Lee State Park

I have extolled the virtues of the South Carolina park system before but it had been a long time since I've had the pleasure of visiting one of their parks.   I am working in South Carolina this month, though. 
Last weekend I joined my younger daughter and family to celebrate her father-in-law's birthday at Chester SP.  I have camped there before.   This time we went to the picnic area at the lake and had a great time.
This weekend I am at Lee State Park.   Lee State Park campground has both regular and equestrian sites, level, with water and electric, for reasonable fees.   There is a dump station, of course, but no sewer hookups in the sites.   With a 2 week limit, who needs full hookups??
This park, like others in the system, appears clean and well maintained.  
The park was built by the CCC.

My plans for the weekend: music, hiking, and some house cleaning.   If anyone tells you a rolling stone gathers no moss - they lie!  So I must weed out some of the moss I've gathered before I inspire an RV episode of Hoarders.

Unless a daughter accepts my invitation to come out and play.. .

The Southeastern Rendezvous

This is the third rendezvous,  where I had no signal.   This area had quite a few more lodges earlier in the week but many had packed up and gone to another event.   Sometimes they overlap. 
Sorry - I was way too busy having fun to take pictures.   There were lots of seminars to attend, matches to compete in, food to cook and eat, old friends to catch up with, new friends to meet, shopping to do, and songs to sing.

Back to the 21st Century.

I'm back.   I have been places where cell phone use is inappropriate, and places where the internet was inaccessible.   The third rendezvous was 10 days long and not a data signal anywhere.   Then I came back to the modern world just in time for hurricane Sandy.   So now the mountain of snail mail has been recycled, the lesser of two evils has been voted for, the inbox has been cleared.   The gear that lives in the motorhome has mostly been returned to its normal place.   The propane tank,  which chose my departure day to run out, has been filled.   And I am at the mechanic shop awaiting yet another repair to the steering/brake system.   Yes,  on this vehicle they are connected.
And so modern life and blogging resume.

My wish list

It is so much easier to set up camp when I've just done it recently.   What took 2 days last rendezvous only took 2 or 3 hours this time.   A wall tent makes a comfy camp but I still miss my tipi.   This camp, there is  one right in front of my camp.

The Eastern Rendezvous

The rendezvous is over.   We had sun, wind,  rain, and a wonderful time.  Ate lots of good food cooked over open fires.  Played and listened to lots of music.  As usual, I took my bow and gun but never shot either because I was way too busy having other kinds of fun.  Shooting will have to wait for a smaller event, when I'm not so busy catching up friends I don't get to see often.
A few days rest at friends’ house,  and we're off to do it again at Fort Rowdy this weekend.

Setting up camp!

I arrived at my friends’ home Sunday evening.  Ohio seemed so level after WV.   It isn't,  really,  but it has nothing that would make an RV nervous. I love the expanse of sky.
This morning we came over to the event site and I set up camp.  I am certain I carry too much stuff but I'm not sure what I could get rid of.  So this is my camp all ready to move into.   Empty and waiting.   Since I apparently can't post more than one picture per blog post from the phone, I'll spare you the details of the rest of the moving in and the rain that's immanent.

Through West Virginia

The drive to western Ohio was long.   When I was younger I could do more long distance driving.   Lately my sit bones hurt after a hundred miles.
I stopped at Tamarack to rest them.
Tamarack is a conference center,  crafts store,  hints of museum , park. ...  I only took time to explore the crafts store.   Lots of neat stuff.   Also an exhibit of West Virginia music.

time traveling

The next few weeks will have nothing to do with motorhomes.  I am headed out for five or six weeks in the 18th century,  doing 2 events in Ohio and another in North Carolina.  I have not spent this much time at living history events since I was a trader.  I've been looking forward to this for a long time.

Mobility!

This is a test post.  I now have Blogger on my phone and I'm on vacation.  I'd say I was retired, but I have vehicles to support and gas to buy.  Anyway, if this works I should be posting more often.  Here goes!

New Comfy Mattress

When I was still living in the Escaper, I bought a wonderfully comfy air bed from Bed Bath & Beyond. It has a built in electric pump and is easy to adjust - sort of like a Sleep-Number Bed without the price tag. It's a twin size, and I bought it thinking I would be able to move it into the Holiday Rambler when it finally got road-worthy.
Not so much.

The beds in the Rambler are a custom size, about 8 inches narrower than standard twin. Sheets don't fit. Extra pillows get in the way. When I put the air bed in place and inflated it, it not only hung over the edge of the bed, it overlapped the built-in bed stand.

Fast forward a year or so. I'm parked at my friends' (Thom and Kacee) in Tool Heaven. So I asked Thom how hard would it be to move the bed stand over to the left. He said it would be pretty easy and promptly volunteered to do it.
OK - pretty easy for him.

He's got cool stuff like off-set ratchets. Good thing, because the way motorhome interiors are put together, screws are not always reachable in anything like a normal manner.

After a bit of contortionism and suitable application of cool tools, the stand and the left spacer were removed.

A bit of adjustment was required to make everything fit back in properly.

The left spacer was joined to the right spacer.

The stand was installed to the left of the spacers, right up next to the musical instruments' bed.

Then Thom built an extension for the bed platform.

And voila! The roomier, more comfortable air mattress is installed.

Thom, I thank you, my back thanks you, zzzzzzzzz.

Breaking News: Poplar Tree Targets Motorhome

OK, my intentions were to take care of business here, staying in my usual spot at Izaac Walton, then head south to join my kids for the Fourth of July. Friday evening the Weather Channel sent an alert to my phone warning of severe thunderstorms. I took heed and furled my awning, then went to bed. When I woke to the sound of high winds, I thought it was morning - actually it wasn't but around 9 pm. There was a lot of wind. I got a text from my friend Sue, about 80 miles north, that it was storming there too. A quick check of Facebook let me know that it was storming lots of places. I heard a clunk on the camper - something'd hit it. Later I heard another one. Later on, I heard and felt a major clunk. Of course it was dark. Very dark - the park had lost power. Somewhere along the line, I got up and dressed again. If I was going to be picked up and hurled to OZ, I didn't want to arrive in my nightgown. I spent some time in the hallway, reading the internet on my phone, figuring it had the most vertical wall support, just in case.

Before midnight, it got quiet. I decided to take a look outside. When I opened the door, 2 things happened: I saw a large limb lying on the ground in front of the door, and I got swarmed by all sorts of little (and big) bugs. See, when the park lost power, the pole light 2 campsites over went out. All the bugs had no light to attract them except the one in my kitchen, so they ran me over on their way in to have a party at my place. (Never again will I complain about that pole light!)

OK, limb in the yard,

limb on the roof,

some visible-in-the-dark damage... I called the insurance company and filed a claim. In the morning, I went out for a better look.

Small limb on the roof.

Big limb in the front yard.

Big limb in the back yard.

Then I closed the door and saw what it had hidden while open: the door to my propane compartment was pretty mangled.

What happened was the limb had fallen from the top of a nearby poplar. The butt had hit the propane compartment door as it slammed up against the side of the motorhome. It snapped at the roofline and the top of the limb somersaulted over the rig and landed on the ground on the other side with its butt away from the rig.

I don't know whether the limb on the roof, which slid under the powerline, is part of the same or a separate event. I do know that if I'd left the awning open, it would have been mangled thoroughly. As it is, I have serious damage to the compartment door, damage to the roof corner, and need to have the roof itself thoroughly inspected. Elsewhere in the park, several trees went down. One was an oak, at least 18" in diameter, which stood in the midst of several campers in the more crowded area of the park. It did not hit any campers, but brought down a power line and landed where a car had been moved from 15 minutes earlier. Elsewhere in the world, one of my friends has a tree through her kitchen roof. I write this while waiting for the insurance adjuster to call, and for the internet to come back up... Hope everyone's ok out there.

Today's yard

Time to be in the woods. I've had enough of civilization for a while, having been working in Northern Virginia the past few weeks. Back to the world of supermarket merchandising Monday but for now - peace, quiet, tent-campers for neighbors. Life is good.

Motorhome Life

Some things got accomplished this weekend. I treated myself to a campground, made a to-do list, and started checking things off.

The false drawer in front of my sink used to fall off every so often. It won't happen any more - it is now a drop-down door with a tray for cleaning tools behind it. By Ref-A-Shelf out of Lowe's.

I'd had the lid holder all along - it came with the motorhome. But it was on the pantry door, so I'd removed it and although lids were in it, it was just sitting inside this cabinet. I finally had a spare moment and it's now on the inside of the door where it belongs.

The big accomplishment of the weekend: after a couple of weeks of frustrating troubleshooting, my coach batteries are charging again. I'm not sure exactly why - it might have been the battery terminals or it might have been something interfering with the cut-off switch that got fixed when I attempted unsuccessfully to remove it - but it was not bad batteries, a bad converter-charger, or a few other things that were checked. (Thank you Iche for helping me with that.)
It is SO nice to see all 5 lights come on when I press that button!

Other things accomplished this weekend had to do with laundry (you don't want to see pictures), cleaning, knitting, and music.


This is my music stand and guitar, ready for use, when I'm parked. When I'm on the move, the guitar is safely in my case, as you've seen in previous posts.



The music stand used to live in its case too, but stuff that's too hard to get at doesn't get used so I've fixed that. My stand is very cool - it's a heavy-duty stand that folds down a lot like a good guitar or mic stand. Even the music holder itself folds in half.



The stand is secured to the back of the dinette seat with a cup hook and tiny bungee cord and can live there permanently. With the music tray folded down, it rides nicely, and a rope holds the stool in place next to it. (The mic stand just kind of sits there - the stool doesn't let it escape.)




While I'm thinking about securing things for travel - I have an Ott-Lite floor lamp. It shines natural daylight on beadwork and whatever I'm reading. It also takes very expensive bulbs and it would really be bad for it to tip over.



Here it is, secured to the bedroom wall. I put an eye bolt through the wall, cut the excess off with my Dremel, wrapped the lamp with a washcloth to protect it and bungee'd it to the eyebolt. That lamp's not going anywhere I don't want it to.



Now THIS - I thought I'd written about it, and taken more pictures - NOT. A few months ago, I stopped at a light that I probably should have run. I heard things moving in back, and figured I'd have to do some cleaning when I reached my jobsite. As I drove on, though, I heard a crashing noise and pulled over to investigate. The first thing I noticed is that my knife block had flown from the back of the dinette to the couch just behind the drivers seat. That was a scary thought.
Then I saw the source of the crash: my fridge door had come off its hinges (one'd broken) and was lying on the door, with the contents strewn around.
I said bad words about plastic hinges and carpeted kitchens, picked up the debris and drove to work. I was able to duct tape the hinge and replace the door, but that's not a permanent solution.
Next chance I got, I removed the door, covered the opening with a down comforter to keep the cold in, and epoxied the hinges back together. So far it's working fine.

Ice

Remind me why i'm not in South Texas?