Another Cold Windy Day

The title says it all! Although the snow had stopped coming down, yesterday it was coming sideways! We could actually see the wind blowing as it was picking up lots of snow and blowing it along.

 

So once again, we bundled up and headed out to get our little area cleaned up.

 

Thanks to those commenters who mentioned clearing off the slide toppers. We had planned to get them cleaned up before we were ready to head out, but the comments inspired Harry to get up there sooner rather than later.

 

They were pretty weighed down with snow and some ice from the melting snow.

It took Harry probably 45 minutes to an hour to get them all cleaned off.

 

 

 

It was so nice to see them pop back up as soon as the snow was all pushed off.

 

 

 

While Harry was doing that, I was shoveling around the vehicles and getting our walkways clear.

 

 

This is a sight I hope not to see too often in the future!

Fourteen days left until we head south!

Snow and Cold

Yesterday was another snowy day.

I am definitely very over this snowy weather. I went out yesterday and shoveled around our area. We will have to do it again today, and get the vehicles cleared off.

We want to keep it as open as possible so there aren’t any issues when it is time for us to head out. If the weather cooperates, we will be leaving two weeks from Tuesday.

This week we have something new to deal with – frigid temps! Our nights are going to be in the teens starting Tuesday and by the end of the week could get down into the single digits. We will be turning on our tank heaters for sure.

 

It’s definitely been an experience so far. One that we will not miss when we are able to head south.

Fifteen more days!

Sunshine!

Yesterday was a welcome day of sunshine, although I think our high was only about 31 degrees. In the afternoon, when the sun is shining, it really does heat up the inside of the fiver. The cats sit on the cat tree or Ariel on the back of Harry’s chair and soak in the sunshine.

 

We also were relieved when the guy from Deiderich’s came to check out the heat strip and told us that he thinks it is the control panel. They are going to order one and will be back to fix us up!

 

The campground owner did a really nice job of plowing the road in here, and we are hoping against hope that we won’t get anymore before it is time to head out.

 

For some reason, living in this campground has made me think about our pioneer ancestors. We have this rig to live in, and a propane furnace to keep us warm, and we still wear layers of clothes on these cold days and nights. They had wood stoves and homes without insulation, and no electricity. I have just really had a new appreciation for how strong they must have been.

 

I, on the other hand, am counting down the days until we can hit the road for someplace warmer!

Sixteen days left!!

Is This IT?

I am sure hoping that the old saying that troubles come in threes is true. Because if it is, we’re done for a while!

First…our car this past Monday…

then…on Tuesday the leak…

and now…our air conditioner in the bedroom with the heat strip.

When we got up yesterday, I went to turn it up to our normal daytime setting, and the control panel was blank. I turned if off and then back on, but no go. Something is gone – whether it’s a part or the whole thing, we don’t know, but suffice to say, it’s not working.

 

So, we’ve called the rv place in Coxsackie where we have had all our service done. Now that we are in Catskill, we are pretty close, maybe 15 minutes away. Someone is coming by this morning to check it out. I sure hope this is IT!!!!!!

Seventeen days ‘til we hit the road!!

First Snow 2012

 

 

If you look at the picture on my blog header, you can see how thick and low the clouds are. There are mountains over there.

 

 

 

 

Didn’t get any sun to brighten the day today. It is still spitting snow now.

 

 

The wind blows through here pretty forcefully, so it looks like a lot of the snow has blown off the roof.

 

 

 

Harry and I got our exercise today! Gotta keep our way clear so we can get the heck out’a Dodge as soon as possible!!

End of the Snow Drought

 

Well, last year we managed to get through the whole winter without any major snowstorms. But our luck has run out.

 

It started last evening right on schedule and came down fast and furious.

 

 

It is still coming down right now, but its kind of a snow/sleet/rain mix. It is supposed to stop sometime early today.

 

 

 

This is the view from our front door this morning.

 

 

The campground owner has been making circles around getting the road plowed. In a little while we will have to get out there and shovel a path in front of our vehicles and open up the way from our fiver to the campground road. We are hoping the temps come up at some point in the next two weeks so some of this stuff melts before we have to make our way out.

I had some comments on yesterday’s blog about our leak and the temps underneath the fiver. The leak in our plumbing seemed to be caused by crimp rings that weren’t completely sealed, and the use of plastic plumbing parts rather than brass. Harry replaced the silver crimp rings with sharkbite crimp rings and replaced one plastic fitting with a brass one. We do have two electronic thermometers – one behind the basement wall near the water pump and one in the docking station – with readouts that we can check inside. The temps have never gone below 40 degrees down there, so the leak was not caused by anything freezing, thank goodness!

More pictures to come later from the snowy north!

An Interesting Christmas

Yesterday turned out to be quite the day. It started out very nicely…had a big breakfast of fried eggs, potatoes, bacon and bagels…yum yum! Then we settled down to relax and watch a couple movies on dvd while the cats settled in for a long day’s nap on our bed. (You can probably see why we spread a blanket over our pillows.)

Again, our day took a bit of a turn in the afternoon. I was thinking of taking our Christmas decorations down in the next couple of days, so I asked Harry if he would get the boxes out of the basement for me. He was going outside anyway, so he went to grab those containers for me, and found WATER. We had a leak.

 

So Harry took most of the stuff out of the basement and got his supplies. I am so glad that I married a plumber’s son! What a job. There were so many fittings leaking.

 

Harry would change one out, and then I would go inside and run the water…and another one would show up. And then there was the hose that refused to come apart, and Harry had to cut it off and replace it with his own pex piping. He had a bag of 25 fittings and he now has four left! And Harry spent about three hours scrunched in the basement in wet clothes in 29 degree weather.  

I’m sure I looked quite the sight as I stood outside the basement with my three layers of clothes on and wrapped in a multi-colored blanket!

 

Does it look as cold as it felt?

I have lived in NY my whole life and I am so tired of cold winter weather that cuts through you like a knife!

 

 

And now we have another storm coming through tomorrow. Forecasts are varied, but it sounds like we will be so lucky if we get just 5 to 7 inches. There are areas very close to us that are forecast for 12 to 17 inches, so here’s hoping!!

Twenty days left until we can head SOUTH!

Christmas 2012

Well, this Christmas hasn’t turned out exactly as we expected, but Harry and I are enjoying it nonetheless.

The good news…yesterday was my LAST day of work. It started to seem very real throughout the day as I cleaned out my desk and filled a small bag with my personal items. I opened a couple more accounts, started a loan app…and then transferred it to one of my coworkers so he would be able to follow up on it and get it done later this week. I can’t say I really felt sad to think of leaving, just about saying good-bye to my coworkers.

Harry arrived right on schedule to pick me up, and then our day went a bit haywire! When it was time for me to leave, the car wouldn’t start. So we called our roadside assistance company, and waited for the tow truck. In the meantime I called my sister, and my brother-in-law was nice enough to drive over and pick us up at the branch. We ended up going over to my sister’s for dinner, which we appreciated so much, as we had expected to be on our way to MA by then.

So this morning, instead of waking up in Massachusetts, we are hanging out in our rig. We did skype everyone this morning, and watched our little guy open his presents. Hopefully we will be able to head over there for the day on Sunday, and have our Christmas a few days late.

In other news, there looks to be a pretty good storm heading our way later this week. <sigh> We were hoping to get out of here before we got any major snow. But we still have at least twenty days before we can get going, so we may have to deal with some accumulating snow before we can hit the road. Yuck.

Anyway, Merry Christmas! Hope everyone has a great day!

The End of the Beginning

We did it!!! Today at 10 am, we had our closing, which went without a hitch…and our house is SOLD. We have the checks in hand, and I will deposit them into our account tomorrow when I go to work. We don’t feel free yet. I don’t think it will completely feel real until we get wheels on the road and start heading someplace new. (Although Harry is enjoying the thought that he doesn’t have to think about clearing the driveway if it should snow.)

So…I was thinking earlier about how the whole journey has progressed…from the time we first decided to pursue fulltime rving…to today. Looking back, I can see that some of the choices we made along the way really helped make the transition go so smoothly at the end.

• Make a Plan

Once we decided to sell the house, really decided…one of the first things we did was come up with a plan. We listed all the improvements we wanted to make on the house, from the smallest to the largest. It was five pages long – typed! We labeled a paper with each year, and divided all the tasks up as evenly as possible. Then we stuck to it, which was almost as hard as coming up with the list in the first place. Even though it was a lot of work, Harry and I both think that updating the house was important, and really helped us to get a pretty quick sale.

• Start Early

To get started early was just as important as planning. We made the decision to fulltime rv back in December 2009. Back then, Harry’s retirement in 2013 seemed like an eternity away! If we hadn’t made a list, I don’t know if we would have started as early as we did. But looking at the list of things we needed to do, and the amount of stuff we had to get rid of, I just knew there was no way we could accomplish all that in just a few months. And while it was a bit of a downer in the past months to live in an empty house (and I think people who saw our empty cupboards thought we were crazy), did it ever make the transition easy. Once we had a buyer, clearing out the little bit of stuff we had left was so simple. We were so glad that we had already done most of the hard prep work.

• Research

Both Harry and I have our own focus for what we want to learn about. Harry likes the technical stuff, while I am not really into that. I’ve done a lot of my learning by reading blogs and forums. No matter how you like to do your research, I think it’s so important to learn as much as you can; it helps to take out a lot of the uncertainty about the lifestyle changes in store. We also spent many hours watching home buying shows and shows about staging. I think that helped us so much when it was time to prepare our house for viewing. And, I think we really benefited from finding a realtor early and getting her advice about our house prep.

For what it’s worth…a few thoughts…

And now…here we are…at the end of the beginning…it’s been quite the ride so far, and we hope that the best is yet to come!!

One Week!

It was one week ago today that we were hitching up and pulling out of the driveway with the fiver for the last time.

Other than the small issue with the water line a few days ago, the transition has gone pretty smoothly. At this point, I can’t really think of anything I miss. Really the only convenience I can think of that I don’t have anymore is the dishwasher, and I don’t really miss it.

 

We did have a little bit of a restless night last night. It was windy, and we could hear rattling and other noises. Our neighbor on one side has an awning out, and that flapping in the wind was pretty loud. And then when we did finally get to sleep, of course last night was the night that Crookshanks had to pick to jump up on the counter and knock a bunch of stuff off onto the floor. So it was a short night, but things like that happen no matter where you are.

Harry changed his hours at work, so on Mondays and Tuesdays we have been able to ride together. I just have the rest of this week and next Monday, and then I will be done with work anyway. Harry has thirteen more days to work, so we are both heading down the home stretch.

Tonight is the walk through for the buyers. The house is completely empty, and we will probably not be going back there again. There was a little bit of nostalgia when we left the last time this weekend, but it passed quickly. We are both looking forward, and can’t wait to start our travels in just a few short weeks!

Settling In

Our first few days are in the bag, and we are settling in nicely. We did have one small blip a couple evenings ago when we discovered that we didn’t have water. We thought something had frozen, but it turned out, (after Harry worked on the water system for hours) that something in the water appears to be causing issues with our pressure regulator. This campground runs its water at a pretty high pressure, which in the summer when the campground is full, is probably a good thing, but right now when there are only a few rigs here….well, it makes us nervous since we don’t want any blown lines. So we have decided that while we are here we will be working off the water tank.

Other than that, things are going well. We are both glad that this commuting is only for a short time. A fifty minute commute is making for some long work days. But it’s only for a little over a week more for me, and 3 and a half weeks for Harry. We are heading down the home stretch.

The really positive thing about this campground is how close we are to my sister’s place. It is so nice to be able to pop over to her house for a few minutes, and then have only a ten minute drive back to the campground. We are lovin’ it!

I have been planning our trip south. We have our route set, and campgrounds in Florida reserved for the months of February and March. Now we are just hoping that our good luck will hold out, and there will be no big snowstorms in the next 30 days!

We are SO ready to enjoy some nice sunny days down south. Weather permitting, one month from today we will be in a campground down in PA getting ready to get our wheels rolling.

Finally Fulltimers!

YAY! As I write this, we are sitting in our first fulltime campground. Unfortunately, it’s only 20 degrees out, so we still need to work on that one. But in here it’s nice and toasty warm.

Yesterday was a great day. It didn’t proceed completely on schedule, but luckily we didn’t have too far to go.

We started out with what was supposed to be a quick trip to have bloodwork done at my doctor’s office, and then we were meeting a friend for breakfast. However, an accident on the highway combined with morning work traffic added about 40 minutes to our journey.

So, after breakfast we returned home to get ready to head out. We had originally hoped to be on the road by 11, but it ended up being 1 o’clock instead. But other than being a little behind schedule, we had no issues. In fact, it was one of our smoothest travel days so far!

So here we are, all settled in for our month-long stay in Catskill. This is a small park and not fancy, but the owner is very pleasant and good to work with, we have good free wi-fi, a nice level site, and we are only 10 minutes from my sister’s place! So I think this is a campground we will be frequenting often.

The house is just about empty, and definitely has a vacant feel to it. We found out yesterday that the closing has been scheduled for next Friday at 10 am! So it will have new owners by Christmas! We are definitely ready, in every sense of the word. We are so glad that we spread out the prep work over the past years, because clearing out the house has really gone so easily.

 

And now, we get to enjoy our new home.

A Quick Update

Life has been crazy, but in a great way!

Over the weekend, our house was emptied out. There is nothing left in the living room, or most of the rest of the house for that matter.

We brought all the odds and ends out to the garage and when people came for the rest of the furniture, they got to take a look at the “everything must go” pile. And it all went!

 

This morning I brought the last of my work clothes to the fiver. I won’t need them for much longer because I gave my notice yesterday! My last day at work will be Christmas Eve.

 

The only room that still has some stuff in it is the kitchen. And it doesn’t have as much as it did in the picture as we have been continuing to sort and pitch. (Sorry for the blurry picture – I only took one.)

 

Tomorrow we move to our first fulltiming campground!!

Moving (Back) In

As of yesterday, we are getting ourselves back into the fiver.

We still have a few things to bring out, but the majority of our things are out of the house.

 

 

I think the cats are happy to have some furniture to lay on again. They seem very settled in.

 

 

 

We are here in this driveway for three more days!! Wednesday morning we move the trailer to Catskill.

 

 

 

 

It will be SO nice to have a different view out the window.

 

The couch was picked up yesterday; this morning someone is coming for the tv, and this afternoon, the bed and most everything else will be gone!! We will have an empty house!

Crunch Time!

After all these years of planning and dreaming, fixing, sorting and cleaning out, this coming weekend is going to be a whirlwind, and I am starting to get VERY excited!

Yesterday was my day off, and it was such a productive day. We were both up at 5 am, and I was busy from the first moment, well, right after my first cup of coffee anyway.

 

I sorted out my work clothes again, and now have just a couple week’s worth of outfits left. I also finished up our Christmas cards, which Harry will be taking to work and mailing today, and wrapped Christmas gifts. In between I also fit in a trip to the dentist, and accomplished some household odds and ends, like laundry etc. Last night we took a break to go to the movies, and I enjoyed relaxing after getting so much done.

So…this weekend coming up is the BIG final push. Our couch and bed are leaving this weekend! And we are moving back into the fiver in the driveway, probably on Saturday. By the end of this weekend, our house will be empty. I have only a few small items to put up on freecycle. Status of the sale – ALL inspections are completed and test results are back – everything was good. The buyers are waiting for their mortgage commitment, which they expect to get next week. Our closing could be anytime after that. We are thinking it will be the week of the 17th.

We have been watching the weather forecast, and so far…so good. Looks like we will at least get to the campground without any snow on the ground. And then we will have about five more weeks before we head south. Chances of not getting any snow are not good, but we are at least hoping for no major storms in that time period. In 40 days we will be heading SOUTH!!