RVing

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Water Day Is Always Exciting

Looks like the RM maintenance man saw I was home and turned on the water for me! He did that last year, so I checked the hydrant yesterday afternoon and this afternoon in case he did it again. Tonight, I hit the jackpot. Woohoo!

I made a rookie mistake while dewinterizing — I hooked up my hose to the RV without filling it with water first. That meant I got tons of air in my lines, which took forever to bleed. Otherwise, the water tank and heater filling was uneventful. Once both were full, I tested my system for leaks.

The tap in the dressing room is dripping, something I’ve avoided dealing with for a while because I don’t have room to work. It’s always corrected itself, so I hope that will happen again… This leak may explain why I have heaps of pressure in the dressing room and almost none in the kitchen. I haven’t found a leak in the lines, so I’m sure it’s that or that there’s still water in the lines leading to the kitchen. Usage will tell. At least, the shower appears to have good pressure!

Then came the fun part — lighting the water heater. Forget doing so from inside. I went out to the control panel and manually forced ignition. I actually got it to light in two tries, but it wouldn’t stay lit. I made some adjustments to the heat probe spacing and after a few more ignition attempts and corrections, I finally got the thing lit for real! Wow. That water heater is exhausting. The one on Isla wasn’t much more reliable, but being on a manual pilot system, I just had to turn on the gas every afternoon and apply a flame to it to ensure I had hot water for a shower. With Miranda’s decrepit water heater, I never know if I’ll be able to ignite the stupid thing from day to day.

I appreciate the irony that I got my water system going right after doing a huge mountain of dishes by hand, including hauling water and heating it on the stove!

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My RV Oven Is So Very Special

Oh, I’ve missed my RV kitchen, especially my oven! I use my oven a lot and I really missed in Mexico.

As some of you may remember, I bought myself a cast iron Dutch oven for Yule. It’s a pot with a tight fitting lid that can go from stovetop to oven. I can’t wait to sear a pork roast in it later this week and then transfer to the oven to slow cook!

Well, quite a few of my friends in Mexico are or were RVers. Those of them who saw the Dutch oven thought I was nuts for believing I could use it in my RV oven. Having seen dozens of RV ovens, I’ve only ever seen another one as large and usable as mine, and that was an upgrade made after purchase, so I understood their concern. Many RVs don’t even have a real oven, just a convection microwave. Some folks, like my friend Vicki, find their oven so useless that they have to make space for a large toaster oven instead.

In my case, I moved the rack to the lowest position to fit the Dutch oven in with an inch to spare at the top, so it will be easy to pull in and out, even when super hot.

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I’ll also be able to store the pot in the oven, with the baking sheets and cast iron frying pans fitting neatly under the broiler.

My oven also heats very evenly and is good for baking. Don’t buy into the myth that you can’t cook or bake in an RV as you can in a stick home. Instead, insist on a better and more usable oven!

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I Did Something Really Stupid – and I Blame RVing For It

I’ve been having trouble with my fridge and especially freezer lately, thankfully after I got through all the meat and stuff in it (including all the ham from Christmas I wasn’t able to foist on other people). My landlady, her husband, and TWO handymen showed upwithin a couple of hours of my asking for help. The guys were going to look at it, she was going to translate if necessary (nope, yay!), and I wasn’t to worry, if there was a real issue, they’d pay for an emergency service call from a fridge repair professional OR a new used fridge right this very afternoon.

So to recap, my landlady responded very appropriately to a fridge emergency.

But I didn’t have a fridge emergency.

I did have a fridge with a magnetic seal that is weakening a little and which was not helped by my having something in the door that was keeping it from shutting properly. My landlord said that if the seal had been stronger, the thing in the door wouldn’t have been as much of an issue, but, ultimately, I’m an idiot who didn’t realise she wasn’t shutting her fridge door properly. Erm, he didn’t call me an idiot. That’s your blogger adding editorial flavour.

And I’m also an idiot who didn’t know that the fridge and freezer communicate. The fridge door not being properly sealed meant that all the cold air from the freezer was getting sucked out too.

I blame RVing because I’ve had a fridge with a door that latches shut for almost eight years now. This would never have happened with my Norcold!

We all had a good laugh and I said I was glad that I was stupid and that there was no massive repair bill in sight. Landlord said he is replacing the seal, though, because even with nothing in the door, it still needs an extra push to really seal tightly. So it was totally worth having him, two repair people, and a translator rush over to my house. Totally.

Post Edited To Add: This post is even funnier if you look at the title of the one before it!

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T Minus 24ish Hours

I leave for Mexico about this time tomorrow!

Because the border doesn’t open till 8:00, there’s really no point heading out before 6:30 at the absolute earliest. That will give me time to grab a coffee in Coronach and do a final email check before I call SaskTel to suspend my service because I plan to pack away the coffee supplies and antenna tonight. I really don’t want to have anything more to do tomorrow than wrestle the mattress topper into its carrying case and get dressed.

The weather this month has truly been a blessing. I cannot believe that I’ll be winterizing the rig on October 22nd in tee-shirt weather!!! And we’ve only had a couple of nights just barely below freezing, and none recently. I’m sleeping in shorts, a tee-shirt, no socks, covered with just a duvet, and only running one electric heater! The weather all the way to Nogales looks clear, too.

Because I’ve been working with a firm departure deadline, good weather, and several lists, departure is going so frighteningly smoothly that I keep thinking I forgot something! But that’s impossible… I’ve been making lists since last year’s rather messy departure!

One of today’s big projects is thawing and cleaning the fridge. I did really well with food management this year compared to last year. All I have left are some mustard and relish that C&C might be interested in. Otherwise, everything else can either come to Mexico with me, or there’s so little left that there is no point in donating it. I’ve also managed to eat healthily all the way through the last week. I do have some cheese left, but I should be able to get through it.

Soon as work is done for the day, I’ll go out and start winterizing my water system. At some point, I need to get keys to  C&C. That’s another thing I did much better on this year. Last year, I didn’t realise until the last second that I only had one house key, so I had to take the big RV key with me to MX so I could come in through the cab this spring. I had a spare house key cut a couple of weeks ago and made a complete set of keys for C&C — outbuildings, RV house door, power box, and mail, then one for myself (minus the mail, of which I only have one) to have handy when I get home. The only keys going to Mexico with me are the two truck keys and the house key.

The truck is nearly all packed and that’s also a huge difference from last year. For one thing, I’m not bringing the cot, so I could really fill up the truck bed instead of the cab. I have also used a lot more bins and boxes, rather than bags, and I have almost no loose items. That will make the border crossing emptyings a lot easier.

My itinerary to Nogales isn’t firm. I just need to be there by Monday afternoon and, thanks to priceline.com, have secured there what promises to be excellent accommodation at a bargain price. My budget isn’t super tight, so having narrowed down that expense and knowing roughly what I’ll be paying for hotels in Mexico, I’m not going to stress out too much about finding super cheap accommodation Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I’ll be happy if I can find for 70USD or less, but landing somewhere comfortable and secure after a very long day of driving will be a bigger priority.

Depending on how the border crossing goes tomorrow, I’d like to swing by Devil’s Tower. This isn’t how I had wanted to see it, just a quick drive-by very late in the day with no time for a hike, but the weather will be good, so it’s time. Then, on to Gillette for the night. Saturday, I have some shopping to do and the stores I need are south of Denver and in Colorado Springs. So it’ll be an early morning to get past Denver around lunchtime. Then, on to Walsenburg since I know there is a good and inexpensive motel there.

Sunday, I’m hoping John will be available for a late breakfast in Santa Fe, then I’d like to get to Deming(ish). That will give me four hours to Nogales on Monday, giving me time to do a final shop at the Walmart in Benson. I’ll be working very, very, very early while in Nogales, so it’s not a bad thing that I’ll land completely wiped and ready to drop on Monday afternoon!

Since I’ll be driving for the next four days and will have WiFi at the hotel in Nogales, I’ve decided not to buy a U.S. SIM card for my phone. So updates will be limited by the connectivity I find on the road. I’ll check in on Facebook when I can.

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October 2015 (Oh, What a Night)

Southern SK had a bad windstorm yesterday. I think the record was gusts of 120KPH in Swift Current. We were gusting around 85 to 90KPH here. It didn’t scare me the way past windstorms have frightened me in the past. It was just more of an annoyance since the evening was a write-off.

And then bedtime came.

The winds were letting up enough that the rig had stopped rocking, but the tarp was flapping badly in the wind. It’s actually very secure and held up beautifully, but there was extra material at the front that kept slapping against the overhang. After two hours of trying to sleep and even going out in my pajamas to add a little more reinforcements, I stalked off to the office with my pillows and duvet. Yay for the second bed! And even more yay that the weight loss means that said bed in the back was actually super comfy!

An RV is not suitable Saskatchewan accommodation… 🙂 I think a project for next summer will be to find someone who can help me really get the RV secure so it doesn’t rock so badly in the wind, whether we put it on blocks, strap it down, whatever.

It should be a pretty quiet Thanksgiving today now that the storm has passed. I want to make some soup that I would have made last night (…). C&C invited me out to Fife Lake for a steak dinner tonight (grill your own), so that should be fun. I just have to stress that I can’t be back toooo late. What with last night being mostly a write-off, I can’t afford for tonight to be, too.

The countdown to departure is really on. After today, I’ll only have one Monday left before I leave. And speaking of Mondays, one week, and 12-some hours left till we know if we have a new government or not…