JANUARY 2001 

Saturday, January 27, 2001                                                                Ogallala, NE

We are the only RV in the campground tonight here in western Nebraska.  We certainly get our choice of camp spots.  It’s hard to believe that just eleven days ago we were in Charlotte, NC closing on the sale of our house.  Here is a quick recap of the past week and a half to bring everyone up to speed.

After closing on the sale of our house Tuesday morning, January 16^th we drove directly to the house of my parents in northern Kentucky to put the remainder of our worldly possessions into storage.  The RV was fully laden with an 8’ x 5’ U-haul trailer in tow, with no room to spare.  The RV was first seriously tested climbing the quarter mile, eighteen-degree driveway to my parents’ house.  After a few days with family and friends in the Cincinnati area, we headed north on Saturday morning to visit Christine’s parents in Wisconsin, just south of Green Bay.  Again spending a few days with family, and putting a few last things in storage.  Let’s not omit the first RV accident, albeit minor. 

Following considerable professional advice I went to have the RV aligned and weighed now that we were at touring weight.  The alignment went well, and was well prescribed.  With the alignment completed, Christine and I began pulling out of the large enclosed service bay as the service technician began raising the garage door.  With the part of our RV that hangs over the cab area blocking our view, I ran into the garage door before it finished opening. The RV suffered a broken trim light lens and a torn roof (a little silicone seemed to suffice), but the garage door may add up to a few hundred dollars of damage.  Oh well, it’s just the beginning of many more nicks to come.

We headed west from Green Bay on Wednesday the 24^th toward Minneapolis with a brief stop in Chippewa Falls, WI for a tourist’s visit to the Leinenkugels Brewery.  The brewery tours were suspended due to construction of a new brew kettle, but we still enjoyed sampling a couple brews in their gift shop, Leinie’s Lodge.

In Minneapolis we spent the night with my sister Kathy’s family and unloaded the last of the items being transported, unrelated to our adventure.  Leaving Minneapolis Thursday morning, we had no more family or friends to put us up as we continued on toward skiing in Colorado.  The first stop was our new home on paper in Sioux Falls, SD.

South Dakota has no state income tax (yes, we’ll have taxable income during our years of travel); no personal property tax (vehicles); and some of the lowest costs for vehicle registration and insurance.  And Sioux Falls has a good mail forwarder catering specifically to the needs of Full-Timing RV travelers.  We will have our mail forwarded to us about twice a month, which is why we prefer e-mail.

We found a city campground open year around, and pulled in for our first campground hook-up in our rig.  The fact that it was only ten degrees outside ended up proving very interesting.  The only outside water source was a spigot on the outside of the office.  I filled the fresh water tank and then went in to test the flow of water.  Both the shower and bathroom sink were working fine on cold water, but nothing was moving out of the hot water faucet.  The kitchen sink was showing no signs of life at all, cold or hot.  This led to the better part of an hour of me crawling around under the RV trying to determine what was going on.

We finally gave up on having hot water that evening and grabbed dinner at a restaurant with plans to seek advice from an RV service center in the morning.  Well, overnight a warm front passed through raising the temperature up into the twenties for a short spell.  This, along with the heat generated by the furnace in the RV helped thaw a blockage in a water line running through the floor.  So in the morning we got all the water sources working properly.  This led to the next hitch, which was draining the waste tanks.  The RV has two waste tanks.  One is for BLACK water (toilet), and the other for GREY water (shower and sinks).  The BLACK water drainpipe has a very large diameter to assist in draining non-fluids.  This large diameter helps prevent the pipe contents from freezing, so I had no trouble draining the BLACK water.  The GREY water drainpipe however, is of narrow diameter, which was blocked with frozen grey water. 

From Christine:  Joe forgot one funny instance.  We were looking for a restaurant, after finally giving up on the water, and realized we had a new noise. Ka-chunk,  ka-chunk,  ka-chunk.  Finally Joe pulls into this gas station and I get out with a flashlight  and look while he slowly pulls forward.  Well, in between the two back, drivers side tires, there was a big rock stuck.  Joe had to bang at it with a hammer to get it out.  Our first couple of days sure kept us on our toes.  Back to Joe...

Back to our original plan to get some professional advice, we drove up the road to an RV dealership.  They generously shared their wisdom there advising us that even the best “winterized” RV’s aren’t intended to function properly below 20 degrees.  We were encouraged to leave some of the lower cupboard doors open when possible to aid in the heating of crucial plumbing elements.  I was also advised to get some electrical heat tape to wrap around my GREY water drainpipe.  Even though both of our waste holding tanks are heated to prevent freezing, the drainpipes are lower than the tanks and fully exposed to cold, especially when traveling.

As we were preparing to leave Sioux Falls, and trying to decide which route to take, we were beset by yet another surprising challenge.  We were traveling west along the outer belt when the lock on our awning came unlocked.  Our awning immediately began flapping violently against the top of the RV while moving 50 mph.  We pulled over on the shoulder afraid of what we would find.  The gale force winds coming out of the north were slamming directly into the awning side of the RV.  We each grabbed a support bracket and pulled the awning out into its deployed position off of the roof.  This was nearly an impossible position to hold as the wind kept threatening to left up the awning with us hanging from it.  After the first attempt to roll the awning up by hand failed, we waited for a lull in the wind before trying again.  The second effort was successful.  We both climbed back into the RV wondering “What next?”.

This event ended up being a strong signal for what route to take out of Sioux Falls.  SOUTH, with the wind on our ass!  This proved to be a very wise decision as we enjoyed a tail wind for the first time in three days after bucking gas-consuming head winds and cross winds for the past two days.  The wind took us south to Lincoln, Nebraska on a journey that can be best described as surreal.  The snow in the region had become so dry in the colder temperatures that it had reached a dusty granular state that danced an eerie ballet across the highway for the remainder of the day.  Enjoying the best fuel economy since taking ownership of the RV, I thoroughly immersed myself in this dream state as we quietly coasted south needing only to whisper at each other to be heard.

We enjoyed an uneventful evening at home in our RV in Lincoln, NE.   Christine prepared her first cooked dinner with ease and anticipation.  I spent a half hour under the RV this morning getting the electrical heat tape installed before we headed west into a splendid day.  The wind was calmly out of the west (mild headwind) and the sky was clear.  The temperature increased the further west we traveled; up into the forties.  We made another tourist stop around lunch today in Grand Island, NE at the Stuhr Prairie Pioneer Museum.  It was an impressive spread that offers much more in the summer.  Grand Island is the birthplace of Henry Fonda, evident by Fonda’s narration of the museum slide show, and the restoration of his birth home moved to the museum rounds.

Sunday, January 28, 2001                                                                Denver, CO

What a different day we had today.  I was hoping to see the Rocky mountains rise from the horizon as we moved into Colorado today, but instead we got snow all day.  We awoke to a fresh two-three inches that kept accumulating all the way to Denver.  The Sunday traffic was minimal all day, but the roads varied from freshly plowed to ‘down-right harrowing’ as the lack of traffic made it a challenge to even know where the road was.  The RV behaved very predictably and was easy to drive with confidence.  Other than suffering in the heat of our hot cab (to keep the ice from building up on the windshield) we tried to stay relaxed.

Approaching Denver we passed a two-mile section of northbound traffic that had about twenty vehicles involved in a smattering of accidents.  We counted our blessings as we located our campground for the next three nights and took a late lunch.  After a comfortable break we ventured back out on the roads as a cautious Denver was making its way about.  We drove into downtown to visit the new REI flagship store and begin our hunt for ski equipment.  With marginal success we moved on to a downtown bar and enjoyed dinner and beers while watching the un-Super Bowl.

Monday, January 29, 2001                                                                Denver, CO

The snow persisted until noon today with about six total inches.  It was beautiful and sloppy today as we shopped for skis.  We ended up at a great ski shop that showered us with customer service on a quiet Monday.  We ended up burning a hole in our pocket to get set up with complete ski packages.  It took most of the day to fit our boots, get custom foot-beds, eat lunch, choose skis and bindings and get everything mounted.

Tomorrow will be a new ambitious day of shopping and organizing.

Tuesday, January 30, 2001                                                                Denver, CO

Another day working on our punch list.  We spent the morning in a very nice library.  Christine worked on her coursework; I did some enjoyable high-speed web surfing, and found some discount lift tickets.  After lunch we went to every RVer’s favorite place for shopping, Wal-Mart . . . no kidding.  We scored some good organizational containers and then went on to have some real fun.  We spent about three hours at the REI flagship store in downtown Denver spending some gift certificates given to us by Christine’s brother, Craig.  Thanks Craig, it was some of the best shopping fun we’ve ever had.

Wednesday, January 31, 2001                                                    Buena Vista, CO

We left Denver today after some last minute errands.  On the way out of town we visited our first Camping World store.  Camping World is a chain of stores dedicated to outfitting the RVer.

Then we began our climb into the mountains.  We had a perfect day for it and the drive was beautiful.  Regular gasoline in the mountains only has an 85 Octane rating, but is a specially formulated oxygenated fuel for high altitude travel.  The RV didn’t knock or ping at all today, but it didn’t have a lot of power either.  40 mph in second gear was the best I could do on some of the hills, but who’s hurrying anyway?  I was however please with the fuel economy going through the mountains.  So maybe the low octane fuel will suffice.

Buena Vista is a quaint old west town sitting in a flat narrow valley at 8000 feet, with majestic views directly west of several 14,000-foot peaks.  Christine and I got here early enough to walk a mile and a half into town and look around.  Wouldn’t you know that the first place we stopped was an old saloon?  Yes, we deserved a cold draft by that point.

I don’t think I’ve written anything about the sleep we’re getting.  In brief, we are a very well rested couple.  It seems that we manage to tire ourselves out early and climb into bed by 9:00.  We get up with the sun around 7:00, but that’s still a lot of very pleasant sleep.