6th trip north (TN6) plan

TN6 plan

RV travel has not been kind to us lately. Last year the TN5 was aborted due to Jett’s cancer diagnosis. The trip south in the fall of 2018 (TS4) was delayed by the near-disaster in upstate New York and the pause for repairs in Virginia. The trip north in the spring of 2018 (TN4) was interrupted by the truck breakdown in Newburgh NY. The trip back from the west coast in 2017 (STE) featured(?) the truck breakdown in Utah. You have to go back to the STW in the summer/fall of 2017 to find a trip that didn’t have a major breakdown.

But hope springs eternal. Jett has been medically cleared to travel to MA and we plan on spending the summer at Lamb City Campground, as we did in 2018. In the very same site. We are looking forward to returning. It might be weird with the COVID-19 pandemic still raging – our get-togethers with family may involve masks and talking from a distance. But we will make do, somehow.

So I have to figure out a way to get there. This is my plan for the trip (1873 miles, 9 hops, 19 nights), starting from our home in Fort Myers:

  • Hop 1 to Citra FL. 236 miles, 1 night. This is just an overnight stop. If I have time I might check out the campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville.
  • Hop 2 to Hardeeville SC. 238 miles, 2 nights. The attraction here is Hilton Head Island. I have been curious about Hilton Head for years and this is a chance to see the place.
  • Hop 3 to Fayetteville NC. 238 miles, 1 night. Another overnight stop. Nothing to see here.
  • Hop 4 to Chesapeake VA. 227 miles, 3 nights. This is one of the featured stops on this trip. It is both a genealogical destination – I hope to see some of the places where my Virginia immigrant ancestors lived – and a historical destination (Yorktown and Colonial Williamsburg). It is likely that some of the places I want to see will be closed, but I will still get a flavor of the area.
  • Hop 5 to Dumfries VA. 177 miles, 5 nights. This is the requisite stop to see Jett’s children and grandchild in Virginia. It will be a challenge to see them all without hugging.
  • Hop 6 to Bedford PA. 166 miles, 3 nights. The two attractions for this stop are the Flight 93 Memorial and the site of the Johnstown Flood. I haven’t booked this stop yet because it is likely that one or both attractions will be closed. I may choose another destination if that is the case.
  • Hop 7 to Watkins Glen NY. 237 miles, 2 nights. This was the destination when we had the near-disaster in the fall of 2018. This is to show Fate that we cannot be stopped. The main attraction is the Finger Lakes.
  • Hop 8 to Lake George NY. 220 miles and 2 nights. I hope to see Fort Ticonderoga, but, again, it may or may not be open. If closed I will explore the Lake George area.
  • Hop 9 to Phillipston MA. 136 miles. This gets us to our summer home. The trip itself will be interesting as it is almost all on local roads through fairly mountainous terrain.

If you look carefully you will notice than the longest hop is 238 miles, which means that we should not need to make any refueling stops while hauling the RV. That is always a good thing.

The 19-day duration is no accident. Because Jett is on immunotherapy infusions every 3 weeks, we have to make the journey within a 20-day window. She will have an infusion the morning of our departure and another at UMASS immediately after we arrive. We cannot be delayed on this trip. If there is a major problem we will have to figure out a way to get Jett north quickly.

I have done everything I can to make sure the truck is ready for the job. I replaced the right front wheel bearing (it was making some noise which indicated wear) and had the dealer inspect the brakes, fluids and hoses. I will wash it to make it nice and shiny and improve its confidence. I think it can, I think it can.

But I will be nervous until we get at least two hops into the trip. Wish us luck.

Categories: Preparation/Planning, TN6 | 2 Comments

Blog booklets 2017-2019 (TTN, NET, STW, STE, TN4, TS4, TN5)

It appears that I never posted links to the blog booklets from 2017 through 2019. I correct that omission here.

Tip: to find booklets for earlier years, use the Search box in the right panel. Enter “booklets” and you should get a list with all of the posts containing the PDF links.

Categories: Blogging, Books, NET, STE, STW, TN4, TN5, TS4, TTN | Leave a comment

Interior walls!

Finished walls where the dryer will go

The carpenter completed the installation of the interior walls and the ceiling today, so all that remains is the final plumbing and the trim. The final plumbing will be done next week – installation of the tankless hot water heater and the sink. But the trim will wait until fall. There is no compelling need to do the trim until the washer/dryer are ready to be installed and we have decided to wait until fall to do that. It seemed unwise to leave a brand-new washer/dryer pair in a shed which could be leveled by a hurricane.

The walls are actually flooring. We have one dark gray “accent” wall where the washer and dryer will reside and 3 cream-white walls. The white walls are Pergo. Can’t remember the manufacturer of the dark gray flooring. The ceiling is white vinyl soffit.

I was pretty pleased, once I got everything back into the shed, to see how empty it was. There will be plenty of room for the stuff we will bring south from our storage unit in MA.

Storage area
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Skirt!

More than a year after I started on the shed skirt, I finished it. I had to wait for the plumbing to be installed and that was done last week. So here they are, the two previously unskirted sides now proudly skirted:

Completed skirt

This was more work than I expected, due mostly to the large number of cutouts that I had to make in the 2×4 frame. Both the hurricane anchors and the plumbing connections were positioned so close to the edge that I had to carve out big chunks of wood to fit the frame around them. And because the frame was weakened by the cutouts I felt compelled to add more braces. Anyway, it turned out to be a big, sweaty job that was done mostly on my knees. My knees objected to the abuse and I felt it last night. They seem to have forgiven me overnight, though.

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Flowers to cheer us

In the middle of this very depressing COVID-19 pandemic, I find that my spirits are buoyed by the presence of colorful flowers on and around our site. Foremost among these flowering plants are our two new plantings – the red hibiscus (which, the gardener said when he put it in the ground, would be yellow) and the small tree (not sure of the type) that seemed on the verge of dying a week ago but has recovered rather spectacularly.

It is somehow comforting to know that no matter how many human beings are dying from this novel coronavirus, the plants will go on, reliably producing cheerful flowers.

The hibiscus is especially dramatic. The flowers are huge – about 6 inches across. And the production is nonstop. Any particular bloom may last just one day, but tomorrow there will be another to take its place. Not a day has gone by since the first bloom appeared that we have not had a vivid display from this bush.

The neighbors also have some very nice flowers. I like the orange/yellow mix just down the street.

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Live performances in the pandemic

Tom Smith, streaming live on Facebook

This COVID-19 pandemic has upended life as we knew it. Bars, night clubs and theaters are closed. Where does one go for live entertainment?

To your laptop, of course.

Last night, for the first time ever, I tuned in to a live performance on Facebook. The performer was Tom Smith, a college friend who spent a lot of time in college honing his guitar-playing and folk-song-singing skills. Now, retired after a long career teaching yung’uns, he has taken up folk singing as a retirement career. And he is pretty darn good.

Anyway, I watched him in a live performance last night. Very entertaining. Kudos, Tom.

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Insulation!

Insulation

The shed now has a layer of insulation, which should make the air conditioner very happy.

I also got the plumbing inspection which means that the way is now open for installing the walls. That is the last major piece of work needed before we can install the washer and dryer. Which, after all, is what this is all about.

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Theme update in progress

I have changed the theme to “Twenty Nineteen” which is last year’s default WordPress theme. I mostly like it – clean and crisp. It also has two of the widgets that I most wanted – an “Archives” widget so that you can go as far back as you want and a “Search” widget so you can search for a post with a particular topic. Try them – then are located at the bottom so you have to scroll down.

Things that are still missing or need to be fixed: (1) the “Recent Posts” list is actually a list of pages, not posts and (2) there is no way to filter by category. I will figure these out, I am sure. In the meantime I will leave this new theme active and look forward to any feedback.

UPDATE: Got the list of pages to be properly labeled as “Pages” and eliminated all but the Search and Archives widgets. Still can’t filter by Category, though.

UPDATE: I am considering the “Adventure Journal” theme. It restores the graphic banners that were lost years ago. I like having the banner. I also have the list of Pages in a right-side column and an Archives drop-down. All good. But I haven’t gotten Search, Categories or Tags filters to work yet.

UPDATE: I got Search back. No Categories or Tags, but I am happy for now. And I have started to upload some more recent banner photos. All of the existing ones were from 2012.

UPDATE[28 Apr 2020]: I found a widget for Categories. That filter now appears as a dropdown in the sidebar. It is single-selection which is not as good as a multi-select dropdown and it seems that the only way to undo a selection is to backtrack, but I am happy that it is now possible to filter by Category. Never had that functionality before.

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WordPress upgraded, but…

I performed the dreaded WordPress upgrade today. It turned out to be a piece of cake. The blog backup took only a few minutes and the upgrade consisted of (1) deactivating plugins, (2) upgrading WordPress, (3) upgrading plugins, (4) upgrading themes and (5) re-activating the plugins. Each step took just a few minutes. Total time: about half an hour.

And nothing broke.

But…

I somehow expected some of the things that had disappeared over time – the graphic banner and the navigation to earlier posts being 2 key features – to magically reappear. They didn’t. So I think I have a theme change and graphic redesign task in my future.

The thing that did change, unexpectedly, is the post editor. This is my first post using this new editor. If you are reading this post then I successfully used it. It appears to have a bunch of new layout options which I haven’t investigated yet, but look forward to learning. Maybe I can make the layout a little more dynamic.

Anyway, it seems to have gone well.

So far.

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Plumbing (mostly)!

Exterior faucet

Exterior faucet

Roughed-in plumbing

Roughed-in plumbing

After 2 years of trying and failing, I finally got a plumber to appear to install the plumbing in the shed. It wasn’t much – a washer hookup, with hot water, a sink and an outside faucet. It was all done by one guy in less than 2 days. It isn’t fully operational yet because the sink can’t be hooked up until after the inspection and the hot water heater can’t be installed until the walls are finished. But the outside faucet works and I expect the carpenter to arrive next week to finish the interior work after which the plumber will return to install the hot water heater. Then, at long last, we will be able to install a washer and dryer. I am not sure that we will get that done before we head north for the summer, but it is possible.

Sunset

And that is pretty damn exciting.

Apparently Mother Nature is in agreement as she gave us a nice colorful sunset last night.

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