The Training Wheels Are Off

I know I've been pretty quiet recently.  My apologies for that...let me catch you up with the past couple weeks.

A few weeks back we decided to do a 2 week "break-in" excursion to feel out the camper and make sure we had everything we needed.  We booked time at Tropical Palms in Kissimmee for sentimental reasons...that was the first campground we stayed at in our first travel trailer, and we love it there anyway.  We loaded up and headed down, and outside of a couple missing things (only 20ft of water hose when we needed 25 for example...doh!) and one washer catastrophe (always check the tanks before starting the wash) everything went well.  We swam damn near every morning before I 'went to work' at my desk in the bedroom.  The kids did their schoolwork with Karen and quite honestly everything went fine.

Our First Set-up...the Eagle has landed!

Unfortunately, the day before we were supposed to leave we got some very bad news; Karen's grandfather had passed.  He had been ill for almost as long as I knew him it seems...and although he fought it long and hard, he finally had enough.  He was a funny guy...  I think I got a different view of him than most of the family.  Most of my interactions with him were 1 on 1, setting up his computer or backing up his important files or those kinds of things.  I told him once that if I worked for him I'd probably have to quit because he always seemed to know how to do everyone's job better than they did, and wasn't afraid to tell them so.  He thought that was funny, and recanted multiple stories of driving off workers for exactly that reason.  Obviously he was more self aware of this than I thought, so I asked him why he did it and his answer was even more insightful..."because if they stay then I know that  either I'm right and I get it done my way, or they are so sure they're right that they'll put me in my place.".  He was hard to please, but very appreciative of honesty and effort. 

Harry L. Clatterbuck

With that news, we started to figure out what we were going to do.  The first thought was to take the  dogs to the trainer and just drive up and stay at a motel, but there were immediate complications...our trainer had a full house (and when he says he has a full house it's not just a couple dogs...it's a whole gaggle).  When we heard that, Karen and I looked at each other and said, "this is why we bought the damn thing...let's pack up and go".  And that's exactly what we did...

We left that next day and headed north toward Sunset Beach, NC...it was really more trial by fire to try to go that far in just a couple days, but we did it with no issues.  We fought through crazy monsoon weather and stopped halfway up in Yemassee, SC for the night. We pushed through the remainder of the trip the following day.  Unfortunately Karen contracted some horrible chest cold type virus on the way.  I can only imagine that if she wasn't too stubborn to go to a doctor, they probably would have told us it was something like the 'West Amazonian Crud of Death' or something.   She really had a tough time and is still struggling with it today...although she seems to be getting the better of it finally.

This was one of the 'not so bad' parts of the storm

Once we got there we had work to do.  I got tasked with building the slide show for the service while Karen got the music together and helped her mother wrangle a massive todo list for the next few days after the memorial.  It was nice to see everything come together at the service and know that Karen's mother could go home finally by the time we left.  It's hard for me to explain all the things that have to be done when someone passes, but there is A LOT.  Karen and her mother really buckled down and knocked it out though.

So...after 4 days in NC we finally loaded up to head home.  Again we stopped halfway for an overnight (this time in Darien, GA) and got home the following afternoon.  We had a long punch list of issues (mostly minor things) that we needed the dealer to handle so we unpacked what we needed back into the house and took the fiver back to the shop to get fixed up.

Back to the palm trees...

When we got back home we realized that we didn't really want to be here anymore.  Even though our trip wasn't under the best of circumstances, we all felt at home.  Now being back in our "house" kind of felt like sleeping at your buddies place...familiar, but not quite 'home'.  We can't wait to get the fiver back and get on the road.  The training wheels are off...the scare and unknown is gone...we are ready!  The 23rd can't come fast enough!!