The State Capitol and TAHOE!!!!

February 2016

You can’t spend 2 months so close to beautiful Lake Tahoe and not go see it! We’d been camping at Lake Tahoe several times in the summer but we’d never been there in the winter. So we took a day off, packed up a lunch and the dogs and drove to Tahoe. Some of the lake was frozen! It was a lot of fun watching the people slip and slide all over the place trying to get down to the lake. Since we value our intact bones we opted to sit there and laugh at them rather than join them.

Jackson and Jenny liked getting out but they still don't like snow!

               

They had these funny dressed up bears all over the place!

We also decided to take in some Nevada history and visit the Capitol Building and Museum!

That was pretty cool too!

Setting Up Our Home On Wheels

January 2016

Part of the mundane stuff of the first month was getting our new home on wheels set up. We spent a great deal of time in the Carson City Home Depot. Our new home came with a big screen TV, an awesome fireplace and a residential size refrigerator. 

Our TV

The cozy Fireplace!

What it didn’t come with was towel racks, hooks in the entry way for coats and stuff and enough counter space. A very handy husband and Home Depot and problem solved.

Larry added the hand towel and TP holder 

Twin bath towel rack   

Hooks for hanging stuff

                                                                                            

He put the computer monitor on a movable arm

We needed a place for the printer and got extra counter space in the process

A little heavy duty velcro and the clock Bonnie & Lee gave us is up!

We expected to add things to make this a home, what we didn’t expect was to have more problems with Christine! In an earlier post I mentioned having difficulties in Rock Springs, WY. They thought the problem was cold (actually well below freezing) weather. Turns out it was more than that. We went from averaging 15 to 18 MPG without the trailer attached to about 6! SIX! We called On Star again and asked about where we could get it serviced. They connected us with Chevy and Chevy said that 6 MPG wasn’t bad. Yeah right! Chevy wasn't paying for gas. Larry was very insistent and they got us an appointment with a local dealer. They gave us a smaller loaner pick up for a week while they checked out the truck. The dogs did not like the smaller truck! But we got Christine back and she seemed to be running okay again. MPG went up to 13 so we figured she was fixed. She wasn't but more about that later.

Another thing we didn’t expect were the winds in Carson City. After all we’re from Southern California and the Santa Anna winds are legendary!

One of my Day Care families gave me a little doggie playpen as a retirement gift. It’s really cool! It’s heavy-duty iron with a cover for shade. Larry set it up next to our chairs so the dogs don’t have to be on leashes all the time. I was inside the trailer and heard a weird kind of banging noise and ran outside to see Larry standing there fuming! He hadn’t staked down the playpen and the wind grabbed it and launched it! It scrapped by his precious Christine! I looked and it was scrapped but not dented like I thought. But it was the first scratch. Why is the first scratch always the worst?

Jenny and Jackson in their little outdoor Play Pen

Well, at the time he thought it was the worst. A few days later we went to the store and filled up on groceries. Larry brought the bags to the door, I grabbed them and put them away and BANG! I ran to the door to find our fold up bed cover slammed up against the back of the cab! It definitely wasn’t supposed to do that! There were 2 perfect little dents on either side of the cab. I wish I’d taken a picture! We called the insurance company and were happily surprised to discover that the deductible for “an act of nature” was $250 instead of the standard $500!

This time the insurance company paid for the rental car!

Never a dull moment in our life of adventure!

Our Life On Wheels Begins

January 2016

We spent the first few weeks of our new adventure doing pretty mundane stuff. We had to find a place in the trailer for everything. We had to get groceries. We had to get our taxes done and make sure all our bills were going to get paid. It wasn’t very glamorous but we had a wonderful sense of adventure for things to come. 

Excited about our new adventure!

I wanted our new home to feel like home not like we were on vacation so of course I had to find places for family pictures, a few knickknacks and stuff.

A few bells and turtles from my collection

Had to have pictures of the kids and grandkids up!

 

Bonnie got us a personalized rolling pin.
The Trailer says The Jensen's and Larry is fishing and I'm sitting in a chair reading.

We got to know a few of our neighbors, especially the ones with dogs. The only problem is, I always remember the dog's names. Not always the names of their humans!

 

This is Archie, The French Bull Dog
and his human from New Zealand! (can't remember her name)

Finding a place for everything is exhausting work! 

Larry taking a much needed break!

The puppies need a break some times too!

We finally decided we needed to have some excitement so we went to visit Virginia City, NV. I was so excited to discover that one of my favorite authors started out in the newspaper business there and they had this awesome, tiny museum in the basement of a little curio shop. It’s actually where Samuel Clemens, writing under the name Mark Twain, worked for the Territorial Enterprise! I also found out that his brother was named Orion! The name of one of the characters in my book: Song Of The Ghost Dog! (Which by the way was a finalist in the Siskiyou prize for New Environmental Literature)

 

From a museum in Virginia City

The bells from this beautiful church were awesome!

Mark Twain actually wrote at this desk!

That's me with my arm around Mark Twain's ghost. Can you see him?

So... apparently he took a dump here!

Cute little hobby horse in the museum.

Virginia City was pretty awesome!

Life really is an adventure!

3… 2…1… Blast Off! AGAIN!

Early January 2016

I’ve had a couple of people ask when I’m going to add to this blog. Since at least a few people are actually reading it, I thought I should write something.

When last I wrote we were sitting in the RV dealership's parking lot spending our first night in our new home and poor little Jenny had a mishap on the steps at 10 PM! As I recall the plan was to find a vet the next day… again… what do they say about the best-laid plans?

We worked a few more hours trying to get everything transferred from our old trailer to the new one. We were pretty beat at 2 AM and decided to call it a night. It wouldn't take too much more so we decided to sleep in a bit. However we were in an RV Dealership’s parking lot so by sleeping in I mean we were awoken at 7:30 AM by dealership noise. The dogs had to be taken out and I couldn’t very well do that in pajamas in an RV Dealership’s parking lot. So… we got up, showered, cooked our first meal in our new kitchen and by cooking our first meal I mean warmed up some Jimmy Dean Breakfast sandwiches in the microwave. We hadn’t even unpacked our coffee pot yet! Luckily I knew the dealership always had free coffee available. I went there.

It took a lot longer than we anticipated to finish transferring stuff and by the time we were finished they couldn’t find the guy with the keys. By the time they found him it was almost 6 PM! They said we could stay another night but we were anxious to get on our way so, with high hopes we took off!

We rolled into our home for the next month: Silver City RV Park in Minden, NV, just outside the capitol, Carson City. It was early January 2016 and there was snow all over the place! It was beautiful!

It was also 4 in the morning! We set up the trailer in the snow and crawled into bed.

When we woke up 6 or 7 hours later we turned on the computer, found a vet and finally took poor Jenny in. One of her toenails had been completely ripped out and another one was shredded! They did surgery to remove the shredded one and told us not to let her chew on her foot.

I put a boot on her so she couldn't chew it. I didn't work!

Tried this collar. It didn't work either!

Life is an adventure!