Welcome to Texas

We made it through Louisiana (that’s a BIG state) and are now hanging out in Canton Texas. It’s 52 degrees and cloudy. We are about an hour east of Dallas and expect to make it there tomorrow (or maybe tonight?)


Tooling along on rte 49 we came upon this trucker… or he came upon us, I forget. We were both going about the same speed… which is really annoying when you’re using cruise control and come up on slower traffic.
   

According to the writing on his truck, his name was Greg. He was hauling cows and he was MOOOO-ving. He was running around 75-80mph depending on the terrain. Most big rigs don’t seem to ever go over 70mph.
 


Tigger and I tired of him “up in our grill” so we put the pedal to the metal and left him in the dust. CYA Greg! Yeah it gets boring on the road. LOL!



I was soon amusing myself by “getting Tiggers nose”. He likes it, I think.


Dallas, here we come!



 


At a gas stop, I saw this nice 4wd Sportsmobile camper van. At least I think it’s an actual Sportsmobile? These things are mega expensive and pretty small as far as RVs go. But, they do have a certain macho, apocalyptic, bad-ass appeal. They’re like a Volkswagen Westfalia Syncro on steroids!




Tigger tried to make some new friends but he couldn’t figure out where all the yipping was coming from. Evidently, he doesn’t know how to look up?



Here’s some random "Views from the road"…

That is a single tire on the back of the trailer! I wonder what it fits?

Lots of wood

A big pig on the roof of a BBQ

A big yacht

A tunnel somewhere in Louisiana

This is for the grandkids looking at the atlas with grammy B. See if you can figure out where we were just by reading this sign. Good luck! You can click the picture to make it bigger.

TIGGER SAYS… “Are we there yet?”

Black Friday, a Westfalia & 2011 nearly over

A few years ago, I joined Herman in standing in line at Staples for 6 hours in the freezing cold until they finally opened in the wee hours on the morning. We were about 30th in line which equates to being too far from the front of the line for any of the really good door buster coupons to filter back to us. The store employees have X amount of each door buster to sell. They have an equal amount of coupons for those items. They start at the front of the line asking each person if they want the LCD TV, the laptop computer, the Xbox or whatever they're selling that year. Usually the first people in line scarf up all the good coupons and only the lame item coupons filter back to the 20-40th people in line. It really does pay to be one of the 1st 10 people in line. You might as well stay home otherwise.

We did get a coupon for a nice magellan GPS for $99. That was Moms Christmas present that year! See what I do for you ma... stand in the cold, in line for 6 hours just to get your present. LOL!

I will say that doing black Friday for "real" (like the crazies we see on the news) was kind of interesting and adventurous but overall, the whole standing in line for hours in the cold "thing" isn't for me.

I am really glad to see more and more retailers pandering to those of us who'd rather sit in our warm homes and buy online. Herman awoke at 3AM (midnight PST) last night and scored a sweet deal on a laptop from microsoft.com. It's an Pentium i5 processor, 500gb hardrive, 4mb ram, camera ect etc etc. for $499. I was snoring away, snug as a bug in a rug. That was the extent ouf our black friday buying spree.

Wait... we did stop by PetsMart and get Tigger some treats and a squeaky Kong toy. He went berserk playing with it for hours. He has some super bite force!

The "Kong" brand toys are the only dog toys that will hold up to Tiggers "play".

We venured out to Panera for lunch (the turkey bravo on tomatoe basil bread is killer!) and then went to look at a potential "flip"... an '85 VW Westfalia. The VW turned out to be fairly nice and rust free on the outside but pretty worn on the interior. It was the less valuable "weekender" (no stove, fridge or LP), not the full camper. It did have a couple fairly rare options... an automatic transmission and A/C. But still, there was definitely no meat left on the bone after the sellers asking price of $5000. Notice the very uncool Dodge pick up truck wheel covers someone stuck on the Westy?! Who could do that to a westy?!


Not bad for being 27 years old

 And, if you must know... we got delivery Chinese for dinner.

We eat out waaaaay to often! If I kept track of how much money we spent every month on eating out take out or delivery food... it would probably amaze us. We could be riding around in a new 45 foot diesel pusher RV if we ate ramen noodles and peanut butter snadwiches!

That'll be a blog topic for another day I guess.

G'night all!

Our First RV

My 1st RV was actually a 1973 VW Westfalia back when I was a teenager in Maine. I had a lot of fun in that rig. I sold it in the mid 1980's to a guy named Sven Nordstrom (I still remember this strangers name?!) I had to chase him for months for the agreed upon payments (that's probably why I remember him). A selling lesson I learned early in life... good intentions and promises don't pay the bills.

Mine was identical to this one. Same color even.

I forgot about RVing for the next 25 years. Time sure does fly.

In the spring of 2010 I was checking Craigslist ads for bargains (like I do everyday) and spotted a listing for a 1996 Rialta camper with 30k miles for $9000. I didn't even know what a Rialta was. Some quick googling told me it was a cool little RV with a cult like following and a value much higher than the $9000 asking price.

It turned out that the seller was a lawyer settling an estate so he wanted to dispose of the RV ASAP. He told me that he had people calling from all over the country wanting to buy the Rialta. Luckily, I was the only local caller & we happened to have the cash on hand. The planets aligned. He agreed to let us see it before he made any other sale plans. I made an appointment to check it out the next weekend.

This is what it looked like when we arrived. You're probably thinking... "that looks pretty good". It's hard to photograph the years of built up grime on this RV or the smell of the inside. The poor RV had sat outside and unused for years. It was filthy outside and damp inside. The mice and squirrels were using it as their home.

There was a big surprise awaiting us. The Lawyer had mistakenly advertised the 14 year old RV as having 30k miles but upon closer inspection, it actually had just 20,085 miles!

Crazy low mileage!

We made the deal to purchase the Rialta for $9600. The price went up $600 because of all the people interested. It was still a bargain so we didn't mind paying a little more.

I started cleaning it.

The comfy cab

Here's a clean spot I made on the front bumper.



If you've owned a boat or RV you know about the dreaded "black streaks". The exterior of this Rilata was one gigantic black streak! This picture shows the difference between the polished side and the untouched side.



A clean spot on the roof.

It took about 2 weeks of elbow grease to get the interior and exterior looking and smelling like new again. It was worth all the effort. I introduced Herman to RVing that summer. We spent more time together and had more fun than we had in years. It was great! If your relationship is lacking "spice", getting stale or you're slowly growing apart after many years... buy an RV! It will bring you closer together and you'll have a blast!

The rialta is so small and easy to drive that we used it for running errands too. It's so nice to have a fridge, a kitchen, a bathroom and a bed with you at all times. I can't begin to describe how handy that is. RV'ers know the convience I speak of.

Here it is all cleaned up and ready for use.



A cool little RV that drove very much like a small car or minivan.
 It was 21.5 feet long and had a 5 cylinder VW gas engine.

Plugged into shore power charging the 2 coach batteries.



Both front seats swiveled rearward. The 2 center seats fold flat and turn into a large, fairly comfortable bed. It is a very well designed little RV.

 

The inside of our 1996 Rialta



Small sink and 2 burner stove



It turned out to be a bit too small inside for us. I am 5' 11" tall and found myself bumping my head every time I moved inside. It was a good, reasonably priced first RV though. We sold it last fall to a nice retired couple from NY. They drove it to Alaska and back.

We liked RVing so much that we purched our Winnebago View this spring. It's a lot taller and a bit wider inside. Plus, it's 3 feet longer. We like it a lot but I can see us in a bigger class A at some point in the future.