It Isn't All Peaches and Cream Part 6

We have come a long way together on this convoluted look at our 2014 RVing season. We come now to the Fall and we are at the end of September. We annually go to a quilt show outside Philadelphia every year and stay over at our favorite campground in Lancaster. This trip was planned for awhile and the campground reservations had been made for Thursday and Friday when we were at the campground in August. We plan this trip to be at the quilt show on Thursday and have Friday for one of our favorite spots - Green Dragon Farmers Market open only on Fridays.  As one of my readers pointed out very recently - as Rosanna Rosanadana once said - "Its always something!" Well, things happen and things were happening.

Our reenacting unit was contacted by a special historic site that was asking us to come and do an encampment. The date was the Sunday of the weekend we would be in Pennsylvania. As Commander of the unit I am not really able not to be there for this type of event - and even though we would be back for Sunday, Meryl and I spend the day before an event preparing for what will be needed the next day. Well, I started making arrangements with other members to take on the tasks that we should have been doing. Things were set - we would be exhausted to getting to this event the next day but I alerted everyone that we would be there - but later than the start. Fine - obstacle averted.

We get to the week of the trip. The weather for this trip appears to be actually cooperating and we are getting ready to go - and we get a phone call. The wife of a good friend has passed away. The funeral would be Thursday. No question - we were going to a funeral rather than leaving on this trip. A fast call to the campground and we delay arrival until Friday and let them know that our two day stay is now one day. This campground has always been great with us in allowing us to cancel or make last minute changes to our reservations. No problem at the campground. We would go to the quilt show on Friday and stay at the campground that night. Saturday we would spend the day in Lancaster, have dinner and head back at night - not too late.

I want to say that this trip is rather uneventful but there are is a minor and a good major event that take place on this trip. We knew the site that we would have in the campground. What we were not aware of was that in the site we were in we were facing a large street lamp that lights the central intersection of the campground. This should be no problem but it stays on all night and the three roof windows in the front of the Roadtrek faced this very bright light. The covers that came with my Roadtrek to block out these windows do not fit snug to the edges. The center window - the largest - has a cover that warped our first year in the Roadtrek still in the window as the August hot sun rose in the morning and heated the window and the composite plastic cover and warped it like a "U". I have been looking to eliminate these windows in some manner for some time. If pointed toward the sunrise, the morning sun comes in around the edges of the covers and streams in waking us way before two "night" people want to wake up. I had tried before this trip to flatten this cover out - clamping it between two boards and heating it with a heat gun. It actually looked flat when it came out and cooled but when placed on the window it went back to its "U" shape. I brought along some foam and my plan was to stuff strips of it around the edges of the covers - sealing the edges.  A while back I made Reflectix covers for these windows - (I will not go into what Reflectix is now as that is an article all on its own) and while it would seem that these covers should work as I made them larger than the windows, they are too flexible and don't sit close enough to not allow the light to still stream in around the loose edges. I have even tried to combine the Reflectix covers with the original plastic ones but this is too thick to fit under the turn clips that hold the covers in place. It turned out that this is the same problem with my idea of putting foam around the edges. No, we had the light from the street lamp at night and the sun streaming through in the morning.

Now one major good thing occurred on the day we were leaving. This was the day that we actually saw the black tank sensor on the monitor panel show empty. A first! Not even on the day we took delivery did the tank show empty! This story appears in the article, "For the First Time...". This was a reason to cheer and it got a big "Huzzah!" out of me when I saw it. As you will see in the article about this linked, it was a short lived experience.

Well, we got stuck in traffic coming home - no bangs, but that lingering mysterious vibration was still evident and as I said in the last article in this series, it seems to be the third seat - but I still have not come up without a way to secure that. And then, of course, there is the wobbling that seems to be coming from outside and mysteriously comes and goes with no predictability. The fire extinguisher was secure in its foam bed and that noise (hopefully) is a thing of the past. We got home a little later than we would have liked to and we got to the event the next morning at Noon which was nicely underway without us thanks to the wonderful group of men, women, and children in our unit. That afternoon we had some nice first person interactions with visitors and with other members - bringing history to life and creating a time travel experience for those who came to see us.

I had thought that this would be the last article in this series, but once I start writing, things get longer than I start out anticipating - so one more time. And the "S" word is in the weather again - (this is being written about six days before it will be on the site) go figure end of March and there is "S" in the forecast ("S" starts a four letter word - your choice, no difference), so who knows when I will be able to de-winterize and actually pull the Roadtrek out of the drive way so... Since 7 has been a good number for me -

End of Part 6

PART 7 (and that really "should be" the last part) NEXT.