Month: April 2012

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Using Tension Bars in RVs

I love the shelf I put up in the toilet room, but it hasn’t been that useful since I haven’t been able to secure anything up there. I ran a tension curtain rod across the opening, but the slightest bump would dislodge it and everything would end up on the floor.

Fast forward to The Apartment. It had a long hallway to the main part of the room. I wanted to hang a heavy blanket across it to muffle noise and to block my view of the front door from the desk. My maintenance guy suggested I hang the blanket on a tension rod. I replied that the blanket I had in mind would be too heavy for one. He looked at me like I was crazy and told me to go look at shower curtain tension rods.

Shower curtain tension rods?

I ran over to Walmart, poked around the bathroom stuff, and found nice big adjustable tension rods that sure looked a lot sturdier than the flimsy curtain rods I was familiar with. Small hiccup; they were $20. It was one thing to pay that for 80 square feet of flooring, but I was not paying that to block a hallway! But then I had an epiphany and did some mental comparing between the width of the hallway and the width of the toilet room. I wasn’t looking at spending $20 on The Apartment but rather buying something that would serve me in the RV.

End result:

That this is not going anywhere! I can now feel comfortable storing the ginormous extra bag of cat food up there!

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Looking For the Best Way Across the Continent

I keep bringing up Google Maps and looking at my atlas, trying to find the best route to Virginia from here. The most direct route is familiar, but it’s messy because I need to circumvent Chicagoland. The less direct route seems easier. Both routes are in tornado country. My head is telling me to go the first way. My gut is screaming “South! Go south!” I’m listening to that gut feeling. The last time I was contemplating two routes with no obviously better option, I ignored my gut feeling an number of times, and I paid dearly for it.

I will probably have to stay in Hankinson an extra night, putting my departure at Tuesday morning. This is the route I have in mind, give or take a few miles at each stop depending on overnighting opportunities. It gives me three spare days:

That’s Hankinson to Omaha to Kansas City to St. Louis to Louisville to Charleston to my destination in Virginia.

The fact that I’d be adding South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Kentucky to my visited states map (putting me at 38) has nothing to do with my decision, but is a nice bonus. 🙂

 

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Thinking About Batteries

I know that my current set of batteries are on their last legs. It would make sense to replace them now rather than wait for the fall so that I can cross to the US with a fresh set. I currently have two 6V, but I would want to go with two 12V so I can get more amp hours for the same amount of carrying capacity and space. There’s no sense getting more than two since I only have a 150W solar panel.

Since I installed the current pair of batteries myself, I know that I can install the 12V set myself, too. I’ll just have to make sure that all the new extra wiring is bundled together in positive and negative bunches and labeled correctly.

The thing is, I know that I don’t want to drop a couple hundred on new batteries without getting a battery monitoring system, too. Andy Baird explains battery monitoring systems well in Eureka, so please follow that link to understand what exactly I am talking about. They are like a fuel gauge for your batteries and can help prolong their life through better use. I remember reading the installation instructions almost four years ago and going HUH?! I reread them recently and they still confuse me. So I’m not confident this is work I can do myself. I am especially nervous about breaking my solar system. So if I decide to bite the bullet and pay someone for installation, I need to find someone I can trust to do it. Can anyone recommend an RV battery expert somewhere in the middle of the United States? 🙂 I actually thought of Camping World, since there is one on both the routes I am considering taking to Virginia, but they don’t sell the battery monitors which does not inspire confidence that they would know how to install one.

I am now eagerly awaiting comments from the peanut gallery! 😀

 

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A Taxing Question

Back in Osoyoos, on an Omak Walmart run with Donna, I asked the cashier what the sales tax was in Washington state. The cashier had no idea what I was talking about.

Tonight, desperately needing a leg stretch despite the gale-force winds, I marched to the nearby c-store (c-store? I’m starting to sound American!) to get some drinking water and asked the cashier about North Dakota sales tax. She had no idea what it is.

I am confused by this. How can you work with money and not have any idea of the sales tax?!

As it turns out, ND sales tax is the same as AB sales tax, 5%.

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Dollar Tree Haul

I have to confess that I became addicted to Dollar Tree stores when I was in the US last year. I’m not one of those crazy people who buys random stuff just because it’s cheap, but they do have a lot of really good products that I actually need. In fact, I’m still going through my stash of waste bags that I bought expressly for emptying the litter box, buying enough so that I could scoop twice a day and have enough bags for a year. That investment was all of two or three dollars. 🙂

So when I saw a Dollar Tree by the Walmart in Minot, I ambled over after dinner to see if I could get the things on my list:

a) A new pair of nitrile-coated gardening gloves, which are awesome for hooking and unhooking the toad as they are warm, but water proof, and easy to slip on:

My last pair was pink and my current pair is green. Stock image because they are filthy. 🙂

b) A slightly bigger basket for the produce. I had bought a black one last year:

And think that this slightly bigger pink one fits in better with my decor (although it’s a bit too hot pink):

c) A tiny waste container for the dressing room into which I could put cotton swabs, band-aids, lysol wipes, etc. without having anything on the floor. This yellow bucket was perfect:

I also picked up a couple of food items, including honey graham crackers, that I haven’t been able to find anywhere else, and a bath sponge. The cashier said to me, “Did you find everything you were looking for? And maybe some extras?” I don’t think that he believed me that everything but the honey-mustard chips were on the list! And as for the chips, I’m addicted to mustard, okay?