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| Love the beautiful sunsets |
T is so sad that he will not continue on with the Boy Scouts. He always bugs us with wanting to stay with his friends. I feel bad for him and would love him to still see his friends, but we just do not have time for Boy Scouts. They go on camping trips every month (like stay in a tent after hiking in 5 miles camping trips) and we play sports on weekends. Also we love hiking, but sleeping on the ground, with bugs, and rain.....ummmm no thanks. When T used his little tent to camp in the backyard, even he came back to get a mat to put under his sleeping bag. This was our last outing for him to see his friends and have fun before we leave the group. The campouts are always so much fun (except for the high humidity in the fall campout). The kids play and ride bikes the whole time. Everyone gathers for skits and dessert; on the last we morning we have a big breakfast and church service together. It is so much fun. We absolutely love it.
This time we would get to take the new camper out and have even more fun. Our set up is so easy now, we fully planned to go on a hike again after we set up and cap the night off with a fire (complete with smores this time). We were ready. On Friday morning, we got up, cleaned the chickens out, loaded up the car and trailer, and were excited to be on our way. I wanted to leave by 10:00 and we were actually early! All we had to do was hook the trailer to the car and off we could go to start our fun weekend. D plugged in the trailer to the car and we did our check to make sure the lights on the trailer worked and this time they didn't! We tried unplugging and plugging it in again. Still nothing. We opened the fuse box on the car and checked for blown fuses, call O'Reileys to see if they had light bulbs in stock, and googled anything on possible causes. I finally went out there and unplugged the cord, noticed that the adapter wasn't open all the way, opened it fully, put the cord in snuggly, and voilà they worked. This took an hour and a half so now we were past my designated leaving time and fairly irritated. Not off to a good start, but at least we were leaving.
I am the designated navigator and D is the designated driver. He doesn't trust me to tow ANYTHING, even the little bitty 5x8 trailer, and I am surprised he doesn't get lost at work without me there to tell him when to turn. I usually read a map (old school I know) while receiving advice from LOLA (our name for the computer direction lady google maps uses). LOLA and the map kept disagreeing on directions and street names this time. I have learned from experience LOLA likes to take some not so good roads to shave a mile or two off your trip. However, when you are stuck towing a trailer through the center of the University of Arkansas and trying to maneuver hair pin turns when you are the length of a big rig, you realize that LOLA isn't really trailer friendly (GOOGLE please add a towing a trailer option with the avoid tolls and highway options!). Whenever there is a discrepancy I TEND to take the real map now over LOLA. For the first half of the trip I did that and we did fine. However, on the second half of the trip I consulted LOLA. BIG MISTAKE. She tried to shave a few miles off by taking us down a "shorter" path through some dirt back country roads. These roads were so narrow I was glad we didn't see another car because I am not sure what we would have done and I am glad it hadn't just rained because these roads were not meant for a 6500# trailer. We would have got stuck. We managed to bump along and miss MOST of the tree limbs and FINALLY made it to the camp out at Lake Tawakoni.
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| Our camping spot |
We set up and were getting ready for our hike. I went to the bathroom and noticed how green the leaves were....WAIT WHAT?!! Why can I see trees from the bathroom?!! That fun little road we bumped down apparently broke the vent lid. The rv has 3 14x14 vents that you can open to help air flow go through your tin can. Apparently, 2 of them shattered on our bumpy journey to the campout which would not have been a big deal if we weren't expecting storms starting that night. Luckily it was 3 o'clock, a local dealer was open, and had 2 vent lids in stock. We hurried out to get them and also some duct tape and trash bags just in case. After we returned we realized we had no way to get on the roof and we needed a drill. Thank goodness the park host lent us both. However, we were pretty tired at this point; we were trying to finish before dark and the rain arrived. and the instructions just didn't make sense. We ended up giving up and just taping the lids to the roof. While D was on the roof he touched the ONE vent lid that was still intact to see how thick it was and why the others had just shattered while this one was fine. Well, it turns out it wasn't fine and where he "touched" it he put a huge hole in the center. Now, we only had 2 replacement lids, the dealer was now closed and we had bought the only 2 lids they had in stock anyways.... so... since we had the trash bags and duct tape, we patched it up as best we could and just hoped it would hold up in the storm.
The good news is that they did in fact hold up to the rain and wind. However, it poured all night on Friday and ALL day on Saturday. The tent campers were completely miserable so the campout ended up being canceled so they could go home. We decided to brave it since we had all the comforts of home (albeit with trash bags and duct tape holding it together). It felt weird to look out at the campers all wet and cold, huddled under their tarp while we watched a movie and popped some popcorn. We also discovered that D's cabinet for his clothes had a leak and everything he put in there was soaked. This was not a good trip. The rain cleared off on Sunday morning and the day held a promise of things getting better.....just apparently not for us. D lost the little $7 pin that holds the hitch to the car. You CANNOT tow anything without this stupid little pin. Now it is Sunday and no trailer place is open. We are trying to find the closest Wal-Mart to see if they by chance have one. Luckily after about an hour D found the pin and we were able to hook up and head home without incidence.
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| We weren't able to do much except sit around the camper. |
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| L worked on making some cute bird nests for the dessert bar that ended up being canceled. |
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| We ate them and watched movies. |
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| We played Moose Farkle and made the best of the rainy day. |
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| A took a nap. |
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| T drew a pic. That is exactly how our car feels in relation to the camper. |
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| They were actually fighting over who got to put the eggs in the nests when I took this pic. |
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| T being cute. |
We have now replaced the vents with good metal ones and figured out we were about 10 seconds from completely installing the ones we gave up on and duct taped to the roof. D swears the instructions changed. Either way we now have 3 new vent lids, plus 2 extra just in case. It was a crazy weekend and we are glad to be back. However, we are hopeful that this takes care of any issues we would have had on our big trip next month.
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| T can be so weird. He literally put on his "cowboy" outfit to go ride the lawn mower around for 5 minutes and then promptly put it in the dirty clothes to be washed...ahhh kids. |
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| My bluebonnets are finally starting to bloom, it took a couple of years. |
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| The camera cannot do justice to her mud boots. |
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