Change of plans -- staying home this winter

Well, it's been a while since I posted...sorry about that.

As I was getting the View packed up for it's big snowbirding adventure, life had other ideas this winter. My mom's health encountered a pretty significant setback in October, so I'm now staying home to help her out for the foreseeable future.

While certainly not the carefree "fun in the sun" winter I had been hoping for, this winter has not been all doom and gloom. Millie, for one, has been very happy to jump through her snowy backyard and rub noses between the fence posts with the neighbor's new black lab. She's also enjoyed being able to see my mom on just about a daily basis-- she is most definitely a "grandma's dog" and squeals with delight whenever she first sees her.

I learned how to winterize a motorhome (well, let's hope I learned how to do it right and don't have busted leaky water pipes in the RV this spring!). I also found a great RV storage place just a couple miles from the house. Unlike my T@B that requires no further attention once it's stored for the winter, motor homes need to be "checked in on" about once a month to charge up the batteries, and run gas and fluids through the engine and generator.

The local storage lot is perfect-- relatively inexpensive, some dumpy-looking RVs in the front of the lot that my nice View can hide behind to deter theft, and it's run by a nice old guy, Roger, who has years of RV'ing experience.

The only challenge with the storage lot has been learning it's rather unique hours. Roger is old-school-- no website, rusty old sign out front, handwrites his receipts, and doesn't have much of a voice mail system. The first time I went to do my monthly "engine running/battery charging", I arrived just as he was leaving for lunch. He said "no worries, just park your car outside the gate and I'll park my truck at the entrance" (so I could walk around the truck and leave, but the lot would still be secure). That worked out well.

But the second month's visit went a little differently-- I was doing my Saturday errands and realized in the mid afternoon that I needed to get over to the lot before they closed for the weekend. I arrived a little before 4:00pm and figured I had over 30 minutes to run the engines, etc. It was cold that day, so rather than stop and say hi to Roger first, I just drove right back to my motorhome. As the sun started setting, I saw that it was getting to be 4:30 and likely around closing time, so I locked up the View, got in my car and began to leave the lot.

Suddenly, I realized I had a big problem--- the front gate was now locked shut, Roger's car was gone, and his office was locked tighter than a drum. I was now locked inside the storage lot for the weekend!!!! Thankfully, I had my iPhone and a nice warm car to sit in. I looked up the non-emergency phone number on my iPhone, and they transferred me to a couple different municipalities until I finally was given to the 911 dispatcher for the county sheriff's office. Within 10 minutes, a squad car arrived and a friendly laughing deputy got out of the car to assess my situation.

The deputy first tried calling Roger's emergency number, but remember? Roger's old-school--- no cell phone, no pager, no nothing!!! So, next, the deputy called a few more of his buddies (some detectives in unmarked police cars) to come guard me while he went over to Roger's house to try getting him there. 30 minutes later, he returned with a sheriff's Paddy Wagon van but still had not been able to locate Roger. Finally, the deputies decided to call the fire department to see if they could bring their bolt-cutters to cut the padlock and chain around the front gate.

About 10 minutes later, the biggest hook and ladder firetruck I've ever seen came roaring up to the front of the storage yard and 3 burly firemen jumped out. I now had these guys and their big truck, the Paddy Wagon, a squad car, and a detective's car in front of me--- must have looked like a huge emergency to the people driving past us! But, fortunately, the firemen were great and laughed the whole time. Within a minute they were able to cut the chain and open the gate for me. I thanked everyone profusely and they sent me on my way.

A couple days later when Roger got back and called me he said I was the first person in his 40+ years of operating the storage lot that had ever managed to get herself locked in! Fortunately, all ended well and we got a good laugh out of it.

So, even though I'm home this winter, I'm still managing to have a few fun adventures with the RV!

Preparing to fly south this winter

I'm planning to hit the road to work and live full-time in my RV this winter. If all goes well, Millie and I should be headed south by early November in hopes of 5 months of warm snow-free living! Since most of my client projects are in southern states, I had planned to be down there for a number of weeks anyway, so might as well bring the RV rather than fly and live out of hotel rooms!

Last year, I did a 6-week and a couple of 3-week roadtrips with the T@B to get my feet wet with the concept of living and working nomadically. I love my cute little T@B dearly, but those trips made me realize that it wasn't the best solution for extended living/working.

While the T@B was small and could fit into any campsite, it lacked full-fledged "self-contained" capabilities of bigger RVs (i.e. no bathroom, small tanks, limited storage space, no generator, etc). And while it was certainly faster and easier than a pop-up or tent, there was still about 30 minutes of setup/tear-down and hitching time required for me to move from campsite to campsite. So, that really forced me to stay mostly at "full-service" RV parks when I was working (as I needed good cell/wifi coverage at the campsite, and also needed water/electric hookups, and access to decent bath/shower facilities).

Now that I have the View, I'm really looking forward to the new flexibility it will offer for this upcoming season-- being able to literally camp from anywhere and still have my own clean bathroom, electric, and decent tank & storage capacities to boot!

But even more exciting will be the mobility options-- that pretty, quiet campsite that doesn't have a good cell signal for working during the daytime? No problem! Just hop in the driver's seat, start 'er up and drive into town or back to the interstate to find better signal coverage, and work from there for the day. When the tanks need to be emptied/refilled, or laundry needs to be done, or I just don't feel like moving the RV that particular day, I can always stay at an RV park, but it will be nice to not have to stay at one every single night anymore.

So, while I now won't have to plan my itinerary so carefully to find good sites to work and camp from, getting ready to embark on my longest stretch of RV living/working is posing a set of new challenges and preparations to plan out--- how to figure out those "longer-term essentials" to bring with me. My home office has a comfy chair, big monitor, big printers, scanners, and lots of storage space for paper files and reference materials. I certainly can't fit that all into my 24' mini motorhome, but being gone so long, I will need much of it.

So, the past few weeks I've been trying to find "downsized and mobilized" solutions to replace everything I currently use from home. I thought it might be useful to share some of the solutions I've discovered if there are any other roaming technology professionals working & living from the road out there who might find this information useful. I'll be detailing these solutions in my next few posts.

Door County Weekend

Just got home from a fun weekend to Door County, Wisconsin (the peninsula in the northeast of the state) with Millie, my friend Kate, and her kids Olivia and Bradley. After arriving late Friday night, we awoke to a perfect sunny day on Saturday and decided to head to my favorite picnic spot on the Lake Michigan side, Cave Point County Park, which features a terrific limestone beach and a number of sea caves in the rocky cliffs. Olivia had fun "rock hopping" (above), while Millie had a good swim in the cold, clear water.

I was also able to capture this quick video before Millie splashed all over the camera lens!

Kate and Bradley decided to play it safe and stay on shore.

After our beach-combing, we ate our picnic lunch and Bradley decided to ham it up with my hat and give me a "home boy" look--

We had a great campsite at Egg Harbor Campground. It's an old KOA that's now run by very friendly owners. Every site was shady and the park had a nice nature trail through an old cherry orchard that was fun to explore. Millie and the kids had a great time together.

On Saturday night, we went to the town of Fish Creek for a traditional Door County fish boil at Pelletier's. The town is very quaint and great for a summer evening walk.

The kids were fascinated by the fish boil and asked the boil master a ton of questions about the process. Basically, they boil a basket of freshly-caught white fish along with another basket of red potatos and onions in large iron kettles over an open fire. As the fish cooks, it's oils rise to the top of the pot, so to get rid of it, the boil master throws a couple cups of fuel into the fire to make it quickly triple in size and cause the pot to "boil over" (thus pushing all the fish oil over the top). The cooks then place a long pole through the pot handles and pull the baskets of food out. These fish boils used to just occur once on a Friday night as a celebration to the week's end, but they are now so popular with tourists, that a number of restaurants do them every 30 minutes all evening on both weekend nights (good thing, because the kids wanted to watch the boil over a couple more times after our dinner!).

On Sunday, we decided to take Highway 42 home along the shore of Lake Michigan. The winds were blowing from the southeast and causing some fog along the coastline, so we didn't get to see much of the lake, however, we did come across this spectacular field of sunflowers in full bloom near Algoma (I only had my point-and-shoot camera with me, but did the best I could to capture it). Quite a wonderful end to a great weekend!

First Longer Trip - Smokey Mountains

After a successful short trip to the Quad Cities, it was now time to try the View on a longer full-week trip. The godkids were eager to go visit their dad (who works in North Carolina), so their mom and I decided to make a week of it and visit the Smokey Mountains on our way there.

We got a late start out of Chicago (does anyone ever leave for a camping trip earlier than they think they will???!!!), so we decided to drive until we got tired and then just stop somewhere along the way. This is one of the big changes from T@B camping for me-- I can now easily stop in a Wal-Mart or truck stop parking lot and snooze for free than have to find a campground with bath/shower facilities and hookups each night (since the T@B didn't have a shower or generator).

Our first night was spent at a Flying J Truck Stop just outside of Louisville, KY. It was pouring rain and still hotter than heck when we arrived, but no worries-- we just pulled into a free parking space, turned the generator on for air conditioning (like the RVs around us had done), and went to bed. The next morning, we awoke to sunny and clear skies and had a nice hot breakfast at the Flying J restaurant. After topping the View's tank with more diesel, we were on the road again....what a deal!

We stayed at Camp Jellystone in Gatlinburg, TN so the kids could enjoy all the fun kid stuff at the park, and Millie could enjoy a swim in the mountain stream running right behind the camp site!

The next day we explored the national park and took the pretty drive through Cades Cove. The kids had a great time stopping at the historic mill village and exploring the log cabin, barn, and other buildings.

All in all, a fun week with some gorgeous views!

First Trip - Quad Cities

Well, technically, I've camped out in the View quite a few times already, but it's always been in a driveway! After a few nights in my own driveway, I took the View up to babysit the godkids (ages 8 and 3) and they thought it was great fun to watch DVDs while sitting up in the overhead bunk (I liked that I could keep an eye on the 2 kids much easier in the confines of an RV than chasing them all over the house!).

But after all that driveway camping, one does eventually wish to actually get on the road and get out to a real campground! So, what better way to start than by bringing it to show my camping buddies at the International T@B Rally out in the Quad Cities (IL/IA). Well, I couldn't exactly go to a T@B rally without my T@B, so since my mom was planning to attend with me, I had her drive the Subaru and T@B and I drove the View.

Here's mom getting ready to tow the T@B.


The trip to Sunset Lakes RV Resort only took about 2 hours, and the View did great-- easy to drive and super easy to set up once we got there!

The park had a terrific little paddling lake with paddle boats and canoes available, but I wanted to bring my own canoe.

Only bad thing about the View thus far...can't figure out yet the best way to bring the canoe along--- it's too long to strap onto the rear ladder vertically, and the roof is too high and filled with other stuff to store it up there, so I need to decide if I should get a boat trailer or get a new car that can be towed behind the View and then put the canoe on top of that. Decisions, decisions!