LAST COMMENCEMENT CEREMONY

Today marked my last commencement ceremony.  It was an honor to be the macebearer for the ceremony, which meant I led the faculty procession into and out of the hall.  I also hooded my last doctoral student.  This is a picture of me and my colleagues dressed in our faculty attire.

ANOTHER MILESTONE

I taught my last class 12/10/19 and attended my last meetings at work 12/11/19.  The students brought cupcakes and my faculty colleagues hosted a nice party with cake and goodies.  I will miss the special people at Lewis.  But I am also looking forward to this new chapter in our lives.  Thank you, everyone for your well wishes and a warm send-off!

SHARING WITH FAMILY

Continuing to "clean out" the house.  Glad to be able to give away items to family.  Our nephew, Jeff, and sister-in-law, Carol, were happy to get some garden and yard items.  Carol is a master gardener so she will do great things with these things.  Jeff also adjusted our whole house humidifier while he was here.  Thank you, Jeff!

GEORGE RETIRED!!

On September 27, 2019, George worked his last day at PACE.  They threw him a great retirement party.  Although he will miss seeing "the guys" he's happy not to have to get up at 2 AM and drive the 35 miles to Evanston anymore.

You bet he has plans for retirement!!!

Video Tour of the Bighorn 3270rs

Some of you have been asking, "What does your RV look like?"  The video below is a tour of an RV just like ours.  

Summertime Sorting

The summer has been devoted to going through things we have accumulated throughout the years and deciding what to do with them.  Here's a few photos to capture the process:

These items above we will take to Arkansas for storage until we decide to settle down in a "stick and bricks" house somewhere

These are items to give away to family 

The two photos above are things we are selling on virtual garage sale sites.  I had multiple offers for the cookware, so that went quickly.  Not so much the chess set.  😕

As you can see, we are making good progress!  

BUILDING PADS FOR STABILIZING JACKS
As we continue to prepare for going on the road, there are projects to do.  Today, George took 2 x 10 treated wooden lumber and built multiple sturdy pads for under our RV's stabilizing jacks.  These will prevent the jacks from sinking into soft soil.  They will also help our self-leveling system to self-level the RV when the ground is uneven.  The rope handles will come in handy for pulling the pads out from under the RV when we are breaking camp.  It's a good thing George is handy!

SUBSCRIBE FUNCTION IS WORKING!
I'm happy to report that the subscribe function is now working!  If you'd like to receive an email when I post something new, just enter your email into the "Subscribe via Email" box and click "Submit".  You'll see a message that says "Sorry, not a valid Captcha answer.  Please try again." Below that message, click on the "I'm not a robot" box, and then click on "Complete Subscription Request".  You'll receive a verification email from "Feedburner Email Subscriptions"; just click the link in that email to activate your subscription.  That's it!  (If you don't see the "Feedburner Email Subscription" email in your inbox, check your junk or spam email folder).

Thanks for subscribing.  I'm so happy that I can now easily share our RV journey with you!

This was our campsite in Mississippi, the first time we did a road trip with the Bighorn   

TEST
This is just a post so that I can test the "subscribe via email" function.  I hope I'm lucky ☘ and it works.

Subscribe Function Not Working
I tried to set up a function so that those who are interested could subscribe to this blog, however, I am having trouble getting it to work.  😩 I followed all the instruction in this link, but people who have tried to subscribe have not received a confirmation email from feedburner, like they are supposed to.  I am trying to research how to fix the problem, but have been unsuccessful so far.  If anyone knows how to fix this problem, please email or call me.  👋  Thanks.

PACKING AND PREPARING
We are in the process of deciding what to keep, what to donate, and what to toss.  Here's our donation pile from this week

 I thought it would be difficult to "purge" the things we have collected over the last 30 years that we lived in our current home.  However, I am feeling lighter and have a sense of liberation from all the "stuff".  I am keeping the things that have memories--photos, memorabilia that we collected on some of our trips--but the other things I am gladly selling on virtual garage sale sites, giving away to relatives and friends, donating, or tossing.  You can only keep so much in a 35 foot RV, so I keep our end goal in mind:  going on the road!

George is preparing a place to keep our RV when we spend some time at our place in Arkansas.  He cut down a tree (see video below) with our friend, Patrick, and laid some stone down during our last trip to Arkansas.  Patrick will install 50 amp service, and then we'll be set.

Here's the designated spot in Arkansas for our 5th wheel:

This is our view of Bull Shoals Lake from our property in Arkansas:

TRIAL RUN
So, my brother, Mike, bought a camper (Imagine 2500rl travel trailer) so he and Marilyn (his wife) and their doggies can enjoy some camping excursions.  He's a retired forester and they love the outdoors.  Well, he bought the trailer in the midwest, but he lives in Oregon!  I volunteered to travel with Mike as he towed his trailer from Dubuque Iowa to Beaverton Oregon.   This was a good "trial run" for me in preparation for becoming a full-time RVer.  Here's a few highlights from our trip:

Here's Mike & Marilyn's setup:

Looks good!

Our first night we could not find a campsite in a campground, due to flooding along the Mississippi.  So we opted to "camp" at the Walmart in a suburb of Omaha, Nebraska.  This was my 1st Walmart overnight jaunt, but I'm sure not my last.  It was hot!  With the help of battery-operated fans, it worked out just fine. 

Our Wonderful Walmart spot

The 2nd nite, we spent at the Cabela's headquarter's campground in Sydney, NE.  It was a nice, convenient full hook-up campground right next to a huge Cabela's store.  I got a 20% discount because I had a Cabela's credit card!  Good deal!  We had threats of bad storms that night, but only had rain (no hail or 60 mph winds that were predicted).  This was one of our neighbor's set-up...quite a rig, eh?

Everyone was taking pictures of this guy's rig!

The third night we stayed in a forest service campground in McKinnon, WY, Buckboard Crossing Campground.  Site 20 was a drive-through, just what we wanted.  High desert full of aromatic sage brush.  So peaceful.  Saw a magnificent sunset! 

Can you spot the pair of Ospreys perched in the tree?

"Big sky" country

The 4th night we stopped at a wooded setting in Glens Ferry, Idaho, Three Island Ferry State Park.  Idaho state parks give all seniors a discount, not just Idaho residents, which was very nice.  Most state parks only give senior discounts to their own residents.  

Mike's dog, Kare, relaxing at the campsite 

Did you know potato chip bags blow up when you move from lower to higher elevations?

We made it to Portland, Oregon by day 5.  

Recreational marijuana is not only sold there, but they even deliver it!

It was a successful trip all the way around.  Mike got his trailer home safe and sound.  He got great experience towing under some challenging conditions, as we hit torrential rains in Wyoming and high winds in both Wyoming and Oregon.  He learned how to use everything on his trailer, and everything worked well.  Yeah!  I learned how to call Walmart to ask permission to camp overnight, how to contact a ranger station to check on road conditions in forest service campgrounds, and that cell phone navigation worked well to search the internet and check out facilities along the way.  Can't wait till we can do this full-time!

  

Hi Everyone

I'm setting up a new blog, to capture the upcoming adventure in my life:  becoming a full-time RVer.  George and I are retiring the end of the year, getting rid of all our "stuff" including our stick and bricks house, and taking our two doggies, Licorice (black goldendoodle) and Taffy (blond terrier mix), and our 5th wheel RV on the road!  Here's our set-up:

35' Heartland Bighorn and 3500 Chevy Silverado Dually

This picture was taken in 2017 at Shawnee National Forest in Southern IL.  We stayed here for a night on our way home from a Mississippi camping trip with our friends Gail and Rich.  This will be our full-time home in a few months.  

Licorice & Taffy