Mark is Working on Modifications to the new Trailer

Our home-owner's association doesn't allow for RVs to be parked in our neighborhood permanently. So we now have an added expense of renting a storage spot. But we can park the trailer in the driveway temporarily, and Mark used this time to work on some modifications to the Geo Pro. He spent a lot of his time laying on the driveway doing things that Denisa doesn't even pretend to understand. He'll have to write the blog that explains his modifications to the solar and electrical systems later.

But Denisa does understand the need for storage in these tiny RVs, and she certainly appreciates Mark's work. On each side of the bed, we each have a tiny hang-up closet. This is basically all the storage space we have for our clothes. It's not a very tall closet, and Mark's shirts are so long that they puddle at the bottom of the closet.

We decided to leave one closet for a few hang-up clothes. But in the closet on the other side, Mark built shelves out of light weight wood. 

Remembering that we can't add much weight to this RV, we also found some cloth storage boxes that can stack two deep into the closet. Now we can keep lots more clothes organized in this configuration of the space!

Many RVs have good storage under the dinette benches. But we found our benches were filled with heater vent pipes and the water heater. There was just a little unused space, and Mark reconfigured it into a box that will fit our fans and a ceramic heater.

Our couch is surprisingly comfortable with its flip-out foot rests. But we found that the four inches between the back of the couch and the murphy bed made a black hole where things could be lost and never found again. We read about some foam rubber wedges from Amazon that would fill this space just right.

Those wedges seem like awfully big items to add to our limited space. But we get double duty from them. They are also used at the head of our murphy bed to extend it in length. They also plug another black hole when the bed is down where we were losing things--like our pillows at night.

Mark also added a paper towel holder and two bath towel racks. Those don't seem to be worth too much explanation or a picture. But it's now nice to have a place for all our towels--paper and cloth. 

During our first time pulling the trailer down the highway, Mark saw that he had lots of blind spots. He was used to our motor home, with a rear camera and two side cameras to show the traffic around him. So he installed a rear camera on the back of the trailer, with a screen mounted on the pickup's windshield. It's nice to know when there are vehicles right behind us!

Mark also installed another solar panel on the top of the trailer. But now we're getting way over Denisa's head in more ways than one. Those modifications are more complicated, and deserve a blog of their own.

Our Maiden Voyage in the Geo-Pro

We couldn't wait to go camping! Between the time of putting the motor home for sale, and then doing our research to buy another RV, it's been a long time since we've been on a camping trip! So we picked a nearby lake for the maiden voyage of our new Geo Pro trailer. Mark was a pro at backing our big old motor home into a camping spot. Of course, he also had nine years of practice. Let's just say that the first attempt at backing the trailer into our camp site wasn't pretty. It's a whole different process backing a pickup with a trailer that can pivot in strange directions, and Denisa had no idea of how to help with this new process. But we eventually got settled into our new spot and got practice in leveling our trailer. In the motor home we were used to pressing a button, and the automatic levelers took over from there. Let's just say it's a little less automatic with our little trailer. But we'll be able to get into and get level in much smaller spots now (once we have some practice).

We walked down to the dock at Clinton Lake where we were staying. The water was perfectly still the first evening when we arrived. We found out that we should have jumped in the kayak right then, as we had some wind the rest of our stay.

We weren't the only ones stopping in at Clinton Lake. The white pelicans were migrating through, and the locals told us that these birds usually stop in during their trips between their summer and winter homes.

 While Canadian Geese are large birds, they look small when they are hanging out with these big white pelicans.

We have camped at Clinton Lake before, but it was on the north side at the state park. Since we are older and wiser this time, we are staying at the Cedar Ridge campground on the south side of the lake. We are older (so we now have our national park senior pass) and wiser to take advantage of the half-price senior rate at this Corp of Engineer Cedar Ridge park. We are enjoying $11 per night camping rates on this maiden voyage! 

On this maiden voyage Denisa was dusting off the camera and taking way too many pictures of the water birds we saw. So forgive her for randomly sprinkling in those pictures.

Our trip to Clinton Lake several years ago was during a time of too much rain, when the boat ramps were flooded and we couldn't get on the lake. Even though it was windy on this big lake, this trip we put our inflatable kayak on the water and did some paddling through the dead trees in the water.

Perched among those dead limbs were a flock of vultures. They were drying their wings in the wind as we paddled by.

On another day, we made a ten-mile road trip to Lone Star Lake. A smaller and quieter lake, it had some protection from the wind. We kayaked around the entire edge of the water.

Speaking of water, we have to get used to the new holding tank sizes in our new Geo Pro trailer. In the motor home we had a 90-gallon fresh water tank, a 70-gallon gray water tank, and a 50-gallon black water tank. In this new trailer we have a 31-gallon fresh water tank, a 27-gallon gray water tank, and a 27-gallon black water tank. Yeah, that's about a third to half the size of the tank capacity we were accustomed to. That means we will have to monitor our water resources a lot more carefully now.

Speaking of turtles--well maybe we weren't talking about turtles. But Denisa was taking pictures of the turtles sun-bathing at Lone Star Lake.

During this maiden voyage, we spent most of our time outdoors. But we were anxious to try out the trailer's amenities. We can report that the RV mattress it came with is as bad as we thought it would be. But purchasing a nice four-inch memory foam topper made it quite comfortable.

We also wanted to try the cast iron grill that attaches to a rail on the side of the RV. We cooked most of our meals outside--which included grilled pork chops and fried potatoes one evening.

We also had pancakes on the grill for breakfast. We're still trying to decide if this heavy cast iron grill is worth its weight. It definitely has some hot and cool spots. But it plugs into our propane tanks easily, so it seems to be a good addition for boondocking trips. But it is really heavy in a trailer where we are trying to keep the weight to a minimum.

It's been more than a year since we've had smores at a campground, and that seems to be a sweet way to finish up this first camping trip. The maiden voyage in the Geo Pro was a success!

We bought a new RV!

We knew we wouldn't be without an RV for long, because we still love this mode of travel. But what kind of RV would we purchase? We knew we wanted to down-size because we wanted to use our mid-size pickup to tow it. The job assigned to our Chevrolet Colorado pickup would change from being towed behind a motor home to now towing a trailer. With a 7,000 pound towing limit, that narrowed down the possibilities greatly. We finally got our choices down to several models, and went to visit dealers to spend time inside the RVs for a closer look. From nine years of RVing experience, we knew we needed something that was comfortable enough to spend time inside on those rainy days. Some of the couches were ridiculously uncomfortable, but this one wasn't bad.

In many of the little trailers, the area behind the sofa is a murphy bed. To save space, the couch flattens and the bed comes down from the wall. One of our priorities was having a bed that we didn't have to put on sheets and blankets every night. This murphy bed keeps the bedding in place, and it only takes a few seconds to get it ready for sleeping each night.

Another priority was a dinette. While some trailers have little tables you can set up in front of the couch, we prefer a permanent dinette. We have found this is a great place for playing games or typing on a computer. It also provides another work space in a kitchen without much counter space.

That dinette makes into a little bed, so we can still take a grandchild along with us. We'll throw a sleeping bag on, and we have overnight room for a third small traveler.

The kitchen is small, but has everything we need--a microwave, a gas stove, a 12-volt refrigerator, and a good-size sink. We found that many of the little trailers have a laughably tiny kitchen sink. This model has an oven that we don't need, but that can be used as kitchen storage space.

The bathroom is actually bigger than the one in our big motor home, with a nice big counter and storage behind the mirrors.

Another priority was a shower big and tall enough for six-foot-tall Mark. His head will be in the sky light, but he can stand up straight while showering. Check!

Another priority was a trailer with no slide-outs. We had four slide- outs on our motor home, and we learned that they can be a blessing and a curse. We intend to do more boondocking, and we won't always be perfectly level (which is needed for slides). That limited the number of choices to only a few floorplans. At less than twenty-feet in length, the one we chose has a very compact floorplan.

Welcome to our Rockwood Geo Pro!

Another priority was the solar capabilities of the Geo Pro. Because of its smaller size, we'll be able to camp in those little forest service campgrounds that were too small for our big motor home. With some solar power, we'll also be able to camp without electric hookups. We plan to change to different batteries and add more solar, but that's the subject of another blog.

We bought a hitch for the pickup, the braking system, and we're ready to wander more of God's wonders in our new RV!

Where Have We Been? Catching up with Some Miscellaneous Fun

It's embarrassing to see how long it has been since we posted on our blog. So Denisa has vowed to do better, and she's working on a string of travel posts to catch up on the miscellaneous fun we've been having with miscellaneous fun people in our lives. One of the fun things is an occasional trip to the lake for some tubing, thanks to our son's in-laws who have a boat on Grand Lake. These tubing rides are a little calmer when a three-year-old is on board with his Grandude and Daddy.

But when it's adults-only riding, the tube is often air-born. We took pictures to show our son and daughter-in-law just how far the tube bounced out of the water . . .

and how high they bounced off of the tube.

We made another trip to the Houston, Texas area to watch our nephew in The Woodlands high school band perform their magic in the marching band competition. Among those huge high schools around Houston, they are still the best! The skies were gray and storms were approaching while they wowed us with their show. Only a few minutes after they got off the field, the rain poured down, and the next bands had to perform in the rain.

While in Houston, we got to go to a Houston Rockets basketball game. While we had good seats for most of the game, we had wonderful seats during the third quarter. When a friend left their five-rows-from-the-court season ticket seats at half-time, they invited us to use them for the rest of the game.

We have never seen NBA action so close! We could see the players sweat and hear the talk on the court. That was some miscellaneous fun!

We stayed until the end to see the Houston Rockets win a close one! The crowd went wild!

While visiting our nephew and niece in The Woodlands, Texas, we were treated to lots of miscellaneous fun. Denisa got schooled in all things sour dough. We used Alexia's sour dough starter to make artisan loaves, pecan sticky buns, orange rolls, oat bread, and these cinnamon rolls that were almost ready to pop in the oven. It was a delicious week filled with miscellaneous sour dough fun!

We have some very talented nieces and nephews, and we love to watch them perform. We've made trips to Wichita, Kansas, to see Elliot in her lead roles in several musicals. Now that she has graduated from high school, we'll have to travel to Chicago to see her in college productions as she follows her musical theater dreams.

We also have miscellaneous fun following our youngest son's races. This trip took us to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for another half-marathon.

While Blake's running 13.1 miles, we calculate how many times we can see him on the course to cheer him on. This day we managed to catch up with him five different times, and we walked/ran twelve miles in the process.

Thousands of people run this hilly course through Tulsa, and we're proud to say that Blake had a new personal best time of one hour and 27 minutes. That's averaging six-and-a-half-minute miles. Wow!

We have watched him run the half-marathon in Oklahoma City several times, but he has started running in Tulsa events now. That has something to do with a young woman that he has been dating for the last year that lives in Tulsa. Don't they make a cute couple?

She lives very close to Tulsa's "Gathering Place." Filled with trails that wind around lakes and hills, we had heard about this special place, but had never visited until this year.

The trails continue down to the Arkansas River, and the weekend of the race we had some miscellaneous fun trying out many of the trails. We took a walk to the pedestrian bridge that straddles the river, so we could watch the sun set over the Arkansas.

That same weekend, our daughter-in-law, Jordan, was on the national show "CBS News Sunday Morning." How did that happen?!? Earlier in the week, we were keeping Eli while she went to the grocery store about a mile from our house. She likes to use the automated instacart that allows you to scan your purchases as you shop, bag them as you go, and pay for your purchases right on that cart without ever going to a check-out line. We've used this process as well, mainly because they were giving a free package or oreo cookies to entice customers to try it. But this day a national CBS filming crew was in Kansas City, and filmed Jordan doing her shopping with the automated cart. We watched the entire news piece when it aired, and swiped this picture from the broadcast. Parts of the news story was filmed in California, New York, and of course our local grocery store near Kansas City. That's some miscellaneous fun to see our daughter-in-law on the national news!

Even though we love to travel to see special friends and family in other places, we are still enjoying our time near Kansas City with these special people.

We get to enjoy some day-to-day miscellaneous fun, and we haven't missed a Halloween trick-or-treat night yet.

We're enjoying many days of laughing until our bellies hurt. So after this long absence from the blog, that's a little snap shot of some of the places we have been--having some miscellaneous fun!