School ended yesterday.  Last night we had one last get together with a couple of the neighbors.  Caitlin had one last sleepover with her best friend.  We went back to the neighborhood this morning to pick her up, and play for a bit.  After that we left the neighborhood for the very last time.  I almost shed a tear.

It still doesn’t feel like we’re gone forever though.  We didn’t get home last night until after 1230am, so I was too tired today to care about it too much.  We only went to Jacksonville, so we aren’t even out of the state yet.  Maybe tomorrow it will feel different, when we cross the state line.  We stopped in Jax to visit one of our friends, and to go to a giant used book store.  It was a very successful trip.  I have a big list of kids’ books that I’ve been on the lookout for, and found a lot of them.  It was great fun.

So tomorrow its on to Charleston for a few days to visit another friend, then up to Virginia.

Oh, we did learn an important lesson sitting around in Orlando.  We have the worms with us because they were doing so well, I didn’t want to just ditch them.  So, they go in the shower on travel days.  Its the only place where we can be sure they won’t tip over on bumpy rides.  When we’re stopped, they hang out outside.  After being out for almost a week, they got totally invaded by fire ants.  We had no idea how to get them out.  We started by cutting off their escape route with bowls of water around the legs.  We tried just brushing them off as they crawled around the outside, but there were SO many of them!  Several days later we decided to dump the whole thing out and see if we could scoop most of them out.  The day before there had still been tons of ants, when we dumped it, we found about 20.  I have no idea what happened to them, but the worms are great, and now we have no ants.

We stayed fairly busy here.  We went to see fireworks at a nearby town, Deer Park.  The guy in the office of our campground said they put on a really cool display every year.  We couldn’t find any info about exactly where, or what time, so we ended up getting there about 8pm.  Turns out fireworks weren’t until 10pm, so we had some time to kill.  The kids were pretty good about it.  We were at the high school, on the track field.  Ian ended up walking/running an entire mile, while Caitlin did half.  They also practiced summersaults which is always funny to watch.   The fireworks were cool, but only lasted a little over 10 minutes.  I’m guessing with the economy woes, they had to downsize this year.  I talked to someone else later who was also there, who said her 9 year old daughter was really ticked off because last year was so much better.  I was okay with it, my kids were tired.  I got to practice fireworks photos, which was fun.  One nice thing about going back to Orlando, is that I know where I can see Sea World’s fireworks without going into the park, so I can practice some more.

We did a good bit of driving around, and found a lot of really pretty properties right outside the city.  This could be a possibility for us.

One of the funnest things we did was go to a U-pick strawberry farm.  Oh my gosh!  I have never done this before, and these were the BEST strawberries I’ve ever had!  They let you eat as many as you want while picking, which is smart, because we ended up buying a lot more than we planned.  They did start to get mushy by the end of the day though, so we froze a bunch for smoothies.

We went to lunch with a friend’s brother and his wife while we were there, and it was really neat.  Their office is on the penthouse floor of one of the historic buildings downtown, with quite an interesting history.  We got fantastic views of the city, and had a great time chatting about life in Spokane.

I’ve fallen behind, because I’m losing interest in keeping up the blog.  Not just that, but the whole trip in general, really.  Which makes me mad because we’re finally at the best part.  But its just too much traveling, for too long a time.  I’m sick to death of being the tourist, always trying to figure out where we should go, what we should see, and always on the go.  I know there is so much interesting stuff everywhere, but I’ve gotten to the point that I just don’t care about most of it anymore.  I’m also finding it harder and harder to keep up with school with Ian.  Its too hard to have a routine and get it done while we’re traveling.

Its supposed to rain quite a bit in the near future, so we’ve been looking for raincoats for us and the kids. It took two cities and TEN stores before we found them. Ian and Caitlin picked their own. He got blue, she got pink. They look like such a classic boy and girl. No pics yet, its been raining.

Then we moved up to Redding, where we have been so busy I haven’t had time to write anything.  My cousin Mary and family live near here.  They also have a boy and a girl, each a year older than Ian and Caitlin.  The kids have been having a blast playing together.  We went to their house Wed, to Shasta Dam, a cool kids’ playground, and Sundial Bridge today.  Tomorrow we’ll visit the house they own near here, then go back to their current house for some hiking and more playing.  This weekend its time to finally make it to Oregon.  We’ve been in California now since January, its time to get out.

The campground is really nice, very very pretty.  The people are all extremely nice.  If we had blue hair we’d fit right in.  We took Sophie to the dog run area, and one lady pulled Caitlin onto her lap and held her captive for about 20 minutes.

We went to Yosemite yesterday and had a great time.  Its a truly spectacular place.  Pictures aren’t ready yet though.  Today we lazed around for awhile, did a little bit of schoolwork, then went to town.  One of the places we went was Costco, where we always buy more than we planned.  We had to do a good bit of rearranging to get all the stuff put away.  There is now food stored under our bed.  I just hope we don’t forget its there.

Tomorrow is supposed to be pretty chilly, so I don’t think we want to go higher up.  We’ll hang out here again, and go back to the park Sunday, and probably Monday.

Oh, and now we have yet another maintenance issue.  Last time we moved we forgot to shut the exhaust fan vent in the bathroom.  The plastic is very brittle and now there is a huge hole and lots of cracks in it.  We’re expecting rain in the next few days so I suppose we’ll have to do something about it soon.

Next up was the truck performance shop, to finish installation of a new computer system thingy-doo to boost our towing power up hills.  They had the truck all day and overnight Wednesday night.  They installed a new air intake, all new exhaust, and this computer bit.  Inside the cab we now have a PDA, like a Palm Pilot, with a readout.  Usually the PDA is available at local stores, but not anymore.  They had to have one overnighted from the manufacturer, hence the overnight stay for the truck.  The new PDA came in with the wrong mounting bracket.  The right one was supposed to be overnighted for installation today.  This was supposed to take about 20 minutes.  So, we all shlepped down there, with the trailer attached, to get this done after the tires this morning.  Lo and behold, the company sent the wrong mounting stuff AGAIN!  Our install guy said he could hardwire it in, to bypass this wrong connector, but needed a drawing from the manufacturer.  We waited and waited for them to fax it, and when they did, it was illegible.  Then we waited some more for them to email it instead.  We finally got it, but then one of the wires that was supposed to be in the truck, wasn’t, so that had to be figured out.  In the end, the guy was able to wire the thing in, and run the wires for our tire pressure monitor and the GPS into the dash, so now we don’t have 15 wires all over the floor.  It looks great.  While we were there, another guy looked at our trailer brakes, and found where a wire was rubbing against a leaf spring.  This is likely what has been causing the amazingly annoying problem with the brake controller beeping at us every time we go over a bump.  We’ll find out next time we move to a new city, as it happens after a few miles of travelling.  I also happened to mention our bumper issue, and they happened to have a welder guy too.  He found the bumper had originally been welded on only 3 sides of each of the 2 beams holding it on.  What lazyasses the original manufacturers were, who probably didn’t feel like getting on their backs, to weld the bottom side.  Anyway, this guy reinforced our bumper and said we could hang a motorcycle on there now if we wanted to.

The kids were extremely good overall through this whole day.  At one point I seriously wondered if someone could literally die of boredom.  We were all bored nearly to tears, including Sophie.

We had decided earlier in the day to just come back to this same campground, because it was familiar, close by, and easy.  After leaving the truck shop after 6pm, I was so glad we did.  We got back here, dropped the trailer, then Sean went to pick up a pizza for our very late dinner, and get a few groceries, while I finished setting up the trailer.

The kids ran around playing while I worked, like they always do.  I was getting the sewer pipe hooked up when I heard Caitlin start shrieking.  You can tell the difference between mad crying, and true pain.  This was pain.  I left the sewer pipe on the ground, ran around the trailer, and she told me she tripped and hit her mouth on the edge of the concrete pad under the picnic table.  I looked to see if she had cut her mouth anywhere, and found she had knocked out a front tooth!  It wasn’t loose yet, so it was a little bloody.  She also scraped her gum behind the knocked out tooth.  She didn’t know she had lost a tooth.  She said she was excited that the tooth fairy was going to come again tonight, but it really hurt.  A few minutes later she determined its the scraped gum that hurts, not the empty spot.  I’ll call our regular dentist in the morning, but I don’t think there is anything to be done.  I’m guessing its just going to be an empty spot until the permanent tooth is ready to come in.  By the way, this is the same tooth that got knocked out of place when Sophie knocked Caitlin down when she was 2 years old.  Back then she smashed her face onto the tile and knocked her two front teeth crooked.

The kids are now in bed.  Nothing else can possibly happen in the next 2 hours of the day, can it?  I’m too tired to go back and proofread this, so sorry for any errors, or if sentences don’t make sense.  I’m going to eat shop chocolate and go to bed. Oh, and the total cost for the day for mechanical issues was about $4,500.  We’ll see if there are any medical bills to go along with that.  Stay tuned, its always an adventure…

We like to play by the stream, and build up rocks so it babbles more.  The streets are paved so the kids ride their bikes up and down our quiet street a lot.

One afternoon we went to an off leash dog beach.  I found several dog beaches, but most of them only allow dogs after 6pm or before 9am.  After 6 its dark, before 9 just isn’t happening.  I found two that are off leash all day.  Everyone had a great time.

1. The bumper to get re-welded, not a huge priority, and we have to find a welder somewhere.  This may or may not get done.

2.  The refrigerator has a recall, apparently it might catch on fire, especially if we run it on propane instead of electricity.  This is a somewhat higher priority, but is a pain in the butt that we keep forgetting to deal with.  We have to call the manufacturer to find out where to take it, then call that place so they can order the part before we get there.

3.  Our battery in the RV doesn’t work.  It quit right after Slab City.  We picked up a new one, but apparently it doesn’t work either.  Sean needs to test it and see if its the battery, or something else that isn’t right.  I’m guessing its something else we’ll have to get fixed.  Getting a new battery is too easy.  Normally its not an issue since we have electricity in campgrounds, but we want to do more boondocking along the way.

4.  The brake controller is still having issues.  As we were driving into Banning a couple of weeks ago, we were driving about 20 miles an hour along a side road, when all of a sudden the trailer brakes slammed on.  Turns out the safety wire that connects the trailer to the hitch came off.  This has never happened before.  But, it showed that the trailer brakes CAN work.  We tried them manually and yes, now they work.  Maybe they were just stuck, and the wire coming out broke them loose.  But, the brake controller in the truck still beeps every time we go over bumps or put the brakes on.

5.  And here’s the adventure I could have done without – yesterday we were about 5 minutes away from our new campground, driving on the freeway.  I thought for a minute I heard a strange thumping noise, but it was faint and I couldn’t place it.  Then someone driving by said we had a flat tire.  Sure enough, there was smoke pouring out of the back of the trailer.  Naturally we were in the middle of a construction zone, with nowhere to pull over.  We had to drive another half mile before we could get off the road.  I was so afraid there would be an accident behind us with the tire ripping apart and flying everywhere.  As it turns out, not much went flying, most of the tire wrapped itself around the axle.  But it managed to rip off the wheel well moulding, dent the side of the rig, leave huge black streaks everywhere, and ruin the rim.   Apparently RVs don’t come with a lug wrench.  We tried the one from the truck but it didn’t fit.  So we called AAA and waited 2 hours for them to show up.  Turns out the lugs were covered with a plastic cap, so our lug wrench might have fit after all.  But, the jack we had was too wimpy anyway, and this guy got it all taken care of in about 20 minutes with his power tools.  So now we need 4 new tires and wheel rim.  We’re replacing the piece of crap bias ply tires with radials, so we have to do all 4.  We were lucky though, we read about other people whose tire blew, and it tore holes in the their water tanks under the trailer, and other major damage.

Yes, its always an adventure…

The day after we got here it rained for 3 days.  The kids were building up far too much energy.  There just isn’t really a way to burn it off in such a small space.  TV and computer games will only go so far.  Finally we let them out to play in the rain, but not for long, it was too cold.  After that, we couldn’t take it anymore and drove toward LA, to find a mall with a play area.  We looked some up on the web, and found one that said it had a play area, but when we got there, it wasn’t true.  The kids were happy riding the escalator over and over, but Sean and I were bored.  So we found another mall that really did have a play area.  They both had great fun, and there were several other kids, which made Caitlin happy.

This morning Sean and I were laying in our cozy bed, when we heard the kids talking and laughing.  Then Ian came and closed our door, and told us he was locking us in.  We knew they were up to something, but we didn’t want to get up.  Curiosity finally got the better of me though, and I had to check it out.  Looks like putting stuff on top of the cabinets is no longer safe.

This afternoon we went for a drive up the mountains to find some snow to play in.  We found this place called Riley’s Farm, which is a living history attraction with a restaurant, store, apple orchards,  re-enactments, etc.  Only the restaurant and little store are open during the week in the winter, but they had a big yard area and were happy to let the kids play as long as they wanted.  Depending on the weather, which we just found out is turning rainy again, we may go back up on Saturday for the candlemaking and tomohawk throwing demonstrations.  That’s not something you see every day.