The Return Trip Begins

After 8 days of being out of our un-routine routine (that is, traveling freely with our own set patterns of the day), we are back on the road and back doing what makes us (particularly the dog) happy. He has been acting up quite a bit the past few days, but that is really not surprising. It was "as hot as Hades" as my mother put it, and the poor guy had to be inside the tin can almost 24/7 for a week. Then we get to Fort Wilderness at Disney World yesterday, and we had to keep him inside because the darn squirrels have been tamed, apparently, by too many children, and they just taunted the dickens out of him....

So, here we are in Albany, Georgia (a new state in the RV!), at a very spacious, leafy and grassy, park. It's only 80 degrees (there was a T-storm this afternoon and the temperature dropped, at one point, 26 degrees!). Lisa is throwing tennis balls for the dog and he is SO happy to be wearing himself out. Just got an action shot with my iPhone....


It was really great to spend a week with my folks and to help them get 100% settled. (Didn't we do a nice job on the plates and all the pix in the background? ;-)


And it was really REALLY great to see our best friends from Chicago down in Orlando, while they were vacationing at the Magic Kingdom. We invited them "over" for dinner and we "took in a show" (walked to the lake's edge for fireworks at a "secret spot" that the very "family" guy at the entrance told us about). Lovely evening, despite the mosquitoes and disagreeable dog. Peg insists that the dark photo is "the best." I like the well-lit one, so I'm putting up both.




All is well. Even with our coach, which gave us some fits yesterday. The "high engine oil" warning light went off for the third time since we had the oil changed, so we scrapped our A1A drive (hoping to see the shuttle out on the NASA launch pad) and instead drove back inland to the Palatka dealer to have the extra oil siphoned off. We have now learned--the hard way...TWICE--what to do. (See below.)

And first thing in the morning, we had the oil on the generator changed. Learned sort of by accident that it needs changing after 20 hours (the break-in period) and then not again till after 150 hours. So, we had that done at Camping World and thought it went well. Got down the road a 100 miles to a lunch spot in 95 degree temps and the genny started, ran, but didn't get the power going. No A/C. Sweltering turned to swearing, but we persevered and found that a switch must've gotten accidentally tripped. We figured it out without calling or emailing any SOSes. Very proud of ourselves. But we did have a few moments of thinking, Doesn't ANYONE do their jobs right anymore? Two oil changes = two oil overfills plus one genny oil change and no genny power. Argh.

I can see that the more WE know the more we can ensure that we get our service done properly. Up until now, I had been horribly, stereotypically female about the whole thing. "Well, those fellas MUST know more than I do." NOT. I will now walk in with 13 quarts of the RIGHT oil and tell them to use what I've brought, only 12.5 quarts, and return the .5 quart to me, thank you very much.

So there.

It feels good to learn and start to really understand things!