This will probably be our last week in Tennessee before we head out for warmer climes sometime next week. Jenn’s aunt and uncle have invited us to Thanksgiving dinner, and there’s no way we can refuse, considering the spread they put out. In the spirit of traditional Thanksgivings, we figured we’d share a few more homemade recipes: my grandmother’s chocolate pie recipe and Jenn’s uncle’s recipe for limoncello.

Grandma’s Chocolate Pie

Grab a medium sized pot and toss in everything but the pie crusts (duh!), Cool Whip and butter. Set your stove to medium or medium high heat and begin mixing it together. Once the mixture seems to be warming up a bit, toss the stick of butter in and keep stirring. You’re going to do a lot of stirring. Basically, you want to keep stirring until it achieves the consistency of a thick pudding. I recommend a whisk for this… or even a small hand mixer if you can keep it from splashing all over.

Once the mixture thickens up, remove it from heat and pour into a couple of pie shells. Personally, I like Oreo or graham cracker pie crusts, but it’s pretty hard to ruin this pie by picking the wrong crust. Next, I like to leave the pies sitting out under a paper towel so that the steam doesn’t form condensation and make the crust soggy. About an hour should do it. Once they’ve cooled a bit, toss them in the fridge or freezer to cool further. Before serving, cover them with Cool Whip and grab your own fork and plate so as to be sure of getting a slice.

Uncle Mike’s Limoncello

Limoncello is a fashionable after dinner drink all over Italy. There are many commercial limoncellos sold today, but only the homemade liqueur has the fresh and refreshing edge that makes it such a wonderful drink. The popular way to serve limoncello is from the freezer and syrupy thick, but it is often served at room temperature as well.

The key ingredient to limoncello is, of course, the lemons. The fresher the lemons, the more oil can be extracted from their skins and the more flavorful the liqueur. Traditional recipes call for a few green lemons as well as the yellow, but green lemons are difficult to find in the US. Mottled yellow and green lemons are an excellent choice. Green (or mottled) lemons will add more fragrance to the drink, while yellow lemons will add more flavor.

Peel the lemons, being careful not to remove any of the white pith along with the lemon zest as it gives a bitter taste. A lemon zester works best for this task, however a potato peeler or knife will do in a pinch.

Put the lemon zests into a half gallon container along with the grain alcohol. Store this in a cool, dark place for 3-4 days, taking out to shake several times a day.

Once the lemon zests become pale and crisps, you’ve extracted all of the lemon oil from them. Strain them out of the alcohol and discard the zests.

Grab a pot and mix your sugar and water together. Heat this on the stove over medium-low to medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Do not let the water boil. You are aiming for a clear sugar syrup. Once achieved, let the sugar water cool down to room temperature.

Mix the alcohol with the sugar syrup and you’re all set. You’ll need a couple of liter bottles to store the limoncello. You can drink it at this point, but the flavor will round out a bit if allowed to sit for a week. As for the leftover lemons, need I suggest lemonade?

Happy turkey day everyone!

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As we make our way south and west to avoid the bitter cold, Johnny and I are stopping at places we wont be seeing for a long time. We have stopped at GSP, at Winchester, VA, and now we are sitting at my parent’s place. Its our familiar last stop before we hit the great unknown again.

While we are here, we have been doing some caving. Our good friend David visited us and we headed over to Camp’s Gulf Cave. We had a great adventure. Either Johnny or myself will post about it as soon as we get the pictures . Hopefully he, Pam and Chaos will join us for some more caving fun before we head off once again. We are surely going to miss them when we leave this side of the country. Its not often that you find good people who are great company and are willing to meet up in various places to do the things you like to do. We really lucked out when we met them. We would have probably left the east coast sooner if our paths had never crossed.

For some reason, when I get to my parent’s place, I turn even more domestic than usual. Tonight, for instance, I decided to make a batch of pasta. It was my first time, and I would have to say it turned out well. While it smelled just like the stuff in the box, it wasn’t quite like it. The best way to describe it would be to say that it was much more hearty - not so much thicker, but more… wholesome. I have to say that I prefer it to the boxed stuff. Not only is it more hearty, it is better tasting and I know exactly what is in it. Which is a major plus for me. I hate turning over a container and seeing 3425437 ingredients in an item that I know should only have 5. Not only that, but now I know that I can make it, too.

Next time we are out in the boonies and out of pasta, I will not fret. I will just make some. Ah… self reliance. Its a good feeling. Lately, my staples have been milk, eggs, flour, sugar, and olive oil. More and more I have been finding that those, some meat, a few spices, and veggies are all I need to make just about anything. Quite a far cry from the old days of ordering in for every meal. Life is good. There’s no way I could have found the time to experiment like this when I was working 9-16hrs a day.

So, have I convinced you to make your own pasta? Its incredibly easy, and it only takes 5 ingredients. Water, oil, flour, salt and eggs. Here’s the recipe:

* 1/3 cup water
* 2 1/3 cup all purpose flour (or whole wheat)
* 1 teaspoon of olive oil
* 2 eggs
* 1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix 2 cups of flour and salt in a large bowl and create a depression in the center. Beat eggs. Add water and oil to eggs. Pour egg mixture into the depression you’ve created in the flour mix. Mix well. Use remaining flour to cover your work surface. Knead dough on the floured area four about 8 minutes. Dough should have elasticity and be smooth. Cover dough and allow to sit for 10 minutes. Divide the dough into 4 quarters. Lightly flour working area and roll each quarter out with a rolling pin into a 12×12″ square (1/16″ thick). Set them aside for 20 minutes. Cut into desired shape.

You can also use this recipe to make egg noodles. Just substitute the 2 eggs with one egg and two yolks. You can freeze the left over egg whites for use at a later date.

If you want to store them, you should allow the pieces to dry for at least 1 hour. Dry them by hanging them or placing them on a rack. After they dry, you can seal them in a Ziploc and put them in to the fridge for a couple of days. You can also freeze them for up to 8 months.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t stop thinking about the possibilities. Herb flavored pasta, spinach, raviolis, unique shapes, etc. Heck, with the right packaging and ingredients, it might even make a nice gift.

Tonight, I served it with my “almost from scratch” marinara sauce. Yum yum! Maybe someday I will post that recipe too. Or, maybe my homemade alfredo. Tomorrow, I will be making another batch of beef jerky. I am going to try it a little differently this time. I might also go ahead and make that new twist on pesto sauce that I have been thinking about. Oh, the possibilities!

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So, you want to live in the back of a truck… First off, you should probably face the fact that you’re a bit of an odd duck. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about some of the things that you’ll encounter along the way to making this grandiose fantasy a reality.

Where are you from?
You’re going to hear this question a lot as you travel around. It’s simply a polite thing to ask strangers that “aren’t from around here”. There are a few schools of thought as to how one should answer this question. You can tell people where you left “real life” from if you are in a hurry and don’t want to explain how you come to be living in that truck over yonder. If you’re dealing with a business or government agency, it’s usually simplest to give the address of your mail forwarding service or the address on your driver’s license.

The next two options are a pretty good way to strike up a conversation, so use them carefully as you may end up trying to explain yourself to a posse in the wrong town. You can simply tell the truth and explain that you’re traveling. This can lead to all sorts of interesting questions such as “are ya’ll circus folk/gypsies/carnies/hippies/destitute?”. I wouldn’t recommend telling the cashier at a local business this, but it goes over well at campgrounds. Events that bring a lot diverse folks together are also a good bet. You’ll have to explain yourself a lot more, but as you’re there to meet people anyway, it gives you an interesting topic to talk about. A lot of people are curious about the fulltime RV lifestyle and have lots of questions. The final answer to “where are you from?” is to say “I grew up in…”. This is a polite way of making smalltalk without committing yourself to answering a lot of personal questions from complete strangers.

What do you bring along?
This is a really tough question and will depend mostly on what you enjoy doing and how much room you have. Jenn and I had a lot of different ideas on what is considered “essential” to the fulltime RV lifestyle, but one thing we both agreed on was that tools should come along. The only tool I can recall leaving in storage is a sawzall that simply took up too much room when a circular saw could accomplish much of the same work and be a better all around tool besides. Jenn is carrying around a full size sewing machine and I’m dragging along an acetylene torch with miniature gas bottles.

Why are tools so important? They give you the ability to work on your own rig! It might take years to become an expert craftsman or handyman, but with tools at hand, you can attempt to fix problems or fabricate new solutions. It might be ugly or even fail the first shot, but you can probably do it two or three times for the cost of having it done by a professional. Let’s face it, if you’re not going to work every day, you probably have a lot of free time. Why not spend a couple of days making something that a skilled laborer could knock out in a couple of hours? The satisfaction that comes from making things just the way you picture them is well worth the time involved.

Entertainment is also an important item to think about. If you can use some of the tools you brought along in a hobby such as wood working or sewing, you’ve knocked out two birds with a chunk of iron. But what about books, movies and toys? Yah, I said toys. Unfortunately, books take up a ton of space and are quite heavy. DVDs aren’t quite as bad, but they still take up a considerable amount of space. Our solution to these was two-fold: electronic media and reduce what you carry.

Movies were a pretty easy solution. Most of our movies were ripped to disk and stored on hard drives for backup, so we simply moved them over to the ReadyNAS and keep fifteen or twenty on a Cowon for easy access. The movies we wanted to keep but were not yet ripped got stripped down. You don’t need that plastic box they come in. Grab a CD/DVD travel case and fill it with nothing but disks…. you just cut the size of your movie collection down significantly.

Books are a bit harder. Electronic copies are a good start, but I still haven’t found an E-Book reader that I was happy enough with to shell out the bucks. Reading on the laptop is doable, but it’s a drain on the electricity and not entirely ergonomic. For now, I’m still carrying around a couple of dozen small paperbacks and swapping them out for new books as we find new books from friends, family, lending libraries and public libraries that are giving away old books.

Ok, so I’m just a big kid at heart. Two toys we made sure to bring along were Jenn’s Mindstorm lego kit and my 500 in 1 electronics kit. I’ve got to admit that we’ve spent no time at all playing with either of these toys, but I still like to think that there is enough ‘play time’ there to keep us busy for several years of rainy days. For low cost, small storage entertainment, old video games are great. They take up very little room and you can get them at bargain basement prices. A few days of entertainment from a $1 game is a helluva deal. Simple board games without a lot of pieces are also a nice way to pass an evening.

You can make room for just about any hobby if you are passionate enough about it. You just have to ask yourself if remodeling vintage automobiles is worth hauling around a trailer with your Model T frame and random parts for the next twenty years. Jenn and I are hauling around bows and arrows along with a practice target, fishing poles with minimal tackle, a fair amount of caving gear and enough old radio dramas to play for three or four years straight just to name a few.

This article has gone on longer than I expected when I began writing. If it’s popular, perhaps we’ll turn it into a mini-series about what to expect from and how to prepare for life on the road. Happy trails!

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A couple of months back, we posted about three guys that got laid off from the Northwood of Virginia factory and have gone into the repair business. Well, we still needed a few things fixed because of problems with our appliance vendors and had a few days left on our warranty, so we figured it would be a good time to visit Bruce, Jerry and Roger again. I’m happy to say they had about a half dozen RVs in for repairs - primarily insurance claims and warranty work. Fortunately for us, everything they had sitting was because they were waiting for parts to arrive, so they had some time to work on our fan and air conditioner without having to wait.

We’ve been working on their website for a few days and instead of trying to figure out how much to charge a start-up that we really want to see succeed, we talked them into doing some customization on the camper. You’ve seen my oh-so-humble efforts on the liquor cabinet, so let’s just say I was thrilled to see what they made of my request to add a spice rack. And here I was about ready to buy some wire and plastic contraption from Wal-Mart!

Along with the lack of a spice rack for Jenn’s insane collection of spices, I’ve always been annoyed by the main pantry. Sure, it’s fairly large for a truck camper, but the shelves are about eighteen inches deep with a two foot counter in front of them. It’s just plain difficult to reach things in the back of the cabinet… much less see what they are without removing everything in front of them. With the addition of a spice rack, we were able to sacrifice a little bit of shelf space and have Winchester RV Repair install a set of drawers in the cupboard that look like they came that way from the factory. Now, we can just slide out a drawer and have easy access to anything inside.

My final gripe was more of a design problem with Northwood’s truck camper couches. There is basically one small piece of iron on each side and the cushioning inside the couch separating it from the storage compartments and furnace underneath. Maybe it’s not a problem for the average vacationer, but when you sit on the couch day in and day out, the couch begins to sag permanently into the empty space below. Roger and Jerry cut a sheet of plywood to fit beneath the couch that solves the problem quite nicely. I’m no longer in fear of being eaten by the couch if I don’t stand up every fifteen minutes!

I can’t recommend Bruce, Jerry and Roger enough. Aside from decades of factory experience, they’ve done things like retro-fit a log cabin with RV comforts and gutting vintage motorhomes to change the entire floorplan while modernizing the RV systems. I’ve got to work up a list for oddball requests the next time we’re in Northern Virginia. Bruce says no electric chairs or jacuzzis in a truck camper, but I bet I could talk them into an external water pump and filter system for filling the tanks from the nearest stream. Where were these guys when I wanted to retrofit that UPS truck?!

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I know a lot of fulltimers swear by various camping club memberships to keep their camping costs down throughout the year, but at Hitek Homeless, our focus is on avoiding camping fees altogether. That being said, sometimes it is just more practical to stay in an established campground overnight and some sort of discount card sure would be nice.

Recently, we stopped over in a national forest and it was getting too late to be out looking for a campsite in the dark. The fees posted for this campsite were $5/day. You can’t beat that with a stick, right? Wrong! For the first time, I noticed that our America the Beautiful pass would allow us to camp for HALF PRICE somewhere.

Now, I happen to think this interagency pass is an excellent deal for folks that want to check out the national parks as they travel, so we picked one up while visiting the Wright Brothers memorial in Kitty Hawk, NC. At the time, we joked about buying an $80 pass to avoid paying an $8 entrance fee. But, you’ve got to remember that the interagency pass takes an all you can eat approach to entrance fees. It will get you and up to three other people into just about every federal area where they charge an entrance fee for free. This includes national parks, monuments and historic sites, forestry service, bureau of land management, bureau of reclamation and fish and wildlife sites as well as federal recreation lands.

The pass is good for a year, but try to buy it at the beginning of the month rather than the end as we did. I was a bit annoyed to see our pass punched to expire thirty days earlier than it would have if we’d bought it the following day. If you happen to be sixty-two or older, you qualify for a Senior pass which is $10 and does not expire. If you are permanently disabled, you qualify for an Access pass which is free and never expires.

You could buy a pass on the internet, but if you’re going to buy a pass with an expiration date, why bother when you can buy one from so many places where you’ll begin saving money immediately? Actually, if you’re planning to use it primarily as a camping discount card, go ahead and buy it on the internet, as many of the places where you can receive a camping discount do not sell passes.

Oh, yes, I did mention camping discounts, didn’t I? Here’s a treat for those of you that like camping on the water. All Corp of Engineer campgrounds accept the interagency passes and give a 50% discount on their camping rates. I was a bit disappointed to see that the COE had raised their rates significantly since our copy of Camping With the Corps of Engineers: The Complete Guide to Campgrounds Owned and Operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was published. The COE is starting to approach the price of commercial campgrounds in a lot of cases, but 50% off puts it back in the bargain bin.

As long as we’re talking about federal lands, here’s a fun link to maps of the various federal lands. Pity they don’t cover state forests, parks and wildlife management areas as well, but at least the federal lands have more or less similar policies from state to state.

Oh, and lest I be castigated by completeists, I’d better mention the Volunteer pass. If you’re the kind of person that likes doing volunteer work, you can earn a ‘free’ Interagency pass by volunteering 500 hours to the federal agencies in the America the Beautiful program. Now, if you’re like me, 500 hours really seems like a lot of time for a pass with an $80 value. The one bright spot in this otherwise dismal news is that you could potentially volunteer these 500 hours as a campground host and get a free campsite and perhaps a small living stipend while working towards your ‘free’ interagency pass.

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On 2008/10/25 at 12:11 PM, Brent wrote:

Hey guys,

Currently working my way through your all your postings. My wife and I are in the “can we really do this” stage of making the same change that you two have. Very much enjoying reading through your process.

Much like you two, we both work in technology and are somewhat dependent on the Internet. Add to that, the need for research / blogging / and potentially some work while traveling and connectivity gets to be one of our important decisions. So I’m curious, how are you feeling about the cell network decision versus satellite? Working out as you had planned?

Brent

Well, Brent, I’d have to say I don’t like any of the choices available. I’m pretty happy with the performance of EVDO, but I’m extremely upset with Sprint changing the contract midstream so that it no longer remotely resembles the class of service that we originally purchased. I have already ranted about this particular event once, so I’ll try and stay on subject…

For in-motion internet access, I don’t think you can beat EVDO in the US. EVDO also trumps satellite systems for setup times as there is no setup at all, or in our case, we roll up the television antenna to get a bit more height from the cellular antenna once we’re parked. There is no trying to make sure your dish has an unobscured line of sight, etc. EVDO is also superior to satellite internet in terms of bandwidth and latency. You just can’t get around the speed of light time lag when you’re acknowledging a packet… the further the physical distance, the longer it takes.

Now, satellite has a few nice things going for it as well. You don’t need to be near a cell tower for starters. You can also get a clear line of sight to the sky when mountains would otherwise block cell towers. If you have money to spare, then a motosat installation would take a lot of the headaches out of setting up your satellite dish. Just flip it on and let the machinery lock onto a bird.

If you’re going to be in really remote areas and can’t be without Internet access for extended periods, then satellite is pretty much your only choice. If you can handle being offline for the occasional two week period and hauling a laptop into town to look for wifi hotspots, then EVDO is a pretty good choice with a much lower startup cost and lower monthly fees (I think!).

In a perfect world, I’d opt for an EVDO router as well as a satellite system. I’d settle for a standard satellite system as I’d only be setting it up when we were going to be parked for a week or so without cellular access. However, in the real world, I’m not about to pay for two different kinds of internet service just in case.

Now, back to my favorite rant… metered bandwidth. You can’t get away from it. The satellite companies do it as well as all the EVDO carriers. 5GB seems to be the gold standard for EVDO currently. Yes, that’s slightly more than a 14.4kbps dialup circa 1990. I’m not sure what kind of bandwidth the satellite folks are being allowed to enjoy, but I haven’t heard of any satellite companies charging overage fees. The last I heard, Verizon, AT&T and Sprint are all charging overages on new contracts. To the best of my knowledge, they are all pretty exorbitant… just as with cellular minutes.

Ten years ago, it was the web hosting companies that charged exorbitant overage rates and sky high pricing for a trickle of storage and bandwidth. The ISPs of the day all charged a flat rate whether you checked your mail once a month or spent the entire time downloading movies. These days, server space and bandwidth cost pennies, but end-user ISPs are limiting bandwidth, connection time and even charging overages. Funny, huh?

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Yah, I know we’ve been slacking on the blog updates lately, but as soon as we were done with the carnie gigs, we hit the boonies again without pausing to look for cellular service. I don’t think we’ll be doing any concession work anytime soon; so whatever jobs come next should be fairly new to us.

We left South Carolina in a hurry and made a beeline for the Great Saltpetre Cave Preserve in Mt. Vernon Kentucky again. We were hoping to get some caving in and see some friends once more before it gets too cold to be in Kentucky and we head out west for the winter.

We got to GSP on a Friday evening and were disappointed to find there weren’t many folks around for the weekend. By the end of the weekend, we hadn’t managed to go caving, but we did meet the head of the GSP committee, who had not heard of our ‘pseudo-real temporary membership in lieu of an actual real membership and almost real camping pass’ which had been issued by the former membership chair of the Greater Cincinnati Grotto. However, Bob, was polite and let us stick around while we straightened things out.

Halfway through our first week there, we met Shane, who had come up to do some trail maintenance and caving. We ended up doing a night trip with Shane to John Griffin cave. We later heard conflicting information regarding the closed state of this cave due to bat hibernation season. As of this moment, I am unable to find it listed on the cave closure list. I wish we’d had this list handy during our time at GSP. There is a 1600′ stream passage that has acted as an obstacle to finding the other entrance to this cave system. During our trip, this passage was nearly dry and it would’ve been an excellent time to try and find the other end without risking hypothermia as previous expeditions have.

Friday night, Shane’s wife and daughter came down and we hooked up with another couple to do an evening trip to Sinks of the Roundstone. Jenn and I had been in the cave during Karst-O-Rama, but we barely scratched the surface of the cave. During this trip, we saw several new areas. Now, it seems like an even nicer cave because I’ve seen that there is quite a bit of cave there that we haven’t seen and experienced some of the more interesting passages that we passed up during our previous trip.

Saturday night was the Halloween party. Jenn got suckered into sewing tarps to act as a wind break for the party. I made a couple of chocolate pies, decanted a bottle of whiskey and finished making the bottle of limoncello that Jenn had begun work on during the week. I can safely say that none of this was left over except the ‘lemon hooch’ that I had to wrestle free after a drunken hayride so Jenn could have a drink or two.

Sunday, we got together with Shane’s family and went to Climax cave. Climax is a really fun cave. It has several different maze areas where you can get quickly turned around if you’re not careful. Jenn and I have been on trips to this cave twice now and I’m still not sure we’ve seen much more than half of it. This is one of the caves that makes people really appreciate the reflective markers I’ve made up. In fact, the next time we ran into Shane and family, they’d made their own set of flags similar to my own.

The first half of the following week passed quietly until people began arriving to setup for the Rockcastle county elementary school field trips. Once again, Jenn got suckered into sewing tarps as the previous tarps were not dark enough to block the sun so that we could show movies to the children. Thursday and Friday, we got to remember what it’s like to get up early… we were helping with the cave tours of the Great Saltpetre cave for 2nd and 4th grade students. We had a lot of fun and made sure to follow as ‘tail gunners’ for a different guide every trip. Each guide had a little bit different lecture to give as we were walking through the cave, so we got to hear quite a bit of the history of the cave.

By Friday evening, we finally got our GCG membership straightened out and were no longer ‘the squatters down on the point’. Dave rolled in Friday evening and we spent the weekend hanging out and looking for caves. The sad thing is that we were looking for known caves, but with poor directions. We spent Saturday afternoon climbing all over a ridgeside and found a few holes, one of which was human-passable, but only about 40′ one direction and 15′ the other. The upside to this was hearing Dave scream like a girl upon seeing ’some sort of giant rat-like monster’ and then hearing him shout ‘OOGEDY BOOGEDY!’ in order to frighten off the critter before sending Jenn and I in for further exploration.

Sunday was almost as bad, except we drove Dave’s truck through some 4WD trails rather than actually walking. We found one potential cave, but the entrance was awfully tight and downhill around a corner; none of us was really comfortable with trying to get out of that belly-crawl once we got in. Jenn made it in the farthest, going headfirst while I held her feet. She was able to see around the corner and it was more of the same, so we gave up on that particular hole as being a lousy way to experience a first hand cave rescue.

Monday, Shane and his family came back down and he took us over to Wells Cave which is about and hour drive from GSP. The entrance to the cave acts as an excellent nerd filter. It took about ten minutes to negotiate a crawl through four to six inches of mud that has the consistency of peanut butter. Behind this, there is over eleven miles of cave. We’ve barely explored this cave; it would take much longer than the time we had available to see anything approaching the entire length of such a system.

And today, we’re back on the road!

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I posted back in April about our table upgrade that has saved my sanity, but I figure it’s time to cover a few more minor modifications that have improved our enjoyment of the camper. Also, we’re about to be engaged slinging fried chicken for a couple of weeks and we’ll probably be rather quiet in the blogosphere.

I’ve really got to say I’m still very happy with our choice of camper and options. We’ve looked at quite a few both before and after we made a decision and I still haven’t seen one (yeah, I know Paul will tell me to look at his Snowriver) that I would be happier with for fulltiming.

We had a couple of things customized on the camper that have made life a lot easier. One was getting a wet bath instead of a dry bath. For starters, it’s very easy to clean a wet bath. The only thing you really sacrifice is having a dry place to store towels and toilet paper. It’s also a good idea to buy a squeegie to swamp out the bathroom after your shower. But what we got in return for a dry bath is a wardrobe that’s two and a half feet deep, three full length drawers and a shoe cabinet.

After we quit work, I found I didn’t need hanging clothes anymore and built a cubbyhole system inside the wardrobe. Now, I have four shelves for clothes, a liquor cabinet and a handy place to store our bows which we previously had to squeeze behind the backseat of the truck. Rene has been asking me, for months now, where we hide the booze and I finally have a good answer. With some wiggling, I can get roughly eighteen liters of booze in the liquor cabinet. Just right for a couple of unemployed, homeless folks, right?

Another special order  was getting a couch instead of a dinette. Sure, it’s not optimal for dining, but it just seems much less adversarial to sit on a couch instead of staring at each other over a dinette when relaxing. Here, we actually gave up a little bit of inside storage because there are no drawers under the couch - just the furnace. We do still have a fair bit of outside storage under the couch though. One thing I didn’t realize at the time was that the couch would give us a nice place to store long skinny items such as wrapping paper, fishing poles, the metal detector, our lap desks and my bluetooth keyboard. Overall, I don’t feel like we lost too much storage and the couch really makes the camper feel bigger than a dinette in my opinion.

Above is a pseudo before and after picture of the wardrobe next to our couch. From the factory, there was just a blind in front of this which the cats could easily get into, which led to furrier jackets than was entirely necessary. During our recent visit to the Winchester factory, we were able to pick up a cabinet door and matching hardware that both fit the wardrobe and matched the interior of the camper. Two minutes with a drill and we had a nice cabinet door that looks like it belongs there.

Along with the cabinet door, we also picked up some nice brass colored robe hooks from the factory. They look much nicer than the plastic stick on hooks from Wal-Mart that occasionally fell while driving. They also make fine hat racks and towel hangers (remember, not much dry storage in the wet bath!). Yup, that’s the bathroom door… no need to take a towel in with you, just stick your arm out and grab it from outside.

One of the very first things we did was to stick a small cargo net on the ceiling over the bed. Come on, did you think that homeless people actually washed their clothes every time they wore them? Heck no. If it doesn’t smell yet and we’re in the middle of the woods, it gets stuck in the cargo net to be worn again the next day. It’s also a great place to store things like a jacket I’m going to wear the next day and don’t feel like hanging up or my flannel sleeping pants when it gets cold and we just don’t want to use a lot of propane keeping the place warm overnight.

Finally, there’s this little 475 watt inverter that I’ve wired into the electric jacks. Jenn’s laptop pulls just a bit more juice than you can really push over a 12v car adaptor, so we needed a direct connection to the battery to keep the ‘television’ charged up. It also does a great job of running the NAS when I get a craving to see a movie that I know is on there but hasn’t been moved over to one of the Cowons or a laptop. I had big hopes of using a 1750 watt inverter my dad gave us to power the entire camper, but apparently my soldering job was a bit faulty. I blame the tools… the soldering gun actually caught on fire while I was using it. Anyhow, the remote switch worked fine and my wiring job worked enough to push a load to the inverter, which promptly started smoking and would not turn off. C’est la vie!

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We had to have a few repairs done recently, and after talking to the factory out in Oregon, we were pointed to a dealer in Amherst, Virginia. I was getting a bit scared when the lady there mentioned that their repair guy only worked for them part time. However, she told me she had recently sent some folks up to the factory in Winchester for repairs. Now, this struck me as odd since I’d just got off the phone with the factory in Oregon and they’d confirmed that the Winchester factory was now closed. It turns out that three of the senior guys are starting a repair facility and are still working out of the Northwood factory for the time being!

I can’t recommend Bruce, Jerry and Roger highly enough. Between them, they’ve got something like 102 years of experience manufacturing RV’s for Fleetwood and Northwood. Both times we’ve dealt with them, they have been very professional and extremely fast while managing high quality repairs. In fact, I’ll go so far as to give out their phone numbers for anybody on the east coast that needs some excellent work done. Phone: 540-542-6140 Cell: 304-268-2339

Unfortunately, they are rather low on parts as almost everything has been shipped out to Oregon. Hopefully, this situation will improve as they move into a permanent facility and get the business rolling. They did fix a couple of issues that have been looked at by multiple people in the past as well as some new trivial things that we asked about as long as we were in the area. They’re shipping a part to us as it didn’t arrive in time for them to replace it while we were in Winchester… hopefully, I can manage to replace a circuit board all by myself.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about all the odd pictures, they’ve been having a rummage sale of sorts. There are still quite a lot of tools, bits of hardware, paneling, cabinets, upholstery and god knows what all else. Basically, anything that wasn’t cost efficient to ship out to Oregon or was for previous model years is up for grabs at dirt cheap prices. We dropped a few bucks and came up with a couple of nice improvements on our home that we’ll be talking about in an upcoming post.

One tip: grab a roll of the fake wood grain tape to cover up those nasty nicks in your paneling!

You can see a few more shots of what’s available over in the gallery, but you can’t find the priceless gems like my handcrafted 2 inch screwdriver without rummaging around in the factory.

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Well, we’ve got more than a bar of Internet tonight, so I figure it’s time we got caught up on some blogging.

After we spent a couple of weekends at the Great Saltpetre Preserve caving with some great people from the area, we headed towards Boone, NC to start our next stint as carnies. However, we got sidetracked leaving Kentucky as Jenn noticed Carter Caves State Park was just a few miles out of the way. As this is where Crawl-a-thon is held in January, we decided it would be worth a quick stop over and looksee.

We got up bright and early and explored Laurel and Horn Hollow caves. Both are rather short trips, that have been ‘prepared’ for tourists, but they are still unlit, self-led trips. Horn Hollow has a beautiful entrance, but is otherwise not much to look at from inside. Laurel was quite a pretty little cave and we were able to get off-trail and explore the upper passage as well as climb a small waterfall that most non-cavers would have never seen.

Once we got to the camper, covered in cave mud, and I got stripped down to my high performance underwear, a couple of guys walked up, and rather than running away, they wanted to chat, which marked them as cavers and not afraid of dirty, half-dressed hippies in a parking lot. This was our introduction to Roy and Jerry. They were in the area building a bat gate, which is designed to let bats in, but keep people out during bat hibernation season. Since we were the only muddy folks around with a bat sticker on our vehicle, they assumed we’d be good suckers, err… candidates, to volunteer to help out.

Well, they were right and we decided to come out with them the following day and see just what it takes to build a bat gate. It turns out, that it requires a lot of sweat and a fair helping of calluses, bruises, burns and muscle. Just a friendly note: if anyone ever asks if you’d like to ‘pack in steel’, run away screaming. Steel gets packed in increments of roughly 400 lbs, in this case by five guys along a ridge, both uphill and downhill. After a few hours of this, I was more than happy to be put in charge of the acetylene torch. While I spent a lot of time bending and kneeling, it beat the heck out of packing steel. Luckily, the forestry service and wildlife management services were contributing a lot of manpower to the project or we’d still be trying to get the steel in today.

Roy and Jerry were super nice folks to work with. They took us out to eat a few times and related lots of caving stories. By the end of the first day, Roy had promised to pay for our campsite as long as we hung around. By the end of the second day, we were on the payroll for the duration as well. By the end of the week, we’d been promised a spot to camp in Texas or Virginia and a cave trip into Mexico if we manage to get out west this winter.

This was Roy’s 310th gate and he says he’s quitting… after just one more gate. We had a great time working with Roy and Jerry as well as all the forestry and wildlife folks. You can’t beat doing something new and intriguing, getting paid for it and having a free campsite while meeting interesting people!

View more images from Carter Caves State park, including building the bat gate, Horn Hollow Cave, and Kevin’s Kave in our gallery.

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Thanks for posting. I am sorry that it has taken me so long to get back to you. We have been very busy working and enjoying ourselves. Thankfully, we have been able to do both at the same time.

Claire @ http://escapethe9to5.blogspot.com

Hi Jen

How long do you think your trip will last?

Is it a trip or a change of lifestyle? If it is a trip how do you plan to make the transition back to the 9-5 grind if ever? Do you worry about the future? Do you worry about being homless

How do you manage for money? Do you live off savings or do you work along the way?

I am really intersted in your blog and your plans for the future. I am having another life crisis and I need to do something to change my life.

Cheers

Claire

As for how long the trip will last: forever, I hope. It is definitely a change of lifestyle. From the shedding of all of our accumulated baggage and absurd “needs” to opening up to new people and opportunities, we have changed. Even if the trip was tragically cut short, I have learned new values that I will always keep with me.

At this time, I do not foresee myself returning to the 9-5. I find it very stifling. My career, while profitable, was a drain on my physical and mental health. I cannot imagine returning to a cubicle, ever. I cannot imagine sitting in an office working at least 9hrs a day, sometimes 16, for someone else’s dream. Life is way too short to live that way.

Do I worry? Of course I do. It would be silly not to. That said, I am not going to let fear dictate my life and keep me corralled into a “normal life” where money is all that matters. I remember how miserable the people I know who were trying to keep up with the Jones by working at a job they hated were. It was a stark contrast to the people that we have met on this adventure who are happy, generous, and grateful for today.

Some people are lucky enough to find out exactly what makes them happy at a young age. Sometimes it’s a corporate job, a career in medicine, or driving a dump truck. I chose an enjoyable (for 10yrs) path that had high income potential. But, the money wasn’t enough to placate me for the rest of my life.

I am grateful for the opportunity that our careers have given us. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to make this trip. It has allowed us to do it debt free and with cash reserves. Its much easier to search for yourself and your future when you don’t have to worry about money as much.

I don’t really worry about being homeless. While I am still young, I could always return to the 8-5 if I had to. Currently, my previous profession is in demand. That could always change like it did in the dot bomb, but I would have to deal with that either way. I have also learned that I can live in a much smaller space with less stuff, so less costs. If I find somewhere that I never want to leave, I plan on buying property there. Then I wont be homeless when I am older.

Do I have all of the answers? Nope. Do I know exactly what the future holds? Nope. Does anyone? Nope. Will it all work out? I have no idea. Am I making the right decisions? Only time will tell. Will I live to celebrate my 100th b-day like my Grandmother will do next March? Not a clue. All that I know is that I am happy. Very happy. Finally. I also know that all of the retired people we speak with in the campgrounds say that we are smart for enjoying ourselves while we still can.

We live of investments and income. When we moved into the camper and quite our jobs we were debt free. Both of us had savings and investments. We have been trying to stick to a budget which can be hard when you find new hobbies. We don’t eat out. We try to pay very little, if anything, for our campsites. We try to make more than we spend. We have worked a couple of jobs along the way which will help us stay on the road longer. We are going to work more short term jobs in the future. I would like to work at a whitewater rafting place next. We were offered jobs fighting wildfires last week, but we had a previous position lined up and couldn’t do it.

Speaking of which, I just arrived at our current job site (sorry, I wont have time to proof read this for errors). We are carnies at the moment and there’s lots to do before the fair opens. In closing I will say, if you are unhappy in your current situation, do something to change it. It doesn’t have to be as drastic as selling everything you own and moving into a van down by the river. Start with small changes. Remember, you are the only one responsible for yourself and your own well being. Best of luck to you in your decisions and please let us know how you are.

This is in response to a previous comment. Johnny said that 10 paragraphs constitute a blog post, not a comment. He’s right, so I posted it here.

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Fun with the Folks. Part 1:Food, food, and more food

Before we headed to Karst-O-Rama, yet after our time in Gatlinburg, we spent a good deal of time hanging out at my parents place in Tennessee. We had only planned on spending a few days there, but those few days turned into a month. I was having such a great time that the days were passing as quickly as hours. If it had not been for Wormfest, Johnny would probably still be trying to think of a gentle way to coax me out of my parent’s yard.

Its been a long time since I have been able to spend more than a couple days with my parents. We have lived pretty far apart for the last 10 years. The first part of that was because I was getting my career together in a far away city, then they semi-retired and started traveling around. They did end up settling down and getting a home base, but they can’t seem to stay there for more than 2 months at a time. So, the majority of the time we saw each other was a quick 3 day weekend once or twice a year and Christmas every other year. That’s just not enough!

So what did I do in that month since I wasn’t writing weblog posts? Well my mom and I spent a good deal of time in the kitchen. We made jam from the fresh picked blackberries (yummy!). We (mostly she) made desserts like keylime pie, cheesecake (David helped), (fresh picked) blackberry pies, peach pies, chocolate pies, rhubarb pies, and decadent chocolate cake. My Aunt Joyce made some excellent desserts as well.

My mom and I also tried our hands at granola bars. While they tasted very good and disappeared , they were a failure. We aren’t sure if it was us or the recipe, but the stuff ended up with a cake texture. Good stuff, but not quite the pack for the trail bars that we were looking for. We will have to try again.

I guess this whole post is going to be about food.

While there, I tried to make beef jerky. The first batch turned out pretty well but disappeared almost instantly. Most of the second batch evaded my hungry nephew’s bottomless tummy and became cave snacks for us and our new found friends at Karst-O-Rama. I still have most of the third and fourth batches. My experiments with the fourth batch didn’t go well. I tried to use a lot of liquid flavoring and it turned out kinda spongy looking.

I also caught my first catfish. My dear uncle let us come over and fish from his pond.
Thanks Uncle Mike! After I wacked it 1346523 times to kill it, my father taught me how
to clean it. I don’t really like catfish, but I did want to know how to clean and prepare
them. Its always great to have another skill. So, then I cut the fillets into little pieces and
soaked them in milk for about 30 hrs. The next day, my uncle helped me cook them. I know,
its just battering and frying and everyone from the south knows how to fry food, but I never
fry anything. Even though I don’t like catfish, I did have to try some. Most of it was
pretty good but parts of it still tasted like mud.

I have lots more to say, but we are about to lose Internet access again, so I will cut it
here. That way I atleast get part of it up.

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We are still alive. We are sorry about leaving you hanging, but we have been too busy living and having fun to sit down and write about it. We should have some more time on our hands soon. In the last month, we went to Karst-O-Rama, stayed with my folks and made all kinds of

tasty treats, met tons of great people, explored some wild caves, went to Wormfest, been practicing rope climbing and decending, and… well that’s enough for now. Stay tuned; Lots more to come!

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During Karst-O-Rama, I finally uncorked a bottle of homemade whiskey that I was happy about. In fact, it turned out better than I’d hoped and had a very nice scotch flavor rather than bourbon. During blind taste testing, one person asked if it was Dewars and another asked if it was Glenmorangie. Considering it had been aging about four weeks and cost about eight dollars to make, I took both guesses as high praise on my bathtub booze.

Without further buildup, here’s the recipe. In a one liter bottle, add:

(using 190 proof grain alcohol)

• 1.75 cups of grain alcohol
• 2.25 cups of filtered/distilled water

(using 151 proof grain alcohol)

• 2.1 cups of grain alcohol
• 1.9 cups of water

• Roughly 20 grams of Ja