Blinds (con't)

Well, Alan and I just spent the better part of an hour trying to remount the little sucker.........No go! The factory must hire tiny little people to get behind these things!! We figured there is just no freaking way for us to do it. So....we have an appt. on the 8th for Camping World to replace our electrical cord (the one you use to hook up to shore power) and Alan just called.....they will install the stupid thing FOR us! $45, but it will be done.
Meanwhile, a friend looked at our Sirius radio (thanks, Tom!!) and it's a goner. No funds for that right now. Still have the CD changer and speakers that are broken, too! This thing oughta be practically new by the time we are done fixing shit!!
We have decided to head towards the gulf in Texas around Oct 1 and see Alan's son Sean and his family. We will spend the winter there and then head towards North Carolina to see the East Coast Youngs in the spring. I have never seen the Gulf , but Alan has. I just hope the shrimp and big, fat and plentiful!!! Yum!! :0) Meanwhile, we are enjoying our little RV park very much. People are very friendly and it has been fun to see our friends!

The pics are of our site and Lisa playing in the bedroom. She has a ball back there setting up all her dolls and such.

Blinds

OK, some two months ago now, two of our day/night blinds broke. There are strings that weave thru them and down to a tensioner and the strings are what broke. "ok", I  thought, "I can do this". I ordered some string, bought some gnarly needles and downloaded the "how to" off the internet. And that's when the doubt started! LOL! It took me a month to get up the gumption just to take one down. And then it sat and sat and.......sat. I just couldn't make myself start.
Then, one day, sitting here and looking at them, I thought, "WTH?? They are already broken! So what if I can't do it? I can't make it worse!" So, I got out the stuff and just started. You have to remove side caps and then the string. I cut two very long strings and then re wove the new string criscrossing them in the middle and then down the other side. Next is to re mount them and set the tension. Man, I hope this works!!

The Roof is fixed!

As you may remember, our roof peeled up on one side. So, this past week, it has been at Chris' Collision in Grass Valley (about 35 miles of very windy road from here) for the repair. We have been having trouble with the engine cutting out, leaving me searching for a large enough spot to stop and no power steering to do it with! We have a Cummins 400 (diesel), complete with all the dang computer codes. If something goes wrong, the computer shuts off the engine....which is good because it keeps us from totally ruining our Magic Bus!! But it's also bad if something shuts down your power. Ok, so we got the roof fixed and then DeMartini's RV was kind enough to let us stay the night with their hook ups. We had a nice, quiet night and then, the next morning, drove it around the corner to NorthStar trucking. The Magic Bus spent the day there, but they didn't have the proper adapter to check the codes! RATS!!! They did replace 2 fouled fuel filters (say THAT three times! LOL!). But, now, we needed to get it to South Sacramento to the guy that can look at it with the proper fittings.Oh well, we got the laundry done at least. We keep reminding each other that this is our home and you just gotta fix stuff...... unfortunately, we seem to have purchased a rig that got basically NO maintenance at all. And it obviously wasn't checked all that well at Camping World beforehand either.
We have been putting a shitload of money into our RV and, frankly, we are running low in funds this month. So, we decided to chance it and try for the Camptonville RV park and do the next repair in a few months. But, that still meant we had to chance it dying again. So, off we went, with Alan leading the way. And we made it just fine!! So nice to just drive and not be dying halfway up a hill!! Got to our campsite and with Alan's excellent directions, I backed her in and we set up "home". GREAT to be back, even though we really enjoyed the coast. Alan is on his way back from picking up Lisa at her sister's (thanks again, Linda!!)

HOT, HOT,HOT!!

Did I mention HOT? Man, summer is definitely here in Camptonville!! Thank you, God, for our air conditioning! Extreme weather really sets off my Fibromyalgia BIG time. Saw the doc and asked about the fentanyl patch for pain, as my usual pain medication is not cutting it. He said he'd be glad to write the script, but did I know that, without medical coverage, it runs $1,600.00 a month?????? That's  almost 3 times my Disability check!! This country is SO messed up......people without jobs, losing their homes, no insurance, gangs, I could go on and on...... it just sickens me!!!!! OK, I'm done.
We have decided to stay put here til October and then we are outa here for warmer climes. We will eventually end up on the East Coast to see my brother Ken and family......the route favored right now is Hwy 10, staying a month in Texas and another in Alabama. Then heading toward Charlotte, NC in April where we'll stay at least a month. I can't wait to hang out with the East Coast side of the clan!!
We are taking the Magic Bus in next Tuesday for her roof repair......should take 4 days. We are taking Lisa to her sis's and then heading to the coast for some couple time.
While in Grass Valley this past week, we took Lisa to see her friends at Neighborhood Center of the Arts (she calls it school). So cute to watch their faces light up just seeing her. And she loved it as well.

2 weeks Just Flew By!!

And SO much has happened!! We love our little site here in Camptonville.....trees, a little grassy area and a table. The first thing to happen was when we drove the Magic Bus to Chris' Collision we found out that AGAIN the insurance company was NOT going to pay for our roof saying it was not maintained properly. My disdain  for insurance companies is HUGE!!!! It makes me SO angry that you pay all the premiums on time, every month and when you need them, they find a loophole. Arrrggggghhhh
Ok, so back to Camptonville in the heavy rain only to discover we had NO power, even hooked up! We  couldn't figure it out. In and out of the coach checking the connections, checking batteries and anything else we could think of IN THE POURING RAIN! We don't have much cell service here, so Alan took off to call PG&E. I sat down in our now dark RV and just cried and cried. The stress of constant repairs has been very hard on us. Alan came back and PG&E was no help at all.  We decided to just call it a night and started getting Lisa ready for bed, teeth brushed, all the usual. Lisa was down and we started to our bed......but rain was leaking right onto our bed!!!!!! @#$%%^&&***((()()!!!! More crying on my part, more "blue sky" for Alan. It was clear that regardless of everything else, we had to get those slides back in! Poor Lisa! Had to get her back up to pull in the slides. When we brought in the bedroom slide, about 2 cups of water just poured in on the floor. I threw a towel down and sopped up as much as I could, then left it there. We went to bed listening to the rain pound on the roof and wondering what in the hell we had done to deserve all this crappy luck.
In the morning, Alan called Camping World and they said to come right down. They had the rig for the day, discovered our electrical problem and 3 BAD house batteries. We met a friend for lunch and made new friends sitting in the waiting room. At lunch, we decided to have Camping World do a 45 point inspection, so we spent the night in their parking lot.....VERY noisy, right next to Highway 80, but we ran the generator and watched a movie and felt better about the world. Happily, Camping World didn't find much else wrong and thought the Magic Bus was in good shape "except for that roof". We have an appointment to get that fixed on the 12th. At that time, Alan and I are gonna take Lisa to her sister's (thanks Linda and Jorge!) and we are going to the coast for a MUCH needed couples getaway!
 Just realized I forgot to tell you about a shoe shrine between Fallon and Ely, NV!! We were sitting in the front, having stopped for lunch and driver change. In front of us in this little turn out, we realized we were looking at HUNDREDS of shoes hanging out of a fairly large tree!! Then, we noticed in the ravine next to us even more shoes! There was even a sign! Check it out! I even heard it's kinda famous! To me, it felt kinda creepy....complete with shot gun shells all over the place.