Cleaning and Repairing

 

We were up early and I made the coffee and Sherri came down to the living room and got herself fixed in her recliner. While we were waiting for the coffee to brew we went over our plans for the day. The plan was to get our house in order. We have to clean the shower, toilet room and vacuum the carpet.

Another project on the list was replacing the vent lids on the roof. Tomorrow it is suppose to rain so I need to get those up before then.

We finished our coffee and then the work began. Sherri helped me get the vent lids on first and then she went to work on the floors and bathroom. Vents were finished so I took the laundry assignment. I took four loads over to the laundry and while they were washing I came back and dumped the tanks.

We took a break about 12:00 and fixed our lunch. We had one movie left so we watched it while we ate. Hangover was the movie and it was funny. We got all our chores done and then we had to take our movies back. While we were at the store we picked up some roasted chicken for dinner.

It was so good to get the inside cleaned up and smelling so good. When bad weather comes to town it sure is hard to keep things clean and when it clears out you have to get things back in order.

One last thing I have to comment on is my good friends Jim and Dee had a mishap while driving their trailer. Knowing how they feel right now…because Sherri and I have been there done that. We all have had our accidents with our RV’s. All I can say to them is don’t take this too hard…make it a learning experience and then move on. You both are in our thoughts and we know that you will get past this…

Somewhere in Time

The Ultimate Adventure

 

We woke up this morning at our usual time and enjoyed our coffee and each other. The topic of conversation was future trips and where they might be. We like to get on the computer and map out trips and look at RV parks that we might stay at.

Well we finished our coffee and plans and then got ready for the day. We were headed to Wills Point to put in some Salad Dressing racks. From there we went to Quinlan…Terrell and then ended up in Kaufman. We finished up today and then went to Applebee’s for a treat of soup and salad…all you can eat.

When we reached home I was ready for a nap and Sherri watched her soap opera. I had a good nap and when I woke up Sherri was watching Idol. I watched for a while and then I noticed the sky getting a little dark and it started to rain. I thought about the boxes of soup racks I had in the back of the truck and wondered if they would be OK. Well soon I forgot about the boxes when it started hailing!

We could not hear the weatherman but we could see the picture and we knew the storm was right on top of us.

All of a sudden the hail got larger and started coming down so hard we could not hear the TV weather man. We could see the storm on the radar and we knew we were in trouble. The water was starting to surround the RV and the hail kept coming.

The white stuff on the ground is hail.

Our site is in the river bed here at the park. Needless to say we are going to ask if we can move tomorrow.

Soon I head the worst sound! The vents in the bath area and in the toilet room broke and water started to come in. All we could do is put a bucket under the vents and hope that the rain would let up after a while.

This is the vent in the bath area.

This is the vent in the toilet area

The storm lasted about 30 minutes and at times the hail reached half dollar size. Most of the hail was quarter size but no matter it was banging us up pretty good.

This is a quarter size hail stone. Sherri said she had some that were half dollar size. 

The storm clouds started to clear away and the rain stopped. It took it a while for the run off to clear so we could walk out side. I was going to go up on the roof and cover the vents with a plastic bag. I climbed up the ladder and walked out on the roof looking for any damage that the roof might have sustained. The only thing that I could see that was damaged was the two vents in the bath area. I slipped the bag over them one at a time and Sherri rolled the vent down to seal it off. I hope this keeps the rain out until we can get some new vents.

This is one more time we dodged the  bullet in our RV. We just have to get out of tornado alley…

Somewhere in Time

MLK Day

 

Here it is MLK day and I have to work!!! I know most of you out there are off today and kicked back in your recliners enjoy yourself. Sherri and I were up at 5:00 and on the road by 6:30. We finished today at noon in Canton and headed straight for Ochoa’s Mexican Restaurant. We had a real good lunch and then drove back to the park here.

Not much going on today…when we got home we just climbed in behind the computers and chatted with a few friends and read some emails. To all of you out there that send me emails I want you to know I enjoy reading them and may not comment back but I do read them and want to thank you for thinking of me.

Yesterday we did some exploring here in our own back yard. We found some towns that have been forgotten by most. We drove through several that are not even on the map and see why. Nothing left except some old buildings and rubble of what once was a town. It is sad to see these old buildings that once were the dwelling for a family or a business long ago. We are starting to do more of this kind of exploring as we travel the back roads.

So I don’t bore you too much I will sign off here and wish you well where ever you are. I am working on some pictures of the towns we go through and hope to have a journal entry on some of them…

Somewhere in Time

Movie Marathon

 

Today we have off but we are still up at 5:00. It is best to keep the same schedule rather than try to sleep in. When we sleep in we both end up with a head ache and we feel bad all day.

We had our coffee this morning while setting in our recliners. Last night we had gone to Brookshire’s and bought some movies to watch today. Three movies that would keep us busy for half the day and the other half would be spent washing clothes.

The movies were very good and we enjoyed watching them…eating popcorn and just doing nothing. While we were watching the movies Sherri was washing clothes in our machine. When the movies were all watched we packed up the clothes and headed to the barn.

We are both happy that we got the washer and dryer for our barn. It sure has come in handy over time and we have saved a lot of money doing our clothes there. It sure will be good when we can park in our driveway and stay at the barn. When we are working this area of the country it saves us a ton of money to stay there and just pay for the electric. This weather has been so wet and our new drive may never dry out. Only we would have chosen this time of the year to put in a drive.

We got all the clothes washed and then we had to go back to Canton to return the movies and while we were there we picked up 5 more. Well tomorrow will be another movie day. We decided to watch one tonight while we ate some snacks. About half way through the movie I looked over at Sherri and she was sound asleep. Must not have liked it?

Time for lights out…Woke Sherri up and sent her to bed. I finished the movie and then it was my turn to turn in. We had a good time just the two of us…

Somewhere in Time 

Thursday is the Last Day

 

Thursday morning came and we were up and getting ready to go to work. It was odd waking up in the hotel room and trying to figure out where you are for the first few minutes. Once to cloud cleared I knew where I was and knew I had to bathe shave and get ready for the day.

This day was going to be a reset day for Campbell Soup shelves. We are changing out the shelves that your Campbell Soup goes on. I like working these projects because you get to unload all the product and then build the new shelves and load all the soup cans back in. Now you say how fun can that be??? Well when it is all done and you stand back and admire your work there is a feeling of satisfaction. I am sure there are those out there that don’t have a clue on what I am saying so I will leave it at that.

Sherri and I working side by side is fun too. We seem to get along better when we are working and striving for the same goals….finishing and going home. The work is really not that hard and what I really like about it is not being responsible for anyone but myself. After 40 years of being in charge of people and responsible for everything they do this is a cake walk!

After work we headed to White Oak to deliver some shelves and picked up some salad dressing shelves for future jobs we have to do. On the way there we stopped off and looked at some RV parks that we had heard about from friends. Every park we looked at was nice and we would stay there if we have to in the future. I like knowing what these places look like before I get there. Nothing worse than planning on staying in a park and getting there to find out they are a dump!

It was good to get home after being gone all week. Everything looked to be in good condition when we drove in. The best thing was it was warm and I could hook up to the water. I hope that it stays this way for a while…we are both tired of cold weather.

Tomorrow we are off until Monday so we drove down to the store to rent some movies from the Red Box. We got three and plan on spending the first part of the day watching movies and relaxing. I love this work schedule and the fact that all the traveling and eating we did was paid for! How sweet is that and next week will be more of the same…

Somewhere in Time

Shreveport

 Thanks to everyone that wished me a Happy Birthday. Really what makes me happy is the good Lord let me live one more year. Every year I live I make many memories and that is all we end up with.

Here we are in Shreveport…the alarm going off at 5:00 and Sherri and I dragging around the motel room trying to get ready for the day. We got our showers… dressed and went to he breakfast bar to eat.

We have a breakfast bar here and they had a good selection. Now that I am back to work I have to have some food in the morning to keep me going until lunch.

Being the new guy on the team I was abused today. Not really but I did get to carry out some of the task that the new guy always gets. I was not sent out to get the key to the flag pole but I did get to do some things that kind of breaks you into the team. What I like the most is going to different places and working then heading off to another.

We have 4 stores lined up next week and are pretty much on our own schedule to complete them. This will give us some time to do other things. I think this is going to work out for the both of us. We can make money and still have time to travel and explore places we have never been.

Today was all work until 3:30 and then we headed to the Sam’s Town Casino for our half price buffet. We had to play some before we ate…I lost a dollar and Sherri won $15.00.

I do feel better having worked today. I think a couple of days a week working will help me lose some weight and when summer gets here I will be able to go back to walking more. 30 lbs has to come off so I better get to work on it.

I will not fill my journal with all work. Sherri and I will have time off to do other things. We hope to do some exploring along the way and we will take you along…

Somewhere in Time

Today is My Birthday

 

Got up this morning and did not feel any older than I did when I went to bed. How great is that! I had to get ready to go to work this morning…so made the coffee and took a shower and got ready. The plan was to pull out about 6:00 and sure nuff we did just that. It is still cold here so we had to ready the house for cold temps while we were gone. Much the same as you stix and brix you have to get everything in order so it does not freeze up before you get back.

We arrived in Tyler and started our project which did not take too long. We headed on to Longview…Hallsville and finally Marshall Texas were we finished out the day. From there we went to Shreveport got our motel room and went to eat with all the gang. We ate at the Cracker Barrel and was it good. We all discussed our diets and how well they were working out. You really believe that I know.

I have to lose 30 pounds no ifs…ands…or buts about it. I have to shed this weight and get to where I can tie my shoes and see them while standing. I have a long row to hoe but I know I can do it. I quit smoking years ago so I know I can do it if I just give it a try.

Yes this is my Birthday and I had all but one child call me today. I wont mention which child did not call me. I really had forgotten it was my birthday until Sherri reminded me on the way the Tyler. I don’t celebrate birthdays any more…I just put it behind me and think young. I thank the Lord every birthday for letting me live this long. It has been a wonderful life and even if it was taken from me tomorrow I would have to say that it was a great trip with lots of memories…

Somewhere in Time

Going to Kemp

This is the entrance to the RV park here on I 20. Not a bad park… at $375 a month…wish it was in Arizona

Well this morning we woke up with temps in the teens. Yes it is 19 degrees out there now and the RV inside is 68 degrees. Yeah…for the inside… the outside, however is frozen and we are getting close to being out of water. I checked the tank after filling it yesterday and we are down to a 1/4. I should say down to a 1/4 after our baths this morning.

You’ll have to excuse the pictures…Sherri was driving and I just had to snap them as fast as I could…better than the ones I take while driving.

This is the laundry room

All the road signs in the park are Interstate signs…I 20 row D.

Got some reflection in the window…but this is the view out back. When it warms up I’ll come up with some better photos.

OK we should have enough until the temps get up into the 50’s this afternoon. Well that is what they are calling for so all we can do is hope. We have to leave in the morning for Tyler and then on to Shreveport for two days. We do need some clothes for those days.

This morning we are headed to Kemp Texas to do a soup rack and then we are going to check out some camp grounds on Cedar Creek Lake. We must  get back early enough to see is the water has defrosted. I will have to fill our fresh water tank because I have to disconnect the water again tonight. The temps are suppose to fall into the low 20’s upper teens. GEEE I hope this comes to an end soon.

We left for Kemp at 6:00 am and arrived at the store about 7:00 am. It did not take us long to complete this project and we were on our way to the CVS pharmacy to spend some of Sherri’s CVS bucks she had earned. Then it was on to Lowes to return some brackets I had bought some time back that were the wrong kind.

When we arrived home we found the water still frozen and I began to worry about taking a shower. I did not want to shower up at the club house…It is too cold to drive up there and shower! I want to shower in my shower. We ate lunch…sat down and watched All My Children…we both took a nap and then Sherri woke me up to let me know that the water had broke lose. Thank heavens.

I went out and filled our tank and then hooked the water up to the RV. Man I sure am glad I got that done. Now we will unhook everything in the morning when we leave. We wont be back here until Wednesday or Thursday night. I think the oil heater will keep the place warm enough. The temperatures are not suppose to go below freezing the rest of the week.

Tonight we will watch a little TV and chat some and then get to bed early. We have to be in Tyler at 8:00 am so we have to leave here by 6:30.

Everything has worked out today… work completed…good lunch…great nap…water defrosted…life is good here…

Somewhere in Time

 

Frozen up

 

With the dump valves frozen we had gray water coming out the overflow. Man this is going to be a mess!

We were  up and planning our day out at 6:00. We drank our coffee and talked about the plan for next week. Part of that plan was working on where we would be going for work. Where… was laid out for us in our schedule that we had received online. We now know where we are going so we have to plan where we will be located so we can go to those places.

We start our week out close to our new location. We are staying at the I 20 RV Park just west of Canton Texas. We will be here for the next month while we work on assignments we have. From Van to Kemp to Shreveport we will be working out of this RV park. Yes can you believe that they would send us to Shreveport? You know what is in Shreveport…Yes casinos.

We will get to stay in a hotel when we go to Shreveport so that is another thing we are working on this morning. We have to line us up a reservation before we head  that direction. More than likely we will stay at the Holiday Inn.

We finished our coffee and our planning which included making sure they had room for us at the I 20 RV Park. One phone call confirmed that a site was available for us to park in. We are presently at Tawakoni State Park with a 2:00 pm check out time. We have to get moving so we can be ready by then.

It was about 12:00 when I stepped outside to get ready to move. I checked the water and found that it was frozen. Well that dashed the idea about dumping the black water…which by the way was really not that full. I decided to go with the gray water and get it dumped. You know I have electric dump valves on the Carriage…so when I found out that the dump valves were frozen I freaked out! Now what? Well I came to the conclusion that it was useless to try and defrost them here at the State Park. We had to get going so I said that I would work on this problem when I got to our new site.We went ahead and got everything ready to leave…hooked up and pulled out.

We arrived at our new park about 45 minutes later…big move. We stopped at the office and met the camp host who was looking for us. With the weather so cold they told us to just follow them…get parked and then come up later and register. I thought that was a real nice offer…with it being so cold. We did just that and followed them to the site and parked with very little problem..

We got backed in and I got most everything set up and then found out that the dump valves were frozen! Oh please let the temperatures get warm before I go crazy.

 

At least I got the truck cleaned out inside. The outside looks awful but then what can I do.

The problem did not start until I got everything set up and started to try and dump that gray water tank. The dump valve was frozen solid. Needless to say I was upset about this but what do you do when the temps are well below freezing. We decided to go to the grocery store and get our supplies and wait until tomorrow for some warmer temperatures.

When we arrived back at the RV I just had to try one more time to get that gray tank to drain. Success at last…persistence paid off. We have an empty gray tank now and are good to go. I will not shut the valve off this time. I will leave it open and let the gray go away. I have a short hose on my sewer so I don’t have to worry about it freezing up overnight.

Well we are set here…just going to wait out this cold snap to go away in the next couple of days and then we can  get back to normal living…

Somewhere in Time

Man is it Cold Here

 

This morning we got up and the first thing I did was…No I did not make coffee…I went to the weather station to see what the outside  temps were. My gosh!!! It is 19 degrees out there…that is cold!! OK now I have to go and make coffee. First things first here…they said that it would be in the teens this morning and sure nuff it is there.

Sherri and I have to go to work this morning for a short while and then back here to set around the rest of the day. We plan on doing nothing until we get it all done. If we don’t finish today then we will finish up tomorrow. It is hard to finish doing nothing but we will give it our best shot.

We got ready and headed out to work…my gosh it was cold out there. We ran the truck for about 10 minutes so that we could stand to set there while it finished warming up. We drove down to the gate here at the park…which was locked and I got out to open the lock. I tried the combination that they gave us but it did not open the gate! Wow this is not good. I looked at my watch and it said that it was almost 7:00. Well they open the gate at 7:00 so we opted to wait them out and let them open it.

It was not more than a few minutes and the Ranger showed up at the gate and opened it up with no problem. I asked him what the combination was and what he used was one digit off from what the office had given me. Thank heavens it was not an emergency exit we were taking. One digit could be the difference between life and death. I told the Ranger to tell those desk clerks they need to be more careful when writing down those codes. Like it was going to do any good.

OK so we were on our way about 7:00 and we would be finished by 12:00. Good deal more time to explore the area. We drove for a ways and then we decided that we were hungry so we stopped off at the Chili’s for some lunch. We had a good lunch and then we were ready to call it a day. It was just too cold to get out and take pictures or go hiking so we just pointed the truck back home.

We got home about 2:00 and as I was driving down to our site I noticed the ice that had formed on the branches of the trees down by the water. The sunlight hitting it made it glisten like a diamond. After we got parked I took the camera down to the shore line and got some pictures. It did not take me long to realize that I was cold…too cold to be out on a photo shoot. I packed it in and was real glad to get back to the RV and the warmth inside.

We pack it in here tomorrow and head for our new home. We will be staying south of here which will put us closer to our next job. I really dread packing up tomorrow and hitching up in the cold weather. That is life on the road however so I must get it done and wish for warmer weather…

Somewhere in Time

First Day On The Job

We were up early and made our coffee…I had no plan on drinking mine until I hit the road. We got ready and then pulled out headed for Paris Texas. We had to put in some soup racks up there and then we were going to explore some around Lake Fork.

We arrived at the store only to find out that we did not have all the equipment there to do the job so we had to rearrange our plan. We decided to head south to the next store on our list and see if they had all we needed to install the new shelves.

Quitman Texas was where the store was located and sure enough they had all we needed. We got that done real quick and had time left to explore some RV parks along our route. We enjoy driving through different parks to see what they have to offer. Sometimes we find future places to stay when we are in the area that have amenities we enjoy.

Getting to travel the 4 state area has opened up many new areas to stay in and do fun things in. We have started a new hobby since we have been doing this. When we travel we try and go the back roads that are not normally traveled by sight seers. We are taking pictures of old towns…the buildings and the older houses in that area. So far I really like the results of many of our travels and we have come up with some interesting pictures.

OK so we have to work a few hours a day…we still take time out to go and see some things around and learn more about the towns…the people and the history of those places we travel.

I hope in the upcoming journals to let you know more about these places and provide some pictures we have taken….

Somewhere in Time