….. mirrored doors on the floor, a ripped of panel that showed the dry rot underneath and …….WHERE was the bed?
It looked like someone had started to work on it after it had water leaks and was in the process of dismantling in order to reach everything when something happened that made him quit. Either the money ran out or it turned out to be more then he could or wanted to do or the insurance considered it a total loss or whatever.
I was beginning to think we bought a lemon! How could our appraiser have said it was in fine condition? 

                                              

            

James got me to calm down, the poor guy, and while he assessed the outside I brought out some garbage bags and started picking up the trash. I think I ended up with at least 10 or 15 of them!
I also made one neat pile of all the trim and doors in the bedroom and set it upright against the back so you could see the space.
After shutting all the cabinets and replacing the drawers (they were all there!) the place looked so different I actually was able to sit down, enjoy a cup of coffee and started to feel slightly better!
I could see that at least the wood was all undamaged and the carpet was brand new, still covered with protective plastic wrap!
I filled up some buckets with soap and water and proceeded to wipe down the counters and sinks and started to clean some of the cabinets in the kitchen.
After gathering up all my courage I opened the fridge and freezer again and attacked the awful sticky and stinking mess! I got most of it but it certainly needed lots more tender loving care to be back to being clean again.
What was encouraging though was that it all DID clean up!

 

After some tries we got the slides to work (needed new batteries!) and boy, did that make a difference! This thing was huge inside, so much space!
We returned to the hotel that evening in great spirits, knowing we had a lot of work ahead of us but convinced we could do it. We were incredible dirty though!
All the grime and dust that had been on the RV was now on us, add to that the stickiness of lots of sweat and the overall humidity and you will look something like this…

                                                                 

                                                             

James managed to raise the springs with the brackets  6” over the next days by putting the RV on blocks one site at a time and than proceed to weld on the raisers while it was leaning over precariously.

                                                                    

I did a lot more cleaning and on Friday we hooked up and drove to a nearby garage to have the electricity checked out and tested.
We also had the whole shebang weighed!

                                               
In the afternoon we had it inspected by the State of Texas and the next day we were on our way to the Dallas County Tax Assessor to get it registered after which we would start to head home! At least, that’s what we thought!

Much to our dismay we were told we had to register in the county were we were residents, in our case this meant Polk County since we had our mailing address at Escapees in Livingstone, TX. This meant a detour that would cost us at least a day and many more miles. Not something we liked to have to do in this heat and humidity! 
This came on top of another very frustrating problem we’d encountered a couple of days earlier. For some reason I had forgotten to bring James’ social security card and DMV wouldn’t give him a Texas driver’s license because of that. We tried some different DMV’s on the way south, even went into a Soc. Sec. Office somewhere and obtained a signed copy, but none of the DMVs wanted to do it. Turned out they had changed that policy only a couple of months ago, you now have to bring the original. Just our luck!

The journey home went smoothly, the truck did great in pulling and stopping the RV and James did an awesome job driving the whole 65’ ‘train’ safely and without damage to California and all the way up the mountain to Lake Arrowhead at 5700 feet over a narrow 2-lane road! I contributed by worrying the whole way so we each did our share. I was soooooo happy to be home!

                                                           

JAN-JUNE 2010

JANUARY - JUNE  2010

About 5 or 6 years ago I started thinking about buying an RV and live a couple of months of the year at the coast, a couple in the desert and some in Lake Arrowhead.
Although I loved living in the mountains and Lake Arrowhead was certainly beautiful and much more quiet and peaceful than L.A where I arrived when first coming to America, I missed the Ocean and a break from the snow in the winter at the dessert didn’t seem like a bad idea either.

There would also be the benefit of no mortgage, no property tax, much less insurance, maintenance and, equally attractive on my end, less cleaning! I’d miss my yard, yes, but you have to admit, that’s also a lot of work! It would mean I’d have much more time for reading, be out in nature, exploring and hiking new territory, spinning and knitting, baking and anything else that would tickle my fancy.
It would also mean we could make a start at seeing a little more of America, which we had talked about on more than one occasion but had done very little of.

Well, ...best laid plans…..life…. and all that sort of stuff kind of happened. So about 5 years later, on a New Years eve, we found ourselves still living in Lake Arrowhead, albeit renting and having moved 3 times, but still not traveling very much and the economy down and business slow, when we started talking about this RV-ing concept again.

Maybe the time was now? There was really nothing to tie us down, no children, hey,..we tried, no family close by, no house, our landlady had just informed us she was selling the house so wouldn’t extend our lease and a shaky future with the economy in the pits.
And how often don’t you hear people say they had wished to have done something sooner or when they where younger? Well here we were, young(ish) and still able…

The long and the short of it was that we decided to just do it! I think. Or maybe we gave it a thought for a couple of days but it really wasn’t long thereafter that we started to look for RV’s and figuring out how much we could spent and all that good stuff.

Through the years we had occasionally visited some RV shows and dealers and I had collected a whole truckload of information on brands, types, floor plans, pro’s and con’s,  do’s and don’ts from the numerous websites out there about RV’s and RV-ing. We knew pretty much what we wanted; a large 5th wheel and a big truck to tow it preferably with a lot of storage for James’ tools. For a couple of months I kept a close watch on Craigslist, since we’d like to buy locally and used, just to get a feel for prices and availability. We even called on a few but never really liked the floor plans or the prices.

Than somewhere in April I discovered Copart, an on-line auction site that has ‘lots’ with used cars, trucks, RV’s, boats and motorcycles all over the country. It wasn’t too long after we started looking that James told me he found our RV. Yeah, right! Granted, it was exactly the RV I wanted, a 40’ Hitchhiker Champagne, 10 years old, with a great floor plan.

On the other hand, it had water damage…. !
From what I had read on the ‘boards’ for most people that is a big no-no but James wanted to see if he could fix it and hired an undependable appraiser to go out to the lot (in Fort Worth, Texas, by the way, so far for local) and walk through the RV to give us an idea of how solvable it would be.
It turned out that the inside looked like somebody had started to take it apart and than left the project and thrown everything back in but according to our guy everything seemed to be there and it all looked to be in fine condition. Apart from a panel that had dry rot in the bedroom he couldn’t find anything wrong with it although they had taken all the furniture out. Since we don’t care much for the standard RV furniture that wasn’t a big deal.


So we set everything in motion to be able to bid on it once it would come up for auction a few weeks later and on that morning we sat in front of our computer and waited until ‘our’ RV came up. We knew it would be over in minutes, if at all, and were so nervous I thought I was going to have a heart attack! With a starting bid of $2500 the bidding took of with only 2 people bidding against us, one bailing out at $4000 and the other one…..at $6500! And there it was….it was ours!!!! We couldn’t believe it! What a deal!

                                                           

We had an RV!! It took us hours to calm down, all that adrenalin you know and in the evening we were already looking for trucks, since we had to pull this thing with something off course!
Craigslist came through on that one for us because not much later we found this monster of a truck with all the toolboxes on it a man could need and than some, not to far from us for a very decent price.  We moved quickly before anybody would snatch it up and I knew it was a done deal the minute we pulled up and James started salivating. I muttered something like…waaaayyy too big…but I don’t think he ever heard me…. So that was that.

                                                       

Now we had to go to Texas! Minor detail!

And in the meantime we had to find a hitch for towing, and also make sure the height of the truck bed wouldn’t be a problem, since it looked to be on the high site.
This turned out to be the case, which meant James would have to raise the RV somehow, since it was too low for our truck with hitch. After some surfing on the web and a couple of calls to Nuwa, they provided us with brackets to invert the suspense system.
The hitch we found on Craigslist, and James than proceeded to invent some sort of ‘springs’ for it, to make it more shock-resistant which would make for a ‘smoother’ tow.