MEASURE TWICE & GO TRIBE!

Tuesday, November 1 – We are still at the Houston Elks Lodge campground here in Stafford, TX.  With time on his hands, Paul has been doing some maintenance and other projects around the RV. One of the things Marsha has always wanted is a window in the door. Our 5^th wheel only came with a “peek-hole,” and it was pretty well worthless. For one thing it was too high for Marsha to use and, due to the step arrangement, you couldn't see anyone outside anyway. A while back, Paul from Living Our Dream installed a window in their 5th wheel, so we knew we could do the same.

PPL of Houston, a huge RV consignment dealer and parts store, is just around the corner from the Houston Elks RV Park, so it is a convenient location to do these type of projects. Paul recently picked-up the parts needed to install the window and first thing in the morning he got to work.

Measure TWICE and cut once. Good motto to follow when you are cutting a 15”X24” hole in the door of your home. Paul started by making a cardboard pattern and then transferring the size onto the door. And yes, he measured several times before cutting. Surprisingly, there is only a half-inch allowance where the window frame overlaps the hole. Could have given you a little more freedom for error in Paul's opinion.

The cutting was a breeze. Paul was prepared for a tough cutting job. Paul from Living our Dream wore out several saw blades according to his blog write-up. So Paul had extra blades on hand but was happy not to need them. The only difficulty was keeping the hole straight and level since a saber-saw has such a tiny blade. After a little touch-up here and there, the hole was ready for a dry-fit of the window and frame.

See the blade cutting through the door.

Dang! It appears our door is thicker than the window frame was made for so Paul needs to find some filler/weather stripping to fill the gap. Off to Home Depot for additional parts. Foam weather stripping should do the trick. Paul also coated the outer frame with a strip of butyl caulk to seal it and make it water tight.

 

Surprise, surprise! After carefully inserting the glass and tightening the frame, Paul discovered the weather stripping wasn't needed after all. The window frame tightened correctly in the door after-all. Guess he should have spent a little more time on the dry-fit before assuming the frame wasn't going to work. Oh well, no harm....better safe than sorry!

After tightening the many screws in the mating frames, the glass was securely in place between the frames and weather tight.

A quick spray of Windex to clean the glass and surrounding area and the job is complete. All and all, a job nicely done. And other than the nervous feeling of cutting the hole, a pretty simple job! Next up, adding a window blind to the inside of the RV to cover the window at night.

Marsha loves being able to look out the door. She is easily amused.

I am sure most of our readers already know that Marsha’s Cleveland Indians are in the World Series.

The Tribe is up 3-2. Game 6 is tonight. With good pitching, bats that come alive and a little luck, the Tribe will win the World Series tonight. These games have been great for watching but very hard on the nerves…lol.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!

HAPPY 7TH ANNIVERSARY TO US

October 16, 2016 – This is the last day of our seventh year of travel. Although we no longer “full-time,” we continue to travel more than six months per year. Here is a little summary of our seventh year of travel.

We began the year in Fort Myers, FL, in the middle of a whirlwind tour of Florida. We traveled on both coasts of the state. The Fort Myers area was one of our favorite spots. Later in the month of October, we met up with friends Jeri and Terry Williams and Jan and Jerry Hyde in Santa Rosa Beach. We met both these couple the first year of our travels, and we've renewed friendship occasionally ever since.

Paul, Marsha, Jerry, Jan, Terry, Jeri

November found us in our second home, at the Elks Lodge CG in Houston, TX. We usually spend the Thanksgiving holiday through December there to visit with our daughter, Carrie. We will continue that tradition this year.  Then Marsha flies back to Ohio early in December, and Paul and Carrie join her a few weeks before Christmas.

January found us with RV friends in Mission, TX, part of the Texas Rio Grande Valley on the Texas– Mexico borders. We really enjoyed our time with old friends.

We also visited our dentist in Nuevo Progresso, Mexico. We had significant dental work performed this past year at a mere fraction of what we were quoted in the States. We will only need cleaning this winter and will have it taken care of that when visiting Los Algodones, MX across the border from Yuma, AZ later in January 2017.

After our visit to the Rio Grande Valley, we returned to spend the rest of the winter in the Houston, area. Paul had been having problems with his right knee and had arthroscopic surgery in February.

Paul did recover enough from the arthroscopic surgery to attend the Houston Barbecue Cook-off and the Houston Rodeo in March. What a great time we have visiting both of these events.

Barbecue Cook off

April found us in Springfield, IL, to visit “Everything Lincoln.” This is something Marsha has been looking forward to for some time. We had a great time and recommend this stop to anyone interested in historical areas.

Winter caught up with us in Illinois. We tried to outrun some cold temperatures and a few snow flurries, but unfortunately we failed. The good news, it was only for one night and only a little snow stuck to the ground!

Home a bit too early.

Back in our summer home in Canton, Ohio, Paul dove into a remodeling project. He had plans to build a second bathroom in the basement, which is a common project in our neighborhood. It ended up being a bigger project then planned. He had to bust up some of the concrete floor to install under-ground plumbing. But alas, he was able to finish the bathroom before his total knee replacement surgery in mid-July.

Marsha kept busy with her many crafts, volunteering at her Church, working in the yard, visiting with her dad and the rest of her family and catching up with her many friends.

We enjoyed visits with our daughter, Kelly and her husband, Dave. They live in NE Ohio in wine country, so that meant visiting several wineries. What fun! Our Texas daughter, Carrie, arrived for a visit over the July 4^th holiday. What a great time to have the entire family together.

Having fun at the annual wine tasting party.

We even had a visit in Ohio with Paul's brother, John and Karen, from Augusta, GA. We had a fun get-together at Linda and Dave's home (Paul's other brother) in Barberton, OH. Most of the family was able to be there, so it was like a family reunion.

Karen, John, Linda, Dave, Marsha, Paul

Of course, we had to attend a Cleveland Indians baseball game! We did this with Kelly and Dave and a couple of Marsha’s brothers and their wives. We helped cheer the Tribe to a victory and eventually Central Division Champs.

That is our group in the upper-right corner.

Paul did enjoy working with Dave and Kelly in a bathroom remodeling project of their own. They did a beautiful master bathroom remodel in their gorgeous home in Chardon, Ohio. Dave is quite the hobby tiler and did a huge tiling job in the new bathroom. Paul was his “cut-man” trimming the tiles where needed. A fun couple of weekends.

We finished the summer with a visit from Angie and Rick, our Mission, Texas, friends. They were on their way to Chicago and swung a little bit our of their way to stop for a few days and visit with us. It was a nice visit. We enjoyed having them as house guests.

Paul, Marsha, Rick, Angie, Kelly, Dave

We had hoped to leave Ohio around the first of September, but Paul's knee was still giving him some discomfort, so we postponed our departure and changed our travel plans. We eventually departed near the end of September and experienced a travel week full of problems. The air-conditioner on the 5^th wheel died; we had a check engine light on our Ford truck requiring cleaning of the exhaust filter; our new tire pressure monitor failed; we needed to replace our shower fixture; Marsha's Kindle reader wouldn't charge and was replaced under warranty; and to add insult to injury, Paul's rear bike tire blew out on our first bike ride on the beautiful trails in Gulf Coast, AL.

Gulf Shores, AL

Bay St. Louis, MS

After an abbreviated visit to many of our favorite areas in the Gulf of Mexico, we limped into the Houston Elks Lodge in Stafford, TX. There was only one RV site open, and we quickly settled in for the next couple of months.

We successfully completed many of the needed repairs and are moving forward with plans to visit Arizona and the Southwestern part of the U.S. in 2017.

SOME INTERESTING STATISTICS FROM OUR 7TH YEAR ON THE ROAD:

Starting Date: 10/17/15
Starting Location: Alva, Florida
Ending Location: Houston, Texas

Number of different cities visited:  19
Average length of stay per visit:  8.53 days
Average campground cost: $13.52
Truck miles driven:  11044

Highest price paid for diesel fuel:  $2.54 (Cedar Creek, FL)
Lowest price paid for diesel fuel:  $1.59 (Houston, TX)
Average price for diesel fuel:  $2.04
Average miles per gallon:  10.361

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. have a great day!

FINALLY AC

Friday, October 7 – We finally got the air conditioner installed, and it's working hard to cool the 5^th wheel here in Houston (currently 93 degrees). What a two day nightmare.

Paul picked up the AC and accompanying parts at PPL here in Houston on Wednesday. PPL was very busy and couldn't install the unit for approximately two weeks, so they recommended Jeff Allison of Allison RV Repair for the installation. Jeff is a mobile tech and said he would put us at the top of his list due to the extreme hot weather.

Jeff and another worker arrived Thursday morning and quickly removed the old Carrier (They are no longer made and parts are not available.) from the roof of the 5^th wheel and replaced it with a new Coleman Mach 8, 15,000 BTU unit. Now for the interior wiring.

Good thing our neighbor stopped over to supervise…lol

The Carrier had a remote control panel, which are no longer available, so Jeff had to install a wall thermostat to control the new unit. This is where the trouble began. He followed the schematic shown in the installation instructions carefully and could not get the thermostat to work. He worked over 6 hours on Thursday and finally had to call it a day. He promised to return Friday after investigating with several other techs what the problem could possibly be. (Yikes, this has Paul nervous). Another night in hot Houston without air conditioning!

Friday arrived and thankfully so did Jeff. After-all, he wasn't paid for his work all day on Thursday. He was alone today, so Paul helped troubleshoot the thermostat installation problem. Well, after another four more hours, getting a replacement thermostat from PPL in case the original was bad, four calls to Coleman Technical Support and many re-wiring tries, they finally got the AC to cool properly.

The problem was in the installation instructions. On our final call to the Coleman Technical Support, the technician was explaining the wiring and mentioned it should look just like the diagram ON THE BACK of the thermostat, which was all ready mounted to the wall, NOT like it is shown in the instructions. What! We removed the thermostat and rewired it according to the diagram and PRESTO it worked. Over 8 hours of frustration solved in about ten minutes. Crazy!

Looks pretty nice.

Paul and Jeff arrived at what they felt was a fair price for two days of frustration and parted friends. Everyone was happy. Friday evening was spent at home relaxing in the air conditioned 5^th wheel watching the Cleveland Indians win game two of the American League Division Series. They've won the first two games over Boston. GO TRIBE!!

The Elks Lodge campground it packed. We were very lucky to grab the last spot available. It is on grass, but we have a spot. The people in Site 1, our normal site, will be leaving in two weeks. We will pull into that spot as soon as they pull out.

Site 9

Looking right.

Looking left.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!