End of Dog Sitting/Move to The Duchess

Connie and I ended our dog/apartment sitting job on Saturday morning and said our good-byes to Murphy and Emma. We had packed up everything left of ours in the apartment on Friday and loaded it into our Jeep and car on Saturday morning. It had started raining in Austin on Friday and the rain continued all day Saturday. We made the trip to Rosanky Texas to spend our first night sleeping in the RV since getting the new transmission installed. We spent the time we had on Saturday moving our stuff into the RV and deciding where to store everything. Everything is soaking wet at the farm so I put out mats to keep our shoes from sticking in the mud. The good news is that all of the stock tanks at the farm are now full which is the first time that they have had this much water in them in several years (Texas has been in a drought since 2010).

Here are a few pictures of the RV and my dad's farm:

View from The Duchess overlooking the farm

The Duchess at the Rosanky farm

The Duchess and storage barn

We had purchased groceries at Trader Joe's in Austin before we left so that we would have something to eat for dinner on Saturday night. At the end of a long day, Connie cooked our first "meal" in the RV using the convection/microwave oven. We enjoyed one of the bottles of wine that came from our "Bon Voyage" party before settling down for the evening.

Wine from Bon Voyage party

I was finally able to get the DirectTV connection working (or so I thought). After a couple of hours of having a satellite signal despite the rain, we started getting error messages again. I called DirectTV and was able to speak with a customer service rep who actually knew about RV DirectTV setups and we spent about 30 minutes correcting everything the previous service rep had told me wrong. Once I had made all of the corrections in the setup, DirectTV starting working again and we were able to watch a movie on Saturday night.

The Duchess has returned

On Wednesday morning we finally got The Duchess out of the repair shop. The new transmission had been installed on Monday afternoon and the shop had finished it final testing on Tuesday. After some issues with the invoice (the repair shop's computer servers went down on Wednesday morning), the final invoice was faxed and paid so we were able to drive off in The Duchess. We have had a great relationship with National Indoor RV Center in Lewisville TX where we purchased The Duchess. They have done what they promised us to make sure that everything on the motor home is in working order even allowing us to have the repair work done here in Austin rather than having to take the RV back to Lewisville.

We took the motor home out to my dad's farm which has full hookups (electric/water/sewer) and got her all set up.  The new transmission worked great on the 50 mile trip from the repair shop to the farm. My dad, who is 82, is on the road with his motor home for the next three months so we will take advantage of his absence from the farm to get to know The Duchess.  We need to spend time learning about how all of the systems in the RV work and see what we will be able to store in the closets, drawers and basement storage. We took another load of clothes and other items from the apartment down to the farm's barn and gave a desktop computer and shredder to Connie's sister.

I spent a couple of hours trying to get DirectTV set up in The Duchess. First of all they sent us the wrong receivers (they sent three HD receivers all with DVR's instead of HD only receivers) and so before we could activate the receiver they had to "re-organize" our account. We decided to keep one of the HD-DVR receivers and send the other two back. DirectTV will be sending us a replacement HD receiver but without a DVR for our bedroom TV. We tried for a long time to get the HD-DVR receiver to work, but it kept losing the satellite signal. We finally ran out of time and I gave up for the day. I will try moving the RV location a few yards to see if the signal is being blocked by trees and hopefully get it working this week-end.

Today Connie and I attended our last yoga class at the Brushy Creek Community Center. Connie has been going to these yoga classes for a lot longer than I have, but we will both miss all of the people in the classes. We will especially miss Katie McBrearty- Shield who taught the class. She is a great teacher, a great friend and an inspiration to both of us. We also made a trip to visit the grave sites of Connie's mom and dad who both died with-in a month of each other late in 2013.  Tonight we will get to eat fish one last time at Brooks and Heidi Ivey's house and enjoyed one last visit with our friends.

Down to our last couple of days here at the apartment dog-sitting Murphy and Emma. We will leave Saturday morning after feeding the dogs to head to the farm and spend Saturday night sleeping in our own bed inside The Duchess. HOORAY!!

Continued Preparations

Connie and I continue to make preparations for the move from the apartment where we are dog sitting into The Duchess. We made trips to my dad's farm on both Friday and Sunday to put "stuff" that we had at the apartment into the barn. Some of this will go into the motor home and most it we will store in the barn. We are grateful that my dad is letting us store stuff in the barn during our travels as it allowed us to keep some items that we would have had to get rid of otherwise.

We ordered more items that we need to start off with in the motor home:

• Direct TV receivers and service
• Small satellite dish and tripod to have in case the roof-top dish is blocked by trees
• Collapsible ladder
• WiFi Ranger Go2 router that works with both campground wi-fi service and cellular
• Cover for bicycles
• Extra keys for Jeep along with Hide-a-Key box
• Small fire resistance-water resistance safe to store valuables in
• Fire extinguishers for motor home (after going to a class with Mack the Fire Guy, we did not want to start out without this)
• Passport America membership
• Renewed our membership in Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA) 

The weather here in Austin was much nicer over the last few days, so we took advantage of it and walked the dogs twice each of the last three days. It looks like we are in for more rain later this week. The Duchess is scheduled to have her transmission replaced this week, so hopefully we will get her back and be able to get her set up at the farm by this week-end when we end our dog-sitting job.

We finished up our tax returns for 2014 and will put them in the mail today. We are trying to move all of our accounts to a couple of financial institutions to simplify our lives during our travels, so there is more paperwork to complete to accomplish this.

All for now as the countdown continues. Connie and I can't wait to get started on our journey.

Dinner with Grandson/Happy Hour Group

On Monday night, Connie and I had dinner with my grandson Rhys McKay and his mom, Grace McKay at Kerbey Lane Cafe. We had not seen Rhys in a while and he has grown quite a lot. He is now two and one-half years old and is going through the "terrible twos". It was good to be able to spend some time with Grace and Rhys before we head out on our journey. As usual, we forgot to take any pictures, so here is one from last year. One of our resolutions is to take pictures of the people we meet and the places we go.

Last year's St. Patrick's Day photos

Tuesday we received good news about the motor home. The dealer we purchased The Duchess from agreed to pay for the replacement of the transmission. The work will be done here in Austin at the Allison Transmission repair shop that the motor home has been at for several weeks now. The repair shop has told us that the transmission replacement will be completed in about one week, so hopefully we will get The Duchess back in the middle of next week.

We also had our final get together with our Happy Hour group on Tuesday night at Brio's. This group has been getting together almost every month for the last 13 years. The group members have changed over time, but Connie has been a part of this group from the start. I joined the group when Connie and I started dating in 2002. Connie was the "planner" for the Happy Hour group and we are hoping that someone will step up and continue the get togethers on a regular basis. Although I am sure that we will meet lots of new friends on our journey, we will miss the camaraderie of our Happy Hour group.

Connie and I are continuing to complete the purchases we need to make before we start full-timing. We are having packages arrive almost every day now at our friend's (thank you Marty) house with "stuff" we have ordered on-line. I am sure that we will have ordered some items we end up not using along with finding our there are other things we forgot about.

Dog/Apartment Sitting

Emma and Murphy

Connie and I took a job dog/apartment sitting here in Austin from February 10th to March 21st. The apartment is located in the Great Hills/Arboretum section of Austin in an area that has lots of shops and restaurants. There are two dogs, Murphy and Emma. Both of them are them are King Charles Cavaliers. Murphy is 11 years old and Emma in 5. They are not related. The couple that we are sitting for is spending this 5 weeks in the British Virgin Islands. We were hoping to be able to get out and visit a number of the restaurants in the area, but here in Austin we have had a series of cold fronts plus a lot of rain that has limited our outdoor activities. The rain started again yesterday and continues today. We are hoping for better weather starting tomorrow. Maybe we will finally start our spring over the next couple of weeks.

I spent the week-end doing taxes. We had to complete the final tax return for Connie's dad's estate along with our 2014 tax forms. Everything has now been completed and we will file them in the next couple of weeks.

We are still waiting on approval to have a new transmission put into our motor home. The tests have all indicated it needs replacing, but the dealer we purchased it from has not given the OK yet.

Connie and I visited my dad last Friday since we finally had a sunny day. He is still living full time in his motor home which most of the time is located on a farm in Bastrop County Texas. He is leaving this week for about three months to join other SoJourners in some church work here in Texas. After that he is headed to Arkansas and Oklahoma to do some additional SoJourner missions in April and May. We had finished the scanning of photos into our computer, so we took the boxes of these photos to my dad's barn for storage.

There has not been a lot of activity for us in the last week, so no posting in the blog. I will continue to post from time to time on this blog as items come up in our journey. Stay tuned.

Fish Fry/Visit to The Duchess

Brooks and Heidi hosted one of their famous fish fry dinners last night. Brooks and Robert Hocker had gone fishing on Sunday and caught over 80 fish at Lake Travis. About 20 people attended the fish fry and brought along side dishes. Brooks deep fried the fish (white bass and striper) and as usual it was delicious. We all ate our fill and enjoyed the getting together with friends. One of the things Connie and I will missed the most is the fish fry dinners and the good times shared with our friends at these gatherings.

Connie and I went out to visit The Duchess yesterday. She is parked in the corner of the repair shop awaiting the next step in the process of repairing/replacing the transmission. The shop is suppose to pull the transmission today and do a physical examination of the parts. They still don't know if the entire transmission will need to be replaced or if it can be repaired. We are in that "hurry up and wait mode".

We went ahead and drained all of the water out of the motor home since it is suppose to freeze again over the next few days. We remembered to drain all of the water out of the filteration system and will go ahead and replace the water filter itself. We still need to order a few more items for the motor home before we head out on the road. We ran the generator for about an hour and put a load on it. The recommendation is that you run your generator for at least an hour once a month.

I went through some old photographs/old paperwork in a box I had been given after the death of my mother. I found several items that I had never seen before. Another trip down memory lane.

Bon Voyage Party

Even though our launch date is not until April 1st, last night a group of our friends threw us a "Bon Voyage" party to celebrate the start of our great adventure. We want to give special thanks to Darlene & Rip Collins, Heidi & Brooks Ivey and Rhonda & Russ Herrington for all of their planning and preparation in putting the party together. We also want to thanks all of our friends who came out on a night where the weather was inclement.

Friends dating all the way back to our childhoods attended the party and wished us well on our journey. Several specials gifts were given to us including: trail mix for those long hikes and "special" bottles of wine for the end of those hikes from Darlene & Rip, koozies to keep beverages cool along the way from Heidi & Brooks and a Wilson Cell Phone Booster and Antenna (so we can keep in touch with all of our friends here in Austin) from the Collins, Herringtons and Iveys. The party had a camping theme, so the food was what you would find on a camp out (at least one appropriate for the RV lifestyle of camping). Rhonda had a friend make wonderful sugar cookies with a camping theme: some looked like canoes, campfires, RV's and other assorted items you would find at a camping site. All of the food was delicious and there was plenty for everyone. We have a great group of friends here in Austin and we will miss them when we leave.

Everyone was curious about the blog, especially the one who had not heard about it. It was enjoyable to be able to visit with friends and discuss our plans.

Again we want to thank everyone for the cards, thoughts and gifts we received. It was unexpected, but our group of friends have always been generous with each other.

Connie had spent the entire day going through photographs and picking out which one she scanned in the computer. A long day for her but one that brought back a lot of memories. This blog remains a work in progress and hopefully we will continue to add "stuff" to the blog as we go along.