All previous posts are shown here to get the new blog site going. Contiued posts will be updated each week.

June 8, 2007


It looks like it is time to update the blog. We have been full-time RVers now for about 9 days. We picked up our Jayco Designer 36 RTLS fifth-wheel on Thursday, May 31. Since we are still waiting for our replacement window (we are having a foldable bay window installed in the Dinning area) we can’t go far from the dealer.

Our first five days were spent at a local campground about 10 miles from our previous home, which sold on May 23rd, and we vacated for the last time at 12:40 Sunday, June 3rd. It took us the days between May 31 and June 3 to move what we could keep into the RV and dispose of the rest of our worldly goods (that we had not already sold, donated or given to friends and relatives) accumulated over nearly 50 years of marriage. It is a monumental task condensing 3000 square feet of “stuff” into a 300 square foot RV. Needless to say, our worldly goods form a much smaller mass now.

We had to leave our first campground after five days because all spaces were reserved past that date. A County Music Festival in Nashville created a shortage of camping space in the area. We had to go about 60 miles north to find a campground we could reserve. We are now at Clarksville RV Park in Clarksville, TN on the Kentucky line around Fort Campbell Army Base. We will be here until Tuesday, June 12th, then we will head back to the dealer to see about getting the window installed. The window is at Jayco, the trailer manufacturer, but should be at the dealer by the time we return. We hope there are no delays because we intend to head south on the 15 of June. Current plans would carry us to Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. After which, we plan to head north, or perhaps west, we’ll decide that later.

As far as RVs go, we have a lot to learn. We are “newbies”, novices, first-timers, or a variety of other terms. Which simply means we don’t know much. What are the steps one has to go through and in what order to hitch to/from the truck, hook and unhook the “shorelines”, the RV term for outside connections to electric, water and sewer, if available? What needs to be tied down, put away, put up, pulled down or secured? What needs to be emptied, filled or cleaned, and when?

By far, the biggest deal is being able to move and park the RV without damage to the unit, oneself or others. Keep in mind that the RV, fully loaded (and we sure have a good load) weighs over 16,000 pounds. Couple this with our six wheeled (duly) truck and we have a load between 20,000 pounds and 25,000 pounds moving down the road. The combined length of this “train” is about 60 feet long.

So far we have discovered that the RV pulls like a dream. We hardly know it is behind the truck. The brakes on the trailer work really well and we hardly notice the effort. We have yet to experience very hilly terrain, so we’ll see how that goes later. But as you no doubt know, the really big deal is the parking. We have moved the rig four times now, but have had to back it only once. We have been lucky enough to get “pull-thrus”. That deal will most likely end when we leave this location, so wish us luck.

We’ll catch up with you again next week.
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June 15, 2007

As you know from the last blog, we were hanging around the Nashville area to get our Bay Window installed by the dealer. Well, it took weeks to get the order on the road. The parts man called on Wednesday, June 13, to say that a window had come in. He went on to say that it was not the right window. More delay, and we are not waiting. We told the dealer we would be back in a month-----or so.

As I pen this, or really type this, we are sitting in a beautiful Park campsite in Georgia, Fort Yargo, about 21 miles from where our son Don lives. I mention that Don is our son because some of you who may read this may not know. The trip from Goodletsville, TN, our last camp site, was about six hours, at 55 miles per hour. We have decided that is our speed---let the rest of the traffic go around!

The fifth wheel continues to work well and the trip seemed effortless. We are also enjoying our time with the RV. Even though we are “newbies” to the whole idea of fulltime Rving, we have never even been camping in an RV, it already seems like second nature to us.


We are, however, still having to learn a few new things, like how to conserve on water. The reason of course for conservation is because there may not be a sewer connection, which is the case where we now are. With a “fiver”, what, I understand is what the “seasoned” RVers call a fifth wheel, it is not easy to move it just to “dump”. The procedure of tie down, store, secure, unhook, raise the stabilizers, hitch to the truck, raise the landing gear, etc. etc. for a 500 yard trip is the same as for a 500 mile one. So we purchased a “Smart Tote”, which is a portable container with wheels that will hold 35 gallons of “dump stuff”, black water, gray water. It has a handle that you can pull like a wagon if on foot , if the dump is near, or hook to your truck bumper hitch and ever so slowly pull it along. We haven’t done it yet. We’ll let you know how it works.

I will try to attach a picture to this blog, but we have been having a few problems with the system, so we hope it will get loaded right. We have had comments that the “comments” link is not working. One should be able to click the link and add any comment you would like to our blog. If we can get this corrected we will let you know. In the meantime, just send an email if you would like to comment. Send it to evandcarolyn@yahoo.com.

We will be here in the woods for a week, with trips in and out to see family and friends, then we will be headed on to another State Park, this time in South Carolina. We’ll talk with you again on the other side of the line.
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June 28, 2007

Well, I promised to update this blog every week, so I guess I had better get to it. We have been in South Carolina now for a week at the Dreher Island State Recreation Area. It is a beautiful park, but difficult for a “big rig” like ours. More about the park experience in a little bit.

We left the Georgia State Park early on last Friday morning, June 15th. Since we have a GPS system in our laptop computer, “Windows Streets and Trips“, we decided to use it for the first time to guide us to our destination. A female voice guides us turn-by-turn and lets us know when we get off route. We quickly dubbed the voice “Wendy Street”, for obvious reasons. “Wendy” started us out on back roads before we got to an interstate system.

We followed these back roads for 50 miles of twisting and turning on two lane. We got off route twice and Wendy hollered “OFF ROUTE”. At times it is difficult to tell the difference between “bear right or left” and “turn right or left”. The first time we got off track we had to make a rather sharp right turn in a Church driveway. We bumped slightly off the pavement as we made the turn. The second time we were lucky enough to be able to make a nice wide swing through a car dealership to get back on track. This made Wendy happy as we were “back on route.”

We finally got on I-20 heading East to SC. The 159 miles on I-20 was a breeze compared to the previous 50 miles. As we sailed along the interstate, Carolyn remarked that she saw something that looked like a “spot” of something on the front overhang of the trailer. “We’ll check it out”, I said, “when we stop“. We shifted onto I-26 for a few miles and got into Dreher Island after a brief 12 miles of two lane through the town of Chapin, SC.

Now we are at Dreher Island. I said we would get back to this experience, so this is it. As you know, we are “Newbies”. Newbies make mistakes. If this is Rving 101, then I am not sure we passed the first semester test. This is how it went………

We started our pull into the campground and, found it very crowded with extremely narrow, curving roads and RVs and vehicles crowding the very edge of the passage, with trees everywhere along the road. We came to a sharp left-hand curve with pine trees close in the center of the turn. The trailer was getting close to a tree and starting to brush it. I backed and tried to swing wider but the trailers on the other side crowded the road. I backed a second time and got farther off road to the right barely missing more trees on that side but cleared the tree at the trailer by 4 to 6 inches. WOW!!

There are 30 camp sites in Campground 1, and we are headed for number 30, the last one. So we had to negotiate the whole campground of narrow roads, trees, trucks, trailers and people to get to our site. Our site? It is a back-in, more perpendicular to the road than angled, lined with pine trees close on one side and a tree at the front corner on the other side and one at the back side. Across the “barely 10 foot” road is another line of trees, not more than 2 feet off the road. Ahead of these trees is a series of posts, 30” out of the ground.

I pulled the trailer as far forward of the site as I thought would be needed, to pull close to the trees on my left, and started to back. Carolyn was behind the trailer pointing the way. The trailer started turning properly for the spot. I pulled forward slightly, corrected, and backed again. I made another pull forward, correcting to the right, all the while watching the trees approaching the truck on the right. Suddenly, I couldn’t move. I put it in forward. Nothing. I put it in reverse. Nothing.

I called to Carolyn to come to the front of the truck to see what my problem was. She said, “Stop!” I put the truck in park, put on the brake and got out to see what the problem was. Remember those 30 inch posts? I had managed to wedge one between the right front tire and the bumper, inside the wheel well. The post would not budge. I tried rocking fore and aft to try and loosen the post. It was loose in the ground, but it couldn’t be lifted upward because there was not enough room in the wheel well.

The only solution, I thought, was to dig it out. I retrieved a crow bar from the back of the truck and started attacking the dirt at the base of the post. About this time, a truck pulled up in front of us, then another. Park personnel got out of the truck and looked at the problem. They got a shovel and dug out the post. Remarkably, no other campers gathered to offer advise, help or laughter. We were finally able to get the camper backed into its spot. However, the bedroom slide is only one inch from a tree, and some low branches from the tree in the back are against the air conditioner. We had to jack the front end of the trailer up so high to make it level that I can almost walk under it without ducking.

Did I mention that the park is a very beautiful lake setting with lots of nice features? It is so, but it is not made for big rigs. Will we return to this park? NO way!! Did I also tell you that the tree in the curve cost me an amber reflector from the side? Did I tell you what that “spot on the trailer” was that Carolyn saw? It is not a spot, it is a hole. It had to have happened when we made that sharp turn in the church drive, with that bump off the road. The corner of the trailer had hit the corner of the folded truck lid, which was also knocked loose and askew. The hole is about the size of a nickel. Maybe a little large for a “bubble gum” fix, but maybe not too bad.

So what do you think? Did we fail the first semester test? There are more tests to come you know. One learns by mistakes. Boy!, are we learning.

After the entry, our time here has been nice. We are glad we came, but sorry we picked this park. Tomorrow, we leave for Georgia again. Back to the same park we left in Winder, Georgia. Stay tuned for the next adventure in the travels with “first timers”.

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July 6, 2007

Well, it is that time again. I know you are waiting with baited breath to see what mishaps we have experienced during the last week. Right? Well, to our credit, we got out of the Park in SC without difficulty and made our way smoothly back to the Park in GA.

We had hoped to get the same site we had left a week earlier, but no luck. There was a big flurry of activity at the Park Office when we got there. It appeared as if everyone was wanting a site for the July 4th weekend. We hurried through the process and went searching for a suitable site. Of course, we had reserved a spot, but one cannot reserve a particular site. It is first come, first served. Everything in Campground #1 was taken. We headed for Campground #2. The very first site in this Campground was vacant, and it is a pull-thru. We pulled in without hesitation. We didn’t bother to look for any other site, and as it happened, this one was the only one available.

We got the trailer unhooked and setup without problems. The site is fairly level, but we did have to prop up the left wheels about two inches to level it out side-to-side. We have a nice 8 foot, heavy duty picnic table and metal fire-ring with attached grill. Mostly woods for a view on the trailer entry side, but there is another trailer in view about 25 yards away. Not a bad site. If our previous site here rated an “A”, then this one has to be a “B+”.

We are finding that our holding tank gages don’t seem to properly measure the contents. We have a 35 gallon black tank, and two 35 gallon gray tanks. Now we are not using the black tank except when necessary at night, otherwise we go to the public restrooms, so we knew there shouldn’t be much in it. And we were using as little “sink” water as possible, yet the black tank registered 2/3 full and one gray tank also 2/3 and the other 1/3 full. This didn’t seem right to us, but we thought we had better empty the tanks.

Remember, we bought a 35 gallon “Smart-tote” portable tank just for these occasions so we would not have to move the rig. I told you about this a couple weeks ago and promised to let you know how well it works, or doesn’t work.

We got the tank out of the truck bed from where it rides between the hitch and tail-gate and hooked it to our tank outlet. We have a clear section of tube attached to the hose so we can visually monitor the flow of the contents to know when it is finished emptying. We always empty the back tank first so the gray tanks will help flush the tubes clean.

We watched the black tank empty and remarked that it seems like very little to us. Then we empted each gray tank in turn. Our “fuzzy” math tells us we should have had 1 2/3 tanks full, or about 58 gallons according to the gages. Our 35 gallon tote wasn’t even full. Another problem for the dealer to fix. We do need to know an accurate gage of the tank contents .

We hooked the tote to the truck ball-hitch and make our way to the dump station. Dump stations, for those of you who are not familiar, have a capped hole inside a concrete area about 3 to 4 feet square with a concrete, raised edge about three inches high. We pulled the tote as close to the raised edge as we could get it and began to extend the hose from the tank. That’s when it happened. Yep, the hose came loose from the inside of the tote and the contents began to spill outside the dump and running down the road. We quickly lifted the tank, wheels and all, into the dump area and let it run. Carolyn turned on the “flush” hose of fresh water provided at the station and helped clean the area and the dump. When the tank was empty enough to stand it on end, I got a screw driver, took off the bottom “skid plate” and reconnected the hose. We then proceeded to complete the emptying.

Luckily, no one was around to see our mishap. We cleaned the area as best we could, grateful that we had been using the campground restrooms on a daily basis and not our tank, if you know what I mean. No real heavy “stuff”.

To say the least, we were not happy with the tote. Not only because of this event, but also because it will not empty fully. When we got back to the trailer, I called Camping World, where I had bought the tote and complained it did not work and I wanted to return it. Well, they wouldn’t let me do that since it had been used, it is now a “bio-hazard”. So we are stuck with a poorly functioning, $235 tote. Since it will not empty fully, because of the design that wraps around the hose creating pockets lower than the hose exit, we figure we will need to flush it extremely well, allowing only “clean” water to remain.

Other than this “little” problem, we have had a great time back in Georgia. Friends from the time when we had our Gift Shop in Stone Mountain Village, Millie and Woody Parish, who made some of the crafts we sold, graced us with a visit to our new home. On the 4th we had a cook-out in the park with our son Don and Bill and Marilyn May, friends of some 40 years. We used the metal grill at the site and cooked ribs, hamburgers and hotdogs. We had all the “fixins” to go with it, and watermelon, cake, ice cream and strawberries for dessert courtesy of the Mays.

We will be pulling out tomorrow, heading for Chattanooga for a few days and then on to Kentucky. We will catch up with you again when we get there.