RV Travels With Huggy

This weekend spring has finally come to the Pacific northwest. We have overcast with showers this morning but had three straight days of 70+ degree weather over the weekend and on Monday. The long range forecast, even with some clouds and showers, is showing lows that are as high or higher than the high temps we were getting just a week or two ago. Hopefully that La Nina condition in the southern Pacific Ocean that has been causing this has ended.

Last Sunday we went to the nearby town of Sedro Woolley for their Blast From the Past annual festival and its annual car show. I don't know how many cars were there but somewhere over 200 due to the great weather. Of course I do have some photos to share:


This car was one of the first we saw as we walked up to the area where they were parked along a 3 block area of town with all the parking lots and side streets included. This is a bright color and sure was a stand-out in that sunshine.


I don't know if this is a home built travel trailer or not but it is nicely done and looks good behind an early 1950s pickup.


I don't remember seeing this car before. It is from Eastern Washington but very interesting in that it shows a newer side to hot rodding. The engine is a four cylinder unit that is also unknown to me. One valve cover says "Olds Powered," the other says "225 Hp." Does anyone know what this engine is?


Here is a view of that side of the engine. The other side has two dual-barrel Weber carburetors.


I couldn't resist taking this photo! This guy is so big and the little tow car he is pulling is so small. The couple did have a toddler who is more likely the one who rides in this little car, but it makes a different juxtaposition photo.


In addition to a nice color this Ford Mustang has interesting eye lashes. I wonder if they leave them on while driving on the highway?


There were quite a few trucks including this rather unique Chevy one. I don't remember ever seeing a model like this. Pat is checking it out.


Whenever I see a 1937 - 39 Chevy I am interested in it as my first car was a 1938 Chevy two-door sedan. I rebuilt a Oldsmobile V8 engine over the winter of my senior year in high school and installed that engine into my Chevy over the following summer and early fall. It was a fun car and I think is still on the road in the Spokane, WA area although I don't know how much it gets driven as the best mileage I ever got was 12mpg. That wasn't too bad when gas cost 32 cents a gallon but with today's $4 it would be expensive to drive. And it needed Ethel (high octane) gas. Mine was a metallic blue color but the last time I saw it the color had been changed to a yellow that is about like that of the first car in this post. In the photo my favorite lady is walking up to check it out, too.

That was a fun day for us and another couple from our community that went to the show along with us. Of course we ate fair burgers for lunch at a booth there. And for at least the second year in a row, the weather cooperated. There is another local car show in two weeks in Burlington. I hope the weather will be as nice for that one- in fact I hope it will continue to be nice for all summer. This sure was a good weekend. I even got the lawn mowed!

Labels: Festivals, Friends, Pat and I, Photos, RV equipment

We occasionally do get snow here in coastal Washington State in the lowlands, but not very often. This photo was taken in the early afternoon on last New Year's Eve from near our house, looking east toward Cultus Mountain, which is high enough that it does often get snow during the winter. You can see there is still snow even on the tree branches. The photo was taken with a 300mm lens and I did have to remove some power lines from the lower part of the image in Photoshop Elements. I am posting this as the weather forecast says we may get a bit of snow overnight tonight that should change to just rain by tomorrow afternoon. Fun.

Our sunroom contractor did come back this week but didn't make it here until Tuesday. He worked half a day then and got the plywood onto the bottom of the deck framing, then came back all day Wednesday to get the insulation in, the subfloor decking with a vapor barrier on it and the knee wall built. We paid him a deposit on the work at that point and he is due back today. But it is now 15:15 in the afternoon and there is no sign of him yet. I don't think he will be here today. He needs help for the next part which is putting up the metal support structure of the upper part, so maybe he wasn't able to find anyone to help. But I think he should have called me. He was planning to work on it tomorrow and all of next week. We will see what happens tomorrow.


This photo shows the deck with the knee wall. The open part on the far side is where the sliding glass door will go. The window wall at the left side of the photo will be a vertical one with 48 inches of bronzed acrylic plastic between the aluminum studs, from the top of the knee wall to where the roof starts to slope up to the house. The roof will slope up from that height of 6 feet to where it reaches the house at a height from the floor of 8 feet. The roof is to be glazed with insulated polycarbonate plastic. There is a 6ft. wide sliding glass door which goes in the big gap in the knee wall, half of which will open and 3 - 2ft by 2ft awning type windows, plus a regular door located where the window into the house is now that will go into the house.


This shows the special electrical box we installed in the knee wall to provide an outside electrical outlet. It is one designed to work with vinyl siding which is what the house is sheathed with and will also be used on the knee wall. We will have two 20 amp circuits in the room and have a small electric "fireplace" heater to use out there. I don't know if it will be enough- probably not on these real cold nights but we will find out.

The warantee work did get done on the motorhome Wednesday but they didn't want to install the inverter where we wanted it. I have talked with our local Camping World store and they can do it before we leave so still have that to do next week. We are thinking about our travel schedule for the Snowbird trip and I am sure looking forward to being on the road again with the RV.

Labels: Griping, Photos, RV equipment, Sunroom, Weather

I think I will just forget yesterday's Superbowl. At least the Seahawks did get there for their first ever appearence. As M said in a comment, "Maybe next year" (that was for me as she is a Steeler fan.)

I got the rest of the rig ready this morning to leave & got away from Boomerville at 10:22. It was 84 miles from there to my parking place for the next month. I stopped on the way into the Yuma Foothills area at a truck stop to fill the RV gas tank since I think it will cost more in a month when I leave the area. It took 32.8 gal at $2.439/gal. That included quite a few hours of running the generator while boondocking at Quartzsite, using something like 3/4 gal per hour of gas. I then put in 30 gal of reverse osmosis water at 10 cents per gal. Most tap water down here is high in salts & other minerals so doesn't taste good. This reverse osmosis water is almost too soft but it is at least pretty neutral in taste. I won't use much of it while here as I will buy drinking water in gallon jugs and use tap water for washing, toilet flushing, etc. This will be mainly used while boondocking next month while at Life on Wheels in Tucson.

My place here has full hookups - 30 amp electric, water & sewer. I get local TV channels from the antennae and the satellite antennae sees the satellite so all of those channels are available, too. There is a shed with a full bathroom and a clothes washer for the use of myself and the other RV here on the lot. It is just over two miles to the Zodiak Internet Cafe (mochas) & Fry's supermarket, so most important things are pretty close. My cousins, J & S L, live right behind me on the next street over. I have hooked up my laptop and find that a broadband connection apparently is not available here, as it again hooked up on National Access. The faster connection might be available in town. I am actually out in the Yuma Foothills and the main part of Yuma is ten miles or so to the west.

The local news is on & the weather report says the daily high temperatures over the next week will range from 79 to 84 with overnight lows in the upper 40s. That sounds about ideal! My mail was here waiting for me and I think I now have all that I will need to do my income taxes. Ugh, but it has to be done. This is really a tough life style but someone has to do it!

Labels: RV equipment, RVing, Small towns, Weather

(Tuesday, Jan. 17th) The Wilson Trucker/RV Antennae arrived, I picked it up just after 13:00 & told Mohave RV Repair I had it so they could come by anytime after that to install it. They called at 16:20 & told me they were not going to make it here today. Kind of frustrating but what can I do about it? I asked to please have them here in the morning so I can still do something with the day & they said they would try, but no promises.

I did take the antennae out of it's packaging & stand it up in a corner of the RV windshield. It doesn't have the ground plane rods installed but when hooked up to the voice phone it seems to connect with a signal strength of 4-bars. It should work better when up higher on the rig & with the ground plane rods installed. I won't try it with the PC card until it is properly installed but it looks at this first try like the phone at least will work a lot better with the antennae. To celebrate I went to Vito's Pizza tonight for their pizza buffet, a place Annie & I went for dinner once last year.

I will spend tonight in the RV watching TV, reading & holding Huggy. Then we will see what time they get here tomorrow to finish the job & get this thing properly installed. I have figured out where I want it to go on the rig & should not need to buy an extension cord to hook up to it there.

Labels: RV equipment, RVing

Today is the day the new antennae is due about 14:00 this afternoon. The RV people will come install it just after that, as long as it does come. This will be interesting to see how it improves my signal strength. More later on the subject.

I got the desktop computer setup over the weekend so had access to Photoshop & was able to reduce the size of a couple of photos and get them uploaded to Flickr today, so they have been posted just below this update. One is of the sunset Sat night when there were clouds to the west, the other is of Church of the Holy Spirit, where I attended services on Sunday. I also emailed three photos of the Triumph Bonneville motorcycle at the casino display to son M. They are each over 2mb in size so I need to reduce them before I try to upload them. I have the Nikon along now and really will try to get more photos taken and uploaded. At least this is a start!

Yesterday I did go to the north part of town where I was able to connect to the Internet with my wireless card. I have a hard time remembering whether I posted from Pocketmail or on this system, unless there are photos involved. Maybe after that antennae is installed today (how is that for being positive!) I will be able to do it this way from home without having to go to the library or the north part of town. It is almost noon here and I have to keep track of time as I sure don't want to miss out by being too late myself.

Labels: RV equipment, RVing