December 24th-28th, 2020 - Christmas Season

There isn't much room in a fifth wheel for a Christmas Tree or for lots of Christmas decorations. Kelly did a paint by number of Santa before we left home so we brought it along and hung it on the back window over the couch with some bell decorations hanging from the cabinet handles nearby.  Here is a picture.

A couple of years ago my sister, Renee, gave us a ceramic camper with a Christmas tree on top that twinkles. We put it on the couch under Santa for our Christmas Tree. Here is a picture.

Kelly's birthday wsas on December 23rd. As the week progressed birthday and Christmas presents began arriving from FedEx, UPS, and USPS. With little space to put them we piled them on the couch. Here is a picture.

Christmas Day we Zoomed with the kids as we all opened our presents. It was a nice way to be in touch with each other during this Covid period.

Our thirteen year old grandson, Kellen, wanted a new skate board for Christmas. We sent him the money so he could pick out what he wanted. They went to a skate board store in Stockton on the 26th and he picked one out. Here he is proudly displaying it for a picture outside the shop.

The next day he was riding it around the neighborhood and fell off resulting in a broken arm.  Here he is in a sling until they decide next week if he needs a cast. Fortunately it is not a bad break. War wounds of skate boarders. At least it is his left arm so he can still use his new gaming mouse with his right hand.

Several years ago I replaced a florescent light in the kitchen area of Marge with two LED work lights. I made a wooden box to mount the lights in and for mounting it to the ceiling.  Here is a picture.

I went to all of the trouble to make a custom box for these lights because they are work lights which I assumed would be tough and last a long time. WRONG. With probably less than 200 hours on them, they are starting to go out.  Here is a picture with one already having three of five lights out. So much for LEDs lasting 20,000 hours. What a joke.

Now the question becomes: "Should I buy a replacement light that fits my custom made wooden fixture or should I start over with a different kind of light that may be more dependable?" I haven't decided yet. I can't do anything until I get home where I have the proper tools for any replacement or modification. It just ticks me off that this stuff is so crappy no matter what price you pay. 

More RVers are beginning to arrive here now that it is after Christmas, even more will arrive after the 1st. I don't believe any of the Canadians will make it down due to the Covid restrictions which is keeping them from crossing the border.  We have no New Years plans other than a nice meal. Normally there is a really nice New Years Party here at the park but all of that has been cancelled this year. Hopefully next year will be a completely different situation for all of us.

Happy New Year!!!!!

December 15-16th, 2020 - Christmas Lights and Another RV Project

Tuesday I began working on removing the burgundy decals on Marge because they are faded and cracked. They make the rig look old. In just two hours I removed all of the decals on the driver side. I heated them up a little and peeled back a corner. Once I got my fingers on the corner they decals pulled off in various pieces with little effort. I was pumped. This was proving much easier than removing the gold decals a few years back. I then removed all the glue residue with a product I bought online that is awesome.  Here is a picture of the driver side with arrows pointing to where the burgundy decals were that I removed.

Last night we drove to a subdivision about seven miles away that puts on a massive Christmas light show. Virtually every house in the subdivision is lit up with thousands of lights. They started doing this 28 years ago to honor a good neighbor who needed hospice care. There is no charge to drive through, they just ask for a donation to the hospice. In that 28 year period of time they have raised over $970,000. I'm sure this year will put them over a million. What a tribute to a friend. It is quite a display and took 45 minutes to wind through the subdivision. So much to see. Here are a couple of pictures while on the move.

Each house was different and better than the next. A fun evening.

Yesterday I decided to tackle taking the burgundy decals off the passenger side of Marge. This side looked worse than the driver's side because it faces the sun at home all the time. Here are two before pictures.

You can only appreciate how bad the decals look with a couple of close up pictures. Here are two.

Removing the decals leaves a "shadow" because the gelcoat underneath is bright and shiny like new while the surrounding area is dulled and a little yellowed from fourteen years of weather. The "shadow" left behind is much less offensive to me than the old decals.

Upon starting the passenger side I quickly found that these decals were not going to peel off like they did on the other side. I did a section of about two feel in length with the heat gun and plastic scraper. It took well over two hours because the decal only came off an eighth inch at a time. A horribly slow process and painful on my feet up on the ladder. There had to be a better way.

I had brought along a decal eraser which is a round rubber wheel that chucks into a drill. It is used by autobody men to take decals, pinstriping, etc. off. I had it a long time but never used it because I was afraid the spinning might burn the gelcoat surface under the decal. It is not as tough and hard as automotive paint. After two hours with the heat gun and scraper I decided to give the rubber wheel a try. It worked fantastically but was a little slow. because the wheel is only a half inch wide and these decals are over a foot wide in some places and up to ten feet long. An added benefit of the wheel though was that when I was finished with the wheel there was very little glue residue remaining to be removed with solvent. 

Just as I finished it started raining. Here is a picture of the final result. The first picture has arrows pointing to the "shadow" from where I took off the gold decals a few years ago. 

The next picture has arrows pointing to the the "shadow" for the areas of the burgundy decals I removed yesterday. It stretched from the end of the slide out to the back cap. 

I am glad this project is completed. It's been bugging me for a while but it was not something to do in the hot sun in Missouri if I could avoid it. Nothing makes an RV look dated more than old. faded, cracked decals. The only decals left on Marge are the black decals on the bottom and the "Carriage" logo on each side. They are in good shape so I will leave them alone for now.

As I said above, just as I finished working the rain started. It rained all afternoon and into the evening. At one point Kelly's phone alerted. She was on a Zoom call and ignored it thinking it was a "silver alert", i.e. an old fart missing. As it turned out it was a tornado warning and one touched down and did some damage in an industrial area about two miles from us. From now on we are going to pay more attention to such warnings. The park does have a large block building we can go in an emergency and a large block clubhouse.  Let's hope we never have to go there. We have a Midland weather alert scanner but for whatever reason it won't work. Figures.

    

December 10-12, 2020 - New Palm Tree and Golf Cart Parade

Kelly ordered a new palm tree because our old one is now only lighting partially. I have no idea how old it is. It was pulled out of the dumpster about four years ago and given to us by a neighbor. Here is a picture of the new one, which is on the right. It is a totally different style than most on the street but is a nice touch with white lights in the greenery. I ordered a set of new green lights to fix the old one on the left just for the hell of it. It's worth spending $10.00 bucks on it.

At 6 pm Thursday night the park had a golf cart parade. Decorated golf carts and bikes wind through the park after dark lit up and Christmas music playing. We could just sit at our site with a cordial and watch it go by. People did a great job decorating their carts. The pictures in the dark as they drove by didn't come out but here are a couple as they lined up to begin.

Due to Covid and many residents not coming down to Florida it was a smaller parade than in years past.

Yesterday was an equipment upgrade day. We used Kelly's phone as a hotspot for the internet for a few days but it became pretty obvious that is is not adequate. Her hotspot is "unlimited" but due to the usage they notified her they were throttling her down. So much for "unlimited". We made a trip a half mile away to the Spectrum store and got a modem and router. I thought about bringing our router from home but didn't. I would have saved $5.00 per month. I'll bring it next year.  Here is a picture of the modem and router set up on the couch end table with the cable running through the seal in the slideout.  It is totally out of the way which is important in our small quarters.

The internet speed is great and there is good coverage outside the RV as well. 

We next turned to the update of our Dish receiver. The one we purchased down here about five years ago, with the addition of an external hard drive, would allow us to record shows but we couldn't record while watching. Kelly didn't like this shortcoming (She's used to the "Hopper" at home). Additionally the old receiver could not access the internet so we couldn't watch Netflix. Kelly found a half-price receiver deal so we ordered a new "Wally" receiver. It allows us to record and watch at the same time as well as get the internet. Here is a picture of it installed above the TV.

While we can now get the internet with the Wally, they didn't tell us that you have to buy a USB antenna for it to work with the router. No one mentioned that ever! Yesterday we ordered the antenna from Dish for $30.00 with shipping. Hopefully this will make everything work when it arrives. What a pain.

Our last technology project of the day was setting the Facebook Portal to the correct time zone and city for weather. When we got here it did not correct for the change in time zone and city. I got online and it said I had to do a factory reset. We did that but by doing so lost all of the contacts in "Messenger" so we have to put them all back in or call people on "WhatsApp". The kids are on "WhatsApp" but none of our friends.

We reset the time and city manually. The Portal is a nice piece of equipment for video calls. It has a camera that follows you around as you talk on a video call. It is much nicer than having to hold the phone for video calls. (Thanks to daughter Annie, who works at Facebook, for buying it for us). If you are on Facebook and do video calls with friends and kids and grandkids I strongly recommend you get one for about $120.00.

Kelly is making cookies today for the ladies "Red Hat" luncheon on Monday. Each lady is supposed to make cookies and put a few in a dozen sandwich bags to exchange with others. Their lunch will be a box lunch so no contact with anybody.  She enjoys the Red Hat Lady activities. Later on they are having a pulled pork dinner fundraiser and Kelly volunteered me to be a gopher picking up cooked pulled pork from various "cookers" around the park and bringing it to the clubhouse where they will make up box dinners for people to pick up outside. Everyone is being really cautious with Covid, which is good and necessary.

Up to 75 degrees and sunny today. Nice! We can't wait for the rest of our friends to arrive over the next few weeks.

 

December 7, 2020 - Doctor Visit, Hose Repair, and Signs Up

The day before we left home my left eye started hurting and was all red. All the way down it bothered me. We got here late Tuesday so on Wednesday morning I went to an Urgent Care to get it looked at.  This was my first urgent care visit ever and I found it a strange system. Walk-ins were welcome so I arrived at opening time of 8:30 a.m. I was told to check in using the kiosk. I did that and was then told my appointment was in four and a half hours. I voiced my incredulity at that so the nurse talked to the nurse practitioner and she said if I came back in 30-45 minutes they would squeeze me in between vaccinations. She gave me some anti-biotic cream to put in four times a day. I put it in and over the weekend it still wasn't any better so I decided to find an ophthalmologist. I found one and they got me in at 9:30 this morning. He said it wasn't infected but the cornea was all irritated. He gave me drops to put in every two hours and a salve at night. He wants to see me back in a month so he can dialate the eye. He was concerned about three bumps on the lower eyelid of that eye that I have had for about a year. He said I needed to see a specialist to see if it needed to be biopsied for skin cancer. I have an appointment in four weeks for that as well.

When I got back to the RV the package had been delivered with a new hose coupler. Here is a picture of the old coupler after I took it off. It was plastic. I'm not crazy about plastic coupler because they tend to crack over time.

I installed the new (brass) coupler and water squirted all the way across the lot to the camper next door. I turned off the water and found that the hose was cracked.  Here is a picture after I cut the bad part off.

It is easy to see the crack which I didn't even look for when installing the new coupler. I cut off this piece and reinstalled the hose. Here is a picture of the completed project with no leaks.

This should be a good repair for several years. This hose connects the RV to the water filter and water pressure regulator. We really need a water pressure regulator here because the water pressure at the spigot is insane.

A project yesterday was to hang all of our signs. We have several that go on the fifth wheel, including a new one I just got for a Jack Horner prize at Thanksgiving. (It is on the bottom.) Here is a picture.

The top sign my dad used when he went camping. When he died in 1984 I inherited it. It didn't seem fair to only have my name out there so I made the second one for Kelly. 

This year we have a separate sign I made to set out that states that masks and distancing are required at our campsite. It has a decal on each side that I put on a painted black board. Here is a picture.

It rained all night and it doesn't appear that the glue on the decal is fairing well with water. We will see how long it lasts. I may have to take it down when it rains - a pain but the sign is important.  Everywhere I have gone down here people wear masks. It is very good to see that. 

We ordered some groceries online at Publix and picked them up and we will continue to do that to stay away from people. They charge $4.00 for the service but it well worth it. Aldi does it as well.

Kelly got a new paint by number today and is already busy working on it while she listens to music.

We have been using Kelly's hotspot for internet and it has worked quite well but today she was notified that, although it is unlimited, at 6 more gig they are going to throttle her back. So much for unlimited. So I'm doing this blog from the campground clubhouse where the internet is fast and free. It's good exercise for me to ride my bike up here anyway.

The sun has come out and it is 63 degrees, light jack weather - nice.

December 4, 2020 - All Setup for Christmas

Yesterday was a sunny, warm and thus busy day. We laid down the mats which decrease the amount of sand we track into Marge. They also make it easier to blow off the leaves as they fall over the next month or so.  We also set up the Dish satellite. I always have a terrible time getting the dish pointed correctly. I absolutely hate this project every year but I am too cheap to buy an automatic dish. Two neighbors from across the street, John and Jack, were a great help. Once the dish is pointed correctly we have to call Dish Network and have them move the service to Florida (for an extra $7.00 per month) and reactivate the receiver. Here is a picture of our site with the mats down and dish installed.

The tan mat I pulled out of the dumpster here two years ago at the end of the season. There is nothing wrong with it, it is just a little stained so someone threw it away. The black mat in back is a mesh mat I bought at Harbor Freight two years ago. It is thin but works fine. The little blue mat is the one we usually have under the steps but since we have a concrete patio we don't need it there so I placed it forward.  You can see the sandy soil with grass sprouts around. 

We didn't bring the little refrigerator this year but we do have the portable icemaker set up on a table under the fifth wheel to keep it out of the rain. I need to clean it out before plugging it in. One of today's projects. 

In the picture you can also see our little palm tree. Most of the Audrey Street residents have a lighted palm tree. It is cool driving down the street at night. This one was pulled out of the dumpster by a neighbor about four years ago and given to us. It worked fine but this year about 1/2 of the lights are out. I will trash it before we leave, it isn't work trying to fix.

The plastic female hose connector on the hose to the water filter cracked yesterday. I went to Home Depot early this morning to get a replacement. I couldn't believe that they were sold out of the size I needed. I didn't feel like driving seven miles to the next closest hardware store to check so I will just use a longer hose until I can find a replacement fitting. 

We did online grocery shopping at Publix yesterday with pick up service. It worked out great. We now have all the groceries we need allowing us to just sit around and eat and drink!!!! I grilled chicken last night which was the first full meal we had since we left home. On the road we ate sandwiches and soup we made so we didn't have to go in anywhere.

The park is about half full. Many Americans are not coming down due to Covid and the Canadians cannot get across the border. Basically all park activities have been canceled due to Covid. They are still having a bonfire every other Friday but we will probably skip that as well. I don't get much out of a bonfire I have to sit ten or more feet away from. We also saw pictures of a lot of people at the last one without masks. We don't need that.

Kelly decorated for Christmas. She hung the Christmas bells, the Santa picture she painted, and we put out the lighted ceramic Christmas camper decoration Renee gave me.  Here are some pictures.

 

December 3, 2020 - First Days Roberts RV Park

Yesterday I found an urgent care in a nearby CVS Pharmacy. They took "walk-ins" so I headed there to get my eye looked at. I arrived ten minutes before the opening time of 8:30 a.m. but could not check in at the kiosk until 8:30 a.m. Why I don't know because you can check-in online. Once I completed the check-in process I was then told my appointment was for four and a half hours later. The only person around was a nurse. When I inquired about his long delay for a walk-in she was helpful and said that people called in online overnight and made appointments, thus the delay. She saw I was a little taken back by such a wait and, after checking with the nurse practitioner, she told me if I could come back in a half hour they would squeeze me in between a couple of vaccinations. Good deal.

I then walked to Target next door and bought a plunger for the kitchen sink which remained plugged.

When I got back to CVS I was seen by a nurse practitioner and given a prescription for some antibiotic cream for my eye. I filled it there and headed back to the RV. I'm putting it in four times per day. I hope it does the trick.

The RV parks in Florida are large to accommodate snowbirds. I got to thinking that no one had seen the layout of Roberts RV Park where we stay.  We are on Lot 469 on Audrey Street, the "party street". I think there are over 500 lots in this park. Here is a picture of the park layout. I placed a yellow arrow pointing at our lot. We are on the back side - the "low rent district".

Most of the park lots have single and double-wide permanent trailers on them. Our area is 90% RVs. There are a lot of vacancies right now because a lot of snowbirds don't come down until after Christmas and many Canadians will not be able to come down at all because of Covid restrictions not allowing them to cross the border. 

After getting back from the urgent care I hooked up the truck and re-leveled Marge. In the dark we couldn't tell that she wasn't level side-to-side when we unhooked. After that I unloaded the truck so I could park it in the parking lot up the street. We have Kelly's car at our lot and there isn't room for both vehicles.

I then tried the plunger on the kitchen sink. Luckily one plunge and everything was clear. Yippee! I had never had this happen before and was envisioning having to pull everything out of the cabinets and tearing into the drain pipes. I am happy that didn't prove necessary.

Kelly has been down with a cold since we arrived so she has not ventured outside. I hope she feels better today and can go out because it is supposed to be 70 degrees before starting to rain for the next two days.

We had planned on going to Spectrum and getting Wi-fi for our stay. They will do that here with no contracts because of the snowbirds. We decided to try the hotspot on Kelly's phone and it proved to work really well. We will save $70.00 per month.  Another "Yippee".

My task for today is to get the Dish TV satellite dialed in and the Wally receiver updated. It is a process I absolutely hate because it usually takes two hours on the phone with Dish to make it happen. Dish is a necessity for Kelly. I would be happy with just hooking up to the free basic cable provided by the RV park.  

November 30th - December 1st, 2020 - Trip to Florida for the Winter

When we left Perryville at 6:00 a.m. on Monday it was 24 degrees. Glad to get out of Dodge. We took a new route through Birmingham, Alabama, which proved to be a bad idea. About fifty miles from our RV Park destination for the night it started sleeting.  Here is a picture while sitting at a stop light but it didn't come out very well.  

We had reservations at Yellow Hammer RV Park in Clanton, Alabama, for a stop over. I picked this park because it was right off the Interstate and it was a Passport America Park, which makes it half price. When I called to make the reservation I was told that it was under new management and they no longer honored Passport America. I made the reservation anyway because there were no other parks in the area. When we arrived at 3:00 p.m. the office was "closed for lunch" until 3:30 p.m. Really? We waited patiently for a half hour when a campground resident drove up and told us if we had reservations we could just pull into our lot. I told him they didn't tell me what lot on the reservation and he said he thought they did and I should recheck the email i got. I did and it and the lot number was there but I never would have found the lot number if he hadn't told me that. Goofy.

We got set up on the lot and it was only 40 degrees out. RVs are as cold inside as outside so it was about 42 degrees inside Marge. It takes a long time to warm the place up. It remained so cold we went to bed early with lots of covers and slept good.

In the morning this was the temperature.  In past years it has never been this cold on our way to Florida.

The vehicles were covered with a  hard frost. I have ice scrapers but apparently they are at home. I let the vehicles warm up and used a credit card to scrape ice off the side windows. Here are two pictures.

We headed out at 7:00 a.m. for an eight hour drive. I didn't like this new route because there were so many stop lights on the US highways going through towns. I won't take it again.  It became pretty clear that we were not going to get to the RV park until dark, which is really a bummer. It is very difficult to back up a large fifth wheel 90 degrees in the dark. Here are two pictures as we approached St. Petersburg.

We hit rush hour traffic going through Tampa so sure enough it was dark when we arrived at the RV park. They had people there helping with parking. They were very helpful. I don't think I could have done it without them. We thought Marge was level and unhooked. She ended up not being level once unhooked from the truck. This happens sometimes, the truck twists it. I will have to hook up today and put boards under one side to get level for four months.

A problem upon hooking up the utilities was that the kitchen sink will not drain a drop. I can't figure out what that is all about. It is as if a valve is closed but there is no valve. All the other drains work fine. The trap or line can't be frozen after all this time. I will have to take the trap apart today and hopefully find the problem there and not somewhere else. These pipes are not easily accessible. Always something.

My first priority today, however, is to find an urgent care facility. I developed an eye infection just before we left town. I need to get some medicine for it.  It is 47 degrees here this morning so that is an improvement but still cold. I think it is supposed to get close to 70 today. I hope so.

November 24, 2020 - Trees Removed at the Lake Lot

Daughter Alexa came down from St. Louis last night to help with a project at the lake lot. We had two cedar trees we wanted to cut down because they weren't providing much shade and were interfering with better trees on the lot. Alexa, Kelly and I went out this morning, cut the two trees down and piled up the branches.  Here is a picture of me working on the second tree which was actually forked.

Here are pictures of each stump, one on each side of the steps.

The trees weren't that big and they fell exactly where I wanted them to. I will come out later and cut the stumps down to ground level to lesson a trip hazard. 

Lots of branches spread all over the area as I cut.

I cut the trunks in blocks for campfires and the branches were piled up for burning. Here is a picture of each pile of branches and a picture of my help as we ate a sandwich for lunch. In the background behind Kelly you can see the row of cedar blocks for campfires.

I am happy to report that my new chain saw worked flawlessly after having been repaired due to debris in the carburetor from the factory. 

We had the time today to burn a lot of the branches but it was just too windy to risk it. Since we are heading south on Monday they will just have to lay there until spring when we get back. They will be good and dry by then and will burn quickly. We will bring Homer out and burn branches while camping for a couple of days. 

November 14, 2020 - Replace Vacuum Door Connector

The new inlet for the vacuum in Marge arrived today. Although it is from the same company and is the exact part number, it is different.  They have changed the way the door mounts and the way it connects electrically.  Here is a picture from the front and from the side.

It is a rainy day so I decided to mess around on it and see what I could get accomplished. When I worked on the inlet the last time I had to unload everything from the front compartment and take down the wall to get access to the hose to reconnect the vacuum.

The old inlet mounted with four screws to a metal plate behind the wall paneling. The new one has two screw holes for mounting it into an electrical box. There has probably been an update in the electrical code that now requires it to be in an electrical box even though it is a low voltage wire to turn it on. 

Because of the new design the new inlet would not attach to the metal backing plate. Upon looking at the situation I decided that if I cut the metal backing plate out I might be able to connect the vacuum hose to the new inlet from the inside.  I got busy with my Dremel tool and cut the metal plate into a couple of pieces and pulled it out. Once it was out, through the double wall, I could see the plastic hose laying about six inches below the inlet opening. I thought if I could get ahold of it I could pull it towards me and connect it to the new inlet from inside. Trying to retrieve an inch and a half PVC fitting six inches away through a double wall with a two and a half inch by two and a half inch hole proved challenging. I was finally able to get under it with a piece of coat hanger wire and lift it up. Once I had it up even with the hole I was able to grab it with needle nose pliers and pull it into the room. Luckily there was enough hose to pull it in about four inches so I could connect it.

The next problem was that the pipe fitting on the back of the new inlet was smaller than the old one and therefore did not fit tight in the inch and a half PVC pipe. I didn't want to just Duct tape it on because this fitting needs to be tight for suction. Plus Duct tape tends to dry out over time and the hose could fall off in the wall. I needed a thin "O" ring to go around the fitting on the new inlet. In looking at the old inlet I noticed it had such a ring around it which sat in a groove. The new inlet did not have any such grooves. I pulled the "O" ring off and put it on the new inlet but it was too tight for the PVC fitting to slip on. I noticed that the pipe fitting on the new inlet is tapered on the end. Here is a picture with arrow pointing to the taper.

I moved the "O" ring to the taper and pushed it on to the PVC fitting. Once I got it on straight it pushed into place and even became very difficult to turn. A good tight fit. I don't think it will ever come off on its own. Making this connection saved me all the hassle of pulling everything out of the front compartment and pulling down the wall to access the vacuum hose for connection. YES!!!!! I then marked holes for mounting of the new inlet and screwed it to the wall. Here is a picture of the finished project.

I think it will work fine but if the two screws, which are just into the 3/16 inch plywood, do not prove strong enough I will have to figure out how to reinforce the inlet mount to the wall.  One thing I like about the new inlet is that it does not have a switch which turns on the vacuum when the door is opened. That is how the old one worked. This one relies on pushing the hose into the socket with the metal band on the hose completing the circuit and turning on the vacuum.

This should be the last project on Marge before we leave for Florida the end of this month. I have some outside projects planned when I get down there and need something to do as we isolate and social distance.