Comes the moment of truth. Can we really do it? Will we really like it? What if we don't like it? Will we be able to do all the little things needed to live in a motor home?
On April 1, 2011, we loaded "Finally" with just about everything except the kitchen sink, managed to attach our car to the motor home, and ventured forth with the knowledge that God would take care of us, regardless of how inept we were. Our destination was Savanna, Georgia, about 300 miles from Winston-Salem and we planned to be gone for about 6 days.
Our good friends, Don and Anne Mumy, had invited us to share this trip with them. Don and Anne are experienced RV'ers and we hoped that with their help we would survive this trip and come away with the confidence to press on with our RV experience. We salute their courage for volunteering to "chaperone" our first trip.
Actually, they did their job well and the trip was more or less uneventful. There were a few noteworthy moments when our inexperience stood out. When we were preparing to leave, Don was helping me empty the tanks. He said that I should always empty the blackwater tank first, then the graywater, which would in effect rinse the drain hose after emptying the nasty stuff. We did this and noted that there was a place to hook up a hose and flush the tank. This sounded like a great idea so I hooked up the hose, turned the water on, opened the blackwater drain and waited for things to happen. All was quiet, nothing was happening until Lynn and Anne started yelling that water (not too clean) was coming out the front door.
Even I realized that the first thing to do was shut off the water. After some discussion, Don and I decided that we could continue with the graywater tank open, that somehow the blackwater tank would also get flushed out. This seemed to work because water was flowing through the drain and things appeared to be ok. This left only a small mess to clean up in the motor home. As it was, the water that overflowed was not the nasty stuff so there was no real damage and no lingering odor to remind us of the event.
What Lynn and I eventually realized was that our blackwater and graywater tanks are mislabeled. With this incident burned indelibly into my memory, I now empty the graywater tank first, then the blacktank and have not had a similar problem.
While this was going on, I made another rooky mistake. I was in and out of "Finally" and on one of my trips in I thought that I might as well close the slides while I was there. When I pushed the button to close the living room slide, there was an immediate screeching sound that obviously should not have been happening. I did stop right away and went out to see what the problem might be. What I had done (or not done) was fail to close the storage door over the sewage tanks and electrical hookup, located immediately under the slide. As a result the storage door caught the molding on the slide and pushed it out. Don came to my rescue and helped me secure the molding so that it wouldn't come loose on the trip home.
Despite these two events it was a wonderful trip. We saw a lot of Savanna, had lunch at Paula Deen's restaurant and just generally had a great time. Don and Anne were good company and we thank them so much for helping us start our great adventure.
With that first trip behind us, we were now confident enough to plan our second trip, a solo adventure, without a safety net, so to speak. We decided to go to a state park campground in South Carolina, near Charleston. This campground had no sewage hookup so I would have to be sure to empty the tanks before they overflowed, even if it meant unhookinng everything else and going to the dump station.
This trip went really well. We enjoyed a trip into Charleston and a beautiful campsite on the banks of the Edisto River. The noteworthy event of this trip was a severe storm front that pushed through the area and had possible tornados predicted. We knew enough to know that we didn't want to be in our motor home if any tornados were in the area. Before the storm front arrived, we checked out the local WalMart to see if it might be substantial enough to withstand a tornado. However, we kept watching the weather channel and it was soon apparent that the storm would be passing somewhat north of where we were. We praised God for sparing us this test.
Having been south on our first two trips we decided on the mountains for our next trip. We decided on a short trip to West Jefferson, NC, less that 100 miles west of Winston-Salem. My son, David and his friend Kelly wanted to join us and thought that this would be a good time to test our skills. They would camp in their tent and join us for meals. We would also tour the area together. This turned out to be a fun trip. However, it turned pretty cool that night and we didn't seem to have any heat. Tried everything and could get the heater to work so I went out and bought out a little space heater which did the job and is now available if we need it.
We visited the cheese factory in West Jefferson and Kelly fell in love with that. She bought several items and kept them in our refrigerator until time to leave. I was hopeful that she would forget them but that didn't happen. On Sunday, David and Kelly honored Lynn for Mother's Day with lunch before they returned to Charlotte.
Later, I learned that there was nothing wrong with our heater. The problem was that I had turned the gas off, instead of on. Since we hadn't tried to cook anything on the stove it wasn;t readily apparent that the gas wasn't on. Another lesson learned.
Our final trip was to Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, where I was a lay delegate to the Western North Carolina Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. Lake Junaluska has a nice campground that others in our church have used so we decided to give it a try. While there we decided to invite Bret Cogan, our pastor, and Fred Scherle, a friend who was also a delegate, to our new motor home for dinner. We would cook on our grill and add potato salad and cole slaw and eat out on a picnic table and have a wonderful time of fellowship.
When the appointed time came storms were brewing and cooking out was doubtful, and forget about eating out. Fred had another committment come up but joined us for a period of fellowship. After I took Fred back to his hotel, the weather turned even worse and the wind was blowing so bad that I couldn't even light the grill. On to Plan B. Luckily we had a pan that we could use to cook the chicken in the oven (had never used the oven and had to figure out how to light it.). Things turned out well and we had a nice dinner and fellowship with Bret. The whole trip went well and I can't report any other dumb mistakes.
By now, over the course of three months we have had 4 trips, made mistakes and learned from them. We have tested the waters and didn't drown. We developed confidence that this is something that we still wanted to do and that we could do. We are ready for launch.
Our next post will tell you about the preparations for the trip and finally events from our first few weeks. I made some adjustments to our itinerary, to show the actual towns where we have made reservations. I am still working on addding pictures on another page.
So long for now.
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