Author: Easin' Along

Certain that every Easin’ Along reader is breathlessly awaiting an update on Lucy’s progress, I am posting a short update at the end of Day One. 

We arrived at the FamCamp on Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama late on Wednesday night. A drive that should take no more than five hours stretched to seven due to heavy traffic and a nine mile, bumper to bumper backup, caused by an overturned lumber truck on the Interstate.

We arrived after dark and after the campground office closed for the day. Fortunately, we have camped here twice before and know how to find the campground on this very large installation. The campground manager, a very nice man named Rick, had left a note on the office window to let us know to camp in site #32. We pulled in, unhooked Lucy, de-winterize her, and connected the utilities. Within an hour, we were eating a late dinner of chicken salad and artisan bread in front of the television.  Bedtime came early after a long day on the road.

On Thursday, we spent the entire day getting Lucy organized for a three month trip. When we left Knoxville, we loaded boxes, bags, and cartons of food into Lucy and left it on the floor until we reached Montgomery.  Helen (adorable wife) had the task of moving all of it into Lucy’s pantry and cabinets after she cleaned them. She also spent the morning organizing the bathroom cabinets and the bedroom closets–something we did not do before we left. By the end of day one, we could find food in the kitchen and our underwear in the bedroom. Helen really is a master at finding a place for everything and putting everything in its place.

My job was to install a handle on the screen door, and activate Dish Satellite TV. The screen door handle was no problem, but the Dish TV thing took a while. There are three satellite connection points on Lucy and I tried all of them…three times.  Finally, I placed a call to Grand Design, Lucy’s manufacturer, and a customer service representative helped me find the connection I needed, located in a cabinet above the television. Once the connections were completed, I had to call the Dish people (in the Philippines) to activate the receiver. The whole process made me wish for the days when we had only three channels and rabbit ears on top of the tv set. Ultimately, I got it done in time to watch an old Perry Mason on MeTV. Life is good.

Once we completed our projects, Helen decided we needed some exercise, so we took a walk around a small lake near our campsite. The hike probably was a mile in length and felt good.  Temperatures are near seventy degrees here and the Azaleas are just coming out.  Helen found one with blooms and wanted to pick a few, but I finally managed to talk her out of it.  The bush with the new blossoms are pictured above. Pictured below is the lake.  The leaves are not yet out on the trees but it won’t be long and it feels like spring is on top of us here. Will it be hot in Arizona?

That’s about it from Montgomery.  Tomorrow (Friday) we drive to Biloxi, MS for a three day stay then on to LaFayette, LA. We’ll have another update soon.  Thanks for Easin’ Along with us.

 

If you want to accelerate the activity in your life, plan a three-month trip.  We’ve done a fair amount of extended travel, but never more than five weeks.  We started planning this trip about nine months ago, and I thought we would be ready, but the “to do” list keeps growing and the pace of life has picked up considerably.

Fortunately, we downsized a few years ago and now live in a home that we can leave and have little to worry about.  The grass will get cut and our great neighbors will alert us if anything looks out of sorts.  We signed up for a mail forwarding service and can check that off the list. Cable TV, landline phone, and internet service are cancelled, and we will see what we want to do about that when we return.  So far, I love Dish TV and will use it in Lucy during the trip. I will probably renew internet, but the landline phone is history. Our taxes were filed earlier than I can ever remember.

Helen (adorable wife and social animal) finally realized that she will have only me for conversation for three months and has spent the past week in front of every warm and breathing body she can find to talk to.  I expect that to continue right up to the moment of departure. She loves her friends and certain to miss them.  I predict she will be on the phone a lot.  I will miss our church and our gifted minister, but our Sunday services are online, and we can watch them while we travel.

As of today, we still have one more load of laundry to do, one more trip for a few groceries, and a jug or two of adult beverages to buy. This weekend we plan to hug some friends, and family, and entertain a few neighbors before Lucy is hooked up to Bert. Once all of that is complete, Lucy heads westward. To say we’re excited is an understatement.

With internet cancelled and Wi-Fi spotty at times, I don’t know exactly when we will have Easin’ Along up and online again.  Hopefully soon.  In the meantime, I’ll be taking notes and pictures and plan to publish something by the time we reach Biloxi, Mississippi, even if it is short.

Please come back, this should be a fun journey and we look forward to sharing the discoveries we make along the way. Until next time…we’re Easin’ Along.

Last week I outlined a few of the necessary steps required in the early phase of planning an extended RV trip. Most of those steps involve logistical matters like route planning, reservations, distances traveled per day, as well as a few items on the home front like mail forwarding and canceling phone and internet services. My purpose was to highlight some of the tools we use in this effort. This week, I thought I would share the method I use to organize that information and point out some of the resources we use to enhance our travel experience once we get rolling.

Spreadsheet

In the previous post, I mentioned that we use RV Trip Wizard and MilitaryLiving.com to plan a route and to locate campgrounds approximately 250 miles apart along that route. At the beginning of this process, I create an Excel spreadsheet and list the preferred campground stops along that route.  I type in the phone numbers of each campground, the desired reservation dates, and the distance from the previous stop. Once I complete that list, I begin making phone calls to secure a reservations.  If I am successful, I enter the confirmation number in the spreadsheet and other pertinent data like costs and site number (if known).

More often than not, Military campgrounds will not accept reservations for retired personnel until 30 days or less from the desired date to give active duty service members priority, a policy I agree with completely. Therefore, the spreadsheet is always a work in progress and is revised often throughout the planning stage. If the military campgrounds are full, we try to find a commercial campground or state park close by, but a route change may be necessary at times, requiring more revisions.

Once the spreadsheet is at or near completion, I place a copy in our trip binder and give copies to family members so they can keep up with us. A spreadsheet can be a bit time-consuming, but it is valuable information.  I store a copy on my phone in the Dropbox app and refer to it often when looking up the arrival dates for various destinations.

Trip Binder

On our first retirement trip up the East Coast, I compiled a binder with tabs for each overnight stop along the way. A trip binder is now a part of every trip we take. Within each tabbed section, I place a print copy of the reservation confirmation along with other information like magazine articles, newspaper clippings, etc., that I gather about tourist sites or events like festivals or concerts in each area. I also place notes or emails from friends if they have visited the area and what they recommend for us to see and do (and eat).  Finally, I add a few sheets of loose-leaf notebook paper at each tab to write down information about our visit to share with friends or Easin’ Along readers in blog posts. The spreadsheet mentioned above is usually the first tab. I have all of the binders for past trips…mostly to re-live some of the memories.

Tour Books and Reference Material

Helen (adorable wife) has the job of planning the activities at each stop.  She brings me along to drive, cook, and wash dishes. There are a lot of resources out there for information about cities and restaurants anywhere in the country and we use a lot of them like Trip Advisor and Fodor’s.  Sometimes, a Google search will give us more than we can take in, but that is a good a place as any to start. Trailer Life Magazine does a great job of pointing out information to RVers from other RVers about travel to certain destinations. As soon as our spreadsheet is nailed down, Helen pays a visit to the local AAA office to pick up the latest Tour Books for each region along our route. These travel guides are updated often and are an excellent resource for restaurants, “must-see” attractions, and historical information about a particular city or town. She brought home a haul for our next trip.

RV Manuals and Checklists

Ok, we’re on the road and the awning gets stuck or a light on the refrigerator starts blinking—now what? When we purchased Lucy, the RV dealer gave us a binder filled with the manuals for all of the appliances, warranties, and other moving parts.  I used that binder to organize, as well as add, additional information on maintenance procedures for RV equipment like the generator, fifth-wheel hitch, and portable gas grill.  I also inserted checklists for critical procedures like hooking and unhooking the trailer and a checklist for preparing the trailer before departing for the next stop.  The owners manual has a section that outlines the hookup procedures, but I found that some of the necessary steps were either omitted or not clear enough for a novice like me and I created my own. I keep a copy of the checklist in the RV reference manual stored in Lucy and a laminated copy near the RV control panel. We secure the departure checklist to the refrigerator with a magnet.

Let’s Roll

The plans and the preparations are wrapped up and we’re ready to roll. Even though we love it here, we’re eager to move on to someplace a little drier and bit warmer for a few months.  We’ve had more rain in Tennessee this winter than we’ve had in years. Two weeks to go and we’ll be Easin’ Along once again. I hope you’ll stay in touch…this trip should be a lot of fun.