Motivation..

We had gotten the Vegas to our park and rented the available lot across the street. The plan was to put things in order as we emptied the 12 tubs plus piles of "stuff" that were the treasures from our previous travel trailer. Just 50 feet away it's a convenient location and we could take our time sorting thru everything to decide on the best location and "do we really need this?". Good plan except...

A fire broke out east of Benson in the Dragoon Mountains which form the east boundary of San Pedro Valley- Benson is on the west side of that valley, a scant 10 miles away. With very strong winds, the Walnut fire (named I believe for the orchard area near Willcox where the fire originated) was becoming a threat on the east side of the valley and specifically the village of Dragoon. The strength of the winds was so high Cochise County Sheriff's office issued an evacuation notice for Dragoon and closed I-10 both east and west bound. Our park is located on AZ-80 which was designated as the escape route.

If things got worse and we had to bale out it was clear we needed to get the Vegas put together quickly. So The Admiral went into manic-mode and in a matter of about 8 hours we had all tubs, buckets, bags & bins from the travel trailer emptied and put away. The fire has diminished but I now see it was a blessing in the guise of a threat.

Almost done, but... where's the food go?! 

With the minimum taken care of, the Admiral made a trip to Walmart and got a few odds & ends to make the RV usable without raiding needed items from our Cottage (the model name of the trailer we live in). I made several runs back & forth moving tools & "stuff"... things to take care of a few regular maintenance starting with cleaning the windshield! All that "necessary" crap I stowed in the myriad outside compartments. 

Not everything is on hand to get the storage worked out, e.g. we don't have the sewer hose and the elbow fittings for connecting to a sewer or dump station. We do have the support for keeping the hose off the ground (required by AZ). Fire extinguishers are arriving tomorrow (Friday) but the aerosol can for kitchen fires arrived on Wednesday and is stored. Today I received the bug screen for the furnace

We tried out the queen mattress in the slide. Probably a very good mattress for small children that don't reach across the 2" drop from upper half to the lower half, but an adult will be a cripple within 20 minutes. C got on the Thor Axis/Vegas group on Facebook and within a few hours had worked out a solution involving a 4" thick memory foam mattress topper complete with URL to the item at Good Sam. It's on the way.

And before I finished this note I received the sewer hose & fittings. Well... except for the final piece: the box was missing the adapter for connecting the end of the sewer hose to the sewer. *&&^%$ I can probably find it at Walmart which makes me wonder why I didn't just go there in the first place!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uh-oh... the 'season' has started!

Image
We (mmm... I!  ) drifted thru the whole summer and didn't give much thought to it ending. Hard to realize summer is officially over in about 10 days when we are still hitting temps in the 100s! But there it is.  Cruising-friends-turned-RVers who publish conchscooter.blogspot.com are in the Southern hemisphere dealing with van renovations. That's about as close as we get to being on the road. Well- not counting driving to appointments in Tucson. Appointments in Benson don't count as the engine hardly gets warmed up before we arrive!  -----------------------  And today, as I type this post, is the 25th anniversary of 9-11 . The Admiral and I were in the Herrington Harbor Marina in Maryland on that infamous day. We were prepping Goosebumps so we could leave for points South. We needed haircuts and made our way across the street to the shop where we went mid-week. We stepped inside and were greeted by some very somber faces. The staff had the TV on and we stepped in abo...
Read more

'Tis the season...

Image
 ... to sweat ! And complain. A lot.  It turned hot. Then this week it eased a bit. But it's coming back very soon! Hard to remember to check on sunrises and sunsets but here are what I managed to put together... Sunrise off to the Southeast... ... and a sunset off to the West (where else?!) The craziness in Washington DC has caused annual visitors to disappear from the park early as fuel prices climb to all-time highs. If you have a big 40'+ motor home or you're pulling a heavy 38'+ 5th wheel, either of which sucks up the diesel fuel, you need to take precautions to minimize fuel expense! Diesel was priced at $4.99/gal this week. 
Read more

Monsoons? What monsoons?!

Image
Every year I go through this anxious anticipation. "When are they ever going to start?!" Then that is followed by something like "when will this ever end?!" It's kinda' like how they joked about it in circa 1950s USMC: "there are only 2 good duty stations: the last one and the next one!" In the mean time life plods on and grocery prices rise faster than Social Security checks. A few years ago the Admiral was paying something like $100 - $175 for the week's food & necessities from Safeway. Now she's paying about $400 for the week. Yikes! And no, we aren't eating a different mix of food: we've been on a (sort of) vegetarian regimen since October 2013- it's called a pescatarian diet: veggies plus cold water fish (like salmon) once or twice per week.  Update: The Admiral shopped at Safeway today (23 Jul 2026). Sockeye salmon was $27/lb. They don't even carry king salmon. King salmon is caught of the coast of California and ...
Read more