Notes From The Road
As I have now embarked on my Full Time travels I will from time to time post a few comments, reflections and experiences of being on the road here under this title.
Please do not expect a glowing "it was all wonderful" approach. My intent is to show with as much even handedness as I can muster the good and the bad, the crazy and the inane, the heartwarming and the heartbreaking. And of course the day-to-day routine of full timing.
My hope is that my humble attempts will entertain and illuminate. I hope you will think so too.
Here is the first installment:
Yard Sales have become my least favorite activity. All those people coming to buy the stuff I have deemed to be useless to my new life. "Yes I'll take $5 for the snow shovel" in fact I would have paid him $5 to take it. We ended up selling most of the things we didnt need, like the 42 inch HDTV and downsized to a 28" Samsung that I mounted in the TT, and which we have yet to turn on two weeks into this adventure. In my trailer mounting of the TV resulted in a full day and two trips to Best Buy and another to a local hardware store for different spacers as the ones that came with the TV mount were not the correct size for the TV. A close inspection of the TV mount box revealed that nowhere on it does it claim to be "Universal".
We gave away a considerable amount of the odds and ends we couldnt sell and no one in their right minds would buy anyway. But of course I often wondered about the sanity of some of the people that did buy some of the stuff we put out...a Pez Dispenser? Mary said put it all out you never know what people will buy. She was right.
Now I have been through similar down-sizings several times in my life when I moved to a new country or left one to come back to the states. So I am familiar with the sense of freedom and the feeling of that weight of insurance payments being lifted from one's shoulders so this wasn't new to me. But welcome none-the-less.
Our first stop was Theodore Roosevelt National Park and the sole reason for our visit was to see my Friend Mary's Fathers Barb Wire and Early Western Tool collection that is housed in the Billings County Museum there in the nearby town of Medora. The collection was wonderful and a truly good look back at how the West was REALLY won. Barbed wire not guns.
The town of Medora with it's famed musical, which we did not attend, should be given a miss. It is too cutesy by half and a complete and utter tourist trap of the first order. It's tenuous hold on any historical importance which is touted at every turn and in every advertisement and brochure is it's thin link to Theodore Roosevelt as a young man. There are few original buildings and tons of gift shops selling Cat Accessories and ice cream parlors for as far as the eye can see.
Based on the costs at the Medora C Store I assumed the owner had a new Rolls Royce that he was making payments on. I understand the idea of greater markup for a tourist area, I once owned a tourist business, but three and four times the cost of the same items elsewhere? That's pushing it.
The scenery was lovely and the weather near perfect for our stay. We camped at the National Park in a truly huge site (no. 38, no hookups of course)for 7 nights. Needless to say my tanks were full and my batteries low by the time we left.
I used my new Champion Generator for the first time since I bought it last spring and it worked perfectly. It is a Dual Fuel type and I ran it on propane. I tested the air con and other things all turned on and the generator seemed to take it all in stride barely changing tone when the AC kicked on. At 3800 watts it will run everything in my TT no problem. I only used it to recharge the batteries and to get the slides back in at the end I did not use it to power the TT.
We left TRNP headed for Spearfish SD to get our new Drivers licenses and stayed in the really lovely Spearfish City Campground. That story and a review of that park in the next installment.
Please do not expect a glowing "it was all wonderful" approach. My intent is to show with as much even handedness as I can muster the good and the bad, the crazy and the inane, the heartwarming and the heartbreaking. And of course the day-to-day routine of full timing.
My hope is that my humble attempts will entertain and illuminate. I hope you will think so too.
Here is the first installment:
Yard Sales have become my least favorite activity. All those people coming to buy the stuff I have deemed to be useless to my new life. "Yes I'll take $5 for the snow shovel" in fact I would have paid him $5 to take it. We ended up selling most of the things we didnt need, like the 42 inch HDTV and downsized to a 28" Samsung that I mounted in the TT, and which we have yet to turn on two weeks into this adventure. In my trailer mounting of the TV resulted in a full day and two trips to Best Buy and another to a local hardware store for different spacers as the ones that came with the TV mount were not the correct size for the TV. A close inspection of the TV mount box revealed that nowhere on it does it claim to be "Universal".
We gave away a considerable amount of the odds and ends we couldnt sell and no one in their right minds would buy anyway. But of course I often wondered about the sanity of some of the people that did buy some of the stuff we put out...a Pez Dispenser? Mary said put it all out you never know what people will buy. She was right.
Now I have been through similar down-sizings several times in my life when I moved to a new country or left one to come back to the states. So I am familiar with the sense of freedom and the feeling of that weight of insurance payments being lifted from one's shoulders so this wasn't new to me. But welcome none-the-less.
Our first stop was Theodore Roosevelt National Park and the sole reason for our visit was to see my Friend Mary's Fathers Barb Wire and Early Western Tool collection that is housed in the Billings County Museum there in the nearby town of Medora. The collection was wonderful and a truly good look back at how the West was REALLY won. Barbed wire not guns.
The town of Medora with it's famed musical, which we did not attend, should be given a miss. It is too cutesy by half and a complete and utter tourist trap of the first order. It's tenuous hold on any historical importance which is touted at every turn and in every advertisement and brochure is it's thin link to Theodore Roosevelt as a young man. There are few original buildings and tons of gift shops selling Cat Accessories and ice cream parlors for as far as the eye can see.
Based on the costs at the Medora C Store I assumed the owner had a new Rolls Royce that he was making payments on. I understand the idea of greater markup for a tourist area, I once owned a tourist business, but three and four times the cost of the same items elsewhere? That's pushing it.
The scenery was lovely and the weather near perfect for our stay. We camped at the National Park in a truly huge site (no. 38, no hookups of course)for 7 nights. Needless to say my tanks were full and my batteries low by the time we left.
I used my new Champion Generator for the first time since I bought it last spring and it worked perfectly. It is a Dual Fuel type and I ran it on propane. I tested the air con and other things all turned on and the generator seemed to take it all in stride barely changing tone when the AC kicked on. At 3800 watts it will run everything in my TT no problem. I only used it to recharge the batteries and to get the slides back in at the end I did not use it to power the TT.
We left TRNP headed for Spearfish SD to get our new Drivers licenses and stayed in the really lovely Spearfish City Campground. That story and a review of that park in the next installment.
