Last day home. We still have to load clothes and last minute kitchen stuff, but we're both ready to see Springfield in the rear view mirror. It's not that we don't like Springfield. We do. But, Lil Pumpkin is getting lazy and out of shape (like me) and needs a good exercise run. So, our plan is a 6500 mile jog into Nova Scotia.
We're going to head almost due east to Virginia Beach area for a little sentimental tour of one of our "homes" there and then head north up the coast. I plan to stay as close to the coast as is feasible without having to face big city traffic. I know, I know. That's a real trick and I may have to head a little west now and then for a traffic respite. So, the plan is to drive clear up to Prince Edward Island and see as much of the scenery up there as our eyes can hold. We're going up in the most colorful time of the year as the leaves turn. That's good. But, it also means it will be more difficult to find camping sites. Those campgrounds that are still open this late in the season are likely to be full. We could wind up overnighting in a convenience store parking lot. Another problem with the time of the year is the weather. So far, it looks good, but one never knows when a cold front might move in and freeze us out. Oh, we have a furnace to keep us warm, but if it gets too cold, our water tanks and pipes might freeze. If it does turn too cold, that's where Key West could come into play. See ya on the road.
We're counting down to our Nova Scotia trip. I hope I don't jinx it by mentioning it. Seems something always jumps up in the way with our last attempts at hitting the road. But, Joyce has her new hip and is doing well. My back is...well, it's a Kerr back. Need I say more. The biggest problem we have right now is Ditto. she has annual skin allergies and this year seems particularly bad. We think it is probably from grass and are hoping she'll improve once we hit the road and she is subjected to grass as much less. I never did come up with a satisfactory seat for me in the rear. However, I can swivel Joyce's front seat around and recline up front, so I, at least, will have a comfortable seat to do my computin'. We're both kind of excited with the new beds. They are much more comfortable than the original fold down sofa bed that came with the RV.
Our trip plan is to head east to Virginia Beach, Va. and poke around there. Then head up the coast all the way to New Brunswick and over to Nova Scotia. On our way back we'll stop to see Tom, Jr. in New York. As we work our way home, the plan is to follow the Blue Ridge Pkwy from the north end to the south end. This trip will be the last two weeks of September and well into October. If we don't get to see lots of beautiful falls colors, I'm going to be very disappointed.
I still haven't finished the revised beds in Pumpkin. Actually, the beds are done, but I'm still trying to come up with a comfortable seat back there for me. That's where I plan to do my computin' and TV/movie watching. But, tomorrow we're heading to Stephen's. He has a cabin in the woods near Paris, AR. that he is remodeling and claims he needs my help. As stove up as I've been, this ought to be good.
Our next big trip is well into the future. We're planning on traveling up to Tom, Jr's in Upstate New York in late August for one of my granddaughter's wedding reception. Then we're planning on heading on up into Canada. Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island is probably as far up as we'll get. In preparation, we applied for our passport cards (don't need full blown passports) a couple of weeks ago. Progress on Pumpkin's bed remake is ongoing...slow, but ongoing. We've got the mattresses ready and Joyce has the center cushion that goes between the mattresses made and covered. We're engineering a seat backrest for the cushion where I'll sit/lounge and watch TV or movies. We're on hold right now awaiting some straps I ordered.
Joyce has made a "sock" from a canvas fabric that fits over the forward end of the center cushion. When the straps come in, she'll sew four of them underneath the top section of the sock. These will create a four strap back support that will attach to the ceiling, probably to the rear shade valance. The straps will get a canvas covering which will form a kind of hammock shaped back for my chair. In the meantime, we hope to make a few shorter trips before August and who knows, we may wind up in Idaho again in June.
I've spent the last several weeks ripping out the power sofa and making new built-in beds in Lil Pumpkin. The original bed was made from the fold-down power sofa with cushions over the wheel-wells to extend the bed length. The tabletop was intended to go between the wheel-wells with a cushion on top of it to make the entire area a big roughly queen-size bed. The problem with that design was it required one to crawl to the center and end of to bed to get up. At our age, this presented a doubly problematic...well, problem. We don't crawl well and we have to get up often throughout the night. My initial addressing of this problem worked reasonably well, but still had its drawbacks. I took out the tabletop, which allowed us to get up at night a little easier. Without the tabletop, we effectively had twin beds with an open aisle between where the table top had been. The beds were just a little narrow, however, so I added a wider piece of plywood to each wheel-well. The cushions required widening to match the wider bed base. I managed this by adding a length of large swimming "noodle" between the cushion and the wall. The large noodle was almost the exact diameter as the thickness of the cushion. We then laid a 2" thick memory foam mattress topper and there it was. Nice comfy twin beds. Well, mostly. We used the new beds on our 46 day long trip out west in 2014 and again in 2015. But, there were still issues. The sections of cushions just didn't mate well with the folded down sofa and even with the memory foam topper, were a little uncomfortable. Then, getting up at night, the topper would tend to crawl off the edge of the bed. And there was the daily making of the bed at night and unmaking in the morning to raise the sofa back up. There had to be a better way... I got this idea back last fall of removing the sofa-bed and building separate twin beds. It has been a slow project due to weather and lots of interruptions, but I'm getting there.
I started by removing the sofa. A few nuts and bolts, unplug a wiring cable and a few grunts (with help) and out it came. Then I removed the seat belts to clear the area better. And, in this photo, you see the partition I made which will establish the separation between the interior and the storage area accessible through the rear doors. Visible ahead of the partition are the wheel-wells mentioned previously. The photos below show the area behind the partition for rear-accessed storage.
One consideration I had was to make a storage area for my Tailgater Dish TV antenna (yes, we have satellite TV available on our trips). The Tailgater, although relatively small, presented a small problem in that it was a hair taller than the wheel-wells which set the level for the beds.
The photos above show the general size of the Tailgater and the box I made to store it in for our previous trips. This proved unsatisfactory because it made an uncomfortable seat for meals and sitting at the table. So, we put the original seat back in and I started castings about for a better way. The new bed construction opened a new possibility. With the partition in place, I constructed two identical (almost) bases for the beds. They were constructed from 3/4" thick framing sandwiched by 1/8" plywood. That made them light and relatively stiff and strong. I still had to construct support in the rear (head of the bed) yet, but this photo shows how the beds fit in.
You'll also see a false floor section under the plastic storage box. The studs sticking up through the floor, which were used to bolt in the sofa and seat belts, presented some obstacles. I decided to make these false floors which would give me some storage for seldom used stuff (spare water hose, extension cord, etc.) underneath and a smooth surface above where the storage box and lawn chairs can slide in without obstruction. I couldn't run the false floor all the way across the cargo section because it would be too low for the Tailgater to fit. So, I made it with a space between for the Tailgater.
I found the antenna was the shortest lying on its side and the tapered corners let it fit perfectly in the space between the beds and the false floors on each side. That's about the extent of my progress to date. I have made a section to go between the bunks and form a cover which will convert into a seat when needed. And I have finished exposed surfaces with a cherry stain and polyurethane. Things are on hold while we wait on mattresses. Actually, mattress (singular). We gave Stephen a full-size inner spring mattress for his camp trailer and he is giving us his foam mattress that came in the trailer. The plan is to cut the foam mattress in two and make two mattresses for Pumpkin. While building the beds, I kept in mind the possibility of reverting back some day if and when we decide to sell Pumpkin. Another owner might prefer the original set up. So, with a couple of small exceptions, I have not made structural changes and have built the entire thing to easily be disassembled and the sofa bed reinstalled. Assembly and disassembly are a lot like a Chinese puzzle, but it works.
I finished (I hope) repairing all the bad links to photos. Google made some changes in online data storage and I took advantage of it. They offer unlimited storage (under certain conditions). The downside, for me anyway, is in trying to get organized, I broke a lot of links. 2016! Our travel plans for 2016 are rather ambitious. Joyce has some medical matters to attend to which will limit her travel abilities for a couple of months. Our dream is to go to Alaska. Climate conditions obviously dictate when that travel can be done. So, we're looking at a late June start and get back south by early September. That doesn't mean get home, just back south so the weather doesn't do such sneaky things to us. In the meantime, I'm still working on Lil Pumpkin getting the beds designed and built plus a few other modifications for comfort (Ditto's as well as ours). If the Alaska trip doesn't work out then we're thinking Nova Scotia. Like the Alaska trip, it requires an eye on the weather, but we'd prefer early fall timeframe.
As we left Flaming Gorge, we dropped down into Utah where we caught US Hwy 40 at Vernal and took it east across the state line into Colorado. We made a quick stop at Dinosaur National Monument to check out the new facility. We had been there in 1989, I think it was, and I was interested in what they had done to it. The bones still looked the same.
We camped at the Yampa River State Park. Another nice park and another nearly empty park. Running late in the season certainly has its advantages. Past Steamboat Springs, we took State Hwy 14 toward Walden, Co. Coming down on the east side of the mountains, we encountered a rancher and his cow hands moving his herd down from the upper pastures for the winter.
If you will notice, the yellow hoodie cowboy is a cowgirl. Since we weren't going anywhere soon, I struck a conversation with her. She is how I knew they were moving the herd to winter pastures. She was also how I knew they had another herd about the same size a mile or two down the road. Oh well, I always did enjoy staring at the rear ends of young heifers. Once we got through the black stampede, we drove on through Fort Collins and to Jackson Lake for the night.
