Back on the Road Again!

Well, it's been quite a while, and I thought I'd post a little something as we head back out on the road.  The remainder of the summer was a bit hectic as we stayed with my parents as my sister came and went with her family.  She moved to St. Augustine, FL over the summer, and this involved lots of stays with my parents as they were between houses for the summer.

After our last trip we came back to my parents' house where my parents were taking care of their grandchildren while my sister and her husband wrapped up their house sale in DC.  They joined their kids in Blacksburg shortly after we arrived and stayed for a while.  We taught the kids about emptying the RV's tanks!

Aaron helped his sister move to Richmond, VA for a few days while I visited extended family in Ohio.  I hadn't been to Ohio in a while and it was especially great to spend some time with my great uncle.  Unfortunately I didn't manage to take any photos!!

We spent the 4th of July with my sister at her in-laws' lake house on Lake Canandaigua, one of the finger lakes in New York.  We drove the car and left the RV at the farm since we had somewhere to stay.

Aaron watching fireworks with our nephews and niece

We took a long way back via Ohio to see several sights we'd been interested in - still in the car.  We checked another national park off our list - Cuyahoga Valley - the most interesting feature of which was the 'Ledges' hike, where sheer cliff walls put out cool air like air conditioning.  We stopped by Cedar Point so Aaron could experience several record breaking roller coasters, and then drove down to visit the Neil Armstrong Museum and the National Museum of the US Air Force - the latter houses the only remaining Valkyrie, which Aaron desperately wanted to see.

Part of the Ledges hike

Cedar Point!

This is the Gemini capsule that Neil Armstrong barely 
survived after one of the thrusters misfired

The Valkyrie - look closely, Aaron is standing underneath with
arms extended

Right after we got back from Ohio we drove the car for an overnight trip to Dollywood to see their summer festival drone show before it ended.  The show was absolutely incredible.

One of the many formations the drones made

Right after we got back from Dollywood, my sister & her family returned to Blacksburg so we stayed put to visit and help with the kids.  We were crazy enough to volunteer to babysit the four kids at the end of their stay for several days so my sister & her husband could get the new house set up in St. Augustine.  We had a good (and exhausting!) time.  

With my sister, her kids, and my aunt at Dixie Caverns

After returning the kids to their parents, I was thrilled to spend some time with my aunt's brand new golden retriever puppy before we took a quick trip to St. Louis to visit some friends there.  

With my aunt and her 8 week old puppy!

With our friends at Grant's Farm in St. Louis

To wrap up our summer, we took our first cruise since the pandemic started on the Carnival Magic.  Due to CDC regulations and last minute regulation changes in The Bahamas, the passenger count was only 1800 out of a possible 4500, and we thoroughly enjoyed our space.  Unfortunately a handful of COVID-positive crew members caused our shore excursion to be canceled in the Dominican Republic, but aside from that (which, honestly, we figured was a distinct possibility in the middle of the pandemic, so it wasn't too surprising nor upsetting), everything was awesome.

On the top deck of the ship, overlooking the water slides
and ropes course

All dressed up for formal night!  We made the masks in the 
craft activity that day and didn't actually wear them outside the cabin

Drinks and shade on a beach in Bimini!

We spent the week after the cruise helping my sister with the kids while my brother-in-law was away on a business trip, then dashed back to get the RV ready to get back on the road.  Time to travel in the RV again!  I'll start regularly posting our adventures again now that we're back in the RV, but figured one non-RV post was warranted given that I've been silent for a few months!

More Repairs & 20th Anniversary!

We had another couple of sunny days! 

First up: recaulking the windows and awnings on our driver's side and installing gutters on the main awning.

Window awning recaulking

Aaron had actually built the gutters way back in the fall when we were first getting ready to start this adventure, but he didn't get them installed before we left.  We figured we'd install them on the road, only to figure out that we didn't have a tall enough ladder with us to really do so safely.  So they made a trip untouched in our cabinets until we got back on the farm!  Some glue and a couple zip ties later and they're up on the awning and *hopefully* will help keep the running water off the side of the RV.

New gutters before and after painting

Installing the new gutters

We also reglued the facing to one of our basement doors.  Aaron banged the doors pretty strongly getting the facing back in place and accidentally broke one of the door strut attachments (these things were falling like flies in the fall when he was doing repairs, so no big surprise there).  Our next sunny day he fixed this with a new steel plate, epoxy, and a few rivets.

Adding rivets to the new metal plate

All done!  The gray is JB Weld epoxy, Aaron's
go-to for small gluing jobs

Our final and MAJOR project was lubricating the 40ish lubrication points underneath the RV.  This took a LOT longer than we expected, mostly because it took forever to locate all the grease fittings.  Fortunately we had a list of what we were looking for...as Aaron lubricated the various points, we discovered that the ones that were easy to find appeared to be well lubricated...but the ones that were harder to find seemed like they hadn't been lubricated in a LONG time...which suggested to us that the previous owners did NOT have this list and just lubricated what they could see.  Everything should be in good shape now though!  One of the lubrication points was a two person job - you had to hold a finger over a release hole while pumping grease into a fitting so it would go out the other end of the joint - so I even had to get up under the RV to help!  Unfortunately we don't have a picture of that rare event.

Trying to locate grease fittings

Aaron and (mostly) my dad have a slowly ongoing project of trying to figure out how to straighten or support our front hydraulic jack.  It's at a bit of an angle - we think the previous owners ran over something - and when the jack is extended a lot it just looks precarious.  My dad has fabricated an impressive looking bracket out of steel, and we went to a Fastenal location to get some extra long threaded rods to support the process.  So far we're still in the preparation phase for that so I'll have more details later, but in my ongoing reporting on the impacts of coronavirus on our lives, I thought I'd share this picture from shopping at Fastenal.

Social distancing

That's Aaron in the neon yellow shirt.  They wouldn't let you in the shop except to pay - an employee met you at the door, noted what you were looking for, and went inside the shop to try to find it.  Social distancing was going great with just us and this guy, but then another person walked up and stood right at the door and encroached on everyone's space.  So it was halfway working?

Finally...it's our 20th anniversary today!  Staying home/staying safe this rainy (and sleety??) day in Blacksburg is a far cry from our planned 2 month cruising trip in Europe, but we're doing our best to celebrate nonetheless.  I made Disney's Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Banana French Toast this morning for breakfast, which was quite a hit.

Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Banana French Toast

Cabinetry Fixes & Housework

It's been a while since the weather was cooperative enough for us to get anything done on the RV, but this week we decided we just needed to bite the bullet and start working on things.  However, we stuck to the inside for now!

The latches on several of our drawers are broken; mostly they were broken before we purchased the RV, but some have gone out since then and some are in worse shape now after opening violently when we went over bumps or around curves while driving.  Aaron fixed the worst offender this week: the latch on one of the cabinet drawers in the kitchen.  We discovered we don't have as many replacement latches as we thought, so we'll have to get more before we can finish the rest of the drawers.

First Aaron had to repair the broken cabinet bottom - a result
of me overloading it with baking stones 😳

Replacement latches

Aaron had to get creative because the replacement
metal latches didn't fit in the same spot as the old
thick plastic latches...he ended up mounting
the latch to the top of the drawer instead of the
bottom and it worked perfectly.

We also discovered the glue holding the brush-like weatherstripping (maybe? not sure what to call it) on our screen window in the living room had decayed, so we re-glued that on.

What's that called??

While checking to see how this item was mounted on the other screens we discovered that our dining room screen was missing this piece!  That explains SO MUCH about why bugs kept on getting inside our RV!  I felt like they were coming through the window crack that I could see, but didn't understand why the window was designed like that...and now I know that it WASN'T designed that way, it's just missing the brushy weatherstripping thingy that's supposed to keep them out!!  I'm SO excited and can't wait to get a replacement glued in so we can keep our windows open without fear of bugs!!

While it's been too icky to work on the RV in West Virginia, we've been getting into other projects at my parents' house in Blacksburg.  In contrast to the family farm in West Virginia, the house in Blacksburg is on a wooded mountain with lots of leaves...so many leaves...  We spent some time one afternoon clearing some very compacted (and almost soil) leaves out of the culverts crossing my parents' driveways.

There were so many leaves and they were so
heavy I had to switch from a rake to a snow
shovel to move them across the driveway.

Aaron gave up on tools entirely and just started hauling the
leaves out with his hands.

All clear!

Aaron replaced a non-working drain in my parents' bathtub, inadvertently aggravating a slow leak they've always had into a very fast leak in the process.  He and my dad replaced the drain pipe entirely and now the bathtub is in top notch shape!

Old corroded drain plug mechanism.

Replacement drain pipe installed.

All new hardware!