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Doug, Trudy, and Dale's Adventure
 

T minus 7 Days

... and the count down continues towards lift off (OK, I'm a NASA fan ), I mean until we leave on the cross county trek (OK we are also Star Trek groupies ). By the way, we saw the new Star Trek movie this week, and it was GREAT!!!! We continue to prep for the trip.... - The Boss is moving her stuff to a central location in the small bedroom that I call the warehouse.... hmmmm, 5 pieces of clothing for her and then I get one t-shirt, at this rate I may up end with at least a change o
DougC

DougC

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Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

Over the River and Through the Woods to ...

We are now in Warrenton, Missouri, parked in my mother's driveway. We had a nice visit with my sister and her family in Kansas City last weekend. My sister is recovering from knee replacement, a familial weakness that will likely catch up with me some time in the future. She is hobbling around on a crutch but is healing and will soon be out dancing again. While in the Kansas City area we enjoyed staying at the Smith's Fork Campground. It is located just below the dam at Smithville Lake, a C
tbutler

tbutler

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Doug, Trudy, and Dale's Adventure
 

T Minus 10 days

Tonight I have a mild headache caused by walking into the RV ... A bit of explanation.... right at this moment... if I look in the bathroom mirror, on the left side of my upper forehead is a half moon cut, maybe 3/4" long, attempting to heal. You may wonder how I came to acquire such an injury... here's the story, on our motor coach (like many motor coaches) there are cargo/battery/other areas that have doors that lift up... when the doors are opened they swing out and up, with the
DougC

DougC

1
Learning a New Hobby
 

Delivery and First Trip

September 23, 2008, was the big day. I was nervous and scared. A friend of mine drove to Red Deer, Alberta, with me. He has been driving motorhomes before and I felt like I need somebody with me who knew how to handle this beast. The delivery took around three hours. I found a few things that did not work the way I liked. A technician on standby took care of all the issues I presented. Now I just had to drive the baby home, 1.5 hours north to Edmonton. At first I was a little intimidated. This
Learning a New Hobby
 

The Purchase

Here we go! I'll give blogging a try. Never done this before. I guess I will write about my experiences with my motor coach, purchase, taking delivery and so on. Let me start by writing about our camping experiences in the past. If I go back all the way to the beginning, it actually started in December 1993 in Germany. I was a soldier in the German Armed Forces and just got promoted to Sergeant. I was sitting at our company Sergeant's Christmas party when the company chief approached a group
"Gramps" Blog
 

Rules for owning a Motor Coach: Number 2

2. Keep your temper on a very short leash. Or, when owning a motor coach, patience is not only a virtue but a necessity. If you are the type of person who always wants to be in control of your circumstances and are uncomfortable when things are not perfect or not even close to it, you will have trouble adjusting to the motor coaching lifestyle. Things are going to go wrong whether you are an old-timer or a newbie. There are preventive measures you can take, but only God can stop anything and ev
-Gramps-

-Gramps-

2
Doug, Trudy, and Dale's Adventure
 

T minus 13 days

Howdy All, As mentioned previously, this weekend, May 15-16-17, is the motor coach testing weekend.... testing all functions and features... The RV is fully hooked up to shore power, water, sewer, and cable TV. As the temperature here is now in the 100's the two AC units are getting a good workout.... it was 107 degrees today.... I've let the front TV and the bedroom TV stay on... I visited the rig several times a day... testing the water flow in the kitchen, bathroom area and shower,
DougC

DougC

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Doug, Trudy, and Dale's Adventure
 

14 days until liftoff (The Trip)

Just 14 days left... whoopee!!! This past week has been fairly busy, remember in our previous entry I mentioned my rotary club was hosting a GSE Sweden Team from May 8 until May 13.... wellll, we did that.... hence, getting ready for the trip was on the back burner.... it was a great week and the Sweden Team was taken to the airport this past Wednesday morning. Sooooooo, back to getting ready for the Trip.... on Thursday the RV was taken in to the local RV shop as planned to install
DougC

DougC

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Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

Into the Storm

The Weather Channel is busy hunting severe storms. I am watching for their vehicles, when I spot them I'm headed in the opposite direction. Today we left Wichita, Kansas headed for Kansas City. Spring storm season is in full swing in the mid-west and the Weather Channel is making the best of it, pursuing storms across the very area we are traveling. The forecast for the whole trip was highlighted in red on the weather map. I told Louise that an early start was in order as the afternoon prom
tbutler

tbutler

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Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

Life is a Learning Experience!

After a one month stay in Denver, we finally said good-bye to family and packed away the loose items in the motor home and set out for Missouri and visits with my relatives. As soon as we unplugged the motor home from the shore power the alarm on the inverter went off, setting off a real learning experience. We had a new inverter installed, a Xantrex RS3000. We had left the electric water heater on when we unplugged the shore power and the inverter was telling us the batteries weren't up to r
tbutler

tbutler

0
"Gramps" Blog
 

Rules for owning a Motor Coach: Number 1

It's been so long since I blogged anything that I find this blank page a bit intimidating. But I will get over that rather quickly. "What's it like owning a 38 foot coach?" I was asked that question just a few days ago. I had to stop and think for a minute or two. I have always thought that having that big thing sitting in my driveway is nuts. It really is crazy. It cost too much to buy, to own, to keep on the road, and to pay the taxes that come along with it. It is insane to own it, but at
-Gramps-

-Gramps-

2
Doug, Trudy, and Dale's Adventure
 

22 Days Countdown Until Trip Day

Today was a better "get the RV ready" day. This morning I checked in with the RV store that is servicing our RV ... they said they didn't have my cell number, so they couldn't call and tell me the AC motor and squirrel cage came in and also the replacement fabric for the bedroom slider. I kept my thoughts to myself about them not having my telephone number .... With the parts in, I now have an appointment set for next Thursday to install the replacement parts. Next, as I mentioned in an ea
DougC

DougC

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Doug, Trudy, and Dale's Adventure
 

23 days until Departure "T" Day

Howdy Ya All, I've been lazy with the blog.... but moving right along.... in 23 days we leave, that's May 30, in the morning... the master trip planner (me), kinda like a load-master in the Air Force, has got more lists started than one person can keep up with, most are not up to date... but, lists are a bit like a security banket... a list and a cold beer, a great way to relax Three of us are going on the month long, 7,000 mile trip... my significant other (Big Boss), Dale the dog (Littl
DougC

DougC

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Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

One More Item Off the Bucket List

At first glance this might not be what you think of when you think of going RVing but this adventure was made possible by our RV lifestyle. Staying as long as we are in Denver would have been prohibitive if we weren't living in our motor home. Having all my resources at hand made this work for me. Everything has fallen into place and I have just completed my training to fly gliders. I started this quest on Thursday April 23rd and was able to satisfy the FAA authorized examiner on the oral an
tbutler

tbutler

0
RelationshipDoc's Blog
 

Trekking Down the Trace

This past week was semester break at the university where I teach, and I really needed the break. After some discussion, my wife and I decided to do something we had talked about for several years. We took the northern portion of the Natchez Trace, from its terminus in Franklin, TN, to Jackson, MS. This blog is about relationships, so I won't give a blow by blow of the trip, except to say that it is a very pleasant drive. But, unlike the southern portion of the route, there's not much to see exc
RelationshipDoc

RelationshipDoc

1
The Vernon/Staniforth Travels
 

"Us"

24-foot Itasca Navion, diesel, Class C Bev Vernon and Stan Staniforth; a retired team, she from the Academic field, City Univ.- Bellevue, WA and Stan from B.O.A.C. Montreal, Canada and Alitalia Air, San Francisco and Seattle,The Amer. Red Cross and Disaster Services. Both heavy into volunteering: Stan at the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery Lake Sammamish State Park and a transcriber for the Secretary of State, State of Washington , genealogical records archive. Bev serves her church in Financial Reco
Doug, Trudy, and Dale's Adventure
 

31 days before "T" day

April 28, "T" stands for the "Trip"... One of the items that is part of the across the county round trip is that we are picking up a car, a 2002 Honda Accord, in Washington DC and bringing it back to California. It may turn out to be a toad, not sure yet. I spent several hours this morning researching tow systems versus shipping the car back by a private carrier versus renting a auto tow dolly. You would think we were launching a space shuttle with the amount of information I gathered tod
DougC

DougC

2
Doug, Trudy, and Dale's Adventure
 

Planning continues

We continue to plan and currently the first phase of the planned trip from Cathedral City CA to Washington DC is the following: Day 1, May 30 - The general route is starting with I10 from Palm Springs CA to just outside Phoenix, then I17 to Distant Drum RV RSRT at Camp Verde AZ. Day 2 & 3, May 31-June 1 - on day 2 we continue on I17 to I40 and turn East to I25, turn North at Albuquerque NM and drive to Taos RV CG in Taos NM. The idea is to spend two days in the Taos NM and Sante Fe NM
DougC

DougC

0
Doug, Trudy, and Dale's Adventure
 

Missed entry No. 2

Howdy, Ok, it appears we have the FMCA blog started... we now have to figure out how to have family and friends, outside of the FMCA community, read the blog. I find that is easier said then done. By now, after a days worth of blog stuff, I probably have a number of blogs set up out in the Internet universe, none of which are connected to each other or FMCA. Soooo, it seems to avoid retyping everything, I have to decide to continue with the FMCA blog and then copy and paste the blog into an e
DougC

DougC

0
Doug, Trudy, and Dale's Adventure
 

Getting Started

Howdy All, this is the first entry for our cross country trip blog.... the idea for the trip started about a month ago.... and now has growned into an actual "go do" thing.. One of the things to deal with trip planning is just too much information available... there is AAA auto club, Good Sam Club, FMCA, and others.... whew! We've sorta settled on using the Good Sam trip planner as it will identify rest areas, dump sites, fueling stations, state road conditions. We use that along wi
DougC

DougC

2
On the Road Again
 

Where's Waldo and Waldo-ette?

Well, Betty and I have finished packing most of the rig for the upcoming trip to Idaho. We'll finish the rest the day before we leave. For those who have RVs, you can appreciate that loading and unloading is a royal pain in the A--!! especially if you're going to be gone for any length of time. Invariably you forget something and end up buying it along the way. That means when you get home you've got two or three of the same thing at the house. We leave home on May 5th. According to Google, it
skyking8

skyking8

2
Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

We were into our second week in Denver last week. Louise was busy taking care of her mother and while I could help some, Mom was getting better and mostly needed supervision. Louise needed a nightly debriefing. So being the restless sort, I thought ... "I have always wanted to add a glider certification to my pilots license. Here I am in one of the glider meccas of the U.S. for an extended period of time. I wonder what opportunities there are?" A quick check on the WWWeb brought me to Mile Hi
tbutler

tbutler

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