Just Sitting Around

Sorry for not posting for a while, but we have been sitting around waiting for certain events to happen so that we can once again get back on the road and see America.

Many of you know that when we came in for Christmas this year there was a sudden death in the family and so our stay was extended. 

One thing led to another and before you knew it, it was time for Jered, our 18 year old who lives with his mother, to graduate from high school.  So it just made sense to stick around rather than heading West and having to turn around to come back for it.

We are very proud of Jered for his accomplishment of receiving the Top Senior Award at his career center for IT Networking.  We are sure that is a skill that will serve him well in the future.

Jered's award for Top Senior for IT Networking.

Other things that have happened since our last post is that we discovered that we had a hole in one of our tires which was now flat and off the rim.  Luckily we have Coach-Net which provides roadside assistance and they had a local wrecker service come out and replaced the tire on site. 

Even though we had to pay for a tire, Coach-Net paid for the roadside assistance service which saved us $275.00 and made the yearly membership cost of $149.00 well worth it.  We have had Coach-Net from the very beginning of owning the RV and they have proven very helpful, especially when we had or have questions about anything on the RV.

Getting the tire changed on the RV.

Since we had hardly any miles on the tires and RV, there was plenty of tread left on the old tires and so the technician said we were safe with running the new tire against the old one and that it would not put too much stress on the new tire.

I'm sure there are plenty of thoughts on this and many opinions on whether or not we need to change both tires and then if we do that we need to change the tires on the other side so then I might just as well get all the tires changed on the RV.  

I'm going with changing the one tire and hopefully it is not a mistake.  If you know for a fact, and not just that you have heard the proper thing to do when changing tires on an RV, please let us know.

Another repair that had to to be made on the RV is our water softener which is used to remove any iron out of the water.  We moved sites here at the RV park and now are hooked up to a well that has more iron in the water than normal.

I have to recharge the softener with salt about every three days which means I have to take the water filter casing off, remove the filter, fill it with salt, and then run that through the softener which recharges it so that it will pull the iron out of the water.

The original water filter case must have frozen at one time since the top cover had a crack in it, so I bought a new one and replaced it.  The new filter's casing was so hard to unscrew that I ended busting the PVC water valve and pipe that feed into the filter.  So I decided to replace it with brass so that hopefully it would withstand the force better that it takes to get the filter canister off.  So far after recharging it six or seven times since replacing the PVC with brass, nothing has broken like before.  

Misty says that since I man-handle everything, that is why it broke, but I think too many things are made either cheaply or out of junk, just like the PVC valve.

Old PVC pipe replaced with brass.

Water softener with new filter casing and brass fittings to include new brass valve.

Yet still another repair or modification I had to make was buy a Tailgater satellite antenna for our Dish System so we could watch TV once again.

With us moving to a different lot in the park and with the leaves coming on the trees, we could not get a signal with our satellite antenna mounted on top of the RV, so we bought a Tailgater antenna.

It works great and now we can watch TV again.  The only issue now is that we do not get local channels, which is confusing since we received them fine when using the top mounted satellite antenna.  I called Dish Network to get help, but they were not able to resolve the problem.  I guess my next move is to contact the manufacture of the Tailgater which is King Controls. 

There are only a few of the Dish Network receivers that will work with the Tailgater and luckily we had the VIP 211 receiver which does.  The other receivers that will work are the VIP 211k 211z and 411 receivers.

Tailgater satellite dish antenna.

To get the cable into the RV I bought a flat coaxial cable to pass it through the bedroom window.  One day I will run the cable into the RV in a permanent fashion, but this works for now.

Running the satellite dish antenna cable into the RV.

I than ran the cable through the trees up off the ground so that when the grass is cut it would not be ran over by the mower.   I was thinking about burying it across the road, but since there is not that much traffic, I just ran it across the top of the road.

I did stack a few pile of rocks on the little bit that does run across the grass so anyone mowing would hopefully see the rocks and not mow over that part of the cable.

Stringing the satellite antenna cable through the trees so the grass can be mowed without cutting the cable.

Also while staying here a stray dog came around and has decided to adopt us, just like Angel did in Texas.  He is probably not even a year old and is a very friendly dog, but way too big for us.

He is also used to running free and I'm sure the RV life would not be for him.  We put up Found posters all over with his picture and put a post on Facebook along with a couple of other Lost Dog sites for our area but have had no luck finding his owner.  He was probably dumped and so now, has no owner.

He had a red collar when he first found us, but now that is gone.  Not sure if he got it off somehow or someone took it off of him.  Sort of strange.

The kids would love for us to keep him and so have named him Cookie.  I'm going to hate to burst their bubbles, but he will not come with us and unfortunately when we do leave I will take him to the Kanawha Charleston Humane Association or animal shelter.  The good news is that they are trying to become a "No Kill" shelter, which makes me feel better about dropping him off there.

Of course if you are in our area and want a good dog, just drop us a line and let us know.  He is looking for a good home.

The dog that adopted us who will be know as Cookie.

So that is what we have been up to the past month or so.  For the most part there has been more good than bad, which is always good.

We are blessed that God has enabled us to have such a wonderful lifestyle and we pray that others can experience all the good we have experienced so far.

God bless you all and may He keep you safe!

If you like our blog please follow us and/or go to our Facebook pages and like them or send us a friend's request.

Thanks!
Don, Misty, and Kids...