What I don’t know about drinking water can hurt me

We lived many years in Charlotte, NC, and benefited from a well-run municipal potable water treatment and distribution system. Some folks turn up their noses at muni water supplies and prefer bottled water or well water, perhaps without investigating the difference in qualities.

Public water systems maintain stringent monitoring, process controls, and reporting to meet or exceed mandatory EPA guidelines (FDA standards for bottled water are far different from EPA’s tap water standards, according to NRDC). There are, of course, always exceptions but, given a highly regulated water source and an essentially unregulated one, we’ll generally stick with the EPA-regulated water source.

Full-timers may be less familiar with local water supplies than home owners and sometimes this can matter significantly. Have you ever considered asking the local tap water supplier about the water quality? Shouldn’t you know if the park is under a boil-water condition, or “the water is okay but no one drinks it”? Wouldn’t you like to know what you’re drinking?

We’ve started asking about the water source and quality if we’re going to connect to, or fill from, a park’s supply. You may get a funny reaction from the park’s office staff (even if they are the manager). Sometimes they’ll say, “Hmm, I hadn’t thought about it, I’ll find out.” We’ve been told, it comes from the adjacent housing subdivision and is whatever they get.”

And we learned at one park, “The well water is untreated.” We needed to fill our potable water tank, but didn’t want to store untreated water in it. Cleaning the interior of a water storage tank is much more difficult than keeping it clean. Or do you believe what you don’t know won’t hurt you? You can’t see in the tank, and the gradu isn’t showing up in your ice trays so everything is okay. Wrong.

How do we maintain our RV’s potable water system? We provide the following not as a prescription for your use, nor as a superlative to anyone else’s methods. The following is what we have done for the past five years. We wish we could show you a picture of the inside of our tank (or maybe we shouldn’t be looking in there anyway).

> We keep our fresh water tank full as much as we reasonably can. We can treat what is under the water line, we cannot treat above the water line. Air space above the water line is space for growing stuff on the tank walls. Keep the tank full most of the time.

> We change the fresh water on a regular basis, even if we haven’t used it. Water treatment is our friend (many people will argue this, but this is about us) and inhibits organic growth in our fresh water tank. Chlorine treatment doesn’t persist in stored water.

> We don’t put untreated water into our potable water tank. If the park offers only untreated water then we’ll treat it during the tank filling (more on this later). We don’t have a nifty siphon pickup attachment for our fresh water (white) hose. Instead we use a piece of NSF grade clear tubing two feet long to siphon from a one quart container of the bleach and water solution. We mix the solution following guidelines for emergency treatment of drinking water from EPA.

We found a helpful link to system cleaning procedures as well as normal chlorination here. We also have used guidelines from an EPA document, emergency disinfection drinking water. The EPA guidelines are similar to what Jim followed in treating institutional potable storage tanks in his previous lifetime.

An interesting side note comes from monitoring our drinking water pitcher. This pitcher is clear plastic and sits upon our counter-top. The pitcher holds almost a gallon of drinking water and receives artificial light or indirect sunlight all day. The pitcher has an integral filter cartridge. And, within three to four weeks, we start seeing green film in the pitcher.

The filter’s advertisements claim, “Lowering levels of sediment and chlorine–evident to the nose and mouth–enhance water taste while health concerns are addressed by reducing copper, mercury, and up to 98% of lead commonly found in tap water” (Amazon ad). Relevant in this discussion is the reduction of chlorine in the water. No algae inhibitors, so here grows the stuff! We thoroughly wash our pitcher every three or four weeks when we notice visible green in the bottom of the pitcher. Can you wash your RV’s fresh water tank so easily, and how do you know when to do so?

We mentioned earlier, we cannot readily see inside our fresh water storage tank and aren’t sure we really want to. [I think I've seen some pictures of old potable water tanks removed from RVs -- not a pretty site. We couldn't find them to attach for this article.] We do want to maintain our fresh water tank in a reasonable manner and believe we can do this by following three simple guidelines.

> We keep our fresh water tank full as often as we reasonably can.

> We change the fresh water on a regular basis (drain and refill at 3-4 week intervals).

> We don’t put untreated water into our potable water tank (if the source is untreated, we’ll treat the water while filling our tank).

Our RV has an inlet water sediment filter with a large cartridge in a plastic canister. The whole house water filter keeps rocks and other debris from clogging our valves and faucets. We mentioned above we also use a Brita water filter for our drinking water. We do not use bottled water and don’t buy water (RO or other processes).

Whenever we stay in an area for a few days we become accustomed to the local water “flavor”. Filtered through our counter-top pitcher, the water makes good tea and is fine in our re-usable water bottles. Why incur additional costs (and increases of disposable plastics to waste dumps) of bottled water? Or dumping quarters or dollars in the RO water dispensers?

We believe we are providing safe and sufficient quality water for our uses with the above steps. This has worked for us. What do you do?

Jim and Debbie
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©2007-2010 Dreamstreamr

Wild Boar Street Party and a day at the beach

We, and almost 100 of our neighbors, spent an afternoon chowing down on wild boar and a few dozen other delectable dishes. This was a potluck extraordinaire, done in true potLUCK style. The featured attraction was wild boar killed locally last week by a couple of our neighbors.

Some Southern boys cooked it and the hosts were kind enough to invite our street and the several adjacent ones, as well. Result? The biggest street party we’ve ever seen. The adherence to potluck values produced a fantastic variety of food.

We had wild boar, great pork chops, eight or ten kinds of potatoes, lots of beans, several salads, and more desserts than we could eat. This was a fantastic potluck and a nice time to get everybody outside. How was the bbq’d boar? Almost as good as BBQ from Lexington, NC!

Today we spent a day at the beach. The morning was for a shopping mall experience, something we cannot do in Okeechobee. Locally we have stores for the necessities, like groceries, hardware, building supplies, and some clothing places. Oh, and a LOT of fishing tackle.

What else could we want? You cannot buy bicycle parts locally. Except for Wal-Mart, you cannot buy tennis balls locally. And there isn’t much shopping for granddaughter birthday presents. So we had fun doing what we so rarely need do, spending a few hours at a big mall.

Our reward was the afternoon at Jensen Beach on Florida’s Atlantic Coast. Weather was nice but not very solar. Breezes were light, cloud cover was thorough, and the temperature was just below 80F. We were warm without getting hot, and enjoyed reading, watching and listening to the surf, and relaxing with sand between our toes.

A gray day at the beach is better than a good day anywhere else. We loved having a day out. And, upon our return we find our silver home has been under the very watchful eye of this hawk. Even with his back to our home, he had his sharp eyes on everything.

Jim and Debbie
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©2007-2010 Dreamstreamr

Top Ten Advantages of Living in a Travel Trailer

Our life, living in a home one-half the size of their carports, is not well understood by our families. Our home is less than 200 square feet. We don’t have a garage, a basement, or an attic. Folks in big houses might not really notice the trappings of big spaces with hiding places above, below, beside, and inside.

How much time do you spend straightening the garage? Frank Lloyd Wright eschewed garages in many of his house designs. Wright preferred carports because they would avoid the capture of all that clutter. You know, once it gets away from you, the garage just can’t be recovered.

You’ve avoided going up to straighten the attic how many times? It’s too cold, it’s too hot, you have four gazillion things more important to do, you aren’t missing anything up there, and visitors almost never see it anyway.

What’s really in the back of the big downstairs coat closet? You know, the mysterious and unknown territory under the coats, and the tablecloths on those heavy-duty hangers, behind the vacuum cleaner and the boots? Who will ever know until you are forced to search even this hidden place?

In many markets across the United States housing was a sure investment. In some U.S. markets this might still be true, although odds makers probably would offer less than certain odds on it. A house is to have and to hold and to maintain and to clean and to keep organized and to repair and what else? It’s a lot of work, isn’t a certain investment, and might not be all it’s cooked up to be.

Anyone who full-timed in an RV knows there are many advantages to living in a compact and mobile space. We aren’t bringing up any news for full-timers. Many other people don’t know anything about qualities of rolling homes. And, if David Letterman runs out of other top ten list things, we thought he might want to use this list:

Top Ten Advantages of Living in a Travel Trailer:
1. You just can’t lose anything for long in less than 200 square feet
2. If the weather is bad, you can move
3. If the neighborhood is noisy, you can move
4. No painting, ever!
5. No leaves to rake or shrubs to trim, or gutters to clean
6. Power outage, city water system down? No problem in a travel trailer
7. You’re never far from home
8. Window washing or vacuuming or mopping take less than 1/2 hour
9. Upstairs bathrooms sewage never backs into the downstairs bathtub or shower
10. Our property tax bill goes down every year

We didn’t even get around to mentioning the most obvious — we can, and do, move our house about the states and provinces of North America. And we’re loving doing this in our 25′ Airstream travel trailer.

Jim and Debbie
locate us here
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©2010 Dreamstreamr

Do we really need this techie stuff?

One of our readers (a newbie Airstreamer) asked a few interesting questions of us this week. We thought the answers might interest others too, and maybe even generate a comment or two. So (with their permission) we’re putting the questions and answers in this blog.

The first question is,

Do we need to buy and use a SURGE PROTECTOR?

o Need/don’t need? We aren’t considering the outlet strip “surge protectors” you can buy at office supply stores. We’re talking about the heavy duty transformers with sophisticated electronics to handle your RV’s 30amp or 50amp power and smooth out the high and low voltage excursions. We do NOT use this.

You must make your own decision here. Most parks have pretty good power, only one park in the past couple of years had power that varied a lot. But you can over-protect on one thing and never know what will get you. Electrical surge protection seems to be one of those “insurance” things. Some people swear by it but majority of people we encounter don’t seem to need it.

o Any recommended ones? We cannot recommend one, never used one, never plan to. Every month or two we’ll stay in a park which prohibits the use of the large surge suppressors. We do have a couple of friends who are readers of our blog, both are super smart engineers who airstream. We’ll ask them, and we welcome any readers comments on this issue.

The next question is, Do we need a VOLT METER?

o Need/don’t need? Yes, you need this in at least two different versions plus one variant. It is important to check, at least initially and then periodically, the 120 v.a.c. level in your trailer while in a campground. If the indicated voltage varies more than 10 percent plus or minus from the 120 volts, then we unplug from park power and run on batteries only. How do you know the park’s electrical power isn’t reasonably steady if you don’t periodically check a volt meter? More on this below.

We also have a small twelve volt meter to indicate battery voltage. This one plugs into one of the RV’s 12vdc accessory outlets and digitally displays voltage to nearest 1/10 volt (e.g., 12.3, or 13.8). It also has green, yellow, red light to indicate the range of voltage at a glance. Jim likes to fret about our battery voltage after a day of dry-camping, and the 12vdc meter helps.

Jim can watch the battery creep down, gradually, from 12.6 to 12.2 and below. Makes him really nervous and want to get the candles out. We learned though, while spending ten days dry camping in cold weather in Ketchum, Idaho, the batteries will do just fine overnight even from 12.2 at bedtime. The furnace ran a couple of times and the batteries pulled it just fine. In the morning we were still at 12.2vdc. This is real handy — not the end-all but nice to have.

But, most important of all is the IDEAL-Sperry 61-500 (or equivalent) polarity tester. You must use this when you connect park power to your trailer before either of you contact the trailer’s metal parts. This little polarity tester tells if the park’s power is wired properly.

Electrical wiring hazards in your RV (and in your home) can include absent connection to “ground”, or the hot and neutral wires may be reversed, or the connection to neutral may be open. Any of these hazards can be a shock hazard danger to you and a physical hazard to your trailer’s electronics. These little polarity testers cost between $8 and $15.

o Any recommended ones? We use a square tan jobbie for monitoring 120vdc. It plugs straight into any wall outlet, has approx a 2″ X 2″ clear view window. It has absolutely no brand marking on it whatsover. We purchased it from Camping World five years ago for a little less than $20, I think.

o Or criteria to look for in one? The 120 vac meter is an analog meter, has green and red display area to indicate acceptable (green) and bad (red) voltage conditions. This is so simple and is hard to beat. For 12 vdc, one alternative is an electronic smart meter to read multiple battery aspects and perhaps keep some info in memory. We haven’t gone this route yet and don’t know if we will. It isn’t anything we’ve needed. Some solar charging systems include pretty neat metering capability and we might find our way to one of these meters someday.

The last question for today is, What about a WATER PRESSURE REGULATOR for the trailer?

o Need/don’t need? We haven’t seen any reason to add a second pressure regulator for our trailer. Your Airstream has a water pressure regulator built in, at the potable water inlet, recessed into the trailer’s exterior wall. Ours has not given a minute’s trouble in four years. Some people wear suspenders and belt.

Some people contend (and some parks suggest) it is important to place a pressure regulator between the park’s hydrant and the RV’s water hose, to protect the water hose from the park’s extremely high pressure. Jim worked in a large RV campground in Kissimmee, Florida, almost forty years ago. Folks would spend all day at Disney World or Sea Land or wherever. When they returned they would find their water hose had burst from the sunlight softening the vinyl water hose and also creating high pressure.

That park recommended folks turn off their campsite water hydrant when they left for the day. Sometimes we still turn ours off for the day, but usually we leave it on. Two summers ago we were staying a very very hot week in Bakersfield, California. Spent days visiting a dear friend in the hospital. Returned late afternoon to find the hose had melted down completely. Oh, it wasn’t the water hose, it was the other hose — you know, the big one.

Yeah, it was a big one alright. We always always leave our black drain valve closed when not dumping (and very rarely leave the grey one open but sometimes forget because we walk away while it takes its five minutes to empty). Our sewer hose was empty and dry, and the direct sunlight and 106F degrees air temperature was just too much for the vinyl on a very good quality hose. Camping World very readily replaced it with a free one, same hose. We’ve used it over 18 months since without incident. Who knows just what happened that hot August day in Bakersfield, but it was a sight!

o Any recommended ones? We don’t use one, and don’t think it is necessary for your Airstream trailer. Occasionally we’ll find a park, like Yellowstone NPS, with high (80 psi?) water pressure. We tried with, and without, a pressure regulator to protect the hose. Just don’t need to worry with today’s high quality braided white water hoses.

We generally find the water pressure is lower than we want in our trailer. In some parks the water pressure is so poor our in-trailer showers were awful. Solution? You can, as long as you have water in your potable tank, run your pump during the shower. Gives great pressure. Even better, though, is to replace your RV’s shower head with an Oxygenics BodySpa hand held unit.

We did this and it is among our top ten improvements. No matter the water pressure, we get a nice spray anytime, yet still we’re conserving water. This is especially great when we’re boondocking.

You can probably find someone who will attest we are completely off base on this regulator issue, as well as the voltage regulation issue. Every group of five RVers seems to have one who has had every imaginable disaster — what we used to call “snake-bit”. We’ve met a couple such folks at the Airstream factory in Jackson Center, Ohio. Of course, this is the place you’ll meet people having problems with their Airstream, right?

A few of these folks have had such terrible experiences it’s a wonder some of them keep RVing at all. Some of them are convinced it is just an Airstream problem, and they’re getting their’s fixed to sell it and
switch to another brand. Reminds us of the lemon cars or haunted houses we’ve luckily avoided so far. We wish them all the luck, and we are very happy we’ve been so fortunate.

o Or criteria to look for in one? Just don’t worry about adding the water pressure unless you know you’re constantly going to be in very high (greater than 80 psi) potable water pressure situations.

CAVEAT: We are speaking from our first-hand experience with approx 1,000 nights between this Airstream (2005 CCD 25) and our previous 2005 Airstream (CCD 22). And we get a little help and a few fun anecdotes from some of the many friends we’ve camped with.

Future attractions: Comparing solar power to portable generator for RVing, and how do the dreamstreamrs maintain their fresh (potable) water tank throughout the year?

Come back and see us, we’re enjoying your comments and feedback.

Jim and Debbie
locate us here
visit our website

©2010 Dreamstreamr

What are our favorite home improvements?

We’ve said it before, we’re not afraid to alter our RV, an Airstream travel trailer. We bought it expressly for full timing and expected to modify it. The size is great, the look is great, no complaints on either of those accounts. But we believe we can improve various features to better suit us.

As you may know, if you’ve read our website or read along with us for any time, we’ve made a lot of changes. Not all our changes have been big things, and most of them have been inexpensive. We think they have all made our rolling home better for us. You can see the lists here so we’ll only list the top contenders.

Our favorite home improvements? It’s not a fancy list by any means. These might not suit you at all but they are our favorites. Many of them were recommended to us by others. There are more than twenty-something changes we’ve made to the interior or exterior of our space ship. In no particular order, here are the best 10 because we can’t pick just one.

1. roof vent cover, MaxxAir FAN MATE – MODEL 900®. This allows us to leave our roof vent fan open irrespective of the weather. The Fantastic Fan rain sensor automatic mode would open and close repeatedly only after we had fallen asleep. We (Jim, really) had twice left a roof vent fan open, with automatic closing overridden.

Twice we returned from errands and found rain water on our bed. One of these times the bed was so wet we slept on the sofa until the bed could dry overnight. The Fan Mate 900® allows the vent to stay open even when the rain is pouring down. We only close the vent when it is very cold and if we don’t need venting for gas burning appliances.

2. cutlery drawer and knife drawer, hand crafted by Jim. Our RV’s maker failed to take advantage of a space beside the sink under the kitchen counter. Jim divided the false panel in front of the sink, added drawer pulls, installed drawer glides and a drawer box. This drawer is much handier than the lower three drawers hidden by the cabinet door.

Also Jim added a slide-out knife rack on a board supported by breadboard slides. Our knives don’t bang around, stay sharper, always present handle-first, and are out of the way but easy to access. This fits behind the cabinet door below the new drawer and above the factory’s three drawers.

3. shower head, Oxygenics BodySpa®. This shower head makes a vigorous water spray without much water pressure, and has adjustable flow. It is a vast improvement over the original hand-held shower head provided in the RV. Also it is very easy to grasp by the web designed into the handle.

4. solar panels Sharp 125w, and 6v batteries Interstate 2200. This was one of our first customizations, and the one we use the most. It is at work anytime the sun is out. We especially get great use from it when we are dry camping, providing our power needs. And it’s so darned quiet!

5. catalytic heater, Olympian Wave 6®, propane. We stay warm in cold weather without using any battery power. We tried this heater on the floor with Olympian’s accessory stand. The stand’s feet were in the way on our meager floor space. We designed a hinged mount on the cabinet wall between the kitchen and our entrance door. The heater can radiate toward the sofa, the dinette, or the kitchen and bedroom area. Sort of like our own little fireplace – cozy!

6. mattress, 10″ solid latex foam, custom cut (2 round corners). Our factory-installed mattress was almost worthless, and died at a surprisingly young age. We traced the shape of the two radiused corners for our local mattress maker. He, in almost four weeks, provided us a heavy but excellent mattress for our rolling home.

7. Intellipower® charger/converter, 9260 Progressive Dynamics. Airstream had already replaced our Parallax charger converter, a single-stage model. Matt and Beth told me which model to buy. Installation was greatly aided by some of the examples from Best Converter website. Best part has been knowing the batteries are being precisely babied by our new charger.

8. streetside and rear awnings, ZipDee®, from Airstream Service. The Airstream looks really cool with awnings out on four sides. Our refrigerator appreciates the shade from the streetside awning, helps cool the fridge on sunny days. Rear awning is less useful but helps block bright streetlights or moonlight when we’re sleeping. And we appreciate the ability to open streetside windows whether or not it’s raining.

9. oceanAir® shades, all seven windows, from Airstream Parts. Another early improvement, necessitated by the crummy RV shades provided by the manufacturer. Original vinyl roller shades worked okay, just looked poor. These aluminum cassette hatch shades look very sharp open or closed. Airstream realized how good they look too — they later made these standard equipment on some models.

10. washroom door lock, Omni MR-02-102-24 from Perlane Sales. This is one of the handiest improvements we’ve made. Formerly we constantly were hooking a pocket or belt loop on the door lever as we exited the washroom. No longer! This flush latchset is a dream. Easy to install (but you must cut approx 2″ X 3″ chunk out of your door), looks great and works beautifully. This is another one Airstream has made standard equipment on some models. Very nice change, this replacement door latchset.

SUMMARY:
It has been fun to think back on all the changes and consider which have been the best for us. Truthfully, we enjoy every last one of them. You can pick your favorite one. We haven’t been able to pick just one.

OTHER MODS:
Some of our improvements didn’t make the cut for “top ten”. We would do every one of them again, they have all worked out as well or better than we expected.

> ham radio station, 12vdc distribution, antenna switch, dual band antenna, and Lift-n-Lay HF antenna system
> slate tile in oven to provide more even baking temperatures
> LED lighting for porch, wardrobes, washroom
> matching drawer pulls for utility spaces casework doors
> bolster cushions on dinette benches for leaning against walls
> headboard pad 3/4″ X 12″ X 60″ keeps heads and hands from cool wall
> ottoman footstool provides another seat and storage in living room
> relocate smoke detector from living room to bedroom – looks better, further from kitchen, and is where we sleep
> re-wire the washroom light to power from unswitched fan circuit, from the vanity light switch circuit — don’t have to turn on vanity lights for midnight visits
> Bose Almost Invisible Speakers and Subwoofer
> Conversion of some interior lights from 10w to 5w to save energy
> Hunter furnace thermostat, electronic with LCD display
> replaced Fantastic fan screens with new snap-in screens
> Quick-bite 7700 coupler for greatly easing hitching/unhitching
> Aluminum 30# propane cylinders — they just don’t rust!
> 3-pole flagpole bracket
> Additional storage tube under body, for flags
> 12v accessory outlet just inside curbside storage compartment door
> robe hook in washroom on door, matches original fixtures exactly
> Enkay rock tamers on hitch drawbar — they only ride when we’re towing
> Equalizer 4-Way stabilizer and weight-distributing hitch system
> Prodigy brake controller — set it and you can almost forget it

We think this about sums up the changes we’ve made. If you want more information about any of these just let us know and we’ll do what we can to help you. Happy Trails!

Jim and Debbie
locate us here
visit our website

©2010 Dreamstreamr

What’s a dual-fuel refrigerator worth?

If you could purchase a propane-only refrigerator and save $200 or $300 off the price of a dual-fuel one, would it be worth it? Or, if your refrigerator stops working on electrical power but still works great on propane, what’s it worth to make the refrigerator work on both fuels again? We assumed the cost was worthwhile to restore our fridge to work on either but, after careful analysis, we’re not so sure. It depends upon whether you pay for electrical energy (not everyone does), your energy costs (propane and electricity), and your cost to buy or repair the dual-fuel capability.

We replaced, finally, the refrigerator’s power control board last month. Our fridge operated only on propane for four months, August through November. It wasn’t too much a problem since it still worked so well but we felt it should work the way it was designed, on either fuel. And, we were waiting for the other shoe to drop and we might lose use of the refrigerator completely.

Also we so often get our electric included in site rental costs, we thought we could benefit from selecting between gas and electric. What’s more expensive, operating an appliance designed for propane on propane only, or paying for the electric heater to operate the gas cycle in your refrigerator? We’ll get back to this.

The refrigerator worked fabulously on propane. At $120 for a control board we might save enough propane by using free electric (where we get it) to pay the control board cost. Oh, but we paid $75 in Balzac, Alberta at Bucars RV to have them tell us there is nothing wrong with our refrigerator and we paid another $75 to have Camping World in Boise, Idaho tell us we needed this control board. We knew one repair service was wrong, and thought the other was right. We’d already sunk $150 in diagnostic charges, and figured we might as well buy the board too. How long will it take to save $270 worth of propane?

This sounds a lot like the gas – diesel comparison we used to discuss. Funny, we haven’t heard people talking about this as much in the past year or so. Do you suppose it’s because diesel price just won’t come down and stay down below regular gasoline price? And you pay a lot more for the diesel powerplant and drivetrain (and might mind the noise and smell of Detroit diesels in your campsite). Then there’s the maintenance costs. Diesel only pays if you must have the torque. I’ll try not to talk about this later.

Back to the subject, if you could choose to have a propane-only refrigerator versus paying an additional $300 to obtain a dual fuel propane/electric refrigerator, are you sure the latter is worth the extra dough? I decided to work on this the way we did at work years ago. And, after working on the calculations all evening, I could probably have come to this answer in the first place. The answer is, it depends.

The most important variable is whether you pay for electrical energy (not everyone does), or for what percentage of your RVing months you pay for electrical use. The relative energy costs (propane and electricity) matter greatly, if you pay for electrical some or all of the year. Finally, what is your cost to buy or repair the dual-fuel capability?

If your electrical supply is included the price the campgrounds charge you for a site, then your refrigerator will run at no cost to you whenever your trailer is plugged into campground power (Psst — don’t tell your friends whose house you courtesy park at about this, okay?). If your electrical supply is metered, as ours sometimes is, then you won’t see such high savings from electrical power for your refrigerator.

The next most important variable is the cost of the two energy inputs, propane and electricity. Small changes can have large impacts, if you are paying for all your electrical usage. For example, if electricity costs you 12 cents per kwh (Florida’s average residential rate for 2009) and the current local price for propane is $3.85, electricity is much cheaper to run. At these prices, we could save a modest $17 per year by paying for electricity instead of propane for the refrigerator. The December 2009 prices in Mesa, Arizona, would save us $32 per year burning propane instead of paying for electricity for the refrigerator.

The picture changes completely if electrical service is provided, at no extra charge, with your campsite. Every time you run the refrigerator on free electricity, you save money, and your savings might be $120 per year if you use your refrigerator year around like we do. That’s worth it, for sure!

Propane is very rarely free to RVers. But electricity is provided, in many campgrounds, at no added cost. A dual-fuel refrigerator saves money whenever the electricity is provided at no additional cost. But if you are paying for your electrical service and for your propane, it might be worthwhile to compare the relative costs and burn the better priced energy.

Is a dual fuel refrigerator worth a few hundred extra bucks (for first cost or cost to restore capability)? The short answer is, it depends. We’re glad we fixed our refrigerator to run either propane or electricity. And, going forward, we’ll pay more attention to the local energy rates before we decide which fuel to use for the refrigerator. It may be worth watching the local energy prices, if you want to control your costs.

Jim and Debbie
locate us here:
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©2010 Dreamstreamr, Jim Cocke

What would keep them safe?

What if we invented THE way to keep people safer, everywhere? Parents wonder and worry about their children’s safety. The work of safety professionals is to reduce the hazards, or effects of hazards, upon workers. And will our fourth branch of US government resist increasing its nannyist attention to safety of the citizenry? What else could keep people safer?

Last night Jim read some questionable advice on RVing safety on one of the millions of websites concerning full-time RVing. He ranted awhile and finally worked through how he felt about a couple of the suspect points. Okay, no big deal — we aren’t in business to change people and we have our hands full keeping ourselves safe. Why worry about other people?

Still, Jim looks at these issues through his professional lens as a former safety officer. Some things are black and white. Sure, we all know life is full of gray (and not just retiree gray things). The speed limits on our highways are, as our parents told us more than a few times, the MAXIMUM speeds. This is a black and white thing.

Don’t drive impaired, whether impaired by some chemical or by some distraction like texting or cellphone use while driving. This is a black and white thing. But the speed you should drive is definitely a gray thing — according to current conditions (including traffic, weather, road surface), your vehicle, your condition . . .

And safety? What aids have we to pick our way through the almost daily packaged food recalls, four bazillion new chemical compounds formulated in the past few decades, the air pollution present in so many locales, the sun’s UV effects everywhere, and the countless physical hazards anywhere? What would keep people safe?

Jim figured it out last night in an epiphany in those dreaming moments just as he was falling asleep. Here’s his narrative:

I was still turning over in my mind the safety message I sent tonight to a good friend. My message concerned someone else’s clueless and careless statements related to propane safety for RVs. Then I started falling asleep. Suddenly I had images of a myriad of balloons in the RV. The balloons were a variety of colors and sizes.

The biggest balloons, and the brightest colored, were the most hazardous ones. There are dozens and dozens of balloons but not all are so large or bright colored. You cannot thread your way through the balloons without contacting many of them. But you really need to avoid as many of the larger ones as you can. And try to stay away from the brightly colored ones.

You don’t know just what will happen if you bump into this big one, or that one. You’re confident the smaller ones are innocuous, just like rubbing against a smoothed piece of wood won’t likely result in painful splinters in your hand, or touching a warm surface feels better than contacting a very hot surface. Oh, another gray thing, right? The small ones are the small bumps and scrapes most of us tolerate well in everyday living, but what I can tolerate isn’t the same as for you.

How many things do we do that are proven to lead to injury, disease, or disability? A big balloon might be like smoking cigarettes as 1 in 5 Americans do, according to a recent Time Magazine report. Or maybe a big balloon might be obesity, a major relation of diabetes. Unsafe driving (let’s see: too fast; distracted; impaired senses; damaged equipment; others?) is dangerous.

Lighting an open fire inside your RV, now that would be a big and brightly colored balloon, right? If we could readily identify and rank the hazards in our paths, wouldn’t we be safer? All you need do is maximize your safety and health by navigating a path involving contact with the smallest number of big or brightly colored balloons. Maybe, maybe not.

Remember Leon Uris’ story about airlifting the tribal guys back in the 1950s? These resourceful folks got cold back there in the airplane. They understood what would make them warm and they lit a campfire on the steel deck floor of the plane. They didn’t understand the safety hazards of open flame in flight, because they couldn’t see the size or color of the balloons. But the Air Force guys were safety-trained. Open fires in an airplane in flight = very bad safety hazard. A big bright balloon this smoke and flame thing is without adequate ventilation and unavailable exit paths. It can be pretty simple, eh?

My job as a safety director for a large hospital was to market safety to as many people as I could, every day. I wish I could have made it so simple as telling people, “Don’t worry about bumping into the small balloons. But please, whatever you do, try not to hit the big or brightly colored ones.”

Oh, I think we’re back to the black and white versus gray stuff again. You can describe the balloons. You provide empirical evidence of results of contacts with the various sizes and colors of balloons. And some people just won’t believe. Some people, especially the younger ones, haven’t felt hurt, haven’t seen hurt, and don’t believe in it yet. They don’t think your evidence applies to them.

One in five Americans continue to smoke cigarettes, despite the significant short-term expense and the black and white evidence of the long-term health effects. Fifteen to twenty percent of motorists drive their automobiles without their seatbelt fastened, despite the certain risk of sudden and unlicensed flight. Forty to sixty-six percent of drivers ages 18-24 admit to texting while driving.

So the number of people ages 18-24 texting while driving is high, right? And this despite the certainty of impairment and very high probability (if not certainty) of vastly increased liability for resulting accidents.

Hazards, especially those with any degree of deferred effect, aren’t a black and white issue to many people. Even if a hazard really is black and white, we don’t think it will affect us just this once. It may be a sure thing, cause and effect. You do this, and this happens. And some people believe they can beat the odds no matter how slim.

What would keep them safe? I wish it was as simple as avoiding the big balloons.

[Aside: Gee, isn't saving or not saving money just real similar to this argument?]

Jim and Debbie
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©2010 Dreamstreamr

What else can we do?

We often marvel, as we sit cozily in our not so big house, how comfortable and complete our 25′ Airstream trailer is. The compact design is complete with almost every feature we could want inside. Last night we were musing about improvements we could make to our house. This is really easy to do — we can see the entire interior from any vantage point within.

More difficult, though, is determining what would improve on this wonderful RV. We can easily generate this list of changes we think we would like:

1. A larger refrigerator,

2. a walk-around bed,

3. card-playing space for six,

4. better insulation all-around,

5. a two-inch lower toilet seat,

6. a gravity floor vent for fresh air venting

7. firmer sofa cushions,

8. more LED lighting for boondocking, or

9. more battery capacity would improve our RV’s liveability.

1. Would you like a larger refrigerator than the supplied 6 cubic foot one? This refrigerator has been sufficiently large for over two years. If and when it fails we could opt for the 7 cf replacement Dometic refrigerator — it fits in exactly the same space. Don’t know, we might be able to tell a difference. We sure wouldn’t get rid of a perfectly good fridge to increase capacity by only 16 percent.

2. A lot of people we talk to say they just couldn’t survive with a corner bed. It’s all we’ve had in our two Airstream Internationals (Our Argosy had a pair of twins, but we never slept in it). Their concerns are very justifiable — your partner knows if you try to get out of bed from the wall side, and there is no making the bed without climbing onto and all about it. While this may be tough for some people, we love it. A corner bed makes great use of the limited space we have in our RV’s 8′ X 23′ interior. A walk-around bed would be nice but we’re not willing to sacrifice what little floor space or closets we have to gain it.

3. We’re fortunate and grateful our friends invite us to their larger RVs or park models to play cards. It’s nice to get together as three couples for card games or board games. And we just cannot do this in our Airstream trailer. We might gain enough table and chairs space if we removed our L-sofa and a dinette bench. We love the sofa and appreciate the storage under it, too. We’ve told friends we have room for drinks for six, dinner for four, and sleeping for two. Unfortunately, this Airstream isn’t going to have three couples playing at one table.

4. Airstream trailers (and not all, but many other brands, too) have only two inches insulation in the walls and ceiling. We can tell distinctly we are lacking more insulation several times a year, notably in very hot and very cool climates. More insulation would increase our comfort in very warm climates and would reduce our heating energy during cool spells. While we don’t suffer indoor condensation problems others complain about, better insulation all-around would be nice but this isn’t an improvement we’ll see on this travel trailer.

5. The 2005 Airstream 25, apparently in both the Classic and the International, has a bit of a high toilet seat. Short people need not apply — they might be jumping up and back down and it just doesn’t seem safe. Jim is 5′10″ and his feet don’t rest on the floor sitting on this toilet. This feature seems an engineering goof by the designers. We can remedy this one without too much ado by adding a small section of raised floor. We’ll have to be careful where we draw the line for the 2″ raised floor. It would be pretty ugly to stub your toe and fall headlong into the shower.

6. A gravity floor vent would allow us to make up the needed combustion air for our oven, stove, or catalytic heater. A floor vent would be guarded from inclement weather. A floor vent would reduce drafts from opening windows. And, it would provide the needed make-up air very close to the combustion. Wally Byam apparently thought it was a good idea for his own trailers but, for some reason, didn’t get them into the production units. We can do this and may at some point.

7. Our RV’s bed mattress failed after a year of full-timing. We replaced it with a wonderful solid latex rubber mattress, a lot more supportive and, unfortunately, a lot heavier. The manufacturer’s sofa cushions seem to be similarly poor for the purpose. Since the sofa lacks any innersprings and the cushions sit on plywood forms, we need higher density foam cushions. Several of you have reported your success in doing this and we’re looking forward to this improvement.

8. We boondock somewhat regularly in the summer and fall when we enjoy visiting state and national parks. Some of these parks allow camper savings by opting out of utilities and others just don’t have the utilities. Either way, we benefit by using as little battery-powered stuff as we can. We have LED lighting in the washroom, our wardrobes, and on the porch light. We will, this year, install an eighteen inch LED strip over the kitchen sink and counter. We may find other applications as well to extend our battery power when off grid.

9. Almost two years ago we replaced our two group 24 12v marine/rv batteries with a pair of Interstate 6v 2200s, golf cart batteries wired in series for 12vdc. We gained more battery capacity and might be at a good match with our two 120 watt solar panels. Last fall, while boondocking at the Sun Valley Jazz Festival, we enjoyed great sunshine most days. And we really only had enough battery for one day at a time. It seems we could, with another pair of 6v golf cart batteries, gain all the battery capacity we could want for nights and weekends. This may be something we can easily accomplish.

These potential changes aren’t, any of them, must haves. Some aren’t feasible at all in this RV. But these are the biggest things we can imagine would improve this almost ideal space. Some of these changes are included in other, larger, RVs. All these options are available by some means in many RVs. If we find ourselves in the market for another RV we would include these as important criteria.

You can probably think of more important changes you would want. We’d love to hear what you think — let us know?

We’ll talk about our favorite improvements we’ve made to our travel trailer in our next post.

Jim and Debbie
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©2010 Dreamstreamr

Another iHouse message?

Yes, friends, yet another message about the Clayton Homes iHouse. We’ve talked about it a couple of times previously. We can’t resist one more post, except it probably isn’t the last time we’ll talk about this.

We can try to tell you how impressed we are with how it looks, and why we like it. The open floorplan, economical use of space (1,023 sf iHouse, 199 sf Flex), and durable finishes inside and out all appeal to us. The notions of Usonian design we feel in the sensible and appealing floorplan remind us of our tours at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesen West.

We may not buy an iHouse but it has, at least, started us thinking about what we expect from any house we might build. The Andersen Low-E windows, no VOC coatings, the complete collection of rainwater from roof systems, great use of natural light, these things all appeal to us. And we like the small footprint.

Words fail in describing the fine job Clayton Homes has done staging these model homes. So we thought we’d share this link to pictures we’ve taken. We hope you like these pictures as much as we do. And no, we still aren’t planning to quit full-timing.

This iHouse is so nice we’re tempted, but we just haven’t found yet where we want to stay more than six weeks. We’re full-timing North America, visiting all the places we can. How can we decide before we have checked all the places?

Another message about iHouse, yes. And we’ll offer another, perhaps, down the road as we consider full-timing and its alternative(s).

[Disclaimer -- Jim and Debbie are not connected to, nor compensated in any way from, Clayton Homes nor any division related to them nor to their advertisers or agents.]

Jim and Debbie
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©2010 Dreamstreamr

What Time Helps Us Forget

Time helps us forget. We forget things we want not to remember. We blank out unpleasantry. This strong tendency happens automatically, particularly when we are away from the painful, ugly, or unpleasant stimuli.

Let’s remember the good things, the great things. Great meal, great game, great victories, sweet tastes, we can remember these. Can’t you almost taste, as you think back on it, that bite of a wonderful tamale or the sip of an ice cold margarita, or a nibble from your last favorite candy bar?

What’s blue, green, yellow, and wet all over (except today, when the blue is gray)? Florida! The skies have been beautifully blue. Lawn grass and flowering bushes are richly green throughout our park. The drinking water is yellow, still yellow. We’d forgotten about this. The water color isn’t much of a big deal, really. We filter it twice, as we do for all drinking water. And it is still yellow.

We told our Arizona friends we were going to spend Q1 in Florida. They all said, “Florida? It’s so humid!”

We replied, “Aw, it’s not really, not in the winter.” And we believed ourselves because we’d forgotten. We like it here in Okeechobee. We love our friends, and the pool, and the green grass, and nice weather most of the time. Time helps us forget some things, like really high humidity in Okeechobee from a year ago.

Jim and Debbie
visit our website, see our new 2009 travel map,
locate us here

©2010 Dreamstreamr

How did 2009 work out for Dreamstreamrs?

We realized today, with a laugh, our last year’s resolutions were almost identical to this year’s. Well, maybe they worked out well and are worth repeating. Let’s see how well we did in 2009 living our resolutions.

We resolved for 2009 the following:
# 1. Spend less
# 2. Eat healthier
# 3. Exercise more
# 4. Expend fewer non-renewable resources

We spent under our budget for the year 2009. A few of our reductions included dining, site rental, and, most notably, truck fuel. Truck fuel cost reduction was easy, just reduce towing mileage. 2008 we had very high towing mileage (18,000 miles) and fuel costs per unit were very high. We cut this greatly in 2009 (see #4), so #1 achieved.

We dined out less in 2009 and prepared more of our own meals. We ate almost no “fast-food”. We managed to eliminate pop from our (Jim’s) diet. We drank more fresh-brewed green tea. We made healthy choices for our pantry and refrigerator. We ate healthier, so #2 achieved.

Exercise was on our minds throughout 2009. First quarter we walked a lot, at least three miles a day. 2nd and 3rd quarters we were traveling and still managed to walk frequently. Not enough but we were trying. 4th quarter we went wild, playing tennis almost every day for six weeks in November and December. We managed to finish the year having had more exercise than in the previous year. #3 achieved.

Finally, we pledged to expend fewer non-renewable resources in 2009. Did we? We spent whole weeks powered only by our solar panels powering the RV’s electrical system and re-charging our pair of 6 volt golf-cart batteries. And we reduced our towing mileage by almost 9,000 miles or over 850 gallons of truck fuel. We don’t generally know how much electricity we buy is coal or gas-fired. All the energy we saved by driving less is non-renewable energy. Yeah, #4 achieved.

So our resolutions worked great for us for 2009. We hope we’ll do as well in 2010.

Jim and Debbie
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©2010 Dreamstreamr

Happy New Year

We celebrated New Year’s Eve testing our resolutions before we conceived them. We ate at home, drove very little, spent nothing, and played tennis together. Later we enjoyed a candlelight dinner of grilled steak, salad, and broccoli, and discussed our resolutions for 2010.

The best way to attain compliance on any resolution is to tell others about it. You make yourself more accountable when you pledge, over and over again, yourself to your new goals.

We’ve already spilled the beans but let’s review the resolutions again.

1. Spend less,

2. Drive less

3. Exercise more

4. Reduce our RV’s weight

Eating at home exemplifies resolutions #1 and #2. Never mind we almost always eat at home, this is still a good resolution for us. We think we have better food at lower cost and without driving by staying home for dinner.

Jim played doubles yesterday morning while Deb walked over two miles. We played tennis together yesterday afternoon, our second day in a row (and a good thing too, since it’s raining today). Resolution #3 is good for our hearts, minds, and bodies, and is especially fun together.

Resolution #4 makes more sense than you might think at first. We can reduce or avoid costs by reducing wear on our trailer. Imbalanced or overweight trailer conditions can impair driveability and increase wear on some parts. We have a few opportunities to reduce our trailer’s hitch weight through eliminating extra books and paper goods (from the front book well) or by moving more from the trailer to the truck.

Not too many resolutions and four we can work on together. This ought to work. Since we told you we know you’ll help us. Invite us over for dinner, give us a ride, exercise with us, and let us share our stuff with you (or maybe you’ll carry it around the continent for us?).

We watched Twilight Zone episodes back-to-back after dinner until close to midnight. And we raised our glasses in a toast to ring in the new year.

Today we are watching the Rose Bowl Parade (on any of about a dozen channels) and listening to the rain pounding down on our aluminum roof. We hope you are dry, happy, and safe wherever you are.

Happy New Year!

Jim and Debbie
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©2010 Dreamstreamr

Don’t put those blankets away yet!

Making the bed this morning we had to chuckle at ourselves. We sleep most of the year with a sheet and comforter on top. We designed our bed linens set so we can flip the set over and have a light blanket on top, instead of the comforter. We don’t remember the last time we put the light blanket on top and the comforter under us. But we’re ready, if we ever find ourselves in weather too warm.

Sometime after midnight this morning Deb awoke. She was cold and pulled another blanket and covered us. Yeah, it was forty degrees outside, forty-four inside, just a little chilly for only one blanket. But it was so nice yesterday, our first day in Lake Okeechobee, Florida. The high temperature was around 72 degrees. We arrived and checked in early at Ancient Oaks park, set up camp, got out the golf clubs, played tennis, and went grocery shopping.

It was nice enough outside we walked to the clubhouse and soaked in the hot tub awhile, talking to Rex from Michigan. Then we hit the showers and returned home to grill supper. After a really nice dinner of salmon, salad, and coconut cream cake (fresh from Debbie’s mom), we played Rummikub until we just crashed. And it still felt warm — we’re in Florida, for Pete’s sake. But it sure cooled off later.

We’re glad to be here. This is a pretty park. We already caught up with a few friends and good neighbors, and look forward to renewing friendships with many more. Our tennis racquets still work. Jim was able to dig out his golf clubs and hopes to find his way to the driving range later today and a few more times this week. We’ll have some warm afternoons, some very cool nights sometimes. It is Winter, after all.

We’re still chasin’ 75 degrees, I guess, until we find it. Until we do, we’ll keep the blankets within reach.

Jim and Debbie
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©2009 Dreamstreamr

Holiday Surprises and Delights

This is the season for surprises and delights. Hopefully, the holiday is filled with delight and joy for all of us. We’re glad to be in North Carolina amongst our family during this season.

Monday we spent the day running errands in Charlotte. We had our semi-annual teeth cleaning and check-up, visited our financial advisor, picked up some needed items from a few local stores, and had a great lunch visit to Mr. K’s Soft Ice Cream and Drive-In. We didn’t get the ice cream — we always have a Mr. K burger with chili, slaw, and mustard, with some fries. Yum!

Tuesday we made a couple of holiday visits and spent a half-hour at our little storage unit. We dropped off a few things, like our backpacking gear and goose-down sleeping bags we won’t need in south Florida. We exchanged a few clothes (to freshen up our wardrobe), and picked up some things we’d been missing awhile like a few of our music CDs.

Our biggest surprise was to find things in our storage unit we didn’t remember storing. How did these things end up here? We spent a little longer than we expected as we peered into a couple of the boxes. Sometime in the next year or two we’re going to need an entire day to go through everything and thin it out.

Christmas visit with Chas

Wednesday we had a short day trip to Asheville, NC, to visit Charles, Jim’s son. Asheville is 140 miles west of Kannapolis. Each mile westward we saw a little more snow and a little cooler temperatures so, by the time we arrived in Asheville, we found snow everywhere. Charles had a little time before going to work so we had a nice brunch and opened presents with him. It was great to see him again.

Snowy Western NC

Western North Carolina received 12 – 18 inches of snow last Friday and we saw plenty of evidence of it during our drive. We thought you who may be in non-snowing climates might enjoy a couple of pictures. The pictures are probably a lot easier to manage than the roads, driveways, trees, gutters and other things subject to damage from snow and ice. Enjoy!

Christmas iHouse

How can this keep happening? First we saw an iHouse in Everett, Washington. A few months later we were surprised and delighted to find an open model on display in Mesa, Arizona. We saw the iHouse on display in Austin, Texas, on our way across the states last week. And today we stumbled upon our fourth iHouse by Clayton Homes, on I-40 in Statesville, on our way home from Asheville to Kannapolis. This model unit hasn’t been announced or officially opened, but the nice folks at Clayton Homes in Statesville, NC, allowed us a long visit.

This visit we noticed one big difference — the North Carolina version of the iHouse has twelve inch, instead of no, roof overhangs on the long sides. Each time we visit one we figure out another thing about the house, and we find ourselves liking it even more. We could live in one of these. But we still know neither where we would want to put it, nor when.

The weather outside is frightful

The weather in Kannapolis is still cold. We are so ready to be in warm weather again. We miss playing tennis. We miss being warm (whoops, did we already say that?). But there’s a time and place for everything. There are things we need to do in this home territory, like our dental visit, a little truck service, banking, and the storage unit. And we’re glad we’re with family for Christmas.

We’ll see lots more family Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day, between Debbie’s family in Kannapolis and Jim’s family in Charlotte. We’re excited to see them all, it’s been many months since our last visit with many of them. The biggest surprises and delights are yet to come for us and for you. Be careful, be good, and be joyous. We’ll write again after Christmas, perhaps from sunny (and warm) south Florida.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you from both of us.

Jim and Debbie
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©2009 Dreamstreamr

Still Chasing 75 Degrees?

You might think we’re avoiding 75 degrees, instead of chasing it. We seem to repeatedly stop in chilly places. In fact we would not have guessed we would stay so often in places cooler than 70 or 75F degrees. We really aren’t trying to find cool weather but our travels sometimes lead us to great places temporarily cold.

Our Minnesota visit was lovely (hmm, less warm now) and our Tim Horton’s Trans-Canada Tour was mostly very comfortable, temperature-wise. Vancouver, B.C. was right at 75F degrees most of the time we visited. Everett, Washington was nice and warm in early October with highs in the 70s when we left for Idaho.

Our first night in Idaho, just north of Boise, was snowy and we didn’t see another warm day until we arrived a few weeks later in Mesa, Az. Six weeks of great Arizona weather spoiled us — bright warm sunny days, nice cool nights, a little rain every week or two. Our traveling weather from Mesa to Kannapolis was fine, too, but not warm.

We arrived in Kannapolis just ahead of a great winter storm. We had briefly a nice snowfall yesterday, followed by sleet and freezing rain. The high temperature yesterday and today is 39 degrees, and we saw freezing last night. Boy are we glad we skipped driving on Friday — we wouldn’t have wanted to drive in the winter conditions.

We stayed in Idaho to see friends, to explore a little longer, and to see the Sun Valley Jazz Festival. Snow, ice, and very cold temperatures made it all the more interesting. We were, on our way to Mesa from Ketchum, Idaho, going to linger in the Glen Canyon and Grand Canyon areas. But the weather and temperatures were just TOO interesting, and we didn’t want to winterize our home while living in it.

We’re not trying to find cool or cold weather, it just happens this way. Our next travels, we think, will again take us to warm weather. Until then, we aren’t here for the climate anyway. We’re here to celebrate the season with family and friends, no matter the weather.

We’re still chasing 75 degrees, when more important matters allow.

Jim and Debbie
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©2009 Dreamstreamr

I Like Calling Carolina Home

Ask us “Where’s home?” and we’ll tell you it’s the silver bullet behind our truck. Discussions about home are fun — we’ll talk about full-timing a little while (or a long while if you have time). But it won’t take a couple of minutes before one of us starts talking about North Carolina.

UNC Chapel Hill Tarheels

We are North Carolinians through and through, with family and friends and Alma Mater and residency and our hearts. We love being in North Carolina and love being from here. Our travels take us all about North America, and we haven’t yet found a place we like better. James Taylor said in it perfectly in a song, Carolina In My Mind.

We’re back in Tarheel country at last. We’ve been away since mid-May, our longest absence ever from North Carolina. Driving into North Carolina, especially via I-40 in the Great Smoky Mountains, thrills us to the bone. The mountains, with the slopes sometimes forested with mature forests and other times showing craggy granite rock faces, are just gorgeous.

The return, late last night, was a little less showy than our homecomings the previous two years. We have, for the past five years, eschewed night-time driving (I’ll come back to this) but we arrived in North Carolina well after dark. And we didn’t enter NC via I-40 through our beautiful mountains, but via I-85 through South Carolina instead. Just not as majestic, you know?

NCDOT--Rock_Slide I-40

Actually, we generally would avoid the mountain route this time of year because of colder temperatures and chance of winter weather on the road. And we couldn’t have entered NC via I-40 by the Smokies anyway — have you heard of an Interstate closed for six months in modern times? Read this for the story about this major interstate closing — amazing!

We left Mesa, Az, Tuesday morning three days ago. Thanks to Bob Simms for steering us straight on I-10 from Mesa — we considered bushwhacking due-east from Mesa on route 60 then intersecting I-10. Bob reminded us we were planning to make mileage, not sightseeing, and I-10 would suit us better. He was right. We drove Tuesday 680 miles on I-10 and Wednesday we did another 630 miles.

Wednesday started with cloudy skies and the sun didn’t peek out until it was at our backs. Yesterday morning we left Sulphur, Louisiana, just after 05:00 hrs heading east on I-10, and found ourselves in a light rain for a couple of hours. We cleared Baton Rouge before rush hour and Mobile just after rush hour traffic. Thursday started with dark skies, and the sun didn’t shine all morning.

Okay, those hurdles done, we looked forward again. How’s the weather going to be ahead of us? We had a good internet connection to check the weather forecasts. Atlanta is no problem. Greenville-Spartanburg, check. Charlotte is expecting a winter storm, and the weather guessers projected an early incidence of wintry mix and accumulation in Kannapolis, NC, of two to four inches of snow.

Friday would not be our best weather day, and except for Wednesday morning’s little rain we have had just about the best weather you could ask for driving. If we lay up, as planned, west of Atlanta then we are driving five hours on Friday. We would hit North Carolina right behind a winter storm. We either drive extra-long Thursday or take chances with the weather.

Our drive had been so easy and smooth and we didn’t want to break the spell. What if we keep going, straight-through, to North Carolina? We would double our day’s drive, double the amount of gas we buy in one day. We would be driving in the dark. And one more little thing — we would hit Atlanta squarely at rush hour. Why ruin a perfectly good cross-country drive?

Okay, we could take a dinner break and short nap west of Atlanta. Refueled and refreshed we would hit the Atlanta bypass (I-285) at 19:30 hours. Barring any pile-ups left over from rush hour we could zip past Atlanta without incident. What about those other issues? Total driving miles and gasoline consumption would be unchanged, so it doesn’t matter when they occur. What about driving/towing in the dark?

We drove in the dark on our first ever camping trip with the Airstream, August 2004. We missed a turn on our way to the campground and ended up on a farmer’s gravel drive. After a twenty-three point turn we arrived hours later to the campground with fresh water draining from the now missing bottom drain valve. You can read the whole story here on a page of our website, but we decided we just don’t need (or want) to tow at night.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings we were on the road by 06:00, 05:20, and 05:15 hours respectively, to miss the next big city’s rush hour. This time of day is 0-dark-thirty, just as dark as 10:00 at night. We found the early morning very nice for interstate driving and really like the much lower traffic volume. Our early starts enabled us to successfully avoid rush hours for every major city between Mesa, Az, and Atlanta, Ga.

The only night-driving problem on this trip was with the jersey barricades for construction east of Newnan, Georgia — zero clearance on the curb side and no rear-view/side-view visibility along that edge. Fortunately the construction didn’t last more than five or ten miles and only one trucker decided he had to pass us in the precious little width of the left lane. All’s well that ends well. . .

Okay, we set aside our objections to pushing ahead. And the advantages were several. We could, with a small dining and nap stop, avoid Atlanta’s rush hour. We might, with a little luck, find there is less traffic between Atlanta and Charlotte at night than daytime. We could get to Kannapolis before the road temperatures drop below freezing tomorrow. And we would, for sure, beat the wintry mix.

We hit our rhythm with each of us alternating driving and resting two-hour shifts. The truck and trailer behaved wonderfully. The interstate highway from Arizona through Louisiana to Alabama was the smoothest and easiest interstate we have driven anywhere.

What if we did take a chance with winter weather? We were caught in a heavy snowfall one afternoon several years ago, after picking up the Airstream after warranty work seventy miles away. The weather forecasters called for a late afternoon snow. It’s always fun to browse the Airstream dealers’ lots and showrooms and accessories, isn’t it? And we had lots of time and only seventy miles to drive back to the house in Charlotte.

We finally pulled ourselves, and our RV, away from the dealership and hit the road a little later than we might have planned. Thirty miles into the drive, the snow came down in blankets. Hey, not our fault! The snow came early. Yeah, right. Totally our fault for lollygagging around and taking a chance with weather. We had an interesting (but successful) snowy tow the remaining forty miles on I-77 and into downtown Charlotte.

Back to this cross-country trip. Our great cross-country road trip from Mesa, AZ, to Kannapolis, NC, ended successfully at 12:45 last night. Jim backed our Airstream into the driveway of Debbie’s parents and we were probably asleep by 01:15.

Here are the numbers for the three days:
2,257 miles total
950 miles on the longest day (18 hours)
43 hours on the road (excluding two overnights)
251 gallons of gas for $600
59 mph rolling average, 52 mph overall average
3 meals each totalled $44
48 Red Vine liquorice sticks consumed (thanks Bob & Faith!)
1 interior rivet popped in the Airstream (smooth roads!)
No traffic collisions seen anywhere
No construction delays
A great (and safe) road trip, = $Priceless

Outside, early this Friday morning, it is sleeting. The grocery stores, undoubtedly, are packed with frantic shoppers removing all traces of bread and milk and who knows what else, from the shelves. Local schools closings are trailing across the bottom of the televisions throughout the city. We drove eighteen hours yesterday and arrived in NC on dry pavement.

We’re glad to be back in North Carolina, a great place to call home.

Jim and Debbie
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©2009 Dreamstreamr

How not to tour Texas

We missed Texas. We just sorta flew across, you know? Every time Jim would awaken from a catnap, Debbie would have moved the truck and trailer east another hundred miles or so. After one nap we were out of the desert and in grasslands with, get this, water in the river beds. What, not dry riverbeds? If you’ve spent any time in Arizona or west Texas, you know what we’re talking about.

Yesterday morning we drove 400 miles from Mesa, AZ, and entered Texas from below Las Cruces, NM. We then drove another almost 300 miles and were still in west Texas, in Ft Stockton. This morning we left the Wal-Mart in Ft Stockton, TX, at 06:00 a.m. and started our zoom eastward in the dark and cold morning. It stayed dark and cold all morning, too, aided by very nice cloud cover.

The cloud cover is great for easterly sunrise travel, no hour or two of driving into the bright light on the horizon. Unfortunately the lack of sunlight also meant the day didn’t warm up much. Jim checked Texas cities current temperatures at mid-morning — not a single reported city anywhere in Texas, among two or three dozen, had temperatures above 42 degrees. We would have enjoyed even 42 — we were driving through 25 to 30 degree zones all morning.

Every hour or two we stopped and checked the Airstream’s indoor thermometer. The temperature stayed above 40F, not too bad. We ran the furnace for five or ten minutes during two stops, just to warm the plumbing spaces in the cabinets and under the floors, and turned it off again before heading out onto the highway. Great news, no frozen pipes.

Again, we alternated driving a couple of hours at a time each. Interstate I-10 was great, again. And we schemed to zoom through San Antonio and Houston before their rush hours, morning and afternoon, respectively. It worked great, except for I-10 and I-45 ramps construction right downtown Houston. Small delay there and another one in the ‘burbs of Austin. No big deal, and we arrived almost without incident in Sulphur, Louisiana at 17:45 hours Central time. Zoooooom!

Almost without incident, you might ask? Well, there was this one moment in Austin, TX. . . You see, they also have a Clayton Homes i-House in Austin. And, like the others, they stage their iHouse in a prominent place on their lot. Everyone driving by can see it, stare (a replacement for texting while driving, we suppose), and hit the brakes to try and turn in and visit it.

So we have, as of today, seen the iHouse models in Everett, Washington; Mesa, Arizona; and Austin, Texas. Except for Clayton Homes staff, and possibly some support/install staff of Ikea, we think we might be the best visitors Clayton Homes has for iHouses. Unless, we suppose, they more highly regard the visitors who also purchase an iHouse. What do you think?

Back to missing Texas — we didn’t stop anywhere and eat Texas Barbecue. This isn’t actually much of a loss to most North Carolinians, since we have much better BBQ in NC anyway. We didn’t stop and visit the LBJ State Park, although it looked really nice. We would love to return to Johnson City and Fredericksburg some time when we can return. El Paso looked interesting. Tex-Mex food is one of Jim’s favorites, and how did we do sampling this while crossing Texas?

Let’s see, we stopped last night at a Sonic for a burger and fries. That’s it for Texas dining for us — all the other food consisted of snacks in the truck while driving. What would Ray LaHood, our federal Secretary of Transportation say? Well he already did, and we weren’t so much eating as snacking. The difference, we maintain, is the same as the difference between cell-phone talking and talking to each other in person.

We have only 1,000 miles remaining to arrive in Kannapolis. We’re only 150 miles ahead of schedule, not really a very big deal although it took part of three hours extra driving to attain. Before we hit the sack tonight we’ll check our distances to any rush-hour potentials between here and Montgomery, Alabama, and plan tomorrow’s drive accordingly.

Follow us next time, to tour Texas. We’ll take our time in Texas, and enjoy it. Next time we visit Texas, we want stopping time instead of driving time. There’s a lot to see, and a whole lot of it isn’t even on I-10. Don’t tour Texas on this schedule — too fast, too thin, nearly might as well have flown across.

Jim and Debbie
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©2009 Dreamstreamr

“The weather isn’t usually this _______.”

Our first week or two in Mesa, AZ, folks told us, “It’s not usually this hot in early November.” This past week the same folks told us, “This is much cooler weather than usual for Mesa.” All across Canada this past summer, locals told us “We don’t think we’ll have much summer this year — the weather is much cooler than usual, corn is late. We should go south.”

And tonight in Ft Stockton, TX, they tell us, “The weather here is usually warmer this time of year.” It is pretty cool, 39F. The forecast low temperature tonight is low 30s, which is okay with us — we’ll set the furnace on low and it will run a few times as sunrise approaches, just to keep the plumbing (and humans) from freezing.

We arrived this evening after thirteen hours very easy driving on as good an interstate highway as we’ve ever driven. Great pavement through Arizona, New Mexico, and our first quarter of Texas, and easy grades. Our plan was to drive 500 miles, sort of a break-in day into our 2,300 mile journey.

We left Mesa at 06:00 this morning, made it through Tucson’s rush hour without incident, slid across Las Cruces and El Paso, then discovered Texas has 880 miles of I-10. WOW! Did you know I-5, from San Diego, California, all the way to the Oregon border atop California above Mt Shasta, is less than 800 miles?

So Texas is wider than California is long. This realization may have been part of why we felt inspired to go beyond our planned 500 miles today. Everything went so well and traffic was so easy, especially after sunset, we just couldn’t stop for 681 miles. And we still have 620 miles of Texas I-10 before we get to Louisiana.

Tomorrow we will try to get through San Antonio just after morning rush hour so we can zip through Houston before their evening rush hour. This fine plan depends upon our getting up and out early tomorrow. The trailer is already all hitched up to the truck, so all we need to do is dress, brush teeth, wash faces, and climb into the truck to go.

A quick sandwich supper and showers tonight and we’re off to bed. We would write more, but really are ready to hit the sack.

And we hope we find out, when we get to North Carolina, the weather isn’t usually this NICE! A White Christmas would be fine, or an unusually warm week would be fine with us.

But whatever the weather, we suspect we’ll hear folks say, “The weather isn’t usually this ________.”

See You Down The Road!

Jim and Debbie
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©2009 Dreamstreamr

Six weeks is a long time to stay

It hasn’t seemed so long, but we’d been in Mesa six weeks yesterday. We did have a feeling we’d been here awhile — we’ve both been getting itchy feet for the last week or two. So we started making lists to help get us ready for departure.

That’s right, we’re checking our list carefully before we head back East. We’d hate to get a couple of thousand miles down the road and then realize we left something behind, like the RV. These things are avoidable, you know?

We both are list-makers for any number of purposes. We’ve been accused of being extremely linear (I think it meant I always added 1 + 2 before I did anything to 3). You could, at any given time in our RV, find a couple of active to-do lists and a grocery list (for the things we didn’t find and the things we’ve since discovered we wanted).

We have a pre-flight list of things we’ll do before we leave Mesa. The big things are arranging the radio antennae for the trip, programming the amateur radios for enroute repeaters, setting tire pressures for all eight tires for highway driving, dumping the RV’s two holding tanks, securing all loose items in the RV, donating clothes to local Charity, and getting groceries for the 2,300 mile ride.

We have only a couple of loose ends with the resort park office, like turning in our mailbox key, paying our electric bill, submitting the mail forwarding request. Jim has one more tennis match tomorrow morning. Deb wants to play tennis one more time before we leave.

We’d love to get the truck (and maybe the Airstream) cleaned up before the drive. Clean windows, floor mats, and a clean hood are all we really need — we can’t see the rest of the truck from our truck’s seats anyway. And it’s nice to at least clean the windows and door on the Airstream, if we can’t get it all washed before we leave.

We’re facing a long four days, or we may take a fifth day, for the 2,300 miles from Mesa, TX, to Kannapolis, NC. Yet we’re looking forward to the drive, the scenery, the change. And we’re especially excited about returning to green North Carolina.

Mesa, and Towerpoint particularly, has been wonderful. We enjoyed so much here, from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesen West to Scottsdale’s Old Town and the Sugar Bowl; desert hiking with friends from Towerpoint and visiting Tempe; finding our way around vast metropolitan Phoenix; playing tennis every day and having nice soaks in the park’s hot tubs.

We’ll miss the tennis club facilities and people, just 100 yards from our RV. We’ll miss the interesting and changing desert weather. We’ll miss our Towerpoint friends and our fun times with them. We’ll look forward to another season here, another time. Now it is time for us to go.

Let’s go somewhere. Six weeks is a long time to stay.

Jim and Debbie
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©2009 Dreamstreamr

Another tired subject?

This is so important we want to run it now, although we just ran an entire article about nothing but maintenance and inspections. We hope you’re not too tired (so sorry for the pun) to read this one too. We think this is worth spending the several minutes it will take to read it.

We ran our trailer tires, Goodyear Marathons, five full years before we noticed a tread separation — in the width of the tread there was a clear edge where the under-plies had sort of allowed a herniation, if you know what I mean. You can see the article we wrote on it here. It wasn’t a big deal to me because we were due to replace the tires — five years is the recommended maximum life for trailer tires, by most accounts.

We bought trailer tires called Triangle. They are Chinese and the price was great. They are eight-ply rated, but don’t have eight plies. Go figure. We’ve had them most of a year and they look fine. Keeping good tires is good insurance against failures. Air pressure is extremely important, too.

When your tires are low or lose their pressure while towing, you need to know right away. A tire pressure monitoring system like Pressure Pro can tell you almost instantly when a tire has flatted. If you don’t know it and continue towing, the tire tread can become like a whip and destroy the inside of your trailer’s wheel well. We saw a Bambi in Bozeman, MT, with damaged wiring and plumbing in the wheel well. Pretty expensive, I’ve heard the repairs can reach $three thousand or more. You can find other tire pressure monitors at some tire dealers and on Amazon.com. These seem pricey at $400 but remember, you are likely to avert serious damage to your wheel and RV if you quickly detect loss of tire pressure.

I’d ONLY use trailer tires for my trailer. They are designed for the stresses a trailer places on the tires. Trailer tires ARE different. And I do NOT use maximum air pressure on my tires when towing. I use Goodyear’s tire pressure chart to match my trailer’s axles weight and tire to the recommended (by Goodyear, the tire’s manufacturer) tire pressure. Why wouldn’t I believe a huge successful company’s engineering?

So, for my trailer and tire (if a Goodyear), here’s how it would work. I know, from weighing at Flying J or other truck stop’s CAT scales (costs $9.00) my trailer’s weight is 6,000 pounds (ignoring the hitch weight at the truck’s rear — just considering the weight on the tires). If that weight was equally distributed on my trailer’s four tires then I would have 1,500 pounds load on each tire. My tires are ST225 75R 15.

This, according to the chart, calls for at least 30 psi air pressure. BUT, my trailer’s weight distribution is probably not ideal and I’ve never had each tire’s load weighed separately (you can do it, but I’ve never encountered it). So let’s say I have half-again the weight on a pair of the tires (a high enough exaggeration since it means one side of the trailer weighs 4,500 pounds and the other side only 1,500 pounds). So 1,500 plus 750 is 2,250 pounds load on each tire.

The chart for my ST225 75R 15 tires now calls for at least 55 psi. Not the maximum pressure of 65 psi, which is required for the tires’ maximum rated load of 2,540 pounds each.

Okay, what difference does all this make? It impacts the ride harshness in your sweet little trailer and all it’s little storage areas. A hard (high inflation) tire rides harder. I don’t want to jar my trailer any more than necessary. Tires are rated for loads at specified pressures, why try to out-think generations of trained engineers regarding the proper air pressure?

Yet many Airstreamers recommend nothing less than maximum pressure. I don’t know, but I wonder if this might come from towing heavier loads than the rating for their tires, or perhaps their trailer’s tires don’t have as much spare capacity as ours. The proper tire pressure depends upon your tires’ rating and your tires’ manufacturer recommendation. Not what I say. For me, I run 55 psi (cold) air pressure in my trailer’s tires for all towing days. When it is colder outside, I increase the pressure to 55 psi. When it is hotter outside, I reduce the (cold) pressure to 55 psi.

My tire pressure monitoring system makes all this a lot easier, because I can see the tire pressures on display readily before every day of towing without walking to, and removing the cap on, each tire. I just check the tire monitor and scroll through the trailer’s tires. And I see the current pressures. By the way, the Pressure Pro alarm settings for my tires are also based upon 55 psi, the tire pressures when I initialized the control panel. I could change this nominal pressure setting by redoing the setup configuration for the sensors and monitor.

Tires for trailers aren’t permanent things. Trailer tires are damaged by road hazards but also by things you don’t see. And, age is not a friend to your tires. Take care of your RV trailer’s tires, they’ll take care of you. Simple enough!

Jim and Debbie
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locate us here

©2009 Dreamstreamr