CuRVWander

Since arriving in Georgia in the late 80's we have adjusted to many things.  But there are two things that I never really acclimated to; eastern time and rarely seeing a sunset because of heavy forestation.  Staying up 'till 11:30 to see Carson's, and later Leno's monologue made for an unpleasant moment when the alarm went off the next day.  But as unpleasant as that was, not being able to see sunsets drug on me more for nearly 25 years. This moving into an RV and being able to make home wherever I wanted it to be was going to remedy the sunset problem and tremendously improve the stargazing as well.  But we got an unexpected bonus in that our current camping spot, while still just a couple miles from where we have lived for the last two decades, gives us a whole different view of the countryside.  The spot we are currently backed into borders a small farm that has gone fallow.  But it has not been left alone long enough yet that trees have grow...

There was a lot of trepidation about how our Thanksgiving holiday was going to work.  We could have tried to squeeze everybody into the camper but it would have been tight, really tight.  But a very fortuitous thing happened a few weeks ago.  While visiting our daughter and son-in-law a few weeks ago, Justin just up and volunteered to have, and prepare Thanksgiving at their place.  Sounds great, let's do it. But this did not eliminate the trepidation.  Our daughter's experience in preparing a holiday meal was limited to a couple of the cold side dishes and the green bean casserole.  AND, her and Justin's dietary habits lean toward the tofu and Trader Joe's style of eating.  No matter, we are all going to be together this Thanksgiving and that is the best part of all.  Next year we should be on the road.  Maybe we will be settling in to our winter spot in Texas or Arizona, or on a park host assignment somewhere in the South.  Maybe we c...

Hurricane Sandy did not directly hit the Atlanta metropolitan area but we sure have felt her presence.  Our daytime and nighttime temperatures are about 20 to 25 degrees lower than the average and the wind has been blowing steadily for almost a week without a break. Now I know that wind for a week is nothing new to many of you.  It is a normal day in Texas, Oklahoma and along the coasts.  But around here if the wind gets above 15mph for a couple of hours they put out the red warning flags.  But for good reason, drought-weakened and diseased trees are coming down all over the place.  Atlanta is one of, if not the most heavily wooded city in the country, there is hardly a square foot that is not in jeopardy of a tree falling on it.  We have several monsters surrounding our little RV, and everybody else's RV in the park we are staying in.  Thankfully the owner of the park had a crew in just in September to prune healthy trees and remove questionabl...

Fall is festival time all over the country and the North Georgia area seems especially so.  There are way more festivals on any given weekend during this time than any one person can get to.  But in our 22 years in this area we have come to favor a few and found ourselves attracted to them year after year.  Normally we pick one, or if we try really hard we make it to two each season.  But now that there are no gutters to clean, lawn to mow, leaves to rake, garage to clean or the multitude of other things one has to do to keep a bricks and sticks kept up, we found ourselves with time to get to more this year. A big one that seems to kick off the fall festival season is the Yellow Daisy Festival at Stone Mountain Park, GA.  If nothing else, it is large.  But it is more than just a big festival, it is a diverse festival.  It has attractions by corporate sponsors like you would see at a State Fair, the likes of Ford and the Texas Tourist Bureau....

Every October for 10 years running we have hosted a fall cookout/camp out.   There is a state park less than two hours from where our house used to be.   We would take a couple of days off on either side of the third weekend of October, reserve a campsite and bar-b-que shelter and have anywhere from 30 to 50 people come and hang out all weekend or just the cook-out day. This year was no different except that instead of packing the camper for the last trip of the season, we were preparing our camper that is now our home, to be picked up and moved for a four day get-a-way.   I don't know if other full timers think about it this way but I think about the new level of risk.   I am about to take the roof over my head and all my possessions and hurdle them down the highway through a city that is ranked in the top ten for worst traffic in the country.   It has always been stressful driving through Atlanta, even under the best of circumstances, but this was a whole...

It has been nearly a month now of living in our new rig.  A couple of issues have come up; I noticed that one of my 40lb propane tanks was nearly empty.  That is really strange as it was typical for us to go a whole season on less than one 30lb tank in the Kountry Star.  Granted, we were cooking meals three times a day but that could not possibly explain the consumption I was seeing.  Being aware of this, I started looking for possible culprits.  The first thing was that both of us had been noticing a faint odor of propane when we opened the cabinet doors just below the range, so possibly a small leak there.  But then I saw the read-out on the refrigerator and the little dot that indicates that the fridge is running on electricity was not on.  Dang, the fridge had been operating in 80+ temperatures trying to keep a freezer cold enough to make ice. After several days of working with the factory over the phone to try and diagnose why the fridge wo...

While the brake problem was unsettling, it had to be put aside.  The task at hand was getting the old and new rigs positioned so that we could transfer all the contents from the Kountry Star into the Majestic with the daylight left. I dropped the Majestic off in a school parking lot a couple of miles from the camp ground we are in and went to get the Kountry Star.  The intention was to position them side-by-side so that a couple of 2x12's could be laid across the door thresholds and make a "gangway" to carry stuff from one rig to the other without ever going up or down a step.  But the chosen school parking lot was too steeply sloped.  I would never be able to get the slides out (and back in again) with that kind of angle.  Time for plan B. There was a chunk of land where a shopping plaza had been started.  They got the anchor grocery store in and a couple of shops on either side but the economy dipped and they left some paved roads to nowhere that look...

With training complete and the hot August sun beating down, it was time to hook up the Majestic to the Tow Beast and make the 900 miles back across the heartland from Junction City, KS to Cumming, GA. Although I have towed longer and heavier loads when I was pulling a monstrous combine behind a grain truck through OK, TX and CO back in the mid-70's, I was still nervous about being three feet longer and more than 5,000 lbs heavier than what I was accustomed to for the last ten years.  The Tow Beast is easily rated for these loads but I will now be closer to the maximum ratings than ever before.  It is going to be interesting to see how it feels different in terms of the ride and accelerating/braking and just how big of a hit on fuel economy there is going to be. The Majestic's ride profile is quite different from the Kountry Star.  First, of course, is the extra length.  But the biggest difference is that the Majestic is a lot lower to the ground.  With the K...

I spent my first night in the new rig after the first day of training.  Most of the evening was spent reading user manuals, a lot of user manuals.  Multi-plex lighting, two-zone thermostat for the two A/C's and two furnaces, three different models of MaxxFans (whole house fans, two manual one remote controlled), 42" HD LCD TV, Denon Home Theater System, Samsung Blue-Ray Player, multi-fuel (propane & electric) fridge, Whirlpool Velos Oven/Convection Oven/Microwave combo, Fisher & Paykel drawer dishwasher, LED lighting, 12 volt systems, 120 volt systems, and the list goes on. So my head is spinning a little and now it is time to get my outside orientation.  Jeff started us out at the front of the rig.  In the forward compartment of the "basement" are two sub-compartments.  The lower one holds the house batteries.  These are not your ordinary car batteries.  They are however the usual classification of deep-cycle batteries found o...

I rolled into New Horizons at 10:00am, sharp.  There were introductions to the people that would be working with me for the next few days doing the training as well as addressing the punch-list (like putting on one of the two propane tanks that they forgot, or plugging in the electrical part of the fridge so it would run without consuming propane). Jeff was my primary contact for training.  In his very capable hands we spent the first day going through the inside of the rig.  Much was familiar, but not exact to what I knew from my 11 year-old rig.  RV technology had come a long way in the last decade. The first thing that struck me when stepping in was that it was bright and airy.  Our Newmar rig had a color scheme that was based in a dark blue, but for the New Horizons we chose to go with earth tones on the textiles and a light colored oak for the woodwork.  Wow, was it different.  We got just the effect we were looking for. Lots of windows, and...