Starting to Pack! - part 1: Outside Luggage

I looked all over the web getting tips on what to pack in a motorhome.  We usually pack everything including the kitchen sink.  If you check out   "SliceOfAmericaTrip.blogspot.com" , our blog from 2 years ago you can see pictures of how we packed.  We had 2 vans that time.  This time we will have the van and Lucy, which will be bringing the kitchen sink!

But.....weight and space is of the essence in a motorhome.  Lucy's gas mileage is really low and we want to make sure it doesn't go much lower.  On the drivers side, Lucy has 2 cargo holds, differing sizes and then there is the water door for filling the fresh water tank and the electrical hold for the "shore" electric power cord plus the surge protector and the hot water heater has it's little spot too.

1.  The large cargo hold that will hold the camping stuff:  The large tent, the kids tent, stakes and poles, rain tarps, tarp for working under the vehicles, work gloves and Lucy's plastic levelers.

2. The small cargo hold, rather small, that will hold:
 tools, extension cords and sewer pipe connector.
Pliers
Open/closed wrenches
Flat head screwdrivers
Phillips screwdrivers
Long nose pliers
Vise grips, lg and sm
Wrench
Tie cables
bungie cords
electrical tape
Duct Tape
Oil for the Generator
Flares
Rags
2 heavy duty extension cords
2 plug strips
Disposable gloves
Sewer hose connector
Fuses
Wire


On the passenger side:
3. The very large cargo hold which has plastic tubs that hold:
     carb and choke cleaner
     Various spare belts and hoses
     Fuel filter
     Ignition module
     Motorhome jack
     Stabilizer jacks
     Jumper cables
     Jack handle
     Eternabond tape
     Gorilla tape
     Insulation tape
     Jump start system
     2 fresh water hoses
     Water filter
     Water regulator
     Clothes line rope and pins
     Camp chairs
     Small collapsible table
     Stool for van carrier rack
     Rug
     Collapsible trash can

4.  Small cargo hold:  not sure what will be in here, but seriously thinking of storing the electric skillet which we will be using on the small table just outside Lucy using her outside electric plug.  Since we will be hitting heat we plan to do most serious cooking by campfire or electric skillet to keep from heating the inside of Lucy.

Also on the passenger side we have Lucy's generator, the refrigerator vent and the propane hold.

Items in bold have not been packed yet.






 

How Lucy got her Name

    The adventure of getting a trailer, motorhome, or such can be quite funny.  Like when I was trying to fill the fresh water tank for the first time........I couldn't figure out why it wasn't filling, where the water was going.  After an embarrassing period of time I hit the internet.  People that have had their rv's for a long time forget that newbees have no clue on certain aspects of living on wheels.  It took awhile before it finally dawned on me there are 2 water sources.  The most obvious one being the faucet connection on the side - that is for hooking a hose to a faucet and bypassing the water tank!  The other source is behind a little door.  It is an inlet for filling the water tank. 

Decades ago, Lucille Ball and her husband made a film "The long, long trailer".  The movie is hillarious as my grandkids will tell you. After the water tank incident I felt so stupid for all the consternation and I remembered "The Long, Long Trailer".  So that is how my 1990 Tioga Arrow motorhome was named after Lucille Ball!

Lucy is not a young thing but then neither am I.  She is not one of those HUGE motorhomes but is always to looking to loose a bit of weight, which I am too.  But she has only a few miles on her (I have quite a few) and she is in pretty good shape for her age, which I like to think I am too.  We have bonded. 

And Now Iowa and Illinois are getting in the act!

Heavy rain and flooding!!!  What is it with these states!  Just get it out of your system and be nice when we are in your territories!

We have some of us that will be sleeping in a lovely huge tent from the Rapid City, SD Cabella sporting goods store.  This wonderful tent was purchased after our trusty old "blue tent" was defeated by a wind/rain storm in the Black Hills near Mt Rushmore on our trip 2 summers ago. (see  SliceOfAmericaTrip.blogspot.com)  It was all very exciting.  It was one of the two places I decided to book a room and my sister joined me.......we missed all the excitement.

This time, if Mother Nature tries to pull a fast one we will be ready.  Plan A is the indefeatable tent, Plan B, they all join us in the motorhome......beds on the floor!  Flooding may necessitate Plan B.

We will be tempting fate just a bit.  Hot dogs are on the menu a couple of times.  So, we will see if the CURSE OF THE HOT DOGS is still in effect!  The kids were sure whenever we had hot dogs we had disasters that when along with them!! 

Moving right along...
The van came back with oil changed and tires rotated and all of the other good stuff they do during a tune up.  She is ready to go!

92 Degrees in Texas...Already???

OK, I hope Texas is just trying to get it out of it's system now and give us a break when we visit that state!

What will we find in Texas?  I visited Texas years ago and I remember the huge tall clouds that would just come up out of nowhere....and then a rain and lightening storm....then gone.  Galveston was a beautiful and wonderful place and I regretted not being able to really explore it.  The old houses were wonderful and when a hurricane hits I wonder how they ever lasted all these years.  Well, who knows, maybe they are not there any more.

Thoughts on Food and Traveling

It has been a real challenge to come up with menus for this trip and keep in mind:

We have kids with us and their tastes,
We will have adults and their tastes, 
We want a balanced diet,
We will have a refrigerator in Lucy, but it is small compared to home,
We may hit very high temps and hopefully Lucy's refrigerator will do well
Canned and packaged food is often high in sodium and not that healthy, but stores well 
We don't want be spending a lot of time at grocery stores,
Time will be of the essence on certain days of the trip in regards to food preparation.
Some days we will have campfires, others not.  We will have Lucy's stove, microwave,  toaster, and elect. skillet.
Temperatures will determine what we will want to eat
When we have full days of sightseeing we will be carrying our food and snacks for the day
Fast food is expensive; money-wise and calories
Food is attached to emotions and we want to keep everyone happy,
Food preparation needs to be kept simple and quick.


We have menus on paper for every day of the trip.  They are not set in stone, maybe plaster of Paris though!  From these menus we have shopping lists.  We did this on our last trip and we got very good at whizzing through the grocery stores.  We didn't have a refrigerator though that time and living out of a cooler was difficult.  We may end up putting fruits and vegetables in a small cooler to save space in the refrigerator and still beat the heat.

We have several fast food stops, several restaurant stops (to sample the regional food) in the menus.  Lots of snacks, mostly healthy and some not so much.

For those watching calories we have the Weight Watchers Points for the meals.  That will make it possible to choose responsibly!  (I'm talking to myself here!)

Did you know.....

On October 28, 1886, the day of the Statue of Liberty's official dedication. The island was open to MEN ONLY, so a group of women rented a boat and circled the island in protest!

THANK YOU, to the Homeland Guards!!

Thank you, Jen and Robert for house-sitting and taking care of Meatloaf and the yards while we are gone!  

And thank you, Ed for staying with Dad while we are gone.  He is looking forward to working with you on the chicken coop!  Joe is ready to see you too.  He promises to be a "good dog" and not bark at you.  He has turned his life around and is a real lap dog now.

 And Gerard, thank you for being the "commander of the house" and guardian of Cody while Coletta and Amanda are on the road.  And we will certainly have better phone service than last time.....I hope!

It is so great to know someone is home guarding the ranch!

Tomorrow's project

I noticed this morning that there is a flap of some sort that goes along the front of Lucy.  This flap needs to screwed in again.  It must have been unscrewed when the shop put in the new stabilizers.   It certainly wouldn't help with gas mileage to have it scooping up the air as we go down the road.  A project for tomorrow

We ordered cards to hand out along the way on the trip.  We get asked a lot at campgrounds and such for our web site or who we are and this hopefully will help.




[I ran out of business cards I had with me last time because I was asked for the blog site address so many times.  I was so glad I had them.  We had lots of people taking pictures of our vans just for all the info written on them......# of mosquito bites, # of times lost, etc.  It was pretty funny.  The kids started to count the number of thumbs up from drivers while on the road.  And we really enjoyed the comments on the blog.
signed,
Grandma]
 

The Van Map

This is the stencil for the map we used on Slice of America 1 trip to paint the map on the Van.  I found a large map of the USA online, printed it out, taped the pages together and cut out the borders.  

Slice of America 2 trip will be from coast to coast.  You don't realize just how tiny some of those East Coast states are as you do when you are doing a project such as this.  I have the stencil ready but have it on a board, covered with freezer paper to keep it from getting bent and out of shape...I hope!  We will be painting the maps a few days before we leave with CarArt Paint. 

The CarArt paint is difficult to find but we bought it off the internet.  The cans are small and not the regular size of spray paint cans so don't be disappointed.

Weather!

Out here in our part of California weather is rarely exciting.  We live near the San Francisco Bay and when we have one of our rare lightening storms teenagers can be found forming "lightening watch" parties down at the end of the road.  And a tiny rain shower is called a "storm".  It took me a long time to accept that after experiencing REAL storms in the Plains States.  So........

While we were planning this trip,  Texas was in the middle of SUPER HOT temps!  Joplin, Missouri was hit with that huge tornado, and those tornadoes kept going on and on!  And then there were floods, one of our planned campsites is still closed from the damage of them.  We knew we didn't have to worry about snow and sleet, we dealt with those in Grand Canyon last trip.  Hail could be a problem though, they are always showing those golfball-sized hail on the TV news.  But despite these fears we soldier on.....


Notice this information we found on the internet.  When it comes down to it tornadoes can be around 6 months of the year! 


One of the first things I did was to get a NOAA Weather Radio.  Of course, since we live in "boring weather area" I don't know if the "Alert"  function really works.


Our best wishes go out to all those caught in all that weather this past year.  We have earthquakes but compared to those tornadoes at least big earthquakes don't happen often.

Comments on Our Trips

It always is quite interesting that there seems to be only two kinds of reactions when people hear about our vacation trip.

1.  You're crazy.

2.  I've always wanted to do that!  or I love doing that!

These are the states we visited on Slice of America 1(SliceOfAmericaTrip.Blogspot.com)
 On Slice of America 2 we will be going all the way to the East Coast and back!

The Cigarette lighter now works.

I took off the plastic front on the dashboard and managed to get it all off despite the radio and air conditioner.  With the back of the cigarette lighter exposed I checked it out, it had power to there but not when something was plugged in.  Dearest Hubby suggested it might be corroded on the inside contact, so I took out my handy dandy Dremel with a wire brush attachment and gave it a bit of a cleaning.  Works fine now!

Since the GPS needed the dash cigarette lighter I am really happy it now works!

After a lot of research, I finally purchased my new camera for the trip. A Sony Cybershot. Very lightweight. I test it out and works great. It cost $239 through Amazon.com. A little pricy for me but to have really good pictures and video and for it be really light weight, I am happy. I'm so excited about all the places I will get to share through the pictures and videos. Eeeee 50 more days till blast off!!!!

E-Z Pass on the East Coast

We are trying to set up our E-Z Pass accounts for the toll roads on the East Coast.  We are trying to figure out how must $ to put in the accounts since we will be traveling on a lot of sections of toll roads.  It is not easy to figure out the miles on them by using Google Maps.  Toll roads will be new to us.

Signed,

 Grandma

The Itinerary!

The  final itinerary for Lucy has been printed and is ready to go!

Each vehicle has their own itinerary - 40 days and 40 nights! The navigator keeps these itineraries up front.  They have directions in them.

Cathy spent many hours finding all sorts of interesting sites for us to see.  And reservations for each night!

Another set of itinerary is posted day by day on the wall next to Lucy's door for everyone to checkl

Also the check list for arriving and leaving camp is posted.

Gas prices down?

I am thankful I planned on $5 per gal on gas!  If gas prices go down in time for our trip that would be nice.  As it is, I think gas is the highest always here.  Anyhow, it was nice to hear on the radio this morning that gas prices are expected to go down for the next couple months.  Hope springs eternal!!

Rear and Side Camera System, Part 7

Dearest Hubbie did the honors for me by hooking up the power for both the Pyle and the RearViewSafety cameras.  We decided to hooked it up so that it can be even when the engine is turned off. That way for security we can have it on at night for security if we like.  We added a switch to turn it off wither the engine is on or not.   It all works perfectly!

This is the view the Rear View Safety Camera gives from the upper side of Lucy.  You can see our car, the front patio and the garage door.  The front of the car is where the huge blind spot is.  It will make such a difference not driving by feel when changing lanes and turning to the left.  How many times when just driving your car when the guy behind you decides to rush into right where you are in the process of going.  One of my pet peeves!  Heaven help them when they try it with a big rig or an rv with a blind spot.

This is the view from the cheapie Pyle license plate camera.  A very good view of the garage door and side of the house.  A really good quality picture considering how inexpensive it was, too bad the monitor wasn't good.

This is a view of the area under the steering wheel and the switch we added is on the right side of the steering column.

I had to bring the cable from the upper side camera inside Lucy through one of the dining area capboards.

This project is done!

Rear and Side Camera system, part 6

 The Lucy's 1990 counsel was not designed for all the gadgets we have now.  It has cup holders on each side but they are very shallow.  Then there is the ash tray, which has never been used and a small coin tray.  The rectangle on the front right side is where an old tape deck was.  It was a bear removing because it was glued in.

 I decided we really had to have more room for the camera monitor and GPS.  I cut the new counsel from a nice piece of plastic my husband donated to the cause.

Installed it gives a bit more depth to the cup holders.

This shows some of the work completed today:  See the power pak attached under the new counsel.  And the video cords are hooked up.  The monitor is on the counsel.  The wires under Lucy have all been cable tied.  The power cords still need to be hooked up.