Misc.

I would like to welcome Sissy to my blog.  She has just finished the first entries I wrote in August 2008, so I went back to read a couple of them.  I knew what was coming - selling my lovely furniture and getting rid of a lot of my belongings, plus leaving beautiful Swannanoa, NC (east of Asheville).  I just couldn't go back and read about it as I would give anything to have my furniture back.  I would even love to have the house back, except living on the side of a mountain with hundreds of trees (and millions of leaves in the fall) became too much for me to handle.

I would like to insert here a little advice to those women who are considering becoming solo full time RVers, and that is don't get too hung up on any one kind of rig at first, but give serious consideration to them all, and take into consideration the comments and suggestions made by other women.  I should have listened and bought a Class C RV rather than a 5th wheel and truck, although I could still shed a tear when I think about how much I miss that truck!

I know there must be women out there who are very happy with their selection of 5ver, but when I think about it, every solo female RVer I know who chose the 5th wheel/truck combo has either left RVing for good or else switched to something more manageable for them.  Note that it seems to work out beautifully for couples, but that's a whole different situation altogether. 

I'm not sure it would have made all that much difference in the duration of my RVing life, but it might have, and it sure would have made my RVing life much easier.  I got pretty hung up on the idea of how much more living space I could have in a 5th wheel, whereas I didn't spend all that much time inside the 5th wheel.  Much of the time I was workcamping or just lounging in the fresh air outdoors.

Back to other more mundane things, I forgot to mention that I had looked online and found excellent instructions for changing the toner cartridge on my printer, and I did it without a hitch!  Reality doesn't match the pictures on the inside of the printer when it comes to the green lever.  Also thanks to Nancy who suggested viewing a YouTube video about it.  I believe that was one of the things I did when I looked online for instructions, but the printed word I settled on, which also had a couple of sketches of what I should be looking at and doing, made it an easy operation.  

I think I am making a lot of work for myself in the planning of my trip.  I decided that I will try to take hundreds of photos along the way (year, right!), so it stands to reason that I need to document the time and place of each picture.  How many times have I looked over a beautiful scene, somewhere in Utah no doubt, with gorgeous red cliffs, hoodoos, mesas, and the like, and tried to figure out "Now where did I take this?"  So I created an Excel spreadsheet to keep a record.  When it came to printing it I couldn't get the lines to print - the ones that separate the cells/rows/columns.  I have the microsoft package for a Mac, but usually save the word and excel files in the format for the 97-2004 version--.doc rather than docx, and .xls rather than .xlsx.  But the software version I use has changed greatly since I used the older versions, and for the life of me I couldn't get the grid to print.  So I sat here for sometime with a ruler and pencil, measuring and drawing the lines myself, and have one whole page finished, which looks great by the way.  Why don't I just go out and buy one of those bound journal books and use it to record the info?  I did get my chart to print in landscape so I could widen the columns.  I guess I need these little self-imposed challenges to keep my mind from deteriorating too far.

The binder is coming along nicely and I have it packed with info about where I'm going, campgrounds, directions.  These are things I enjoy looking over in the late afternoon or early evening after settling into my camp or motel room.  I wouldn't always be able to access my computer so organizing it and keeping it there doesn't make sense to me, and I can just forget even reading the small print on an iPhone, if in fact I even wanted one.  Finding coverage is another problem I won't have with my lovingly created binders.  

I woke up this morning actually cold from an overnight low of 58 and all my windows open!  It was a lovely feeling. 

I enlisted Donald to help me with the expense log, which I took from an old triptik.  I asked him to enlarge it to give me more room to enter the info, and then to scan and print 10 copies of it.  They look very good and so professional.  I didn't have the nerve to ask him to create a photo log from scratch!