Busy, busy

Pat and Liam headed off to Boy Scout camp on July 3rd leaving Gray and me alone with Phin (that's what the boys call him/her/it). We got to work tinting the windows with mirrored film for privacy during the day and temperature control. It's amazing how hot it gets in a metal box sitting in the sun all day. Home Depot trip #483 produced the screen mouse, an amazing little gadget, so Gray and I replaced several screens with sunscreen screen. Seems repetitively redundant, doesn't it? Have I mentioned that it gets hot in there?

Sun protection projects done, we took off for the Pontiac Lake Recreation Area. It's less than five miles from where we store Phin and feels like the middle of nowhere - just what we were looking for in a place that has electric hookups. A friend and her two sets of twins joined us. Burgers? Check. Fireworks? Check. Wine for mommies? Check. It was the Forth of July.

The kids finally went to sleep around midnight. Ahhh, the peace and quiet of nature, blissfully uninterrupted until 5:45 AM when kids started squealing and dancing around. What the...? Who were these crazed little people? Note to self: marshmallows made with Benedryl make excellent s'mores, find recipe.

A quick trip home for Wednesday's piano lesson and we immediately headed out to Proud Lake with another friend and her daughter. Proud Lake is slightly further away and is more of a parking lot type camping area. The kids went swimming in the lake, we tried to set up the awning (a no go) and I cranked up the baby gas grill for sliders.  Kids popped popcorn over the campfire and roasted marshmallows. Everyone went to bed a a reasonable hour.

About 5:30 AM Mason and Dixie woke me up to go potty. Oh, yes, little dogs went camping with us. They love it - so many smells to smell. And roll in. And bring inside the camper. I got up to take them outside and we took a quick walk around the campsite loop. We all went back to sleep for a few more hours. The kids took off for the lake for a morning swim and brought back a huge crayfish. It took some convincing but they took the crayfish back to the lake.

We decided to return to the Pontiac Lake Recreation Area for the next night. Same routine - set up, swim, supper, s'mores. We were the only occupied campsite on our section of the campground. It was great being in the middle of nowhere with electricity. I'm really into electricity. A raccoon spent a bit of time knocking stuff off our picnic table in the middle of the night but puppies were so tired from smell smelling and running around that they didn't notice. After a quick campsite cleanup and unplugging, we were on the way home to meet our Scout campers.

On the road to preparing for the road

The past week has been full of little improvements that will make our road trips more enjoyable. We got new license plates with the Michigan State Parks pass and have done some deeper cleaning.

Pat re-plumbed the LP gas connections and tested the water heater. I thought our water heater at home was hot, but this one is more like our instant-hot! Wow! While this would be a simple couple-of-hours task under ordinary circumstances, there was a lot of, er, uh, "creative engineering" that had to be corrected  modified. I just don't think a small propane leak is something I want to live with. I'm crazy paranoid that way. All of this was much more fun that it should have been because the LP tank is a regular gas grill tank located in the travel box on the bumper, NOT the original tank that lies sweetly in its own little compartment with its own little door. We wondered why this modification had been made and the original tank hadn't been replaced until we priced the new tank. 

A generator would make life on the road much easier. There was much weighing the advantages of a portable generator or an installed RV generator. We settled on finding the generator that would fit in the generator compartment behind the driver and get fuel from the gas tank. Yes, there is only one generator that will do that and it is bloody expensive. We'd been calling around to various Craigslist ads for generators and finally early Sunday evening we made arrangements to buy a gently used generator - a Onan Mircolite 2800 - on the east side of Cleveland! So the boys and I jumped in the minivan and took off.

By the time we got back home on Monday afternoon from the generator mission the new shocks were on the doorstep. It's always something.

We found it!

 1989 Toyota Dolphin

There she was waiting for us to come pick her up just outside of Chattanooga, TN.

We drove down on Friday right after school. Of course we had to stop for Chic-fil-A on the way. We stopped at what we later called the Skank mall. Seems we were the only folks in the mall that Friday evening that weren't heavily tattooed or pierced. And didn't have unnaturally colored hair extentions. And were dressed like civilized folk instead of streetwalkers and skater-pimps. We enjoyed our lemonade and nuggets in the van on the road.

We met Glenn, a sweet single father, at a fireworks store near the interstate Saturday morning. We walked around the Dolphin. We turned all the knobs. We flipped switches. We kicked the tires. And we bought a motorhome.

Men build fires.

We started home Saturday afternoon. We spent the night in Bowling Green, KY at the KOA campground (or is it Kampground?) After some confusion about which spot was ours, we set up camp, figured out how to get shore power and hooked up the water. The boys started a camp fire. And roasted marshmallows.

Sleeping

Liam slept on the dinnette bed. Gray slept on the foldout sofa and Pat and I perched in the upper bunk over the truck cab. Things were going well until 4:30 AM when a heavy thunderstorm blew through Bowling Green. Thunder and heavy rain are bad under normal conditions, but in a small box, it's LOUD! The budding teenager didn't wake up - he remained totally motionless through the entire storm.

Eating

The next morning, I perked coffee on the tiniest stove and the boys ate chocolate cheerios for breakfast. Pat ran up to the campground (kampground) office to ask for pointers for emptying the black water tank. Ewwww. His best father's day ever began with dumping liquid waste.

We hit the road afer breakfast and drove and drove and stopped for gas and stopped for gas again and again and again. The Dolphin has a teeny fuel tank and boys wanted to take turns riding with dad in the motorhome. I got to listen to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory twice on this trip.

And still looking

We saw a few more Toyotas this weekend - a nice '91 Dolphin and an empty shell from the '80s. Neither one was "ours." The searching process is constant and while often disappointing, we've learned a lot from the folks we've met. Folks LOVE their Toyota mini-motorhomes. Every person selling a Toy has great tips and hints and stories. Just learning and looking. And looking.

Still looking

We saw some really interesting motorhomes yesterday. A fright pig of a 1989 Toyota Sea Breeze that had been a habitrail for a herd of mice, a really cool refurbished 1976 GMC that was a blast to drive, and a 1986 Toyota Grandville that was in great shape, but was a 4 speed. Sigh. I really don't like shifting gears that much.

In the beginning

We decided that we want a motorhome. A mobile Manworld.

It has to be small, get decent milage, and sleep 4 adults. It must have a toilet and air conditioning. It has to be a motorhome, not a trailer that I have to pull with some huge SUV, not a pop-up-- just something you can stop and crawl through to the back and crash.

We read. We looked at floor plans. We priced new models. We priced older models. We did a long gas vs. diesel comparison. Finally, we settled on what we wanted - a Toyota motorhome. Unfortunately, Toyota stopped making them in the early 90s and the folks that have them are cult-like in their love for them so the are hard to find. I joined every internet-based group I can find that is Toyota camper related. Perhaps we'll get a solid lead on an automatic post '89 version. Fingers crossed.