A Boat and A Jeep (05-23-15)

The first order of business when we got back to Havasu was to get the camper emptied and ready to store.


At the resort where we are staying, we are only allowed to have it on our site for 48 hours at a time, while we load it or unload it.  Once it was emptied, we took it to our lot and dropped it way in the back, so hopefully it won’t be in the way. 

It wasn’t long before we were peeking under the shrink wrap of the boat, to check it out.

Paul was amazed that it was still in pretty good condition, and he quickly dug in, removing the shrink wrap and making a list of what needs to get done to it.

Of course it will need wax, and the trailer needs some parts replaced- oh, and yeah, it needs a new battery.













Well, the waxing isn’t finished, and the trailer still need parts, but 2 days later, the new battery is in, and the boat has been fired up.  It sounds good, and Paul has declared it ready to test on the water.  The only thing is…..it’s Memorial Day weekend, and we aren’t sure we want to hit the water at the same time as thousands of others do.





In the meantime though, we had a Jeep to test drive!  And how does one test drive a  Jeep?

By finding a steep, rocky, rough trail to take it on, of course!

This was so steep, Paul had to get out to make sure there was actually a trail off the side of this cliff.  There was. We were impressed, and the salesman said that this particular trail has sold many a Jeep for him.













Back at the dealership it was time to check under the hood.  Well, Paul did check under the hood of course, but he also had them lift the Jeep so he could check the undercarriage.












After a stressful day of giving it a thorough going over, price negotiations began.  It took a while, but eventually, the Jeep became ours!

House Update

While we were in Michigan we spoke to our builder and he said we are about a week behind, because one of the engineers took longer than usual figuring out the trusses.  So, the plans have been submitted to the city for approval, and we haven’t heard of any glitches, but it will probably be another week or so before we can start building.

Meanwhile, Paul and I have been making good use of the casita that sits on our RV lot.  It is completely empty so it makes a great storage room!  Not only are we keeping a bunch of our stuff in there  (and our last Costco run netted us a lot more bulky items than usual) but we are buying some of our appliances already.  Not the big ones (yet) but we found a great sale on the cook top we want, and also the convection/microwave, so we have ordered them to be delivered to us.

Back Home…. (05-20-15)

Paul and I actually thought that having the boat behind the camper would slow us down on the way home, but that wasn’t the case at all.



It traveled very nicely back there. In fact, it traveled so nicely, we couldn’t always tell if it was still there! There were many times that we couldn’t see it at all, so Paul bought a PVC pipe 102” long and painted the ends fluorescent  pink. It stuck out just enough on each side so we could usually see it.  In this shot, you can see the boat tires, but mostly that wasn’t the case.

Several times we were up and on the road really early and were able to call it quits early enough in the day that we could go for a walk.  This was Pershing State Park in Missouri.

Dozer liked it when we stopped early enough for him to do some exploring outside.

So, how did the passenger on this 4500 mile long trip keep from getting bored?  Well, I had several projects that I worked on.  One was my family genealogy.  I had made contact with an elderly priest last year- he and I are third cousins once removed on BOTH my mom and dad’s side of the family.  He gave me a book he had written, which is a 178 page listing of my ancestors. I told him I would input the contents of the book onto Ancestry.com.  I am on page 118.

The other project was to search the web for Jeeps for sale along our route home.  I checked all the major cities as we approached them to see if we could find any that we would be interested in, now that we have narrowed down what we want. Our theory was that if we found “the one”, I would drive it back to Havasu.  We have been looking for quite a while, with no luck. Well, wouldn’t you know, I did find one that just came on the market- It’s in Lake Havasu City.  We called the dealership and made arrangements to see it when we get back to town.







We took a slight detour on the way back in order to stop in and say hi to Paul’s mom. We only stayed one day, and of course I took no pictures.  I did take some of the repairs we had to do to the shrink wrap on the boat, which started falling apart by the time we reached El Paso.










We left late the following afternoon, and drove until just past sunset, enjoying the way the sun lit up the desert.














A few days before we got home we got to thinking that neither of us had thought to shut off Dozer’s automatic feeder.  Well, we were right.  This is the mess that greeted us in the trailer.  Its not too bad, except the spout actually broke off from the force of the food.  It has already been fixed.  And no, we didn’t let Dozer in, until it had been cleaned up.











Hmmm….this is getting too long, so I’ll continue in the next post……..

A Last Hurrah (05-11-15)

Over the last 6 years, we have had numerous reasons to travel to Michigan on a regular basis- pretty much every year- and sometimes more than once a year.  When we started on the road, our doctors were here.  Gradually we have moved on to doctors in other states.  For several years our daughter lived in either Michigan or nearby Indiana.  She has since moved to California.


And then of course,  our “stuff” has been stored here- both the boat and our household goods- but of course- not for long.

Over the last week or so, we have been spending time with our friends, getting caught up on all the news.  It was bittersweet.  It was pretty evident to everyone that we won’t be coming back to Michigan on a regular basis anymore.  Not that we won’t ever come- we love the Traverse City area and the Upper Peninsula- but we will have no reason to come here on a yearly basis.  So, we have invited all our friends out to visit us in Havasu! 

In between the visits, we have continued organizing the storage unit. On Monday, several moving companies came to look at our stuff and give us quote.  They were impressed with our packing job. We had thought we would spend all day Tuesday re-combining our stuff back into the one unit, but we actually finished doing that on Monday!


So, Tuesday morning we packed up and blew out of town.
Before we could load up the boat and camper, we had to put the hitch on.  Look at the size of that thing!  It has to be that long to accommodate the length of the camper.










The next step is to load up the camper, which is always a fun job.   I will say though, we are starting to get the hang of it. You can see the hitch sticking out the back.












The final step was to hook up the boat.  He had taken just the boat for a short trip to make sure the brakes and lights work.











And so now, we are back on the road for the long trek home. My daughter asked me if it felt weird saying we were going “home” and it really does, but not in a bad way, just weird.