We are on our way

Pat and I left at 4:25 Friday morning. We both had trouble sleeping and around 3:30 said the heck with it and decided to get up and go. Our route was up I15 to I210 which fed into I5. The I210 was heavy with traffic. Once we hit I5 the trffic thinned out and the wind wasn't too bad. It was annoying but not bad enough to pull over and wait it out. We stopped around 11:00 at a rest area for lunch. I5 is pretty boring really. We hit more traffic as we approched Stockton. We arrived at the River Point Landing RV park around 2:45 PM after driving 464 miles. River Point Landing is a small park with about 30 spaces right on the Sacramento river. Several of the RVs are backed up to the river and the guys are fishing. The wi-fi doesn't work outside the office so I made a cup of coffee and brought my laptop down here to check my mail and update the blog. We will be here tonight and tomorrow night and leave Sunday.

Departure Date Approaching

Well 4 days and counting. We are as ready as we can get. Thursday night or Friday morning I have to hook up the Toad (towed vehicle). Our neighbor Bonnie is going to watch the place and water the plants. Pat's friend Sharon is also going to help out and back up Bonnie. SDG&E installed a "Smart Meter" today (unrelated to the trip) but I think that means we can monitor our electricity on line now. We stopped our newspaper until July 1. Pat made our reservations in Stockton. We will drive into San Francisco from there in the toad. Then Sunday we will leave for Seattle to visit Marcia and Gloria.

Well we are fast approaching our departure date. We will leave Friday the 30th. The plan is to drive to Stockton and park the motorhome in an RV park. Saturday we will drive in to San Francisco in the Toad (towed pickup)and visit my sister Pamela. Sunday we will head to Bothell Washington.
Monday we went to Walmart to buy the last few items on our list. If we stuff much more into the RV it probably wont move. We went to an RV supply store and bought some insulation material (it looks like aluminum thick foil)to put over the window and the vent in the bedroom. This will hopefully allow us to sleep when we get to Alaska and the sun doesn't set til 11:00PM and rises at 3:00AM.

I worked on the sat radio Mon thru today. I bought a three way 12volt outlet and installed it on the dash to plug the radio into. The big deal was drilling a hole in the roof of the MH and fishing the antenna wire down where I could reach it. Then I had to run the wire over the curtain rack and down the side of the MH behind a plastic cover. I then had to run it under the dash and to the radio. Once I got all that done yesterday Pat called Sirius and tried to get the radio "activated". We tried sevedral times during the afternoon and couldn't get it to work. We decided either the radio was bad or the antenna on the MH was blocked from the satellite. This morning I unplugged the MH, raised the jacks, and moved the MH to a different location on the driveway. I called Sirius again and they sent out a new activation signal. This time it worked! So now we have Sirius radio. While the MH was unhooked we drove it to the gas station and put in $100 worth of gas (it was half full and $100 filled it up).The picture is my new hood ornament.
Jim

It is raining today. The plan was to work on the Sat radio installation. I guess I can still do that but the rain will interfere with mounting the antenna. Today is the 12th so we have about 18 cdays left to get ready. We bought two pair of rubber boots over the weekend. We will need them for gold panning and possibly fishing.

Preparation

I got the splash guard installed with some difficulty. It is difficult to drill holes while under the motorhome. You can't get any leverage.I also made an extension cord for 30 amp to 50 amp conversion. I will use it when we are just hooking up for the night and don't anticipate using the AC. The cord (more like a hose) that came with the MH is about 1 inch in diameter and very difficult to roll up especially when it is cold.

More Preparation

Today I'm working on the splash guard for the RV. I bought one of the brush-like splash guards on-line. It was delivered in no time. When I unpacked it and read the directions it said to screw the guard to the back bumper. I didn't like the idea of drilling 20 holes in my plastic bumper to mount it and I didn't think it would hold up in any case. I decided to make an angle iron bar thaty would attach to the frame and mount the guard to that using pop-rivets. I have finished the bar and painted it. Now I have to drill holes in the frame of the motorhome to attach the bar, attach the guard to the bar, and bolt it to the motorhome.

Planning for our trip to Alaska

It is early April. We are planning to depart around May 1. We have quite a list of things to collect or accomplish prior to the trip.
We have applied for and received our new passports, bought clothes suitable for Alaska (Carhartt, Cabelas, etc.) We had extensive and expensive work done on the Colorado to enable us to tow it and have braking on it. We obtained a card from AAA that is required by Canada stating that we have liability insurance. We still need to purchase rubber boots to use while gold panning and fishing. We will begin the trip by driving some 2100 miles from San Diego to Hazelton British Columbia. On the way we plan to visit Pam in San Francisco (we have to figure out where to park the RV and then drive the Colorado into San Francisco) And Marcia and Gloria in Bothell Washington.