The Annual Girl Trip--2020 Style

Denisa, her Mother, and two sisters have gone on an annual girl trip every year for more than twenty years. We have been all over North America and have made great memories together. We've done cruises, flown to New York City, toured through all the little states in the northeast, we've done the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and the inside passage of Alaska. We've visited the Pioneer Woman mecca in Pawhuska, Oklahoma and the Fixer-Upper empire in Waco, Texas. We've gone on Girl Trips to Dallas, Nashville, St. Louis, San Antonio, Branson, Denver, etc. Last summer we went to Canada's Banff National Park and the Calgary Stampede. We include a picture at Lake Louise of Debra, Denisa, our Mother, and Connie from that epic trip last July. Who knew how much life would change within eight months after that picture was taken!?!

But this year we really struggled with an option that could work during this year of COVID. No place seemed safe enough for four women of (ahem) advanced years. So in September we opted for a weekend together in Oklahoma City as a girl trip replacement. Denisa was actually taking her Mother there for two doctor's appointments, but we also got to have some fun. Most of it seemed to revolve around food. Our grandmother taught us how to make German food. So this week we recreated some of her recipes. We made veranika, or "cheese pockets" as we used to call them. The dry curd cheese is encased in dough, boiled, and then fried. Not exactly diet food, but comfort food that brings back great memories for all of us.

We also made cherry mousse (pronounced "mose"), the traditional German dessert that Grandma served cold when we were children. We changed the recipe to use Stevia instead of sugar so our diabetic Mother could enjoy it too.

We made a beautiful batch of cream puffs, another family favorite when stuffed with your choice of pudding. We had a reputation of serving these to our church youth group when they met at our house when we were in high school. That brings back more good memories!

We also made a batch of thin German pancakes, rolled them, and topped them with honey syrup. If we were French, these would be called crepes. Most people would eat a pancake with maple syrup, but we were raised on a white syrup called honey syrup--that curiously does not have any honey in it.

Our grandmother would be very proud of us, because the week also included another of her legendary skills. She was always working on a quilt. Ten years ago, Denisa pieced and then hand-quilted this queen-sized quilt made from over 3,000 three-inch triangles. She gave a box-full of those left-over triangles to her sister, and we spent a couple days sewing little pieces of fabric into bigger pieces of fabric. (That's how Mark simply describes the art of quilt-making.)

Normally our girl trips include touring beautiful places and seeing sites we have never seen before. We also enjoy live productions, so we have watched performances on Broadway and beyond. But this year's trip to Oklahoma City included very ordinary sites and different types of performances. But the good news about having a local girl trip is that we got to share it with the locals. We got to watch Connie's twin grandsons play soccer,

and played blocks with one of Debra's grandsons,

and spent a morning with Denisa's son for a picnic in the park.

So just like everything in 2020, our girl trip was different this year. It was less glamorous, but also less expensive. It was less adventurous, but also more comfortable. We found that a local trip with the locals can still be a great girl trip. We also got Mother to two doctor's appointments and a stress test. This year we re-invented the girl trip--2020 style.

Are we ready to buy a house and settle down?

Since we are in a more stationary and family-centered part of the year, it's time to ask ourselves questions like, "Are we ready to buy a house and settle down?" It's been over six years since we sold the house that we designed and then had built to our specifications. After putting so much planning and love into that house, we were often asked how we could possibly leave it. People ask us all the time if we miss it. You'll have to read to the end of the blog to get the answer. 

We find that we don't take as many pictures or have as much to blog about when we're spending time with family. It's not that our families aren't photogenic, we just think that our daily lives visiting relatives aren't quite as news-worthy for a travel blog. One of our main stops during this time of the year is near Beaver, Oklahoma. This is where both of us were born and raised, and both our mothers still live just 15 miles apart. At 90 and 92, both of our mothers are still living at home, driving their cars, and taking care of all their daily chores. But they seem to enjoy a little company when a couple of wanderers take a break from their travels. They also really enjoy Mark's handyman skills.

At Mark's mother's house we spent a couple days installing a new floor in her utility room. That was a great improvement for her house.

At Denisa's mother's house we spent a couple days doing yard work. Mark trimmed the dead wood out of a 100-year-old lilac bush that had been planted by her grandmother. We think it will be much prettier when it blooms next spring. We also chopped through dead ivy, cut down overgrown plants, and removed an old tree stump. We pulled so many weeds that Denisa wore her fingerprints right off. She can no longer unlock her phone with her thumb print! We hauled off two pickup loads of brush, and changed her front porch view from this . . .

to this:

As a child, Denisa helped her Dad build this waterfall using rocks found on the farm. It has been overgrown with dead ivy vines for many years. No one can remember the last time we actually saw those rocks. Denisa's Mother is already enjoying her new view when she sits on her porch!

Mark also was there when Denisa's Mother had problems with her septic system. This project turned out to be more than he could fix on his own, but he took over finding the company that could. Then he was there to oversee the work when the sixty-year-old leach field lines from her septic tank had to be replaced. 

It was nice to spend time with our Mothers and complete some projects that they needed help with. But it's also an interesting reminder for us of the "joys" of home ownership. In the last six years since we sold our house, we haven't had any plumbing problems or needed to replace any floor coverings. Someone else is mowing our grass and we've enjoyed some of the most beautiful flowers of our lives without having to pull weeds. It looks like we're still not interested in settling down and buying a sticks-and-bricks house!

Getting a vehicle ready to tow behind a motor home--more than you want to know

When the excitement of buying a new vehicle is over, then the real work begins. Mark had a big job ahead of him, collecting all the pieces and parts needed to get our new Chevrolet Colorado pickup ready to tow behind the motor home. This job isn't for the faint of heart, and this blog will be tedious for anyone not interested in the details of motor homing. But we wished we had a resource like this when we started this process.

After doing much research from many different web sites, Mark started a spreadsheet with all the things he needed to have on hand to get the pickup ready for towing. The spreadsheet was pretty long, as he ordered the following items:

Roadmaster Base Plate (RM-523182-5)

Roadmaster Diode Wiring (RM-15267)

Roadmaster Charge Line (RM-156-25)

Roadmaster Battery Disconnect (RV-766)

Roadmaster Safety Cables (RM-643)

Demco Air Force One Brake Reinstallation Kit (6217)

Demco Air Force One Reed Switch (SM6272)

Roadmaster to Blue Ox Tow Bar Adapter (BX88185)

Roadmaster 3/4-inch Linch Pin (RM-910008-00) Be sure to order two--ask us how we know!

For the installation process, he also ordered: Red Lock Tight, heat shrink wire splice, and Di Electric Grease. Mark updated his spread sheet with where he found the best price to order each item, when he ordered it, and when and how it was supposed to be delivered. It was a major job just getting all the parts ordered and delivered before the real work had to begin.

Chevrolet says that you have to disconnect the battery before you tow our new pickup. So Mark installed an automatic battery disconnect button on the dashboard. Denisa was glad she wasn't there the day that he was drilling holes in the new dashboard. Then he mounted the the automatic disconnect box to the battery and found a place for it under the hood.

He also installed the diode wiring kit, that ties the pickup's brake and blinker lights to the motor home. That involved running a wire the length of the truck, and splicing into the new wiring. He also installed the charge line, that keeps the pickup's battery charged while it is being towed down the road. Again, Denisa was glad she wasn't there that day when he was cutting our new wiring and drilling a hole in the truck's fire wall to thread the wires. After a couple day's work, we had more things under the hood of our new pickup, as Mark had to find room for all these additions.

Before we traded in our old car, Mark had taken off the Air Force One braking system. That uses the air pressure from the motor home to apply the brakes in the vehicle being towed. Besides the tow bar, this was the main part we could re-use with this new vehicle. We still had to buy the re-installation kit, but it saved us around $800. It's getting more crowded under the hood of our new pickup with another box installed.

Denisa missed out on those three installation processes, as she was taking her mother to her doctors' appointments four hours away in Oklahoma City. But she was there the day that he installed the tow base plate onto the pickup. We started early that morning, as Mark started unscrewing the 45 bolts and screws necessary to disassemble the entire front of our new pickup. That includes the seven screws that hold the wheel well cover in place on each front tire.

While Mark is getting his body into contortions to loosen bolts that were never meant to come off, Denisa was taking pictures. He discovered that this is a tough job for an old guy with bifocals. It's hard to get those bolts in focus when you're working in such tight quarters. The front of our pickup is already looking quite different as parts begin to disappear.

Denisa's job was gathering up all the bolts and nuts, and bagging them up in the order they came off the truck. She wrote notes about the size of the bolts and quantity in each bag, as well as the corresponding number from the instruction sheet. We noticed that the instructions stop when the base plate is installed. There are no instructions for putting everything back together!

As he removed bolts, pieces were coming off the front of the pickup. Besides all the baggies of screws and bolts, it was more than a little unsettling to see the stack of pieces in the grass that he was taking off.

Meanwhile, our new pickup was looking like something from a demolition derby. Denisa certainly hopes that Mark knows what he is doing, and that he can get everything back together.

It wasn't an easy process, but it did eventually fit back together. After all that work, the front of the pickup doesn't look much different than when Mark started.

But when we zoom in, we can see more of the results of those hours of work. In the upper left, you can see the knob where the air hose will be connected from the motor home. In the upper middle is the silver ring where the brake disconnect cord is attached. If the pickup should ever come loose while towing, it would pull this ring and automatically stop the pickup. On the upper right is the plug where the electric cord connects from the motor home to the pickup. Lower, on either side of the front license plate, are the two new receivers where the tow bar from the motor home will be attached.

Now all Mark lacked was cutting the brake line and splicing into the brake vacuum hose to complete the tow braking system. That was another scary step, and it was hard to get accurate information on where to cut and if there was a check valve. We found that to be one problem of buying the new year's vehicle--no one knows much about it.

When we totaled that long list of parts that Mark ordered, the total came in at $1,150. But from a few estimates we found on-line, we would have been charged over $3,000 by a shop to do the whole job. So it looks like Mark saved us around $2,000 with his handy-man skills this time! Since we have more time than money, this seemed like a great project for him. Getting a vehicle ready to tow behind a motor home isn't easy, and we hope we won't have to do this again for many more years of wandering God's wonders.

We Bought a New Pickup!

Now that we are over the excitement of a new grandson and recovered from COVID, we are catching up on some old news--including a big purchase!

We have enjoyed our Honda CRV for six and a half years and 109,000 miles. But considering that it had been towed for an additional 40,000 miles, we worried that it was no longer a trustworthy vehicle. Considering that it got lots of wear and tear on dirt mountain roads this summer, we decided this fall was a good time to shop for its replacement. 

We would have been happy to buy another CRV, but Honda has changed its transmission so it's no longer towable with the wheels down. After 6 six years of having the easy process of hooking up a tow vehicle with the wheels down, we were NOT interested in buying a vehicle that would have to be strapped onto a tow dolly. So Mark began the process of removing some of the tow parts off the car that we could use again on a different vehicle.

In fact, we had a pretty short list of possible replacements when we started shopping. The list of vehicles we considered that can be towed behind a motor home with all four wheels on the pavement are: Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD (too expensive), Ford Ranger 4WD (with less than stellar reviews), Chevrolet Equinox (too small), Chevrolet Traverse (too big), Chevrolet Colorado 4WD, and Ford Edge ST (too pricey). After reading many reviews and analyzing our needs, Mark thought the Chevrolet Colorado 4WD pickup would be the best fit for us.

During a pandemic should be a great time to buy a new vehicle, right? WRONG! Instead, we found that everyone else is wanting to buy a new vehicle now. After shopping Chevrolet dealerships in Oklahoma and Kansas, we were having a hard time finding a pickup outfitted the way we needed it in-stock. We finally located just the right pickup at Hendricks Chevrolet near Kansas City. This pickup had just been unloaded from the delivery truck, so they hadn't had time to add the $1,000 worth of dealer add-ons that infuriate us. Hendricks Chevrolet made us the best deal, and we took delivery of a 2021 Chevrolet Colorado LT 4x4 4-door short bed pickup. This is a big dealership that has been in business for 44 years. They had their biggest sales month ever in June 2020--right in the middle of this pandemic!

Driving all those rocky dirt roads in the mountains this summer in our little car convinced Mark that a 4x4 would get us to even more trail heads. He's already imagining all the places we can go that we couldn't drive to in our Honda CRV. That makes Denisa a little nervous.

We already knew that buying the pickup was just the first of many expenses. We had lots of things stored in the back of that little Honda CRV. In order to store a similar amount in the bed of the pickup, it would need to be protected from the weather. So the first item on the shopping list was a bed cover. Because we will have a bike rack on the back, it had to unlatch without opening the tail gate. Mark shopped and compared and finally ordered this Retrax Pro-MX pickup bed cover. Mark installed it himself, and we began moving the amazing quantity of things that had been stored in the back of the car.

Now the real work begins, as Mark starts ordering and then installing all the things needed to turn this new pickup into a tow vehicle. This is our first big purchase since we hit the road in January 2015. We hope this new pickup takes us to as many of God's wonders as our last vehicle! 

Happy Haloween!

 After surviving COVID, we were glad to be fever-free so we got to spend Halloween with our son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren. We had absolutely beautiful fall weather so we could be outdoors for Halloween activities like cleaning out the insides of pumpkins.

In years' past, we have carved elaborate jack-o-lanterns. But our priorities have changed now that we have a two-year-old helping with the pumpkin.

So it wasn't the best-carved pumpkin, but if it makes Carter smile--that's all that matters.

Eli had a less-eventful Halloween. At ten days old, he spent most of this holiday sleeping, and his grandparents were only too happy to hold him as he snoozed.

He gave us a couple crooked smiles, and he has already stolen our hearts.

As the sun began to set, we talked Carter into putting on her Halloween costume. It's a remake of a uniform from the women's baseball league--"A League of Their Own." She wasn't thrilled with wearing a cap, so Carter was glad that Granddad would wear it instead.

We were just glad that we could convince her to wear her costume during our home-made pizza dinner this evening. But once she heard that there was candy involved with something called trick-or-treating, she didn't seem to mind that costume, even if it now had pizza sauce down the front. She even agreed to wear the belt AND cap. 

She was a woman on a mission once she understood that there was candy to be had in her neighborhood.

The house we sold six years ago was on a new street with wide sidewalks. We always had to turn out our porch light when we ran out of candy, and we bought enough for over 300 trick-or-treaters. This is our 5th Halloween living in a motor home, and we think that having the ability to move our house to spend this time with our grandchildren is great. We love jack-o-lanterns that might be less than perfect, a little goblin that we can snuggle as he sleeps most of the day, and a trick-or-treater with pizza sauce on her costume. It was a very Happy Halloween!

We Finally Got to Meet our New Grandson!

 We spent some cold days sheltered in place, while we waited to be sure that our COVID symptoms were really gone. We have never taken our temperature so many times in all of our lives! In the last few days of COVID we were fever-free all day, only to see that temperature rise up to around 100 degrees in the evening. We finally lived through that trend, and we have now been completely fever free for four additional days! According to the eight pages of typed notes that they gave us when we tested positive for COVID, the current protocol is that you must be fever-free for three days before returning to work and life in general. We waited a couple extra days past that before we made the long-anticipated trip to see our new grandson.

He was cuddly-snuggly, and we had a great first visit with little Eli! He is six days old, and he is doing great!

He even gave us a first grin. Some would say that this was a response to gas in his belly, but we're pretty sure that he was just pleased to meet Gram and Granddad! We think he is is thinking about all the fun we're going to have together.

We didn't stay long, but we took enough pictures to keep us occupied for a while. We'll be sorting through them, and holding them close to our hearts as we treasure this unusual first visit with our new grandson.

Now we are back to our motor home, biding our time while watching more television than usual. Sitting here at the border of Kansas and Missouri, we're "blessed" with the local political advertisements from two states. From what we hear on those paid political commercials, everyone running for office is a crook. We are also taking care of some business. We picked up our mail-in ballots that were sent to our son's house. We carefully read the instructions, and got them in the mail. 

We have now done our part! We won't get political in this very divisive year, but we thought a recent facebook posting summed up our feelings, "Waiting for election results is like waiting for a grade on a group project. I know I did my part right, but I'm scared y'all messed it up." We're just glad to have the assurance that whoever wins the elections, we know that God is still in control! That's important in our lives, and the life of that new grandson we finally got to meet.

Moving to Kansas - and we're fever free!

 After eight days at Prairie Creek Campground near Rogers, Arkansas, it is time to break camp and be on the road again. 

We made our reservations here because we wanted to spend some time kayaking on Beaver Lake. But we would only get to view the water from the shore near our camp site. We will always remember this as the place that we fought and won against COVID in 2020.

It was raining this morning, but we were glad when the showers stopped so that we could get hitched up without getting wet. It's a long drive today, and we're not as strong or fast as usual.

Just to prove that she's not feeling as good as usual, Denisa forgot to take a picture as we crossed the state line into Missouri -- and then into Kansas. It was a long four-hour trip for a couple of weary travelers. We enjoyed the autumn leaves and some beautiful scenery on our drive today. But with blustery winds, it made the trip seem longer and feel harder. COVID causes body aches, and Mark's hip was hurting from running the gas pedal as we made our way through the busier traffic near Kansas City. While Mark took us down the road, Denisa cut up vegetables and started a warm soup in the crock pot for supper when we arrived. We were glad when we got to our new campground at Suncatcher Lake outside of Leavenworth, Kansas. With blustery sharp winds, we didn't exactly get a warm welcome to our new home!

Mark has lost more weight, and he doesn't have any fat left to insulate him from the cold. To make it worse, he didn't know where his winter coat was. He was shaking from the low temperatures after being outside to hook us up to electricity. Denisa noted on her long list of fever readings, that Mark was running a little warm at 100 degrees. But she also noted that he ate ice cream this evening. That's his usual evening snack, but up until tonight COVID has even removed his appetite for ice cream. It's a mean virus!

The temperatures continued to drop as we got caught up on household duties. We have full hook-ups, so Denisa did five loads of laundry. We will be here a month, and we are expecting cold weathers before we leave. But we really didn't expect it in October! With overnight temperatures in the 20's we are already in the uncomfortable position of worrying about our water pipes freezing. Sure enough, the weather's forecast came true. We woke up to a covering of white snow all around our motor home.

We were welcomed to Kansas with record-breaking LOW high temperatures. The normal high temperatures are supposed to be in the 60s, and we struggled to get up to 32 degrees in the warmest part of the day. The bad news is that the snow continued all day. The good news is this is the first complete day that neither of us ran a fever. While the temperatures around us were uncomfortably cold, our body temperatures were just right--finally! Mark had been running temperatures over 98.6 for eleven days!

Because of the length and severity of Mark's symptoms, we had been encouraged to have his lungs checked. So we found a near-by urgent care and called for instructions. We were surprised to find that he was instructed to come into the main entry and wait in the waiting area even when he told them he had tested positive for COVID nine days earlier. We were a little under-whelmed with his medical visit, but they deemed his lungs clear. They gave him a medical order to get a chest x-ray at the local hospital. Again, we were surprised that a patient with a positive COVID test was not separated at the hospital.

We're glad to report that we both continue to be fever-free as we settled into our new camp site at Dreamcatcher Lake. We're still isolating from everyone, as we're counting our days without fever. We're still coughing, but we've heard that symptom can continue for weeks. So for now we're snuggled against the snow, playing games and watching movies and staying away from everyone as we bide our time against COVID.