Week 5.......Baby and Fishing

The start of week #5 and we have not killed each other yet! There have been a few close calls….. I have hidden all the guns, knives and other sharp objects. Just when I thought it was going well I caught her making a schive out of her toothbrush and dinner tasted a little weird last night.  This week has been filled with more visiting and fishing. We have been by to see Jessica and Kendall a few times. She continues to get cuter and cuter. Jessica is doing and looks great, she went home Tuesday afternoon and is now missing the quiet time, meals served to her and oh yeah, don’t forget the meds! The nurses on the other hand were probably glad to see her go. Since Jessica works on this floor and with these nurses on a daily basis she is a little too aware of how things should go and what to ask for. It was humorous seeing her ask for things that I could not pronounce let alone try and spell!

 

We spent some time with Dylan at the trailer fishing, playing and just hanging out. Forrest, Somer and Lily have been out a few times as well, it is good to see all the kids so often! Speaking of fishing, we have been getting a lot of fishing time in. Dylan and Lily each caught a few sunfish and Barb caught her first Utah brown trout! You should have seen her landing this thing…without a net, it was a combination of reeling and dragging it backwards up onto the bank. Even she said she may have overacted but she landed it! Forrest and I had a successful outing for catfish in the marina as well. Not being a catfisherman, I did not know how to clean and cook it but a quick YouTube video and we were good to go. Barb made a Cajun sauce and it was delicious! Today I am doing lazy man’s fishing. I have a pole out on the shore in a holder, an anchovy on a hook and a bell on the end of the rod waiting for the big one to bite.

  Looking back at the last four weeks we have not had a moment of regret…… granted we have had our ups and downs, challenges and frustrations along the way, but those come with any lifestyle you choose. The top of these were losing Bailey and our adventure down the goat trail on our way to find Bear Mountain RV Park where we sustained scratches on both sides of the trailer trying to squeeze down a tight driveway. A little rubbing compound and wax should have it back to new in a few hours.

One thing we have struggled with is slowing down and enjoying the road. We had preplanned our primary destinations as well as a number of secondary stops along the way. While we have enjoyed all our primary locations, we have yet to see any of those secondary stops we had planned. Instead we sped right past them in an effort to get to our next stop.

Being newbies, one challenge was choosing campsites along the way, having never been to many of these areas we had no idea whether our rig would fit into the sites or whether it was a nice place or not. Lots of research on the internet helped us along the way. One thing we discovered is that you must make campground reservations in Oregon on line 24 hours in advance rather than just arriving and picking a site. We were able to work things out but this is something we will have to remember in the future. The only site we have been to so far that we would not return is Mountain Shadow RV Park in Draper Utah. It was convenient as it was right between the kids but we would not stay there again.

We are also learning a lot about our new solar system. We have not been hooked up to power now for over two weeks and so far have been able to live as we normally would. The solar operates everything in the rig except the AC and the propane refrigerator. It looks like we could operate about 3 days on a full charge using lights and TV as normal. Luckily, the weather has been sunny and it recharges every day. We do have a backup generator should we have a string of cloudy days.

Other newbie learnings is testing out our budget….. Fun times! We had done a lot of research on RV living and the associated costs. Some live on as little as $12,000 a year while others spend 10 times that. Our budget is near the lower-middle of that spectrum and so far we have been having a hard time sticking to that. There are a lot of up front expenses; vehicle registration, insurance, solar installation……. Camping expenses have been right about where we thought they would be at about $350 a month. We have paid as much as $30 a night and have had a few free nights but on average dry campsites are about $10-$15 a night. Fuel has been a little less than we expected at $1,800 for the 4 weeks averaging 10.22 miles per gallon. Unexpected expenses were about $600 the majority of which were vet bills. On top of all that we need to realize that we do indeed have a budget and cannot just buy things because we want them or want to pick them up for the kids. Barb does have a couple of gift cards that we are using on “fun stuff”; thank you to Vicki K. for the gift card which is used exclusively on Dairy Queen, Jean M. for the Starbucks gift card! We also have one reserved strictly for our alcohol purchases but that one is going way too fast! On the upside many of these one-time expenses are now paid and we should have a pretty expense-free summer in Canada.