On Monday we had some good news about progress being made on the setup being built for our trip to New England in July. My brother is installing a 30amp plug and waste hookup on the house so that we can spend some time there. He was able to show us his progress through a video call and we got to see our family a little too. We were hoping to be set up for boondocking before this trip but deciding which equipment to go with and where to put it is proving difficult. For now we must stay where there is at least power to run the AC, I never thought I'd be uttering those words. I did not grow up with AC or central air but living in Texas has made it a necessity. We are hoping for mild weather on the drive up so that we can stay at Harvest Hosts and not need the AC. We became members of Harvest Hosts when we bought our current RV but have not had the chance to use them yet due to Covid-19.
Harvest Hosts are usually vineyards, museums, golf courses, breweries, farms and other sites of interest who sign up to be part of the network of places to stay where you don't pay a nightly fee and don't have hookups. You are asked to visit the business and spend around $20 as a thank you to show your appreciation for their hospitality and support for their small business. The map image is all the hosts available, some places have so many that you can even see all the dots until you zoom in! If you'd like to check them out, we have a referral link. Disclaimer: If you sign up, we get a small reward on our membership. http://harvesthosts.refr.cc/lauriemrdjan
Monday also had some bad news, we found the mold we'd been dreading under our mattress. We have been struggling with high humidity because it has been so rainy lately. We were worried that if we couldn't get it under control that we would get mold, or mushrooms since we were getting 80% humidity nightly for weeks! Our current plan is to fight the mold with lysol and if we can't win the battle quickly, we don't want to get sick, then we will need a new mattress and we will get a moisture barrier that was recommended on some of the Facebook RV groups.
Tuesday was a late shift day and I had a productive morning. I vacuumed and sprayed the flea and tick spray on the carpeted areas to make sure that we don't have to fight mold and bugs. The puppies and I went for a walk and when we got back I worked on the blog. After work Dom finished reinforcing the RV bumper. Now we feel safe to carry the bikes on the bumper when we travel. He used a system with two brackets that screw to the frame to help it distribute the weight and be more sturdy.
Midway through the week we got to walk the puppies with our friends and their dog after work. We've been having to wait till around 7pm before walking the dogs due to the daily heat we've been having. It has been in the upper 90s all week and 80s overnight. We hadn't been sleeping well so we had a movie night to relax.
Thursday we received a sticker from The Daydreamer Hustle and since we had their address now, we were able to send them our sticker. Swapping stickers is a fun way to learn about other RVers and have them learn about you. It is interesting to see how different people design their logo and stickers. Adventures with Tucknae, who we also follow on Instagram, has a great blog post about sticker swapping that explains the hows, whys, and design aspects, you can read it here.
Friday I picked up some overtime at work while Dom went to pick up the Jeep from some service that we wrote into the purchase contract. We had the windshield replaced and some other small items addressed. They were unable to get to replacing the broken bumper clips and the shin airbag panel that is hanging a little, likely another broken clip. We installed a second back up camera on the RV since the first one didn't work. This one also didn't work so we decided to troubleshoot to find where the problem was. We hooked up the camera to the 12V car battery and the camera worked, now we knew it was the wiring in the RV. Bummer, we were hoping not to have to mess with wires inside the RV. We removed the middle marker light from the top center of the RV to see if we could find the wires we needed and to see if they were properly attached. We were unable to figure it out so we put it back together and left it for the night. The wind was kicking up and the dark sky told us that it was time to run for cover. Friday night was a flooding rain storm. The rain was so intense that we were concerned about the little creek in the campground flooding. Luckily there was not much fast wind and no hail. But, rain like that meant that there was no chance that we would be able to go riding this weekend.
Saturday, since we couldn't go riding, we packed up the RV and took it to get weighed again. We've been living in it for over 3 months and we've reinforced the bumper and added the bikes to the back of the RV as well as taken some stuff out and brought new stuff in and we wanted to see where we stood with total weight. Overall, with changing the tow vehicle and all the moving around inside and out that we've done, we gained about 757lb. Once we got home, there was more rain on the horizon so I cleaned out the pantry to get rid of anything we were not eating and I cleaned out the dinette of anything that we don't need and aren't using. We still want to go through the rest of the camper to do the same kind of reducing prior to our trip. We would like to do this about every 3-6 months to keep from having things that we don't need.
Sunday we got more rain all morning. We decided to watch a movie after breakfast and wait out the rain. Once the rain stopped and the sun came out, we were able to turn our weight distribution hitch upside-down to get the RV more level while traveling. Our Jeep has an auto-height adjustment using air bags so we needed to adjust the hitch height down another inch. I also ran some errands, laundry and groceries while Dom stayed back to go through the pass-thru storage. He pulled everything out and went through each item to be sure that we are only carrying what we need. You can see the post about it on Instagram. It was a busy day at the end of a busy but good week.
See you here next week!
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