Cape Fair Camping

Sitting at Cape Fair Corp Of Eng. campground, just relaxing by the fire.

Berry Bend (COE)

Berry Bend Campground is located on Truman Lake.  It was chosen as a central meeting place with Dusty and Traci.  Since we were there with Dusty, it rained, of course.

Rocko's debut (Dusty's new trailer) - at least with us.  Dusty had to set up in the rain.  It wasn't pretty. We did not get out much.  Site backed up to the lake about 200 ft. away.  Sarah, Roger & boys came.  Had birthday cake for Laurna.

Pawnee State Recreation Area

This is where we met Tom and Julie.  We had the grand-girls with us and they were to catch their mom and dad here and go on to Utah and Idaho.  The campground was pretty nice, a bit crowded though.  Tom and Julie and Mollie (dog) showed up and spent the night.  We slept 7 adult size people and 2 dogs.  Sure made it crowded, but we made out okay.

Hillsdale Kansas State Park

The NY grand-girls came down for a visit and had to be taken to meet their folks who were traveling to Idaho.  We were to meet Tom and Julie in Nebraska.  So, our first trip in Pumpkin was to Pawnee State Recreation Area near Lincoln, Nebraska.  The first stop on the trip was Hillsdale Kansas State Park.

Hot!!! Being July, it was naturally hot outside.  Inside, Joyce and I were comfortable, sitting in the front seats.  The girls, however, complained.  It was hot back there.  Gripe, gripe, gripe.

Update: Eventually, I got some special vent covers that allowed us to drive with open vents.  That helped keep the air moving through and not get so hot.  Later, I learned we could have just run the generator and used the coach air conditioner.  Well, we were new at this.

New home for Pumpkin!

Here she is! A 2000 Coachmen 31.5 ft.

Joyce seems to really like the kitchen

But, Ditto is not too sure of the steps

Oh well, it's only money

We finally decided that taking cash from our stash instead of a loan was the best deal for us.  I’m not a paying-interest type girl, and the application fee they required would fill the great big gas tank at least once.  And the loan process was degrading.  This sucks, and screw you, we said to Bank of America.

I fumed and fussed about the money, but at the end of the day I realized I’m fortunate to have enough money to buy an RV.  I’ve learned that every minute I spend worrying about the future, I lose part of today.   So, I made all the budgetary adjustments and Tom made arrangements to go get the RV tomorrow.  A small calculation showed cost of gasoline just to get it home will be $20.73.

Now, how to pay for it

The only other concern we had, besides the doors and levelers, was how to pay for an RV.  Do we finance it, or do we plunder our accounts.  I punched numbers, crunched numbers and I laid awake fretting about numbers.  No matter the decision I made, someone was going to get some of our money.  If we financed it, the bankers got interest.  If we cashed in, the gov’t got taxes.

I spent most of the week-end worrying about money, the future, and day-dreaming of reading a book in the Smokey Mtns, squeezing through the tunnels in West Virginia, or pulling the boat to Beaver Creek every spring for the white bass spawn.  Tom spent most of the weekend looking through the voluminous “Owner Information Manuals” we’d brought home with us.  Normally I’m accustomed to “settling for” and “making-do” and seldom get to choose exactly what I like or what I want.  This felt good.

And how odd is it that Floyd Boze’s son is the neighbor of the people we’re buying it from?  The people who are selling us their RV eat eggs laid by chickens I once had.