Wisconsin

Nan and are are in Wisconsin for a couple of weeks since I have a job in the area. We arrived last Saturday. They have a gravity hill in the area so we checked it out. You drive down to the bottom of a country road hill, put your car in neutral, and take your foot off the brake. The car then starts rolling in reverse up the hill. It’s freaky man.

A few days ago I took Roxy for a nice walk around the lake they have in the campground. The lake is about 1/2 mile long and 1/4 mile wide. They have a golf cart path that goes around the lake with tall weeds on either side of the path. Roxy enjoyed sniffing in the weeds for rabbits. After the walk I noticed a couple of ticks walking on me. We combed Roxy and got 3 ticks off from her. Before I went to bed I stripped down and Nan had to do a close inspection on me to make sure I was tickless. The next morning about 3:00 I woke up from another one walking on me. That day I went to work and Nan found about 10 more on her, Roxy, and on furniture. This morning I gave her a flea and tick shampoo (Roxy - Not Nan). Hopefully that will be the end of it.

This is Memorial Day weekend. I had a reservation in the campground for this week and next, but they were booked for the weekend. We thought we might have to go somewhere else, but the owners were able to squeeze us by the bathroom. We have electric hookup, so it’s working out OK. I was hoping it would start raining on Thursday and not stop so no one would show up. It rained a little but unfortunately the weather has been pretty nice. The campground owners figure they have about 1,000 people here for the weekend.

Today we went to see the House on the Rock. In the 1960’s this artsy guy bought property in the country that had some big rock formations. He started building a house in and around these formations. While building the house people would stop buy and ask for a tour. It didn’t take long for him to start charging money for the tours. He died in 1989, but the tours live on. The one video is of the Infinity Room. He built a hall that extends out over a gorge about 150 feet. There is a glass floor near the end of the room that you can look down as see a drop of about 250 feet.

Black Tank Valve Replacement

I have a job in Wisconsin so Nan and I are heading north. We were camped in Indiana a couple of nights ago and we noticed something was dripping under our trailer. I was hoping it was our drinking hose connection since that would be the easiest and cleanest thing to fix. No such luck. It turned out to be the black tank dump valve. For those not familiar with RV lingo, the black tank holds your pee and poop. When the black tank gets full you pull a lever to the dump valve, and the contents empty from the tank, through a sewer hose, and into the sewer connection at the campground. The next morning we were continuing north, so we stopped at a Camping World and picked up a new valve. We planned on staying at a real campground last night, but because it was Friday they were full. So we stayed at a Shell Gas Station that had 6 RV sites right by the Burger King drive-through. Luckily it was all cement which made it easier to work on the RV. I had to drop the belly pan which is a piece of material (now soaked with pee and poop) that protects wiring and hoses under the RV from debris in the road. Then I had to remove the old valve and put the new one in. This sounds easy, but it took about 3 hours since nothing ever goes as smoothly as you hope. Keep in mind that about 2 hours were spent working with, lying in, and trying to avoid pee and poop. Nan came out to see how thing were going but almost threw up so she had to go back inside. While working I kept thinking about those hundreds of times I’ve used hand sanitizer in restaurants because I was afraid of germs, and now look at me.

Tiger Exhibit

Yesterday we went to a tiger exhibit with Bill and Cecil from the HDT rally. It’s a non profit organization that takes care of tigers. For a fee you can get a picture of a tiger on your lap. Then they put a smaller tiger cub on your lap and take more pictures hoping you will buy these pictures also. Of course we did. We stopped at a winery after the picture taking. Luckily Bill drove his truck so there was plenty of room for the wine that we took home with us.

HDT Rally

We are in Myrtle Beach, SC for a week for an East Coast HDT Rally. HDT stands for Heavy Duty Truck (or semi trucks). As Nan calls it - It’s a rally for people like us. There are 7 of us at this rally that tow our RVs with semi trucks. The national rally is held in Kansas in October. They had as many as 60 attendees at the national rally.

A couple of nights ago we went to Dicks Last Resort restaurant. Here is a link to a video of some in our group.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwOG6TtrriQ&feature=youtu.be

The waiter made us all hats with whimsical sayings on them. The lady at the end of the video had a hat that said “My crotch is so dry my crabs ride dirt bikes”.

Yesterday Nan and I lead the group to a dinner at Captain George’s Seafood Buffett. Because it was our idea Nan and I had to first test it out last Sunday night to make sure it met our standards. It did.

Copperhead Snake

After a couple months of me working in Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan, while living with Nan’s mom, we are back on the road again. Nan and I took the truck to Mt. Airy, North Carolina to pick up the RV. We spent 2 nights at the Mayberry campground. The second night there we had a lot of rain and winds. Nan was up all night watching the weather channel and keeping watch for tornados. Normally I sleep in my birthday suit, but since it has a hole in it I didn’t want to run outside without anything else on, so I wore shorts that night. After that preparation I slept like a baby since I knew Nan would sound her alarm if we had to evacuate. Some tornados touched down not to far away, but we escaped unharmed.

We are heading to a Heavy Duty Truck (HDT) rally in Myrtle Beach, SC. Some people that tow their RVs with semi trucks are getting together for a week. It starts on May 6, so we are hanging out in a Thousand Trails campground in Advance, NC (by Winston Salem) the week prior. It’s a nice campground that has a pond where Roxy can take a daily dip. Yesterday Nan, Roxy, and I were taking a walk through the park. Nan stepped over something in the road that I saw move a little. Then Roxy walked over this thing. I realized it was a baby snake after it struck at Roxy, but luckily missed. It looked like it was about 6 inches long. I was looking at it and a guy in a car came by and said “Is that a copperhead?” He took a close look and confirmed that it was. This freaked Nan out a little. The guy went back to tell the park employee who told him there was a nest at that location and they see 6 or 7 of them each year. They guy then came back with his car, drove the front tire on the snake and then turned his steering wheel 2 or 3 times to grind it into the road.