Tag Archives: cold (Linda)

2015/12/05 (S) Saturday Night Fire Circle

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I was awake at 6:30 AM and finally got up at 7:15.  I fed the cats and cleaned their litter tray, both of which are chores but I don’t mind doing them.  I sat on the sofa with the heater pad on my lower right back and finished yesterday’s blog post draft.  Linda got up at 8 AM having been awake since I got up.  At 8:20 I was going to make coffee but Juniper climbed in my lap so Linda took care of that chore, which is certainly one of our more pleasurable.

Linda worked on her counted cross-stitch project and I worked on our Holiday Letter all morning.  I had a finished draft by lunch time and Linda read through it.  I have it set up for 8.5×14 inch legal size paper, but printing it that way will depend on whether we can get high quality glossy color laser paper in that size.

Linda reheated the last of the red beans and rice for lunch after which I washed some grapes.  After lunch Linda continued to work on her project and I turned my attention to another article for Bus Conversion Magazine.

I had some correspondence with the publisher, Gary, yesterday regarding my article on servicing the Webasto burner bearings and decided to finish my article on Butch Williams’ installation of an International Thermal Research OASIS Combi in their MCI MC-9 NJT bus conversion.  The work was done in October and November 2014 and the article was basically written in January 2015 but I had not selected or processed any of the photos.

I read through the article, highlighted several places with missing information, and rewrote some things.  I then selected 36 photos and started processing them.  The processing involved various adjustments such as alignment, lighting, and color followed by resizing and sharpening in two different sizes.  The larger size is typically 1900 x 1272 pixels as that will fill the screen of a 17 inch monitor and I don’t feel a larger size is needed or supported by the level of detail in the images.  The smaller size is typically 300×200 pixels.  I embed the smaller images at the end of the Word document with the image number and a caption.  I used to embed them into the article but the editor and layout person need the ability to fit them into the layout and I ultimately developed enough confidence in them to do that.  This is always subject to change, however, as is everything connected with this magazine.

We had dinner at 5 PM, earlier than usual.  Linda made a nice green salad, sautéed and lightly glazed some baby carrots, and heated some Amy’s vegan macaroni and cheese.  The reason for the early dinner was the holiday parade down Main Street in Williston at 6 PM.  We left at 5:30 and walked to the corner of NE 5th Street and Main Street.  NE 5th Street is the street that leads back to the front entrance of the resort and is towards the end of the parade route, which comes down Main Street from west to east.  There were already people there, all from the RV Resort as near as we could tell, but we were early enough to get seats on the low brick wall that borders the parking lot for the funeral home.

Main Street is also US-27 but the police closed it down at 5:45 PM.  The parade started at the west end of Main Street by the high school so the lead police motorcycles did not reach us until 6:20 and the front of the main parade did not get to us until 6:30.  There were cars with beauty queens, simple floats with seasonal themes, Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops, politicians, fire trucks, horses, and an elephant with Santa Claus riding on top.  It was a classic small town holiday parade.  It was all over by 7 PM and we walked briskly back to the firepit.

The firepit at WCRVR is about eight feet in diameter, surrounded by a concrete floor ring about six feet wide and covered by an inverted conical roof about 24 feet wide at the lower eaves.  A massive 8 foot diameter inverted conical hood is suspended over the firepit and the 12″ diameter flue pipe runs out the center top of the roof.  The outside perimeter of the floor has large wooden rocking chairs (think Cracker Barrel restaurant), a bench, and a few other chairs and there is a little bit of lighting up in the ceiling.  It’s a wonderful place to sit and enjoy the fire, visit, and listen to people play their guitars and sing.  The flue does not draft correctly so it tends to be smokey, but that is the only downside.  If not for that it would be perfect.

John was there with a couple of other people and had a nice fire going.  Even though it was in the mid-to-upper 60s there was a strong north breeze and the fire felt good.  Lots of other people eventually showed up and filled almost all of the seats so John got his guitar and started playing and singing.  Linda walked back to our rig to fetch our plastic wine glasses and opened a bottle of Egri Merlot.  It’s a good life.

I got a call from my sister and stepped away from the firepit.  She called to let me know that our dad was back in the hospital.  When I returned to the fire circle John was busy playing and singing and some folks had left so I tended the fire.  By 9 PM everyone had left except for John, Ali, and us.  I continued to tend the fire while the four of us talked.  Just before 10 PM I spread out the last embers of the fire and we all returned to our rigs for the night except John, who does the closing rounds on weekends.

Back at our motorcoach Linda put on the Michigan State vs Iowa Big 10 Championship football game.  Though not particularly interested in football I was too tired to work so after sending an e-mail to our son I laid down on the sofa; the first time I have done that since we built it into the coach.  By the time the game was over it was 11:45 PM.  We watched a few minutes of Cook’s Country on Create and went to bed.  I turned the TV on in the bedroom then turned it off.  I turned down the brightness of my iPad display and with only the dim light of the ceiling vista, and whatever light could get in around the window shades, worked on my blog post until 1 AM.

 

2015/12/04 (F) The Chores of Life

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The overnight low was forecast to be in the mid-50s so before going to bed I closed the roof vents and we only left the windows open about half an inch.  I was up at 7:12 AM this morning and put on my sweats.  I fed the cats (they insisted), took out my nighttime bite guard, washed it, and put it away.  I then sat on the sofa with the heater pad on my lower right back and Juniper on my lap while I worked on my iPad.

Linda stayed in bed until 9:15 AM.  She is having trouble shaking the congestion and cough but the nighttime medication seems to control it and allow her to get plenty of much needed sleep.  Once she was up I made a pot of coffee and she fixed bowls of granola for breakfast.

My main focus today was working on our 2015 Year-in-Review Holiday Letter but we had other things to do as well.  At the top of my list was mailing the FMCA Freethinkers Chapter certification paperwork to FMCA HQ.  I also needed to do a load of laundry, our first since we left home a week ago.  Linda planned to work on her counted cross-stitch project but also needed to make a run to the Publix grocery store on the southwest corner of Gainesville.

The word “chore” is often used pejoratively, and that is an appropriate use according to the definition, but the first meaning is “…everyday tasks of running a household or farm.”  The definition goes on to include “…. difficult or unpleasant tasks …” and some chores are certainly more (or less) pleasant than others.  Linda likes to cook and I don’t mind doing the laundry but neither of us particularly enjoy cleaning.  I don’t mind dumping our holding tanks, a chore that many RVers apparently find onerous, but I do not like adjusting the pressure in our tires.

I gathered up the soiled laundry and laundry supplies and loaded them in the car.  The north bathroom/laundry building is in plain sight of our coach, and not that far away, but I had more stuff than I could carry in one trip and it was heavier than I cared to schlep around.  If we had an appropriate wheeled cart I might have used that, but we don’t.  I got two loads started but held off on the third until I had taken a shower.  The bathhouses are in the same building as the laundry.  I added my towel to the third load and started it.

In the middle of doing the laundry I was back at the coach, got the FMCA chapter certification paperwork in an envelope, addressed it, and added stamps.  I was going to walk to the Post Office but in the interest of time I drove to the Resort office instead.  That little task had been nagging me for quite a while so I had a sense of relief, as much as accomplishment, when I put the envelope in the outgoing mailbox.  Linda walked down and used the shower facility.

As soon as I got back to the coach with the clean laundry/supplies and brought them inside I put the 2m/70cm ham radio antenna back on the roof of the car.  Linda then took the car and headed for the Publix supermarket at the southwest corner of Gainesville.  I did not want to unload the car, and had work to do at the coach, so Linda went to Publix by herself so there would be room for the groceries.  I put the laundry away and then settled in to work at my computer.

I realized this morning that I do not have SPSS installed on my ASUS laptop so I will not be able to analyze the data from the FMCA education surveys myself, at least not until I get home.  That is unfortunate as I do not know at this point if HQ has the ability or willingness to do the analysis we need done.  I sent an e-mail to the committee chair and executive director to let them know.  Mea culpa.  I replied to a few e-mails and then resumed working on our Holiday Letter.

I realized last night that some of the images which had already been post-processed had dates in the file names that were different from the dates when they were taken.  As I was trying to arrange them in chronological order I went back and found the originals and corrected the dates.  I then continued placing and captioning the photos.

When Linda returned with the groceries I helped get them into the coach while she put them away.  She finally found the Snyder sourdough pretzel nibblers we like and we finished an open container of hummus and had some fruit for a light lunch.

For dinner Linda made a salad and sautéed mushrooms, onions, and broccoli as a topping for a baked potato, which we split.  I had a little vegan sour cream on my half.  After dinner we changed into warmer clothes and packed a bottle of wine and our two plastic wine glasses and walked to the firepit.

Friday and Saturday nights during the winter folks at the Resort gather at the firepit to enjoy the warmth of the fire, have a glass of wine, talk to one another, and listen to live music provided by volunteer residents.  Our friend, John Smith, is the main entertainer, doing mostly folk/rock/country-crossover.  He is also responsible for the fire since Kevin and Sharon sold their park model and moved to The Villages.  (We are still having a hard time comprehending that move.)  John performed solo in clubs and bars for a living many years ago before he and Ali got married.  Jeff sometimes brings his guitar and performs as well, his specialty being old time country music (such as Merle Haggard).  Other musicians occasionally show up, or at least they did two years ago.

We were the first to arrive (besides John) and chatted with him for quite a while before anyone else showed up.  Other folks drifted in and John eventually fetched his guitar and played.  Ali was visiting with Jeff and Kathy and was one of the last to show up.  Jeff and Kathy’s dog, Teddy, has lymphoma so they stayed at their 5th wheel with him.  We stayed to the end, said “good night” to John and Ali, and walked back to our rig.  We watched an hour of Create TV and went to bed.

 

2015/12/02 (W) Settling In

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I was up at 7 AM, fed the cats, and settled in on the sofa with the heater pad on my lower right back to work on my iPad.  I finished my blog post for yesterday and e-mailed the last three days to myself.  I updated seven apps and then checked out the latest issue of the SKP Photographers BoF newsletter.  Linda finally got up at 9:15 AM.  I made a pot of coffee and we had toast for breakfast.

My first priority after breakfast was responding to a half-dozen e-mails from Gary at BCM, one of which required me to proofread an article he had written about a recent rally.  Next I selected four photos I took with our new Sony a99v DSLT camera and uploaded them to a Dropbox folder for Lou to see.  Somewhere in there I got a call from Joe (our mobile mechanic) about Globus cork flooring products.  As long as he was on the line I asked his opinion about the chassis battery / Vanner equalizer issue.  He reminded me, as he often does, that I already knew how to check if the Vanners were working.  When we concluded the call I went outside and did the checks.

With the Vanners connected to the batteries and working correctly the voltage at the “12V” terminal should be exactly 1/2 the voltage at the “24V” terminal.  Equivalently, the voltage from +24 to +12 should be the same as the voltage from +12 to Ground.  I unplugged the two maintenance chargers to let the surface charge bleed off and used the time to trace the wiring behind the two battery disconnect switches.  As I somewhat expected the two Vanner equalizers, which are wired in parallel, are NOT connected to the batteries when they are disconnected from the coach electrical panels.  (The one Vanner whose label I could see is a Voltmaster 60-50M rated at 50 Amps maximum so I presume the other one is the same model.)

With the battery bank connected the relative voltage measurements were as expected, indicating that the Vanners were probably working correctly while the absolute measurements of +25.6 and +12.8 (to the nearest 0.1 VDC) indicated that the batteries were fully charged.

I put the disconnect switches back in the disconnected position and plugged the maintenance chargers back in.  I checked the voltage on the upper and lower battery strands and they were close to the same but not identical.  That was reasonable given that the chargers were independent (electrically isolated) and the upper and lower strands were bridged by Vanner equalizers just minutes before.  Based on my testing it appeared that everything was OK except that I lacked a plausible explanation for why the engine alternator apparently did not fully charge the batteries yesterday on the drive down from Mayo.  I wrote all this up in an e-mail and sent it to Joe, Butch, and Chuck, all of whom have had conversations with me about this over the last few days.

Linda made a humus and onion on rye sandwich and we split it for lunch along with some grapes.  It rained hard while we were eating but the rain did not last long.  After lunch I completed the certification paperwork for our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter.  It was 4:15 PM by the time I was done.  I will get copies made tomorrow and get it in the mail to the headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio.

I logged in to the Prevost Community website to renew our AITA NAPA discount card but wasn’t sure what to do, so I called Chuck.  He and Barbara were at a wine and cheese gathering and he said he would call me back when he was free.  Linda wanted to go for a walk around the Resort so at 4:30 we headed towards the north end.  This part of the Resort has had a lot of development since we were last here and now has a lot of new park models and large pads for RVs.

We looped around to John and Ali’s 5th wheel but did not see any sign of them so we headed down the main road towards Jeff and Kathy’s site.  Sure enough, John and Ali were there enjoying a glass of wine with Jeff and Kathy.  They offered us some and we accepted and pulled up a couple of open chairs.  We sat and visited until 6:30 PM when we started to get some persistent rain drops.  John drove us back to our coach in his golf cart.

For dinner Linda made a nice green salad and pan-seared tofu with a balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, and sugar glaze with chives.  It was very good and I could easily have eaten twice as much.  After dinner I worked on an article about replacing the bearings in our Aqua-Hot Webasto burner this past winter while we were on Quartzsite.  I got the text finished and inserted/captioned the photos that had been post-processed.  There are more photos to be processed and I plan to finish the article tomorrow and upload it to the Dropbox for proofreading.

I need, and have been looking forward to, a stretch of quiet days with time to work at my computer as I have a lot to do.  I need to update our website and blog, which is almost four months behind, and get back to work on the SLAARC, FMCA Freethinkers, and FMCA GLCC websites.  I also need to finish some articles for BCM that have been “in process” for quite a while, and I need/want to write some new ones.  Along the same lines I need to clean up my BCM folders on my hard drive and in our Dropbox.  That is not all going to happen by the time we leave for Arcadia, but I will do as much as I can.  Once we get to Arcadia we will be spending more time away from the coach exploring southern Florida and visiting with friends.  That means I will be creating lots of new photos and posts but have less time to process them.  Ahhhh, retirement.

 

2015/12/01 (T) Home Again

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I got up at 7:45 AM, got dressed, and fed the cats.  The Magnum BMK was showing the house battery pack at 24.2 VDC and 47% SOC with the refrigerator and other significant loads not drawing any power.  I worked on my iPad for a while until I heard muffled voices from the compound around 8 AM and saw Pat (John’s son) working on the roof of one of the trailers.  Linda got up at 8:30 and we had granola for breakfast and had a leisurely morning.

Check-in time at Williston Crossings RV Resort WCRVR) was noon.  We only had 75 miles to travel to get there and did not need to be there right at noon.  Around 10:45 we started getting the inside of the coach ready to travel and by 11:15 we were taking care of the outside stuff.  Paul and Eugenia were already hooking up their car and obviously preparing to leave as well.  We walked around the coach and checked that the bay doors were closed and locked.  On the way around we got the tow bar off the ground and secured it.  I then switched on the chassis batteries, opened the engine accessories air valve, and returned to the cockpit.

The chassis battery gauges read lower than normal for a fully charged condition but had plenty of energy stored in them to crank the engine quickly.  With Linda spotting from outside I did a three point turn to get the bus pointed towards the exit.  John came over in his Kubota utility cart and chatted with Linda while I moved the car behind the bus and we continued to chat with John as we hooked up the car.  We thanked him for his hospitality and assured him that we would be back; both for a solar system and to just hang out for a longer time in the woods by the Suwannee River.  I started the engine and Linda checked the lights.  Everything was good and when she was back on board we started the slow roll back to the county road.

We pulled out of John Palmer’s place around 11:30 AM and slowly made our way back to CR-354.  I stopped there (to check for traffic, of course) and raised the tag axle to shorten the turning radius.  I did not have a sign post at the edge of the road on the left, as I did when turning in, but the ditch on the other side was deeper closer to the road so I did not to get the passenger side steer tire very far off the pavement.  I completed the left turn cleanly and put the tag back down before continuing.

It was closer to 11:45 by the time we passed the east boundary of the property and saw the sign for the River Rendezvous RV Park.  We took CR-354 to US-27 and headed east to US-129.  Just south of Trenton we vectored off onto SE CR-339 and then picked up NE US-27 Alternate which eventually became Main Street in Williston.  The trip took about an hour and 40 minutes and we arrived at the main entrance to Williston Crossings around 1:25 PM.

It’s usually nice to return to a place you have been to before and liked.  We enjoyed our time here during winter 2013/14 and it felt a little bit like being home again in that the place, and some of the people, were familiar to us and pleasant to be around.  One of the most familiar people was John, our next door neighbor of two years ago.  He was doing site escort duty and led us to our site after Linda got us registered.  We pulled up in front of site #233 and disconnected the car while John read the electric meter.  John then helped me back onto the concrete pad.  We were in place and level at 2 PM and visited briefly with John, giving him a quick tour of our interior remodel.  After John left we hooked up the shorepower cord and put power to the coach.

I checked the chassis battery voltage on the dashboard gauges with the engine off and they were 28+ and 14.  We went through our usual arrival routine with the addition of checking the reading on the electric meter.  We pay for our electricity here so checking the meter on arrival is prudent.  I checked the maintenance chargers and they showed the charge level on the upper and lower 12V portions of the chassis batteries as 75% each.  They should have been fully charged after almost two hours of engine operation so something was still not right.  The house batteries were down to 24.0 VDC and showing a 43% SOC.  The battery charger section of the Magnum 4024 went into Bulk charging mode, charging the house batteries at 107 Amps.

We are parked facing approximately WSW so the front of the coach gets the afternoon sun.  It was in the low 80’s, and a bit warmer in the coach, but we turned on the ceiling exhaust fans rather than run the air-conditioning, deployed the window awnings on the driver side, and lowered the day screens on the inside.  We used AntennaPoint.com to locate broadcast TV towers.  The two we cared about, CBS and PBS, were both north of us.  I rotated the front antenna to point in that direction and did a channel scan.  They both came in with solid signals so I repeated the set up with the rear antenna and bedroom TV.

Once we were set up we had vegan hot dogs for lunch and then walked to the CVS Pharmacy just outside the front entrance to the resort.  We crossed paths with John again and this time he had Ali with him so we had a quick reunion.  When we got back to the coach I was tired and with the warm conditions I dozed off.  When I woke up I set up the printer, NAS, and Amped Wireless router.

Meanwhile Linda had started preparing red beans and rice for dinner and discovered that she did not have diced tomatoes.  I drove to the Grocery Depot, which is also just outside the front entrance to the Resort, and bought a couple of cans that included green chilies.  It was 6:30 PM and the Resort gates were already closed so I had to use the code to get back in.  The dish was excellent and would not have been the same without the tomatoes.

After dinner I e-mailed Butch, Chuck, and Lou.  We are parked close to one of the Resort’s Wi-Fi towers with a strong N signal and reasonable speed, leading me to wonder if the Resort has upgraded their system and Internet connection.  Linda made a stovetop apple crisp and finished it just before our Tuesday evening TV programs began at 8 PM.  The crisp was different from an oven baked one but still very tasty.  We watched a few TV programs on PBS and CBS.  Linda has been fighting something and took some OTC Tussin nighttime medicine for her cough, congestion, and itchy throat.  She has coughed enough that it now hurts and is very tired from many nights of poor sleep.

 

2015/11/28 (S) Berea to Cartersville

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I did not take any Ibuprofen before I went to bed last night as I felt OK.  I was also very tired and fell asleep without difficulty around 9:30 PM.  Under the best of circumstances I was going to be awake between 4:30 and 5:30 AM and that was the case this morning.  During that hour the cats prowled around the bed, got some attention from me, and looked out the windows.  What they really wanted, however, was food.

The pickup truck / 5th wheel combination that pulled in on our passenger side last night well after sunset was making departure preparations this morning at 5:30.  The strained muscle(s) in my lower right back were nagging at me and, unable to find a comfortable position, I finally got up at 6 AM as the neighbors were pulling out.  I sat on the sofa with the heater pad on my back and worked on my iPad.

The cats still had food and water but wanted fresh kibble, as they do every morning and evening.  It was in the bathroom closet, where it always is, but took me a while to find as it was hiding in plain sight behind the lower rack of hanging clothes.  Linda finally got up at 6:30 AM.  She rarely sleeps 10 or more hours but she was very tired when she went to bed at 8 PM last night and immediately fell asleep.  She also appears to be coming down with yet another cold.  For someone who rarely gets sick she has suffered with colds this fall.

We only had 300 miles to travel today, all on I-75, between Berea, Kentucky and Cartersville, Georgia.  With a fuel stop somewhere along the way it should only be a six hour day.  We got online and checked the weather.  Rain was forecast to start in Berea around 10 AM so we targeted 8:30 to 9 AM as our departure window and decided to have coffee and breakfast.  The cold front was sitting to our west running from southwest to northeast.  It was moving slowly southeast but the precipitation (mostly rain but with some ice and snow) was along the front and sliding northeast.  Based on how it was moving we figured we would probably have rain between Berea and Knoxville and then dry conditions from there to Cartersville where the chance of rain for today was 0%.

I had the engine running at 8:30 AM.  The battery balance light came on and stayed on for quite a while but eventually turned off and did not come back on.  That may just mean the Vanner equalizer was just doing its job.  However, with the upper and lower banks of the chassis batteries on maintenance chargers since we got here yesterday that just begs the question why they were out of balance.  We may be replacing the batteries and/or the Vanner equalizer this winter.

We pulled out of our site at 8:3 AM.  I-75 through southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee was very hilly but the highway was in excellent condition and it was a scenic and pleasurable drive.  Traffic started to get heavy as we approached Knoxville, Tennessee where there was apparently a college football game being played today.  Traffic remained heavy from there to our destination, which made the driving a little more work and a little less fun, but it was still OK.

The bus ran strong all day and I was able to climb the grade at Jellico, Tennessee in 4th gear without dropping below 50 MPH or getting the engine temperature above 200 degrees F (as best I could tell from the gauge) and the exhaust manifold pyrometers not exceeding 800 degrees F.  That was a big improvement over two years ago when I recall climbing up the mountain in the right lane behind slow trucks in a lower gear and worrying about the engine temperature.

Even though I had the cruise control on for most of the drive I did well using downhill speed to go up the other side and getting on the accelerator early to get the RPMs and turbo boost up and keep them there.  I typically saw 15 PSI boost at 2000 RPM but occasionally 16 or 17 PSI.  We really need a 0-20 boost gauge for this engine but I could not find one and doubt that they exist.  Besides, the new 0-30 gauge is working for me and I have other things that need to be fixed/replaced, such as the twin pyrometer gauge.  The left needle used to stick at the bottom of the scale but now the right needle is doing that.  Tapping on the face of the gauge usually frees it up, but not always.  When the needles are both working, however, they are showing the same temperature within 50 degrees F, which is comforting.  I used to think the bus (and me) liked to run at 62 MPH but I have come to the conclusion that it likes to run 65 to 68 MPH, and I am comfortable with that.

We stopped at the rest area about 41 miles north of the Georgia border where I replied to a text from Kristine and then called John Palmer.  He answered this time, said he was glad to have us visit, and gave me the address.  He said he will have customers there but there was plenty of room and we would not have a problem getting our bus in and out.  (Note:  We are also customers, albeit from a few years ago, but this is primarily a social visit and a place to stop for two nights.)  Rather than take time to eat while sitting still we had some pretzel and peanut snacks as we finished our drive to our destination for the day.

We arrived at exit 296 in Georgia around 1:45 PM and pulled into the Pilot Travel Center just southeast of the exit with the fuel gauge sitting at 1/4.  We picked this place to refuel because it is just on the other side of I-75 from our campground for tonight and I wanted to use as much of the fuel in the tank as I could without risking sucking dirt off the bottom or running out.

I figured we would take on 150 gallons of diesel fuel so I added 2 ounces of Racor Biocide, three 16 ounce bottles of Stanadyne Performance Formula diesel fuel treatment, and three 16 ounce bottles of Stanadyne Lubricity Formula.  The PF additive treats 60 gallons of fuel per bottle and I add it to the tank before each fill up in proportion to the amount of fuel I think I will add.  The directions for the LF additive say to “use it 4 to 6 times per year” but that is presumably based on an engine operating in a tractor-trailer or other commercial / industrial use.  Still, I only added one bottle last time when I should have added three, so I added three this time.  We ended up only adding 142 gallons but the extra additive won’t hurt anything.

I reset the trip odometer before we pulled out, which I forgot to do when I filled up at home.  We used to record our mileage and fuel purchases to get an idea of our fuel efficiency in miles per gallon but have never really had an accurate figure for a couple of reasons.  One was that the speedometer/odometer was not working correctly, or at all, and only got replaced in fall 2014.  The other is that the Aqua-Hot and auxiliary power plant both burn fuel from the same tank as the main engine.  Consequently, we can get an approximate idea of fuel consumption if we fill up at the beginning of a long day’s drive and then fill up again at the end before parking for the night, or if we know for sure that we are not going to use the Aqua-Hot or Genset prior to refueling.  Since we will be boondocking from tomorrow afternoon until Tuesday morning we will definitely be running the Genset and probably using the Aqua-Hot.

Our next fill up will probably be on the drive from Williston to Arcadia in late December and the only reason for topping up then is to make sure we pull into Big Tree RV Resort in Arcadia with a nearly full tank to minimize condensation while the bus sits there until early March.  This is one of the reasons I wanted to get all of the additives in the tank today.  We will have full hookups at Big Tree and do not expect to have to run the Aqua-Hot for space heating.  Even though we will have metered electric, we will use the electric heating element in the Aqua-Hot for domestic hot water except possibly for showering.  If the resort has a bath/shower house we might use it if convenient.

From the Pilot station I drove to the KOA about 3/10ths of a mile on the other side of I-75 and pulled up to the office at 2:10 PM.  The KOA is near Cartersville, Georgia.  It is a nice enough place with easy access but the facilities are not as extensive (read that as kid/family magnet) as some KOAs.  Linda got us registered and the woman in the office used a golf cart to lead us to our site.  We got a very convenient 50A FHU pull through site so getting in was easy and getting out tomorrow morning should be equally easy.

We leveled the coach and went through our arrival routine, minus the water and sewer connections.  It was 71 degrees F outside with low afternoon sun was just warm enough in the coach that Linda opened several windows and I put the screen in the door window.  We then went for a walk around the campground.  The place was almost full and seemed to have a lot of rigs that appeared to be set up for long-term stays.  The woman in the office confirmed later that they were fully booked for this evening and that 2/3rds of the campground was in use by extended stay visitors, many of whom were doing work in the area for Georgia Power.  That was certainly not the case when we were here two years ago on December 22nd, so that may have just been a matter of timing.

Back at the coach it was warm enough that we opened two of the ceiling vents and turned the fans on to exhaust air from the coach.  I went to put on a pair of shorts and discovered that we had failed to pack any.  I did bring my two pairs of convertible hiking slacks so I unzipped the lower portion of the legs on one pair and made them into shorts.  Much more comfortable.  I will be doing some shopping once we get settled.

I sent a slightly more detailed text message to Kristine and a daily update text message to Chuck which drew a reply and another text from me.  Linda got our WiFiRanger connected to the KOA Wi-Fi and then logged-in to RVillage.  She changed our location for last night to the Oh Kentucky Campground in Berea, KY and then changed it again for today to the Cartersville KOA.  We were apparently the only RVillage members at either campground.

We were a little hungry so Linda walked to the office to see if they had any hotdog buns, as we left ours behind along with a loaf of raisin bread.  They did not have hotdog buns so she cooked a couple of vegan hotdogs and served them on bread.  We also forgot to unplug the Insta-Hot in the kitchen so she texted the kids and asked them to unplug it and remove the bread products when they were next at the house.

We will be boondocking Sunday and Monday nights so Linda availed herself of the showers at the campground.  I worked for a while on this post and then went over to get a shower.  Linda warned me that it took a while to get hot water so I let the hot water run for at least five minutes but it never got warm enough to shower comfortably.  The men’s bath/shower room was also quite chilly so I took a really quick shower, dried off, and got dressed.  The office had free coffee available so I had some to warm up and mentioned the lack of usable hot water to the woman at the desk.  She seemed surprised but then asked if I let it run a long time, so they know there is an issue.  She said she would mention it to the manager.

Around 6 PM Linda heated up a couple of Amy’s brand Vegetable Korma meals.  As with all Amy’s products they were vegan and tasty, as well as quick and easy, so the quality to efficiency ratio was fairly high.

The antennapoint.com website indicated that we should be able to pick up a few OTA TV stations.  We managed to tune in the ION and PBS affiliates whose towers were NNE of our location and watched a few shows.  Linda read for a while and I checked e-mail and played games on my iPad, which is what I do to relax and/or fill time when

I don’t feel like doing anything else.  Linda was going to make an Apple crisp but did not have enough cinnamon so she added that to her grocery list and cut up an apple to eat.  Around 8 PM she popped the last of the popcorn and added that to her grocery list too.

Around 9:30 PM I closed the ceiling vents in the bedroom and bathroom and took the screen out of the entry door window and closed it.  Linda has had a cough for a few days and has been a bit congested so she went to bed at 10 PM.  I called Butch at 10:15 PM (8:15 MST) but he did not answer.  He does not have a voice mailbox and does not respond to text messages on his phone, so I went to bed.