Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Kind of Homeless: Part 3

  I couldn't decide whether or not to post about our "homeless, vagabonding" adventures because we left the Bounder behind in Jamesville after our second week of roaming around. But, I decided to go ahead and keep you guys up to date about our summer even if we aren't in the Bounder because our travels are leading up to our more permanent life in our RV, coming up in August.

  Our third week, July 9th through July 15th, was spent in Richmond, Virginia with Dave's sister and her boyfriend. We had a pretty awesome week and did a bunch of things. We stayed with Landon, the boyfriend of Dave's sister, Jo. His living quarters are unique this summer as well. He is living in the basement of some people he knows from the church he is doing his internship with this summer. Check this church out, they're pretty awesome and pretty new - Area 10 - !! Landon was kind enough to let us have his bed for the week while he slept on the fold out couch.

  Moving right along! Dave and I met a ton of people during our week in Richmond and they were all pretty awesome and most of them were very busy people a lot of the time. Monday Dave and I went to the small group, or bible study Landon helps lead and got to be a part of some awesome discussion and be there for a baptism! It's always awesome to be a part of the beginning of a new chapter in someone's life.

  Tuesday was spent being touristy and walking around Cary town with Jo and her roommate after breakfast. Later, riding with Jo to work resulted in our buying a hanging fruit basket for the Bounder! We are always trying to find new ways to conserve space in there. Tuesday was quite easy going and lovely.

  The excitement began to build Wednesday as we woke up in anticipation of our camping trip the next day! Dave, Landon, Jo and myself planned on going up to Woodstock, Virginia to camp for 2 nights and do a little hiking, take in the mountains and let Dave hang glide off of said mountain. Unfortunately, Jo woke up feeling bad this Wednesday morning and later found out that she had strep. Dave and I kept our distance for the 48 hours of her being potentially contagious and prayed she would feel up to camping Friday. We didn't want to go without her because we wanted her to be a part of the fun. Thankfully she was feeling up to the challenge on Friday and we trekked up to Woodstock.

  Though, I skipped Thursday, it was a fun day. Dave, Landon and I went to Kings Dominion, so no complaints here. I can ride roller coasters until I black out. Seriously. And even then, I'd keep going. Anyway, Friday came and we put our camping faces on. We went up to the camp site first thing to set up our stuff because we thought it might rain. Even though the rain was looming, we headed up to the mountain where Dave would launch his hang glider and we would all hope for the best. Once you step off the side of a mountain, there's no coming back, really. Thankfully he flew right over those sharp, deathly trees of doom and glided safely to the ground. He flew for about seven minutes, which was good enough for him considering the not so perfect conditions and we headed back to the site to continue camping!

  We got back Saturday just in time for Dave and Landon to practice for the Sunday music at church while Jo and I vegged out in front of her tv. Sunday morning came and went, we ate lunch at a Thai place and packed up just like a normal Sunday these days.

  Uneventfully, we got from Richmond, Virginia to Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. We did leave our friends in Richmond with some thunderstorms, but we didn't see any of it. We had a great time and I probably left out a bunch of really awesome things, but I'm very thankful if you read this far. If this post was full of more awesome, you'd be reading for days and I don't think that's what anyone wants to do.

  The Outer Banks is next on the agenda. We'll be staying in a regular house, the kind without wheels, but we'll keep you posted nonetheless.

   

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Kind of Homeless: Part 2!


  Week two was spent in Jamesville, NC with my parents. This one pony town is located between Plymouth, NC and Williamston, NC. My parents were also very generous in sharing their driveway with us. This week we only popped the breaker twice! We’re getting good at this whole electricity thing huh? We spent a bunch of time inside this week since it was scorching and were able to relax a bit. 


  July 4th came during this week and we ventured down to the OBX to hang out with my sister, Emilie. Dave got a chance to go hang gliding, while the rest of us hung out at the beach. It was a pretty good day until Dave got heat exhaustion near the end of the day. Thankfully he was able to get going enough to make it to the car to head home. 


  This was a dangerously hot week for our family. Dave loves working on projects to keep him busy. Luckily, my dad needed his mower to be fixed! My dad and Dave had the mower high in the air as they tried to distinguish what the problem was and my dad ended up passing out. He had been careful to drink plenty of water, but had forgotten to eat. No food + 102 degree temps = a passed out pops. Thankfully he recouped and eventually the mower was fixed as well!


  Family time was had for the rest of the week. The Bounder did well, as expected. It was doubly hot inside of it, which had its own, unique draw backs. I don’t know if you guys know this, but when one has to go to the bathroom in an RV the deposit goes straight into a holding tank. Duh! Right? Yeah. Well, when an RV is full of you-know-what, and it’s above 102 degrees outside, things tend to... become obvious. If you catch my “sniff” (pun intended). So, we kept deodorizing that until it could no longer be deodorized.


  Dave finished up some odds and ends on the Bounder that he had started in Falkland, while I tried not to even be outside. All in all, it was a pretty relaxing week with some bumps along the way. 


  We were able to attend church at Poplar Chapel Church of Christ where I grew up attending, on Sunday July 8th. It was really awesome to get to see everyone and catch up a bit. After lunch we attempted to leave to head to our next destination. This plan was tricky, so stay with me. We packed up EVERYTHING and stuffed it all in our two cars. Jamesville was the end of our summer rendezvous with the Bounder, so we took a bunch of things with us. We left the RV in my parents yard and headed for the OBX. Dave’s parents live there and after week 3 of being kind of homeless, we knew we would be going straight there. So, we went to the OBX to drop off Dave’s car and a few things. After that, we headed North to RICHMOND, VA!!!


  Yeah, right. It wasn’t that easy. Of course. 


  We always have to leave in a dramatic way. Mostly, we’ve moved on to our next destination accompanied by buckets and boat loads and tons of rain. This time my body decided it was too hot to function. That’s right, dehydration. On the way to the OBX, I suddenly realized I had tunnel vision. Soon after the tunnel vision, my head started pounding. This pounding was accompanied by nausea and feelings of hot flashes. By the way, I was driving.  Yep. Needless to say, we barely made it to Dave’s parents without me vomiting and we stayed the night there. We can’t just have a boring, normal departure. There at least has to be a tornado, hail or sickness.


  Next on the agenda, Richmond! Because we did finally get there!   

  If you missed the excitement of our first week, we've got you covered ;) Part 1

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Kind of Homeless: Part 1


  Dave and I have spent two glorious weeks in our majestic Bounder. I am using such wonderful adjectives, aren’t I? I just realized that. Anywhoo, These past two weeks have flown by and we’ve done a bunch, Bounder related and otherwise. 
  
  Our first week was spent in Falkland/Fountain NC. For those of you who might be geographically challenged like me, that’s right outside of Greenville. We have really good friends who gave us their driveway to park in and use their water and electricity. They’ve always been really hospitable people as long as I have known them. We did the majority of our Bounder maintenance this first week because it was a trial and error type of thing since we’ve never tried living in it before. When we went on our anniversary in New Bern, NC, we were spoiled by the 30 amp plug they had there. We thought we could get away with running whatever we wanted in the Bounder off of the 20 amp plug outside their house. Well, we were wrong. Three times. We tried running the A/C and the fridge at the same time and some how they would cancel each other out and we were poppin’ fuses like they were hot. Coming home to a very silent rv, no A/C running and no fridge running is a disheartening thing. We learned, eventually. 
  
  We really wanted to be able to run the fridge between trips so we wouldn’t have to put everything in our cooler every time we unplugged. Also, we didn’t want anything to spoil. So, earlier in the month we bought a solar panel large enough to charge a battery that we could hook up to the fridge and keep it going on solar power alone. Pretty exciting!! Dave spent a good amount of time on that this first week, but it was worth it. 
  
  The heat was looking like it was about to reach a level we weren’t very comfy with sleeping in this week. We bought a window unit for our room since it didn’t get any air flow from the big A/C in the living room. It was almost the best decision we’ve ever made. Sleeping in a cooled space is almost too good for words after a sweaty day. And we were sweaty... erry dang day. Dave worked his magic and used his ingenuity to fit the window unit into place. We wanted to be able to ride down the road without it falling out, so there were many a screw screwed in that day. It’s so good.
  
  Dave’s last day as the music minister intern was approaching at the end of this week. As we were preparing for this day to come, we were feeling happy to move forward and sad to leave friends and such an awesome church family. The day came and it was a pretty great Sunday, like usual, but it was kind of a sad day. 
  
  They prayed for us and took up a love offering. Dave sang a song by himself and people hugged us before we left them. I almost cried and we both were so appreciative, so beyond appreciative that we were overwhelmed. I felt like I couldn’t express myself well that day, so I just hugged people and tried to treat it like any other day. 
  
  We ate lunch and went back to Falkland to pack up the ‘ol Road Whale and get moving to our next destination. This task was far greater than we could’ve imagined. I don’t know if you North Carolinians and Virginians remember, but we had a pretty intense storm come through July 1st. Dave was driving the Bounder, I was driving our Ford Focus, Dave’s dad was driving our Tracker and Dave’s mom was driving her car. Our fleet of vehicles was bombarded with first wind then sheets of rain and a lastly, a little bit of hail. This forced us to pull over. The normal cars made it to a gas station, but Dave had to stop a little further back because he went through the dump on the way out and once he saw the land spout he called it quits until it got a bit more calm. After about 30 to 40 minutes of waiting... waiting... waiting, we headed out. The main road we were taking closed down halfway because of power lines being down across the road. We were forced to use dun dun dun!... Backroads. We weaved through miles of limb and debris riddled road for around 25 minutes only to get about halfway and see that a tree was blocking the entire road. The kind folks that lived near this blockade told us we might as well turn back, so that’s what we did. 
  
  So, making our hour and a half journey into a two and a half hour journey, we made it. Finally.
  
  Our second week was a bit action packed as well. Stay tuned for part 2!!