We have been using our time to get more settled in, setting up our canopy, installing lights, Jan's been planting, putting down mulch, etc. And we even got the motorhome all washed for the winter. But, of course we still have to eat out, visit with friends, have happy hours together and share meals. We enjoyed a lunch out with Debbie, Harold, and Tom.
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| A nice day and a nice lunch Jan, Moi, Tom, Harold, and Debbie |
We had a nice lunch out with old friends, Bruce and Cathie, no I was remiss and don't have any pics. Cathie brought up an interesting point though, which almost made me spit out my lunch. She brought to my attention that I have many times in my blog referred to "solving the world's problems", and very obviously I was certainly not accomplishing that! So in the future I will do my best to say, "we are trying to solve the world's problems" :-)
Jan and I wanted a dose of sushi so we went to a nearby place and had a delicious lunch.
Jan has been working on even more puzzles, Ray has been very generous loaning them to her.
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| A tough one |
We have been settling in for the most part as I said, but we had one huge thing on our list which is now complete! We have finally gotten rid of our storage unit that we have had since I retired the first time in 2004. After 3 increases in rent this last year by the new owners, we finally asked our son Jason and Joanne if they could give us a small corner in their basement and they said, Yes! Just so you know the basement in question is in Buffalo, NY, a mere 1350 miles from here. So Jan and I in our excitement of getting rid of the storage unit decided to rent a Uhaul trailer, load it up and drive it north, even stopping once each way, which we thought certainly reasonable:-) We picked up the trailer and 3 hours later we had it all loaded.
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| Making headway |
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| Trailer almost full |
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| Success! Just a bit of trash and Goodwill to go |
Off we went at 0430am on our first stage of 840 miles pulling the trailer. We desperately wanted to beat sunset so we could deal with parking the truck and trailer. One surprise we had is our fairly fuel efficient truck with a 33 gallon tank which we rarely fill more than every 2 weeks only got 9.5 mpg with the trailer, we lost count as to how many fuel stops we made, and really don't want to know either:-)
We got to our first overnight essentially after dark after 13 1/2 hours on the road, and had a heck of a time getting the trailer where we felt it could sit overnight, after 30 minutes of messing around. But we had a cute little 200 year old log cabin to spend the night in.
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| Looks idyllic, and it was, but not for very long....it was about 41 degrees |
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| We had moved the well deserved drinks inside by the fire by now:-) |
And Jan even brought dinner so we didn't need to go out.
It was a nice evening, and we were back on the road at 0500am to get to Jason and Joanne's at a reasonable hour, only 500 miles this day. No problems and we arrived by sunset to just a bit of snow on the ground and 28 degrees. We enjoyed a delicious dinner, a quick visit, and we were in bed by 8pm.
We unloaded the trailer the next day, I know it killed me, and I think it wounded Jason, but we got it done, and fairly situated in its new home, returned the trailer, ran a couple errands, went out for a sushi lunch, and Jason prepared a superb prime rib for our pseudo Christmas dinner. Joe and Donna, Joanne's parents came over, so we got a nice visit with them and of course enjoyed Jax's company as well. To Jason and Joanne, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!!
A very quick visit though, and Jan and I were back in the truck at 0430am for our 750 mile day. It was very nice not to have to stop for gas very often again since we were back up to our normal 18-19 mpg. In fact we were treated to one of the most amazing sunrises we have ever seen, the atmospheric conditions must have been perfect. The picture can't truly do it justice and show just how incredibly bright this was!
But the weather started to deteriorate and then we hit awful traffic and rain in Charlotte and didn't arrive at our hotel until 530pm.
We stopped for some take-out wings for dinner on our way in, and were very happy we did cause it was really raining by then.
One more day to go, off at 0530am, first stop Waffle House for our fuel in the pouring rain and fog.
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| Pretty whipped by now:-) |
It was a really long last day, 590 miles, and it rained hard most of it, had tons of traffic, and then the icing on the cake as we finally arrive in Sarasota, I-75 is stopped, 15 miles to go! We detoured but it seemed endless. But wonderfully Tom provided a delicious dinner, and we were both sound asleep by 8pm.....
Also I should mention that the day before we were leaving, we had Debbie and Harold over for drinks and dinner, since they were returning home for the holidays, and as we are sitting there chatting, we hear water running...........out of the AquaHot again........yes, the one I had just fixed! So having no time to deal with it, I tried to tighten the already loose fittings, to buy time, we still had to get and load the trailer, we were planning to turn the water off while we were gone anyway, so we decided we would fix it once and for all when we got back.
So our go-to AquaHot tech, Rudy had suggested getting braided stainless steel faucet connection hoses and replacing the pex lines with those, and that is what we set out to do. Lowes had a good selection, so we picked out a bunch and found we could easily make it work, and returned the others. So now I am confident the AquaHot leak is FIXED.
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| The fittings I replaced with the offending washers |
A much better solution. Next posts will be a recap and a statistical breakdown of our year, and if I'm a little late.....
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
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