It seems like we had more rain and cold weather this past summer than we did sunshine. October hasn’t changed that. While we were in Celina we had several rainy days, and though we got a break while we drove back to Elkhart Thursday, it started raining just about the time we finished getting set up in our site at Elkhart Campground. It poured all night long, and most of yesterday it continued to rain.

Somebody posted a thread on the Escapees forum yesterday saying it was raining where he was, and asking what fulltimers do with their time on days like that. I replied that we sleep in, make love, have a leisurely breakfast, sip hot chocolate, watch TV, surf the internet, read books, talk, take naps, and call friends and family. Then I added that I hope it rained again today!

Maybe it’s because of all those years I spent living on the Washington coast, where we averaged well over 120 inches of rain a year, but I like rainy days, as long as we don’t have to travel on them. Eventually I do get cabin fever, but a drizzly day now and then is very relaxing. 

I told Miss Terry once that I’d like to spend an entire winter on the Northwest coast sometime, when the pace is slower, and we could enjoy watching the storms rolling in over the Pacific Ocean. I wonder if we can put a fireplace in our motorhome?

Yesterday we did venture out in the afternoon to drop off some orders at the post office, then we met Bill Joyce and Diane Melde for dinner at Mancino’s, our favorite pizza place here in Elkhart. By the time we got back to the campground it had finally stopped raining, and the weatherman says we can expect clear skies for most of the next week, though it’s going to be chilly, with daytime temperatures in the 50s and nights in the mid-30s.

Once things dry out around here a little bit, we want to spend some time getting the bays in our Winnebago better organized. My buddy Ron Speidel taught a seminar at our Gypsy Gathering rally about how to organize your storage bays, and though I didn’t have time to sit in, I’ve taken a few tips from observing how Ron has things in his Winnebago Journey.

We were pretty ruthless in purging things as we moved from our bus conversion into the motorhome, and got rid of a lot of stuff. So our bays are not crammed full, but we still have a few things to discard, and then we want to rearrange things to make accessing them easier.

Yesterday we also stopped to check out our bus conversion. Now, I know it’s an inanimate object and incapable of emotions, but I swear, it looked real sad sitting there, when it was made to be out rolling down the highway. We are very pleased with our new RV, but we love that old girl. We put in every screw and strung every inch of wiring, and she carried us a lot of miles over the years.

A few days ago I wrote a blog post about solar power, and that we had decided not to transfer our solar panels from the bus to the Winnebago. But the solar setup we installed on the bus sure does a great job. The bus has been sitting for about three weeks and is not plugged in, but with just the solar panels supplying power, our house battery bank was fully charged. Someone asked if we ever had problems running our house style refrigerator off the inverter and battery bank when dry camping, but with this solar array, we never had to worry. It does the job.

Thought For The Day – They say wine improves with age. As I enter my golden years, I say age improves with wine!

I’m always amazed when I hear somebody say that they are bored. How can that be? I just don’t understand it. There is always something to do and something to learn. I never seem to have enough hours in a day to do all of the things I want to get done.

In addition to my regular writing and blogging duties, and researching things to write and blog about, I have a half dozen or more books in the writing process that I try to spend some time on every week.

Then there are the many hobbies and special interests that I try to find time for, from geocaching and kayaking, to reading, target shooting, genealogy, and surfing the internet.

While I have a Facebook account and try to post something on there fairly regularly, I have purposely avoided even looking at the many games and other fun stuff there, such as Farmtown. I just don’t have the time to even allow myself to get interested. At one time I got hooked on the computer simulation game Sim City, and had to give it up when I found myself spending way too many hours building my own little virtual worlds.    

Sometimes I find myself wasting time just watching something that catches my eye. I once sat on a beach in Washington State for over three hours just watching as some freak occurrence drove thousands of small fish into the surf line, where the birds swarmed in and dove down again and again, grabbing an easy dinner.

When I lived on the Northwest coast, I loved watching the storms roll in off the ocean, sending huge waves crashing onto the beach and jetty. After the storm would clear, I’d go for long walks, picking up odd pieces of driftwood and flotsam, and once even a round glass ball used as a fishing float.

Yesterday was a good example of just stumbling upon something interesting and finding a way to pass the time.

There are quite a few huge old oak trees here at the Mercer County Fairgrounds in Celina, Ohio, and yesterday afternoon a large limb on one of the trees cracked with a loud noise and sagged down onto an electric line, pulling a nearby power pole off center at an angle.

The County Public Works garage is here at the fairgrounds, and a crew of men and a boom truck quickly arrived to cut down the limb before it came down on some unsuspecting passerby or vehicle.

A project like this is pretty far removed from my usual day, so I sat down at a picnic table and watched as a worker climbed into the boom bucket, raised himself into the tree, and used a chain saw to cut away branches and smaller limbs until he could get to the broken limb.

As the close up photo shows, the offending limb was probably eighteen inches in diameter, and certainly weighed several hundred pounds, so the trimming job required a lot of caution. I sure was glad our motorhome wasn’t under it when that thing let go!

Thought For The Day – It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.

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