July

July

Yesterday, we pulled our trailer out of storage and settled into Orangeland RV Park. We’ll be staying here for the next four weeks. I’ll write more on Orangeland in a subsequent post, but today I want to summarize what’s happened to us in the last month...

• Sunday, July 1 - we left Winston Woods campground in Ohio and headed south.
• July 3 - visited Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas. 
• July 4 - en route to Texas to establish residency, we got the call from Jill - she had been bleeding, was back in the hospital, and if things didn’t stabilize they were going to take the baby. Also on July 4, we suffered a hydraulic system failure in the trailer while setting up at Escapees RV Park I Livingston. This failure prevented us from disconnecting the truck from the trailer, effectively stranding us in the park.
• July 5 - James Theodore Muir Ronstadt born in California, approximately six weeks early.
• July 6 - got the hydraulic system repaired, which entailed simply resetting a hidden circuit breaker. Also established residency in Texas.
• July 7 - having established residency, we immediately hit the road for California!
• July 10 - arrived in CA. Dropped the trailer in storage - we had no reservations for anywhere to stay between July 10 and July 30. 
• July 13 - moved into the Newport Beach apartment of a teacher friends of Jill’s. This was fairly close to the hospital where James was still in the NICU. It was also right on the back bay of Newport Bay. We greatly enjoyed our time here, and also saved a ton of money.
• July 21 - Sweet Baby James came home from the hospital. Since then, he has been doing great - eating well and gaining weight, sleeping soundly at night - all the good stuff. 
• July 30 - moved out of Newport Beach, picked up the trailer and are now settled in. This will be the longest we’ve been in one place since we’ve moved.

As you can imagine, this last month has been a blur. Between retiring, selling the house, hitting the road, the premature birth of SBJ, problems with the trailer, and driving cross-country... we’ve barely had time to process all the changes. We’re still catching up on address changes, closing out accounts in Ohio, getting set up with Medicare, and getting started with my consulting work. We expect August to be a little calmer.

This is a panorama from the pool area at the Newport Beach apartment we stayed at...

Sweet Baby James Comes Home!

 Sweet Baby James Comes Home!

On Friday night, Jill got the call from SBJ’s pediatrician: he’s ready to come home! He’d been nursing strongly for a couple of days, and was gaining weight without the need for a feeding tube.

Saturday AM, we all trooped to the hospital - hopefully, for the last time - to pick him up. After the usual preparations and instructions, Joe and Jill gathered up their family.

Cathy and I made a grocery store run for them, she prepped some dinner, and then we bailed out, letting them have some family time together.

SBJ is pretty much just eating and sleeping right now. The hospital had him on a well-defined, three-hour feeding schedule. We’re hopeful that he keeps to that, at least for now. That should give Jill an adequate amount of sleep and down time.

SBJ, like Madeline before him, was born and cared for at the Kaiser Permanente hospital in Irvine. Kudos to everyone involved in his care: those people are top-notch. SBJ got absolutely world-class care his entire time there. 

14 Days

14 Days

Cathy and I were talking last night after dinner, nursing our adult beverages, when she reminded me that we’ve been on the road for two weeks - only two weeks, although a lot has happened to us.

Here’s a brief list of some of the stuff that’s happened:

• We drove from Cincinnati to San Clemente, California.
• We stopped for several days to establish legal residency in Texas.
• Our grandson was born.
• We have significantly, and not surprisingly, improved our skills and confidence in handling the trailer.
• We endured two significant mechanical breakdowns in the trailer, one moderate breakdown and numerous (and largely undocumented here) small breakdowns and problems.

Here’s some stuff we’v learned from the stuff that happened:

• The Beast Rocks! Our truck has performed flawlessly. Most of our trip was on interstates and we typically set our cruise control at 67 or 68. The Beast could just as effortlessly pulled the trailer at 77 or 78, up hill or down. 
• Heartland, the manufacturer of our trailer, has already ponied up nearly $600 in warranty repair costs, with much more on the way. They’ve been very gracious and cooperative, but none of this would be necessary if they had built the damn thing properly!
• Out of necessity, we have learned much more than is contained in the owner’s manuals about how a modern RV is put together. Anyone who thinks he or she can live in an RV without knowing as much as they can about it should be prepared to spend a LOT of money having someone else fix the things that break. 
• Our problems sink to insignificance in comparison to the birth of our grandson, and the apparently not uncommon health issues he has been going through as a preemie. The doctors say he is doing fine and is right where he should be for a 36-week baby. 

James Theodore Muir Ronstadt

James Theodore Muir Ronstadt

For those of you that don’t follow either of us on social media, this post is all about our grandson.

He was suffering from neonatal jaundice,, which necessitate a couple of sessions under the lights. He looks like he is auditioning for Devo.

There’s a little bit of a discussion on what we’re going to call this guy. Joe favors James. Jill, her sisters and her mother all want to call him Teddy. I kind of favor Teddy, too, but right now I really like calling him sweet baby James (SBJ).

The beautiful young lady in the picture with Cathy is Madeline, SBJ’s big sister. She adores her little brother. 

Another Quick Update

We’ve had a very busy time, these last few days. Here’s a synopsis...

Once again, we are having troubles with the slide outs on the trailer. The front slideout continues to give us problems. Leaving Wilcox, the only way we could get it retracted was to initiate a manual override, which involves me laying on my back in the front bay and pressing a little button on the control panel. Once that’s done, Cathy can hit the main control switch and retract the slide.

Just before we stopped for the night in Ehrenberg, AZ, we pulled in for fuel. The slide that houses the fireplace and TV in the living room had one side popped out maybe 4-6 inches. This is not supposed to happen. Since we were only a mile or so from the RV park, we headed on in. We were able to extend both of the troublesome slides, although the fireplace slide clearly is broken somehow. The slide that was popped out can be pushed in and out by hand. This is not possible for the other slides; the electric motor locks everything in place. It feels like the motor isn’t connected to the slide. The photo below shows what we saw:

After a nice evening in this park, right on the Colorado River, we packed up. Packing up entails the same manual override procedure to get the front slide in. The fireplace slide was pretty easy to simply push the malfunctioning side in while Cathy ran the other side in via the controller. After talking with the Heartland guy (again!) we were assured that we could wedge something in place to keep it from popppng out while on the road. 

Because of SBJ’s (sweet baby James) early arrival, we’ve changed our residency plans for the first part of our SoCal stay. We’re putting the trailer in storage for three weeks. We’re staying for a few days with Joe and Jill, then staying in the apartment belonging to a friend of Jill’s for a couple of weeks. 

We’ll get the trailer out of storage on July 30 and head to our previously reserved spot in an RV park in Orange, CA. We’re planning on being there the whole month of August. Once we’re there, we will engage a mobile RV repair service to get the trailer repaired properly. Despite calls all over SoCal find a repair place that could take it sooner, we were not successful.

SBJ is doing well, getting stronger every day. He’s still looking at being in the NICU for several more days at least, though. 

Just a Quick Update...

For the last two days we have been in what I think of as vacation mode. All you non-retired types know what this is like: up at dawn, drive all day and turn around and do it again the next day. This is NOT what we signed up for, but needs must when the devil drives.

Yesterday we drove from Livingston, Texas (an hour or so northeast of Houston) to Fort Stockton, TX. That’s right at 570 miles, which is a full day pulling a big trailer. Fort Stockton is still about 250 miles from El Paso, which is on the New Mexico border. Texas is an absolutely enormous state.

Fort Stockton is a nice enough little city. There’s quite a bit going on here. Big Bend National Park is less than two hours away. It looks like Carlsbad NP is maybe four hours away. This might be a good stopping point when we get back to Texas.

Today we drove from Fort Stockton to Wilcox, Arizona, which is about 470 miles. In doing so, we crossed not one but two time zones. Largely because of that, we pulled into our RV park at 2:20PM, which has given us a nice leisurely afternoon. 

The real problem with vacation mode, with which we are intimately familiar, is that it’s not retirement mode. I mentioned Fort Stockton; just there, I saw, in addition to the two National Parks not  terribly far away, there was a state park nearby, historic Fort Stockton, and all kinds of cool stuff for retired people to stick their noses into. 

In the past 1000 miles, in addition to the Fort Stockton attractions that I mentioned, I saw all kinds of attractions and distractions that threatened to draw us away. If it wasn’t for needing to be in California to attend to sweet baby James and the family... I’d be opting for retirement mode!

California, Here We Come!

Lots has happened today. The repair guy showed up on time, and managed to fix our hydraulic system in maybe 15 minutes total time!

It turns out that there’s an 80 amp breaker located in the front bay. It is well hidden. There’s no bright yellow tag that says “In case of complete hydraulic system failure make sure that I have not tripped1’ Furthermore, there is NOTHING in the manual along those lines either.

You can simply skip the next paragraph if you want to avoid a rant from a budding curmudgeon.

When you buy an expensive RV (or even a cheap one) you get an orientation by a guy at the RV dealer. Our guy seemed to know what he was talking about and spent maybe 45 minutes with us. It wasn’t enough - and we’ve owned two travel trailers before this. I can’t imagine a rookie going through that. Then, they hand you a big envelope stuffed full of manuals from the various subassembly vendors. An RV like ours contains bits and pieces from over a dozen different vendors. None of these guys give a damn about writing a decent manual. There is a lot of info about installation, a little bit about operation, but almost nothing about maintenance and troubleshooting. There’s got to be a better way for these guys to handle all this.

Supposedly, the “repair” will be handled under warranty by the manufacturer, Heartland. We ‘ll see. The good news is that we are officially Texans!. After the service guy left, we had our vehicles inspected and registered, got driver’s licenses, registered to vote, and even got Polk county library cards! So, first thing in the AM we are headed to California to see sweet baby James1

Of Babies and Breakdowns

A lot has happened since our last post. On July 4, we left Hot Springs and headed to Escapees RV Park in Livingston, TX. While driving through the wilds of east Texas on US 59, we got a call from our pregnant daughter Jill. She was technically due with her second child, our first grandson, on August 7. However, she'd been in and out of the hospital with bleeding and her doctors had already scheduled a C-section on July 18.

Jill had started bleeding again and having contractions. The doctors considered delivering the baby on the fourth, but decided to wait as the bleeding and contractions stopped.

Jill started bleeding again on the morning of the fifth, and the doctors correctly decided now was the time. Yesterday morning, our grandson, James Theodore Muir Ronstadt, was born. He is a beautiful baby. For being over a month premature, he's good-sized, at six pounds, four ounces and 19-3/4" long.

He was having a little trouble breathing, possibly because of the early delivery. They will be keeping him in the neonatal ICU (NICU) for a few days, running some procedures purely as a precaution. Jill is doing fine. Madeline is staying with friends, and can't wait to see her little brother.

On a far less important note is the subject of breakdowns. We used to own a boat, and every boater knows that, sooner or later, the boat will suffer a breakdown. Well, the same thing applies to RVs.  I'm using the word "breakdown" to mean a mechanical event that renders your vehicle, boat or RV, incapable of movement or function. I'm not talking about the nagging little repairs that are a constant fact of life for either a boat or an RV (or a house, for that matter). 

We were on the road when we heard about Jill, but decided we would stay here and finish our business. We had no idea when the baby would be born, and also expected that he would likely be in the hospital for some time. 

So, we pulled into the RV park and proceeded to set up. Our trailer has a total of six slideouts, three electrical and three run by a hydraulic pump. The same hydraulic system runs the jacks that lift the trailer off the truck, and level and support it. 

During setup, Cathy ran the three hydraulic slideouts out, whereupon the system quit on us. We can't move the jacks at all, nor the slideouts. Attempting to do so gets us a rather ominous "CLUNK" from the front bay where the equipment is.

So, we are literally stuck. We can't move the trailer with the slides extended, nor can we remove it from the truck. We managed to get a repair guy to come out today... he's due here any minute... so hopefully we will get this repaired, finish our business here and hit the road for California. 

Update - July 3

We’ve been busy, on the road for the last two days. On Sunday, we drove from Cincinnati to Hurricane Mills, TN. We actually stayed at the Loretta Lynn RV Park. There’s a big complex here, all apparently on the site of her ranch. I have no idea if she still lives here. We pulled in late afternoon and out the next morning.

On Monday, we drive from TN to Hot Springs, Arkansas. We’re staying at a lovely little RV park a few miles outside of town.

Today, we hit Hot Springs National Park. If you’re thinking “National Park” like maybe Yellowstone or Yosemite or Great Smoky Mountains...this isn’t one of those. The NP and the town coexist. The NP Visitor Center is located in one of the turn-of-the century (20th century) bath houses that line what’s called Bath House Row. Wandering the Row was an interesting glimpse into early 20th century thinking on the healing power of plopping oneself into hot salty water. Even today, scattered throughout town are numerous fountains where one can simply walk up and fill jugs with hot spring water. Every fountain we saw had more than one person present, all of them filling up multiple gallon jugs of water... I wonder why.

Had some beers at the Superior Bath House, at one end of Bath House Row. Nice place, and very good beers.

Truck Stops

I’ve driven cross-country a number of times, several of them pulling a trailer. I’ve been in my share of truck stops - Love’s, Pilot, and Petro are all common names on the interstates of America. I have, however, only glanced at the backside of these places - where the giant trucks lurk.

Well, when you’re pulling a 40’ long trailer with a diesel-fueled truck, you don’t have a lot of choices but to join the big boys in the back lot. My pickup truck is huge, and the trailer is one of the bigger ones around, but our rig is dwarfed by just about every semi in the back lot.

Being absolute rookies at this, pulling into a truck stop the first time is like visiting another world. These truck stops have 10 or 15 islands to fill up at. The first time we did this, each island had two or three trucks in line. We (sort of) lucked out and pulled in behind another RV; even the biggest RV’s have tiny fuel tanks compared to a semi.

When you pull up to the pump, the first order of business is to walk the 50 or 100 yards to the office; there’s no pay-at-the pump option here. When you walk up, you pass a seemingly endless row of these giant beasts, all left running. Since diesel fuel is not very volatile compared to gasoline, and a Diesel engine idling uses very little fuel, everyone simply leaves there engine running. So you walk by, go to the office to leave your credit card.

They ask you your truck number - “Huh?” - fortunately, I remembered my license number. Then, “What company do you work for?” After another “Huh?”, I replied, rather wittily, I thought, “Retired!” That seemed to work.

Returning to the truck and pumping was quick. The hoses and nozzles used here are maybe 50% larger in diameter than at the local Shell station. Do the math: that means they have over twice the volume capacity. I can state with certainty that the Pilot station that I first filled up at delivered 21 gallons of diesel in less than a minute!

Courtesy demands that you pull out from the pumps to go back inside and get your receipt. There’s even a line on the pavement to tell you where to pull up to.

The drivers? Overall, I'm sure they're simply a microcosm of America. I have a lot of respect for them: long hours, increasing government regulations, away from their families for long periods of time, dealing with idiot drivers on a daily basis - No Thanks! What you see at a truck stop, though, is maybe not so noble a picture: picture the Wal-Mart in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

 Welcome to Big Country Livin', our blog. We are just setting this up, so we'll be adding more info and prettying up the blog as time goes on.

Who are we? Rick and Cathy Shook. We just retired, sold our home in Liberty Township Ohio, and hit the road in our new Big Country 3965DSS - that's the big white thing in the photo above. It's being towed by The Beast, our 2017 Ford F-350 truck.

We've been through a whirlwind of events just in the past week: we've sold our house, packed just about everything that we still own into the trailer, I (Rick) retired from work and, just this morning, left Ohio.

We're currently somewhere in the wilds of Tennessee. We're spending the night at Loretta Lynn's RV Campground in Hurricane Mills, TN. Tomorrow, we'll be in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Also tomorrow: Cathy's 65th birthday!