So the winter was longer than the locals are used to but we weathered it with a few new learn curves – some of which includes who to rely on for repair assistance, or more specifically who not to.

Nonetheless, we did get through the season, and have decided that at long last, we have found home.  We are still a half hour from Stettler at our lakeside property and we have found that for the vast majority of the year, the community consists of ourselves, a few deer, the voice of coyotes, and porcupines.

This presents a safety matter as we have no one around should anything go wrong, and that is not an arrangement we are comfortable with.

After a lot of discussion and consideration, we have chosen to buy a home in town.  I have less than a 5 minute commute to work this way so huge fuel savings, and the pluses are significant.

We aren’t done RV-ing, but we are done full-timing.  The lake lot and toy hauler are going to be sold as a set and we will consider smaller towables for our adjusted means of travelling.

Besides, our beloved newest crew member is slowly loosing her sight, and we want to settle her in a home that when the eventual blindness overtakes her, she will know her surroundings.

We take possession of the new place in early June, and we are prepping this lake property for sale.

I do want to continue blogging and find a direction that draws me more strongly to share the thoughts more frequently.  When the new blog takes form, I will do a final post here to direct any who wish to follow.  In the meantime, I will post some of the details of the events of the past summer that I have been meaning to tell you about.

Ken will finally be able to truly focus on setting up his shop for building and selling his models too – something he and I have been eager for him to be able to do for some time now! 

It has been an awesome journey and it has served us well in finding a place we truly wish to call home.  Thanks for coming along for the ride.

Adieu

PS: There will always be a place for Miranda and other travellers to pull in for a hello. 

She is instantly responsive to me, but especially when no one is home she is inclined to anxiety behavior including thieving any food left in her range and occasionally not trusting that we will come back in time to let her relieve herself in appropriate locations.

We have therefore needed to kennel her when we both are out.  She goes in willingly enough, and is content to sleep in the kennel when the door is open, but when the door is lock, the strangest things occur.

She – as per her role in the crew as cleaning lady – is inclined to licking, and she obsesses when the door is closed.  We usually come home to wet forepaws, muzzle and chest.  That is normal enough per se, but the one that boggles is best defined by pictures.

At 10 am this morning, this looked new but had mistakenly been left on the floor in a “tend it when I get back” kind of way……

We went out at 10:15 am and were home by noon. Roxy was in the kennel with soaked feet, etc as described, but this is how the sweater entertained her for our short absence!

It wasn’t even particularly close to the kennel, though obviously close enough….

It took me a lot of effort and very definite labourious pulling to finally free it from the bars! How does she do it????? It now has tears and holes. Not happy.

How can one stay ticked off with this face??

The two mini-fridges are working out well, and while the main fridge may well be fixable, we are not going to take on that matter for a while.  Instead, we have clips on the doors to keep them ajar.  We now refer to it as the frupboard (fridge cupboard).

Meanwhile, back at the plumbing….. yes, plumbing.  This time, it has nothing to do with lines, and after a bit of sleuthing, we discovered it wasn’t even the tanks.

In this diagram copied from Trailer Life’s RV Repair & Maintenance Manual 4th edition(by Bob Livingston), you can see a holding zone just below the bell of the toilet, but above the black tank.  I think that is where we experienced the black cone of death 

Rae has an awesome suggestion for a free way to deal with the problem.  It works well when you are mobile.  We are not so much so.

First, how did we diagnose the issue?  Our system is set so that the whole bathroom is connected to the black tank.  That has the shower and sink filling the tank fairly quickly which is not useful for boondocking, but we aren’t inclined that way with a rig like this anyway.  It did lull us into a false sense that this is not a risk factor as much for us, and we did use a good rinse for the solid wastes but we did put the paper down with it. When our black tank needs draining, since the gauges never work, if you forget, the first sign is the shower floor filling – never dirty looking water mind you.

We thought the toilet did a more or less straight drop down a 3 inch pipe into the black tank.  This diagram shows it to not be quite that simple.  Now this is a generic drawing, but it explains why the toilet was backed up to filling the bell (through our efforts to clear it, the level went up) while the shower tub stayed dry.

This meant that there was a block, but the black was draining, just not the toilet.

We eventually turned the water off and took an air compressor with a very long spray head (Ken’s creation many years ago) and blew the dam loose.

It did get a bit messy,(the water erupted with the air blowing, and it did make the water……. blended)  but the result was worth it.  We then took a spray wand and ran it for a good while to ensure the rinse out was thorough.

We had to put a fine female to course male thread tap adapter so we could use the sink to connect the wand.

Ensure that the fine end has threading inside the piece to connect to the faucet

Our rig does come with one of those modern black tank flush systems, and we do use it regularly.  That too contributed to our false confidence in the system.  It apparently misses the area where we experienced damming.

So yet again, we learn more.  Even after wintering for 4 winters in 5th wheels, and in areas that have known winter, we continue to learn.

Fortunately we are back to things running smoothly….

Adieu

Today is the exception, so for a moment of rare public expression:

My younger son has just graduated from a program that is giving him an awesome jumpstart to his coming success story as a man.

Equally as exciting is that on Monday, my older son is starting a year long course (close enough) that will also launch his career.  It is an exciting time when a mother can see two awesome men stand where once a set of children stood!!

Well done my beloved men!!

Adieu

And then they were men….. <3

I left you with us handling a series of water issues.  They are resolved to the best of our knowledge.  I did have a comment from a gent who questioned calling a plumber for a sewer that froze when it should have been insulated, being as far north as we are.  Although I did answer in the comments, I felt it merited one further acknowledgement on the main posts.

In response, the plumber was summoned for the broken water line going to the rear bathroom.  While there, we had them thawed the line, having far more effective equipment than we. Also owing to the fact that their colleague had responded to our inquiry of whether it should be heated along with the insulated box, that he didn’t think it would be necessary.  Ergo, their responsibility.

With that water under the bridge, or rig in this case, we move on relatively unscathed.  Barring of course that we have had 2 whopper power bills.  One does get spoiled when it is included in the pad fee, and after the first one, we did some major tweaking of our draws and expected a significant decrease……..

…..We did have a decrease, but no so much as we had hoped.  We are tweaking again.

Now I know that this falls under no logical reason, and we have had many electricians and RV repair persons’ opinions confirming that the rig being plugged on a 50 amp plug versus a 30 amp should make no difference, unless you increase the draws.  We agree with the logic, and yet we know without doubt that while in Yuma at a full service location, we had all things off except the basics – fridge, microwave not running, and no lights on on 50 amp the analog meter was spinning like a scared hamster on a wheel.  Without changing anything except the plugin being fitted with the 30 amp head and plugging in on 30 amp there was no further adjustment.

Nonetheless, the meter slowed right down to nearly unperceived spinning.  The only thing that makes sense is that whatever the phantom draw (and a lot of rigs have some degree of one), it seemed to feel the difference in available power and got “hungry” on 50 amp.  That was in the first rig.  This rig has only been on 30 amp or unmetered 50 until now.

As we have been in -20C on 30 amp, we decided to switch over to 30 amp for a month and see if that makes a difference.  Stay tuned.

In the meantime, the job is going well, we had a day trip to family on Christmas day, and my knee has recovered from the limp thanks to a knee brace and starting to take arthritis meds (bit of a surprise diagnosis, but the osteoarthritis is in early stages anyway…) but it now puts me in a mind that this line of work would not work for me for long.

As is the case most of the time, I do now and since starting with this employer, always have enjoyed the job at hand.  I am also grateful that I am now full time and will shortly be on medical benefits and can now bank sick days.  Nonetheless I am watching the internal job board for a different option that affords those privileges while still lightens the burdens on my poor old bones.

As I have been idle on the blog again for a bit of time, my beloved Rae decided to email to ensure we didn’t freeze to the sidewalk. (Dear soul)  We had been discussing the trailer entertainment as it decided to throw in a new hitch, having finished with water matters.  The fridge stopped working just before New Year’s Eve.  Why, it got to cold of course……  Really!

Fortunately we had a small bar fridge in my office and it sufficed while we muddled around our options.  Of course it is off warranty, and naturally an RV 3 way replacement is a bit out of our range, having just dealt with plumbing joys as well as power.  In the end, we bought another bar fridge, this one with a separate freezer compartment.  It is stacked on the other one in my office, and we are doing well enough with it.

It also came up that I came down with that retched achy, fevery, barky chest cold that had me flat for 4 days.  Fortunately 2 were part of my weekend, one will be from my holidays, and 1 is one of 2 sick days I have earned thus far.

“Take it easy at work tomorrow”, says she.

“No worries, I am on light duties due to a crush injury anyway.” says I (I now quote my email response as I rather had fun with it)  

oops, didn't that come up??  Nothing serious in the long run.  I don't
know if you have seen cardboard balers, but I am trained on them.  I was
tending to a full one, and pushing some overflowing cardboard in to
carefully close the safety gate.  The compactor part won't run if the
safety gate is not pulled down first.

So my youthful colleague came to help.  He saw I was attempting to prep
for the final compress before swinging the baler open to bind and remove
the ton (or close to it) cardboard, and helpfully assessed that the few
parts sticking out would likely compress enough for the closure to catch
if he put his full 140 pounds behind the pull.

I saw him reach up, but figured as I was working to stabilize the bits, he
would gently pull it down, then give it a final "humph" when the bits were
held by the ajar gate........

Apparently not.

Result: 
1.a colleague continues to get evil glares from assorted loyal
associates
2. opportunity for an impromptu visit with a friend, (while on duty as the
ER doctor on Thursday)
3.  and impromptu photo session (I think the shots were zoomed to close. 
not only did they miss my glowing smile, but they even missed my skin...)
4.  the knowledge that I can postpone a bone density scan for a while,
apparently my carpals are made of steel
5.  to get to play a role I seldom chose (the army called them MIR
commandos) and avoid heavy lifting for the remainder of the week.
6.  to forget the pains of crush injuries as the full body ache, chill and
sweat is so much more consuming an entertainment for the weekend and
beyond.

How did you say you were doing again???

Oh, BTW the other shot was tonight's sunset....

Hmmm, I guess I should include the shots then, hadn't I.....

Enjoy and adieu

A beautiful fiery sunset

my poor crushed paw. you can see the yellow bruising starting to show