It’s been a quiet couple of weeks.  After seeing the redwoods, we moved to gold rush country; Sonora, CA, in a fairgrounds campground for a couple of days.  Still no aircard service, though our phones worked fine and we found an internet café so J could work.  We drove the area and toured the local museum; we went to Angels Camp, home of the annual ( Read more... )

We’re almost all packed up and put away and ready for our 7 (ugh!) am appointment with the NuWa service center tomorrow.  The alarm is set for 5 (eek!) am so we can button up the rig and dump the tanks before driving over to the factory for some minor warrantee work.  We’ve been enjoying Chanute, Kansas and their municipal campground.  Rather than ( Read more... )

...what we’ve been doing on our summer vacation.

We were good little consumers, and actually spent most of our economic stimulus payment.  It came at a good time; there are a lot of upgrades we’d like to have for the truck and trailer and that’s what most of the money went for.

First up was improving the truck performance by changing out the ( Read more... )

Due to a combination of circumstances beyond our control, J and I haven’t had much time off lately.  In fact, we’ve hardly seen each other except for a few minutes before bed at night or a few minutes in the morning grabbing a coffee for breakfast (if we have time.)  We’re both fully tied up handling the various demands that make up our lives these ( Read more... )

J's take on the weekend ( Read more... )

18 months ago more or less, less or more.  I broke down coming from a customer site in the hinterlands of Virginia while cruising through Baltimore.  While waiting for my Dodge Dakota to be fixed I walked up to Days RV and looked at the cutest little travel trailer.

The light bulb goes off “We could get one of these fairly cheap and go camping ( Read more... )

On the positive side: we’ve started work on the interior of the truck. This weekend we pulled the seats, almost all the trim, and the vinyl flooring. Which was when we discovered the solid dirt in the doorwells; over an inch thick in places, it was clearly beyond the powers of bucket cleaning. So we sighed and hoisted the front seat back into ( Read more... )

We made sure to take some 'before' shots of our F350, in the hopes of dazzling with the reconstruction later.

The truck:

( Read more... )

(an expansion on an email to my uncle..)

So, we've had our truck checked out by the fanatic.. I mean mechanic (diesel aficionado who's starting his own business working on them, young guy - 17! - but really knows his stuff) and we had new tires put on (ouch! 6 tires not cheap!) and the alignment checked, and it's in our local garage for PA ( Read more... )

J again:

A funny thing happened on the way to the Diesel Mechanic.

Here we are with an un-inspected F350 DRW 7.3L Powerstroke diesel sitting outside the house.

It needs an oil change, to have the transmission fluid flushed and replaced, new filters for EVERYONE! (At a minimum.  It also needs new tires, and it might need more major repairs that we ( Read more... )