Checking on the Grapes

I keep getting surprises over the growing grape vine. I thought that the bugs had eaten most of the grapes but I am pleasantly surprised that the bugs I saw were probably only eating the flowers from the grape blossoms. At any rate, here is an update on the progress and a look at some of the many, many grapes that are developing:

So far, it appears that our shiny paper strips are keeping the birds away. Of course, we will not be here to see them get ripe so we asked our neighbor (Jim) to help himself when they are ready and to just let us know how they turned out.

I took a load of items to the RV yesterday that we will be using during our trip. I plan to take more trips, if necessary, after I organize the other half of our garage. That project will continue today...

Weekend Ends With Golf

First of all, I was really disappointed with the Kentucky Derby outcome - as are most sports fans. The best horse obviously didn't get the win although he led from start to finish. The rules are the rules and it was an unfortunate ending to good race. I doubt that there will be a triple crown winner this year.

We ended our weekend yesterday with two rounds of miniature golf at our rec center. We played in the late morning before the real heat arrived. Josie came within 5 strokes of beating me and had her best round ever in the first game. She came within 1 foot of a hole-in-one on three consecutive holes while just leaving a tap-in for 2's on those holes.

She lost her concentration in the second game while I improved to beat her by 19 strokes. It is always fun to play and I can see her getting better and better.

Our portable Dish antenna arrived yesterday and we are about ready to complete our TV setup for the summer. I haven't checked it out yet nor have I registered it for the summer which I will do today or tomorrow. I hope it all checks out so we can cross off another task from our list.

Josie begins her Mother's Day run today with 6 straight days of work...

Progress in Garage

One of the least exciting tasks we need to complete is making room in our garage for the car. I attacked that project yesterday while Josie was working and made some very good progress:

It used to be that there was only about a three foot aisle to walk through. I reorganized everything that was on the one side, stacked boxes as high as I could and recovered about five feet more space on the one side. Now, we have to work on the other side and get it to where we can recover another few feet which would make room for the car. We have until next week to get it ready. I am feeling more confident that we can reach our goal.

We have started to create a section in the house where we can accumulate items that need to be loaded into the RV when we bring it to the house next weekend. One thing we are really concentrating on and that is weight. Our goal here is to take only what we think we will need and not overload the RV.

I spoke with our neighbor (Jim) yesterday about our plans and he was, as always, willing to keep an eye out on our house and will do a walkthrough occasionally to check the inside. I will give him a key before we leave and we can feel confident that he will do what is necessary to make sure all is well. I also indicated to him that we may have Patty and her family here for about a week sometime in August while they get Jordan settled at ASU. No problem. He will give her the key when/if she decides to come to our house.

Part of my afternoon activities were to drop off some items at the Salvation Army and to make a stop at the Sun City Posse offices to complete a "Vacation Watch" registration to make sure they keep an eye on things while we are gone. That is a free service that is provided by our community and they make sure there are no papers in the driveway or advertisements attached to our door along with looking for suspicious activity.

Getting closer now...

Good Recovery

We succeeded yesterday in getting everything back to working order in the RV. At least we have the batteries performing again and we should be OK at least until we are able to bring the RV to the house and plug into shore power.

I finally got the door windows swapped out:

and we are back to having our stained glass window.

While I was working on the windows, Josie did some cleaning inside and then stripped the bedding to bring home to clean. Our next trip to the RV will probably be early next week when I start to bring some items that need to be loaded. Josie works today, has tomorrow off and then works 6 straight days through Saturday. We will, most likely, bring the RV to the house on Mother's Day to begin final loading.

The reservations were made yesterday for our two nights in RV parks while traveling. The first one in Mesquite, NV at the Casablanca Casino and Campground, and the second one in the Deer Creek State Park in Heber City, UT. Both of those are familiar stops and we have great accommodations at each...

More Power Problems

We had a nice morning planned at the RV yesterday. We were going to replace the window in the door and Josie was going to start wiping down some areas inside. We arrived at the RV in the storage facility and discovered, once again, that the batteries were dead. I just bought these batteries in September of last year so they could not be bad (I don't think so anyway). The only thing I can think of is that there is something turned on inside the RV that is draining the power. At any rate, I immediately went to the guard station and asked if there was list of some kind for RV Mobile Repair Services. The guard was a tremendous help as he went down the list of services that he knew about and I began contacting each one to get some help. My first call was a clue that this is not the best time of the year to get RV mobile service. The guy said it would be one week from tomorrow before he could get out to help us. That would not work. I finally found a good, local service that happened to be in the area and he came out to our unit within a half hour of the call. What a break! This is the guy who made it to our RV:

He opened up the battery compartment, tightened all of the connections. found a loose wire and tested the batteries.

The test, of course, revealed that they were dead - or close to it - and that the solution was to try to locate a "drain" on the power and get them recharged. Josie found a light that was on in the bedroom and we went around and checked. as best we could, for any other potential problems.

That entire exercise took a good portion of the morning and early afternoon. We postponed the window swap - again. I took out the batteries and took them home to recharge - again. I did that overnight, so we will try to do our "planned" activities at the RV today. Once we bring the RV home to park out front for loading, we should be in good shape as we don't need the batteries as long as we can connect to power.

We are thankful that the weather is cooperating while we go through these unexpected delays...

Some Delays in Tasks

When I went to the RV yesterday to swap out the door window, I ran into another situation that required attention. The RV was totally down on the front end like someone had lowered the jacks and the batteries were near dead again. I have no idea how that could have happened but I needed to fix the problem immediately. I came back home, picked up the battery charger and a ladder for the window swap and headed back. The charger worked great - again - and it also worked with my DC/AC adapter that I have had for years so I was able to charge the batteries (through the truck DC outlet) without a power hookup. So, I now had full power batteries and the jacks were returned to their normal "level" position.

I ran into another problem while attempting to replace the window. The stained glass window we have used for years had some loose corners and the frame was falling off. I postponed the swap for at least another day while I make fixes on the stained glass window. I glued those parts last night with super glue so we should be good to go again. Josie is off today so maybe I can recruit her help to make the window swap today.

I heard back from our manager in Jackson regarding our tentative schedule. He will not be working on the 20th which is the new projected start date and he wants to be there to retrain us. Understandable. He had no problem with our arriving early, but it looks like our start date will remain the 22nd of May. He invited us to attend the orientation scheduled for the 21st, so we will probably attend...

Happy May Day

If all goes according to plan, we will be leaving AZ in a couple weeks for Jackson, WY. Another big step was completed yesterday with the addition of a 30 amp outlet installation on the corner of our house. It looks like this:

The electrician had to use a "split" breaker for the installation (lower left in the photo of the fuse box) as our power box is already full. That means that we probably will not ever have room for any more electrical additions. We don't plan any.

I will go to the RV this morning and reinstall our stained glass window on the door. We removed it when we left the Pioneer Campground last year thinking we would not be traveling anymore and wanted to preserve it for the future. I'll take a photo today when it is done.

Pretty soon we will be begin loading the unit with some things we will be traveling with this summer. I hope we remember everything...