What are We Doing?

What are we doing when we are not destroying dump stations? That is a good question that requires a long convoluted answer.

Like our forefathers that came before us to this great country, we are carving out a niche of our own in the wilderness. But unlike our forefathers who may have been looking for freedom of persecution or religious freedom or just a chance for a new life, we are looking for freedom of the Covid-19 and of course zombies.

Feeling like modern day Davy Crocketts, we have staked out our location to build our fortress of social isolation. The process of raising a fort has begun and we hope to have it constructed before any hostiles attack.

We have been clearing now for 3 summers. It has come a long way from when we started. We are doing most of the work ourselves, Lisa and I. Our kids have helped also but the brunt of the work has fallen upon us. I can't believe what this looked like 3 years ago when we decided to start this project.

3 years ago we started clearing the spot we chose of prickly ash and sumac.Then we had to cut access roads into the area.

As we cut and removed the trees, we started to get huge piles of brush. 

That year we rented a wood chipper (twice) to get rid of the huge amounts of brush piles we collected. Kendra came out to help us with that project and thankfully she did. It took the 3 of us 6 hours straight of nothing but chipping.

Just to give you an idea of what it was like. We went from this.

To this.

Using nothing but a chainsaw and a handheld brush cutter. Our forearms look like Popeyes.

I only put that image of Popeye there because I realized there may be a young reader who does not know who he is. 

For our second summer out there we planned a big project. One too big for us to accomplish on our own. That was moving our driveway from a corner of land that crossed our neighbors land and there fore caused some conflicts in the past.

Our second summer was spent keeping things mowed so that the jungle wouldn't reclaim what we already cleared and when possible we also kept cutting more of the jungle back. Plus that was the summer we went to Alaska so we weren't around for a couple of months anyway. Originally we planned on just a couple of RV sites. but it gets cold up here early and stays late. So we decided on building a garage with hookups inside it so that we could stay later in the season here. So then a building site had to be cleared.

We left for Arizona and the building company came and built our garage in December.

Then the PANDEMIC hit like a tsunami on steroids. That is when we decided that we wanted to build a fortress of our own instead of riding out the storm in our camper or burdening friends and family. Let's not kid ourselves here. We know we are a joy to be around but there is that saying, "Too much of a good thing......" so that is why we want to build. 

So summer number 3 has us revamping our plans and now we just wait for the construction to begin again. Until then we just keep clearing and clearing. It feels good to be outside and working because we can see progress.

We have finally gotten to this clump of trees in front of the garage. Roman came out one day and cut down over 50 trees clearing out the area around 3 giant oaks that we want to keep. The trees are anywhere from 2" to 8" in diameter. Lisa then removes the branches with a cutter and then I cut them up for firewood. Cutting them on the ground was killing my back so I remembered what my old grandpappy said, "A Thompson machine gun will fit in a violin case". Oops, that was my Italian grandpappy. "Work smarter, not harder". So I built a rack so that I could put 4-6 trees across it, getting them off of the ground.

Then with a maniacal laugh, I slice them up into tiny little pieces.

My genius know no bounds. So that is what we do all day. Clear and clear and then clear some more. Our wood piles are getting very large.

Year 2's woodpile fell over when part of our pine tree came down on it.

This is the wood pile just from this year. It is 3 rows deep. So yeah, you could say we have cut some trees. Some day once the trees are down for the most part, then it will be time to start splitting all of this. That promises to be some good times there.

So if you have an inkling to visit, bring a chainsaw and beer.

A Butt Nugget Fiasco During the Pandemic

Gather round children and let Pops share a tale with you. You'll laugh, you'll cry and you may even throw up. Just a forewarning.

We are back in the "Hobbit House" out on our super secret undisclosed location. May 23rd marks the one year anniversary of when we moved into the "Hobbit House" for our Alaska trip and eventually our trip to Arizona for the winter. I will add that we did spend 2 months in my sons basement during the peak of the pandemic but now we are back in the camper. Hiding in our woods because the campgrounds are not open in the state we live in.

Since we are living in it again, that means that our tanks fill up because we are using them. So with our hearts light and gay, we loaded up the "Hobbit House" and headed into town to the only place with a dump station.With nearly 6 years of dumping our tanks it is no problem.

I hook up the hose and the 90 degree elbow and put it into the sewer hole. Lisa is watching me as I perform my tasks like a ballerina in Swan Lake. In traditional fashion I exclaim "There she blows!" as I open the black tank valve.

This is where time goes into slow motion. I am facing the camper and behind me I hear Lisa scream. I think to myself, is she being attacked by a horde of zombies? So I turn around and look down and see my biggest fear.The sewer hose disconnected from the 90 degree elbow. As I realize what is about to happen, it happened. Butt nuggets and sewage start pouring out.

I quickly turn back around, Lisa is still screaming hysterically, shove my hands into the compartment and close the valve. This took just a matter of a few seconds and we had a spill that would rival the Exxon Valdez'. We clean up the area as best we could, choking down little balls of vomit as we did and sheepishly finished our business and left.

Hindsight is always 20/20 as they say. Could we have done things differently? Definitely. I think there is blame for both of us and I will admit fault. I should have double checked the connections were tight. That one is on me. Lisa , instead of screaming and melting into a puddle could have just said "STOP!". Instead I had wasted precious seconds turning around.

So we learned a valuable lesson boys and girls and I hope you can learn from our mistakes. It is going to take me awhile to get over it. I know that I am not ordering Chicken McNuggets any time soon.

Hanging on in this Crazy New World

As I look outside at this ever changing new world, I can't help but think of how good things used to be. Like restaurants, movie theatres, and being outside without the threat of death hanging over our heads. I could enlighten the world on my thoughts about this whole situation but I don't think that it is important. I will have to save it for the campfires and when I have had the proper amount of beer to heighten my level of wisdom.

What I do know is that we have been watching our grandkids for a month now.

They are out of the daycares because they are just breeding grounds for all kinds of germs that go around. Your everyday germs like pink eye, the cold, the flu and the everfun one called hoof and mouth disease. But since there is a new virus on the block the world is upside down now.

We are their new daycare. I never thought that 2 little kids in diapers would be so much work. Also, how can they eat and poop so much? If it's not going in one end, it's coming out the other. I wish I had my phone one day when Lisa was literally up to her elbow in crap. Audie the 6 month old had a diaper blowout and it was up his back, all over Lisa's hands and arm. I would have taken a picture but I was scrambling to hand her wipes before it was knee deep.

4 weeks inside with a 2 year old. Even his mountain of toys are losing their appeal.

Even for me. You can only play with Playdoh for so long. I think what the kids are lacking is structure and the professionals that know how to entertain a 2 year old day after day. At the end of the day Lisa is like this.

All I know is that I have never been happier when "Happy Hour" starts.

2 weeks turned into 4 weeks. 4 weeks have turned into 6 weeks. That's what "They" keep telling us. I just want it to end and have life get back to some kind of normalcy. Even if it is going to be a new normal.

It's a Whole New World

As I think of that title, I can't help but think of Jasmine and Aladdin singing that song, soaring through the clouds.

Then sadly I look outside. At the "whole new world" that we have going on today. We are put under house arrest for something that we haven't done or been found guilty of. I think we should declare 2020 a "do over".

We were in Disneyland in early February and at that time there was some talk in the news about the C-virus. No one knew how it was going to explode around the world. As the time went by and things started to escalate to where they are now, it became a scary new world. Running to the grocery store now could be a death sentence.

Since we are virtually homeless, I think that things for us need to change. In fact our new garage that we built in Minnesota is going to become our new house. We have decided to change our plans a little and incorporate a living quarters in it. 

So we would like to declare to the RV world that we are changing our status from Fulltime RV'ers to Part time RV'ers. We have been on the road nearly 6 years now and it is time to settle down a little bit. We are going to hang onto our two campers for winter trips and summer trips because even though it has been 6 years, we still haven't seen everything.

The traveling started not to be as fun as it once was. That was maybe a good indicator to give it a break I guess. Also with the C-virus covering the entire country, we want a safe haven we can call our own. Who knows, I just might have to make it Zombie proof also.

"Glady's! Stick a fork in me, I'm done!"

Covid-19 and Moab, Utah

Well if you haven't heard by now, there is a worldwide pandemic going on. Turning our world and I am sure your worlds upside down at the moment. It is totally unprecedented. I am really behind on the blog and will try to catch everybody up now.

We have been trying our best to social distance ourselves from others. As you may know we live in a camper full time and travel full time. We have been staying in the smaller towns and any sight seeing we would do we made sure to stay away from people. We left Blanding, Utah and headed to Moab, Utah. It has been four years since we were there last.

Four years ago we had worked at the OK RV park for some really great people. There were also 2 little girls that liked us. Kids don't usually like us, but they did. Angie and Maci. So we just had to stop and see them. They are growing up so fast. They both like horses so they wanted us to see them.

That is Angie and her horse Edward

Maci and her horse. Watching those two girls with their horses, they seemed like naturals on them. Then they wanted to get Gladys up on one.

I think Gladys has been on a horse once in her life so she was a little nervous. But she did it and I think she had fun. Once up, Angie led her around.

It was a bucket list item for her because I guess her parents never rented a pony for her birthday.

Just a couple more pictures of the girls on their horses.

I did not get up on the horse and I am sure the horse was very thankful for that. To this day it is walking around without a broken back. Thanks for the fun afternoon. Our visit was cut short because of the pandemic. We decided to go out to the BLM campgrounds to see what was going to happen. We went to Williams Bottom Campground first. But because of the canyon we could not get cell service or any news. The next day we went out to Castle Valley near Fisher Towers.

That is a beautiful area. We decided to drive up the Onion Creek Trail. It is one of our favorites because there are about 20 creek crossings to go through.

It was another great area to be in. It has been cloudy ever since we got to Utah and that day was no different. I did say 20 creek crossing didn't I?

Moab started shutting down, they were talking about closing all of the BLM campgrounds and they were wanting the tourists to go home. They have a small hospital and didn't want it to be overrun with tourists if worse came to worse. We packed up and headed to Palisade, Colorado where we could make plans to beeline it north. We decided we could quarantine in the pickup camper if we had to. Our son called and asked us to take care of his kids because they wanted to pull them out of daycare. That was the excuse Gladys was looking for.

"Tango! start the truck!"

Off we went like wild banshee's headed to Pringle, SD. We asked Jim and Barb if we could spend the night if we brought them our latest test results. They reluctantly said okay after bribing them. Besides we had to deliver their chairs they left with us in Quartzsite. Here they are with their gifts.

Jim got a nudie pen and Barb got a Las Vegas sticker. Plus it also cost us a roll of toilet paper. It would have been cheaper to stay at the Holiday Inn. Barb made us ribs for dinner in the true RV-dreams fashion. It was delish! Our visit was short and we had to leave in the morning. Jim was taking all kinds of precautions. After a second roll of toilet paper he let us eat in the house.

Here he was trying to get the deer to wear masks when they were around him. We got up early the next morning because we had another long drive ahead of us to get to Fargo. Gladys gave me the green light and we were off. We said some quick goodbyes with tearful hugs, hoping that we all make it out of this pandemic and if we did we vowed to meet on New Years Eve in Time Square. Good luck to our BFF's. And to Jim, if you don't make it we will take good care of Barb.

We made it to Fargo without incident and jumped into our new roles. I was showing Virgo, the soon to be 2 year old how to fashion a respiratory mask out of a tortilla, MacGyver style.

You too can do that to save your lives if you have to. For Audie, we just dressed him in camo and will throw him in the bushes.

So that is where we are at at the moment. Social distancing in Fargo. We are out of our Hobbit House now, which had turned into the tin can for us. Way too many months in that thing anyways. I feel safe that no one will visit us because of the pandemic and if I do see you coming up the driveway I hope that you are Ninja fast to get through 12 gauge buckshot coming your way.

On a more personal note. Of all of the ways I thought we were going to go out of this world, like zombies, aliens, sasquatches or unicorns, it had to be the stupid Covid-19. As a Y2K survivor I expected something better..

Goosenecks and Blanding, Utah

We left Lake Powell with plans made and our hearts, giddy. We were going to travel between weather systems because we don't like to travel through rain. We watched our weather apps for the opportune moment to leave. No rain at the moment in Page and our final destination was dry. 10 miles out of Page it started to rain. It rained on us all of the way to Kayenta, Arizona. So note to self, check the weather half way between destinations.

Southeast Utah if by far one the most beautiful places that we know of. Our destination was a place that we have checked out before when we were in Utah but never had the opportunity to camp there. With our pickup camper, it made it possible to stop and enjoy this special spot.

Goosenecks State Park. Thanks to all of the media induced panic over the Covid-19 virus, I am way behind on the blog which is good news for you. That means more pictures and less commentary!

The fun thing about this state park is that you can park your camper as close to the edge as you dare. If we had the fifthwheel you can hang the back end over the edge and have a spectacular view. But we were in the pickup camper.

That's us on the edge there. It is 1000 feet down to the San Juan River below. So watch your step. The rains were going to show up again the next day. We had hoped to camp in the Valley of the Gods but the road through there is impassable in the rain. So we decided to go to Blanding, Utah and explore from there. We waited for the rain to quit and then we went back to the Valley of the Gods to drive through it.

The clouds hung around all morning. When the sun is out the colors in the rocks are so vivid. It would have been nice to camp there. We were told that that is the darkest sky in America. So if you are into stargazing, this is the place you want to go. The road goes from the north end to the south end which is right near the Moki Dugway. Moki Dugway? What praytell is the Moki Dugway. The Moki Dugway is a road that is 3 miles long, it climbs 1200 feet up the side of a cliff. Doesn't that sound like fun?

Straight ahead is the road that climbs that rock face. It's hard to see but it is there.

It is a nice drive unless you are afraid of heights. Then you will be clutching your butt cheeks all of the way up. Now a couple of people told us about Muley point at the top of the Moki Dugway. Boy were we glad they told us about that. I think it was Steve C. and Mark G. so thanks. Right at the top of the Moki Dugway you take a left on the first dirt road you come to. There is no sign there so it took us awhile to find it. Go down the road 4 miles and it comes out to an amazing vista that looks down to the San Juan river. So doing the math, 1200 ft. up the Moki Dugway and then another 1000 ft. to the San Juan. That's over 2200 ft. down to the San Juan now.

 When you are taking pictures out here it is amazing the amount of elevations that you are in. The visibility goes for miles on end during clear days. That is why this area has always been our favorite for scenery. It is so breathtaking. Our last day in Blanding was going to be another weather day so we didn't do a whole lot. We went to the Edge of the Cedars State Park to learn about the ancient Puebloan people that used to inhabit this area.

The gentleman at the visitor center also told us to check out a cliff dwelling near our campground. It's not marked but he told us how to get there. It was called the Five Kivas Dwelling.

It was found in a ravine just outside of town.

Next up for us is Moab, Utah. 

The world is becoming a crazy place. So many things are out of our control. All we can do is wait and see what happens. For me, I have a beer in one hand and a Zombie gun in the other.

"Gladys! Watch your six!"