September 21, 2014 Lorraine’s report
Hello and thanks for stopping by. It has been a nice, easy week again for us. I love just sleeping until I wake up, get up, go on the computer and just take it easy in the morning.
Well, tomorrow is our 42nd anniversary. Wow, to me that is pretty amazing. It has been a whole lot of fun being with Chuck all these years. Who knew it would be so good for us to be out on the road. We have made many friends, gone places I didn’t think would be possible and have done lots. We have come far! We still don’t know where we will end up, but when we do, we will have each other. Thanks Chuck for all you have given for us!!
So I love being here by my daughter and grand daughter. They are a whole lot of fun. Even if we just hang out and do normal things. And I love my son, Rick and Donna. We have had wonderful visits with them. What fun we have had with each of them. Pretty incredible to us.
So Chuck wrote about our week. Not sure where we will be leaving to, but it should be fun. Hope everyone has a wonderful week..That’s it for me…
Hugs,
Lorraine
9/21/14 Chuck’s report
Yep, we’re back near Susy’s, we were pretty close so got an unplanned extra week here.
First, I want to tell Lorraine “Happy Anniversary!”. Tomorrow is our 42nd year together, last year we were in New York state and celebrated by going on a cruise on Lake George. This year we’ll just celebrate with Susy and Katie and go out to dinner someplace. But it has been a great 42 years, hope we have many more together.
We left Santa Maria last Monday and headed up here. We hadn’t stopped to fuel up since we left Reno and we were around 1/4 tank, lower than I like to get it for a couple of reasons. One is sticker shock, when we get more than 100 gallons, it makes for a big bill. Two, I don’t like letting the tank get that low and possibly stirring/picking up sludge from the bottom of the tank. And I don’t like searching for diesel when I have to buy, with a large tank we can usually pick and choose when and where we stop for fuel. We have purposely not bought fuel in a state we knew had high prices if we were just traveling through. That is one benefit of having a large (150 gal) tank.
I seemed to remember a truck stop in Gilroy, right on our route so we decided to trust my memory and go there. I let out a big Whew when we found it, my memory wasn’t playing tricks on me. And the price for diesel was the cheapest we’ve seen in a couple weeks, $3.73/gal. Not that it’s a good price just lower than we’ve seen lately.
And they had a truck/RV wash there too so I checked them out. They have three guys that use high pressure washers, buckets and brushes. Their way of washing was a bit backwards I thought, they washed the sides, front, back then did the roof. Of course, they had to spray all the previously washed areas after they washed the roof. I usually do the roof first when I do it. But whatever, it was clean and dried of nicely after we left, of course with some water spots from the hard water but much better. And the price wasn’t that awful bad, $1.50/foot. They weren’t too busy when we got there but there was a waiting lineup when we left, guess we got there at the right time.
We got our normal spot here at the Elks, got set up and drove over to pick Katie up from school. She was sure pleased to see Nana. Later Susy came by and we had hamburgers for dinner. We paid for a week and the host told me they have a new guy in the lodge in charge of the RV area and he is making them stick to the two week max stay here. We only plan on staying for a week so that wasn’t an issue but we will need to add that to our plans when we come back for the holidays later this year.
Tuesday we made a much needed trip to Wal-Mart for supplies and such before we picked up Katie. Lorraine had started a pork roast in the slow cooker and we took that over to Susy’s house for dinner. After dinner we walked a couple of blocks to a Baskin/Robbins Ice Cream shop for desert.
Wednesday morning I decided to tackle the front shade problem we have been dealing with. We were driving down here when the day shade came un-raveling (is that a real word?) down. I checked it out and the mounting bracket was bent just enough to allow the shade to come out and unroll. These are electric motor driven and the wires wound up as the shade rolled, causing the wires to roll up tight. When I worked on it a couple weeks ago, I found the motor was bad, figured it pulled the wires out of the motor inside the roller when they rolled up tight. I needed to order a new motor and have it sent me somewhere along our route. So knowing we would be here for a week, I ordered the motor and had it shipped to Susy’s house.
I had to remove the shades on the driver’s side window and remove the pillar trim covering all the wires between the windshield and driver’s side window. When I was working on it last time, I put in wiring disconnects so I didn’t have to cut wires every time I worked on them. This time, when I disconnected the final connection, I found it wasn’t made up very well so I tried a new connection just in case and guess what, the motor was good, the only problem was that bad connection I made when I put everything back together last time. So I didn’t have to drop the windshield shades after all, just put the new connector on, put the trim piece and the driver’s side shades back in place. All in all, it was about an hour’s job and I can return the pricy motor back to the manufacture. And its really nice to be able to use the shads as normal.
Later we made a Costco run before we picked up Katie. They had a welcome back to school program that night so Lorraine, Susy and Katie headed out to attend that. I elected to stay home, didn’t think they really needed me there.
Thursday we only ventured out to pick up Katie from school. Lorraine tried a new receipt for Hawaiian chicken in the slow cooker. Susy came by after work and had dinner with us before they headed to her house.
Friday we hung around home all day once again. I used a waterless cleaner to clean the water spots from the wash job off the motorhome, at least as high as I could reach without getting out/using our ladder. Joe, I was thinking about you as I used the Solution, it works just fine. I still have some left but it’s going fast, ha.
Katie had a dentist appointment so Mark picked her up and kept her the rest of the day, they were planning on going to an A’s baseball game on Saturday. So when Susy came by, we just had hot dogs for dinner, easy.
Saturday we headed over to Susy’s house then went to the San Jose swap meet. This is a big swap meet, must be a thousand different vendors. It was warm, in the low 80s, so we didn’t manage to walk the whole thing but did make a good effort. We found a couple of items we wanted before we made our last stop at the produce section. There is always lots of vendors in this covered section, some have better produce than others and the prices vary too so we checked out a number of them. We ended up with a watermelon, two cantaloupes, two honeydews, three pineapples, lots of nectarines, (I like the white kind best), peaches, plums, oranges and grapes. Whew, what a haul of good stuff but it was a big load to carry back to the car. Guess we’ll be eating lots of produce this week, ya think.
Katie was having a sleep over with a friend of hers at Susy’s house after we got back. We had pizzas for dinner, the gals seem to like that. We hung around until the girls were tired out enough to want to go to bed before we left. After we got back, I cut the watermelon and one honeydew up, put them in plastic containers and put them in the fridge. Once again, I’m glad we replaced the Norcold fridge that came with our coach with a residential one, larger and safer as it doesn’t use propane. And it keeps a better, lower temperature too.
The weather has been really nice this past week. We have morning clouds that usually clear up by 10 and bright, clear, sunny skies the rest of the day. The temperatures have been getting into the 80s most days but there is a usually a slight breeze in the afternoon to keep things bearable. The area is really dry and they could use some rain for sure. Too bad the hurricane that hit Mexico last week didn’t come this way, instead of heading into the Southwest instead. They have had two big rain storms over there in the past two weeks and didn’t need the second one as the first one caused lots of flooding just by itself. But all the same, it is nice to enjoy this fine weather.
We still aren’t sure where we will head to when we leave here. We were planning on leaving tomorrow but that’s our 42nd wedding anniversary so we decided to stay here at least one or two more days, leaving here Tuesday or Wednesday instead. We are thinking about heading to the Elks at Santa Cruz for a couple of days, we’ve been there before but never stayed overnight. I imagine it’s going to be lots slower and less crowded after Labor Day and now that school’s back in session.
I just checked and we didn’t use our camera this week. I know Lorraine took a few pictures using her phone but don’t want to go through to check for some to add here so guess that’s all for now.
Thanks Chuck
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