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Full-time RV travels in the United States and Canada
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We were on the move Wednesday, so Monday and Tuesday were spent preparing to move. We are ready for a change of scenery. This is a long time to sit in one spot for us. Monday we hung the bikes back on the bike rack after getting through all the cobwebs. There is a cedar windbreak behind us and we all know how spiders love cedar. It is a daily task removing spiders and spider webs from the back and sides of the couch. We have noticed several have found their way inside also. We will have to get a insecticide bomb to take care of them, when we get back to Michigan in October. We don't have such a thing here. We also packed as much as possible away inside. That doesn't take long because we have traveled long enough now, that most of everything are in their travel position all the time. We had to put the electric kettle, toaster etc., away, but that is about it. We did fill our fresh water tank for use while we are away. That way we are not tying up Jody's outdoor water tap. We do have a "Y", but it is just as easy to use the onboard water. It makes us more aware of how much water we are using. We will be away for two weeks with no place to empty our gray and black water tanks until we return to our seasonal site. Wednesday morning we were up at the usual 6 a.m. time. We had our breakfast and then dumped and flushed our holding tanks for one last time. We stowed (cranked down) the TV satellite dish, packed up our internet satellite dish and stowed it in the trunk of the car. We weren't towing the car because we would need it in Chatham. I lead the way in the car and Doug followed with the coach. Look out Chatham! Here we come. It was great being on the move again, even though it was only about 40 kilometers or about 26 miles south from our present location. We arrived in Chatham in good time. Doug parked the coach in the Canadian Tire parking lot and we were on our way to Chatham Place Mall to have our eyes tested at Dr. Mastranardi's office. I wasn't going to get my eyes examined because I didn't think there had been any change in my eyes. The nurse at the office said that I should have them checked. Doug had no change in his vision, lucky guy. Me, now that is a different story. New glasses, stronger again, are in my future. Soon, I will need a seeing eye dog. 8( . Not quite that bad yet, but they are very strong. I am glad that they can make them in plastic, otherwise the lens would make us overweight in the coach. We took my prescription to Wal*Mart Vision Center. We really like the Wal*Mart Vision Center for our eye glass prescriptions. We save lots of $$$'s and they are good quality eyewear. This will be my second pair from there. When you get to a prescription like mine, with progressive lens, several hundred dollars are saved. We had a nice surprise this year also. We did not have to pay the full amount and then bill our health plan. They submitted the invoice directly and we paid the difference. That was a time saver. We did a bit of shopping while we were there. We returned back to the coach and had lunch from the Hot Dog wagon at Canadian Tire. Doug had a hot dog and I had a sausage on a bun. Both good for the cholesterol, but we don't do it often. We ate lunch in the coach with the genny running to keep us cool. It needed its monthly run anyway. The best part about this lifestyle is being home wherever we park it. Soon we were on our way to Tilbury. We were on a very important mission. We were going to be looking after our grand-dog for the next 5 days. Our son and daughter-in-law don't have any children, hence the grand-dog by the name of Dawg. Now you know why we have this week's title. It is only 27 kms. from Chatham to Tilbury, so we didn't take long to get there. We were backed into our son's driveway and plugged in, shortly after the lunch hour. Jody had installed a 30 amp RV box for us. That meant we could fire the air conditioner with no strain on our electrical system. We sure appreciate him putting that in for us. Makes our visits a lot more enjoyable. Early Thursday morning, Jody and Rachael were on their way north for the Civic holiday weekend. They go to Bobcaygeon, with numerous of their jeep friends. They are a bunch of hard core jeep club buddies that take off-roading to the extreme level. If you want to go with them, you better go big or stay home. Their jeep is so high, I need a three step ladder to get into it. Now, my legs aren't that short, they aren't that long either, but I can get on a 16 hand horse, if it is wearing a saddle, without a ladder, but this jeep is totally different. I just can't manage to get my foot up level with my ear, in order to get into the jeep. They rock climb and swamp crawl, you name it, it is on the menu this weekend for the jeep club. They love it. It is a real stress reliever from their jobs. Jody loves getting back to God's country. He enjoys getting away from the hustle and bustle of urban life, even if it is only for a few days. Rachael enjoys these weekends also. She loves getting in her jeep and running with the big dogs. Jody is the mechanic. He gets play time also. He is talking about building himself a monster jeep truck. We are looking forward to seeing it. While they were away playing, we were being nurse to Dawg. He had an operation on his ear last week and was still on medication from the vet. He stays outside all the time, summer and winter. This time though, the vet had said he needed to stay inside for ten days. Several times a day I went and let him out. Poor Dawg was hurting, because he just was not himself. He was really droopy. I would be too, if I had a three inch incision, like he had on the underside of his ear flap. Twice a day I had to give him medication. He was really good about taking it. Could have been because it the capsules were inside Schnieders Red Hot weiners 8) He is a good dog and easy to look after. Friday was a work day for me. Doug stayed home and let Dawg in and out. Doug also started the maintenance work on the coach. We have lots to do while we are here. Jody will be helping him, when he gets back. Removing the coach tires are a big, heavy job, made worse by the extreme heat. The tires have to come off to replace the brake pads and rotars. We had heated the brakes up a couple of times. It is better to be safe, then sorry, so we are replacing all the brakes, rotars and brake fluid, just to be safe. Doug was a mechanic in his work days and Jody is a Millwright, so the coach is in good hands. We save mega dollars by doing our own maintenance work. The weekend went by quietly. Everyone is away enjoying the Civic Day long weekend. We hope that you enjoy your weekend also. Monday rolled around. Jody and Rachael arrived home. They had put heavy duty everything in the jeep drive shafts and suspension. They still managed to break this one part. They broke the collar out where the universal joint goes and also the part that holds the other side of the universal joint. Have a look for yourself. It must have been under extreme pressure to break.
I put my clipon sunglasses in the photo to give you an idea of the size of this part. Here is a closer look at the damaged part. We are talking heavy duty steel here!
This shaft weighed about 20 pounds, but is history now. This is the baby jeep that broke the part
Now this is a JEEP! They still managed to have a real fun weekend and breaking parts are all part of the fun. You can see a heavy duty power winch on the front of the jeep. That is the silver piece below the headlights in the middle of the black bumper looking thing. If they get stuck they can pull themselves out and they can also help anyone else that gets stuck. This is the type of off-roading they do. I will post some of their off-road adventures one of these days. Tuesday to Friday were work days for me. I don't have many more days to work this year. About another ten days this year. I think I can manage to handle that. Doug is going to continue working on the coach tomorrow (Monday) and I will go to my job in Chatham. We will be returning to our seasonal site outside of Rondeau Park, one day this week. We are getting very close to need our holding tanks emptied. It is a challenge going this long without dumping, but we have done it before. We take our showers in the house and use paper plates to limit the amount of dish washing. We have learned how to conserve to extend our time away. We hope you all have a good week and we will see you next week from our summer site if all goes as planned. Next we start reserving our winter away. Lots of decisions to be made there 8)
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