Haven't posted much lately. Not that it's been boring, far from it, just that I've neglected the blog a bit.

At the end of the week I am taking in the trailer to have an automatic leveling system  installed. Since I camp solo one of the most time consuming and pain in the butt duties is getting the rig level. I've spent over an hour doing just that. So I decided to look into an automatic leveling system. I had looked at the Big Foot system and the Level Up system. Both the Big Foot and Level Up is hydraulic. This means that pumps and hoses would have to be installed and it tends to be a complicated system.

When I was getting the work done on the trailer frame I found out about a new all electric system that was in testing. In simple terms it uses electric tongue jacks to level the rig. No hydraulic pumps,no fluids and no hoses to mess with or try to troubleshoot if there is a problem. It's pretty simple, just 4 electric jacks, some wiring and a control panel. IT should be fairly straight forward to troubleshoot and repair.

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While it is only the beginning of September, I've started to prepare for my winter trek to Florida. My original plan was to head down around Christmas but since I won't be working I may head down in November. I have a lot of things to do before I head out.

Construction wise I need to get my battery box built. Right now they are just sitting in the front basement compartment with no lid on them. I'm going to make a wood sealed container for them. I also want to add a weather station with a weather radio. I like knowing what the weather is doing and it's always a good idea to have a weather alert radio handy.

Lots of other small projects like an extra portable step for the entrance in case I'm parked on a hill and the bottom step is to high. Make a portable clothesline, extra shelving inside, new latches for the front closet, additional LED bulbs and install a quick connect for the portable LP heater.

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Figured I would do a short update since I haven't had anything eventful that is RV related. I learned last week that my workplace is closing down and I will be out of work by the end of September. I currently have a few job options that I am working through but have not made any decisions yet.

I can move to another company location in Cincinnati. There are pros and cons to this but I would still have winters off so I could keep doing my winter treks down south. Or I could take a position at an other facility about 40 miles away from where I live now but I would not have winters off.

I may also have the opportunity to do some contract and freelance on-line work. This turn into something interesting as it would allow me to work from home.... or on the road if I travel.

I may also be able to get work at another local company that would allow me to have winters off. The pay would be a bit lower then I am making now but it would be a variety of different duties that would keep things interesting.

The last option is to just sell my house, pack up what I need to travel and head out on the road finding short term jobs. While this might seem risky to some, there are tons of jobs available on a short term basis. It can be anything from working in state/national parks, private campgrounds, amazon.com warehouses in the winter to gas line surveying and gate guards.

The last option is the most appealing to me but I'm not going to make a decision until after my winter trip to Florida. Stay tuned, it ought to be a wild ride.

I just found out this week that my workplace is closing it's doors in 60 days. This isn't my first rodeo as in the past I've been at 3 jobs where they have closed down. I can see on the faces of some of my coworkers that it is really affecting them. While it will never be a comfortable situation I'm now used to it enough that I can look beyond the immediate crisis.

It's still too early to have exact timelines nailed down but I can see I have a wide range of options available to me. What I know is that I should have 8 weeks of employment left ( I could be separated before that), then I will have an additional 8 weeks of separation pay. After that I will be able to collect unemployment.

I have found out that I can take a position in one of the company's other facilities. Cincy and Orlando are two that were brought to my attention that I could move to. But over the past couple of years I have looked forward to the day that I could retire and travel. This may just be situation that has me doing it sooner then later.

I have a new trailer, I have a newer truck, there is nothing but a house and it's possessions that are holding me back. I have no intentions of changing my plans of going to Florida this winter and that will give me some extra time to decide what to do. It would be easy to come back home in March, sell everything in the house and put it on the market. I believe that I could dump my home fairly quickly which would leave me free to do as I want.

While still very early in my planning process I could see going back to Xanterra and working at one of the National Parks in the summer like Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, Zion or the Grand Canyon.

Nothing is set in stone and I'm staying flexible. While this could be a scary time, it is also an exciting time. The possibilities are endless.

Oh what an adventure this shake down camping trip was! For the most part this spring has been cold and wet. Over the past month we have had 25 days with rain and the ground is soaked. But the forecast was for a sunny hot Memorial Day weekend and I was just itching to get my first road trip in on the new trailer.

I made reservations at Lake Hudson Recreation Area located near Hudson MI and Friday morning set out on the two hour drive. As I pulled into the park the ranger warned me about the soft ground at some of the sites and wished me luck as I entered. Like most Michigan sate parks, the camp sites are grass and when driving through it was obvious that many of the sites were water logged.

After a couple of drives through the park I found a site that I thought was firm enough to get into. I made good progress as I backed in and just about the time I was into position the rear wheels of the truck started to spin. Rather then dig myself in deeper I just decided to drop the trailer and enjoy the warm dry weekend figuring things would dry out over the next couple of days.

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This past weekend I sold my old trailer. For 2 weeks it has sit out in the front yard the step-son's house on D Ave. There is always a lot of traffic there and have always had good luck selling vehicles here. I also had it listed on Craig's List. Had a few bites but none really serious. I just figured since the weather this spring has been so crappy that no one was really in the outdoor activity mode yet.

On Saturday Bryan had a customer appreciation event where he works and they were giving away hot dogs to their customers. Come to find out that a food permit is needed, plus running hot water, refrigerated storage for the dogs, 3 washing pans and others "requirements. Since he was planning on grilling them outside it would have been difficult to get this all setup. The old trailer comes to the rescue.  I hauled it out to his work and set up. This gave us hot water, a refrigerator and places to put the wash pans.It worked out great and we grilled 160 dogs in a couple hours for the hungry customers.

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In my travels I have noticed a lot of 5ers have those swim noodles on the edges of their bedroom slides. I know why they are there and figured they are good idea. Since my new 5er has a bedroom slide I figured I would get some to put on my slide, I just haven't gotten around to doing it yet.

Guess I waited too long. Today while doing some work in the slide side basement I swung around and walked smack into the edge of the slide. Guess I'll be heading out to the store tomorrow to pick up a noodle or two.

Yesterday I dropped off my faithful travel-mate Spud to the vet. He has a growth on his lip and a few infected teeth. Since he is 18 years old I really wandered if it was a good idea to put him through this. But the growth has been bleeding and I noticed that his teeth were getting pretty bad so at the least the growth had to be taken care of and since they were going to have to put him under, might as well get the teeth taken care of.

Once he was being worked on they found the growth was wider spread then first thought and he had far more tooth infections. After removing the growth they had to do a bit of plastic surgery to reconstruct his lip and ended up pulling 27 teeth. Pretty major stuff for a dog this age to go through.

So far he has been doing well. You can tell he is sore but is eating well (I have to mush up his food) and has been acting as normal as he should considering what he's gone through. He has been a real trooper so far. His mouth should be healed in 3 or 4 weeks and he'll hopefully get back to normal.

I didn't have the growth sent in to be analyzed so we don't know what it was. The vet has real worries that it is cancerous and if it is maybe come back within a month or two. If that happens I'm afraid I'll have to let Spud go in peace as there is no way I would put him through Chemo at his age. Let's hope it doesn't reappear and he can spend a couple more years making trips with me.