Hi from the Keystone state

camping

We have been in 40 states in our camping careers and loved every mile of them. In all the years, we have always had dogs, and lots of them, but never been refused a site. They are the best "alarms" one could have and provide a great deal of comfort knowing they are there to let us know if something is amiss. They don't bark at every little noise, but do seem to have a sixth sense about when to let us know things just aren't quite right. They are soooooooo happy to see us when we come home and don't ask for anything but a lap to jump in and a pat on the head. We just can't imagine traveling without them. We guess that makes us eccentric in some people's eyes, but that's okay. One of the great things about camping is you can take your family with you...just because ours have four legs apiece instead of two, doesn't make them any less family members, right? Life is too short not to live it....:thumbup1:

Some of our more notable moments

Should start out by saying we live in a 97 Bounder with a slide. We decided to take a short trip to Mohegan Sun and Foxwood in Conn. back in November. Worked till Friday and got set to go on Sunday. This was Saturday. We have been parked for over a year, so no telling what was in store for us. Jack started to motorhome as he has done almost every month since we parked and the engine started squealing. Next was the jacks, they wouldn't retract. Then the slide came in but wouldn't go back out. It stopped working. We called a friend and he came over. He said some air pump thing in the engine had frozen up and he sent his brother to get a new one....one hundred dollars or so. We were supposed to get new tires on and had to be there before noon and it was getting close. Mike, our friend, pounded and got the jacks to come up. Found out that there had been a box of oil left on one of the storage containers in the slide and it got squished when the slide came in. Finally made it for the tires and when they went to put one of the duelies back on, when they put new tires on before, someone had missed the pin that helps to line up the tires and the rim was ruined. Get out the spare and they will provide a new rim. 550 dollars. The generator had to be removed earlier and was ready for pickup. Another 675 dollars. Went to Mike's to put on the new air pump thing and his brother said they didn't have any. Great:bang: Mike did some more pounding and greasing and got that to working finally. Had to put on a new belt, 75 dollars. When the slide came in and squashed the box, it cut a wire so the slide wasn't getting juice. Spliced them together and the slide worked. By now, it is Saturday evening and too late to get going. We decided to take the MH for a ride before we left just to make sure nothing else was wrong. Well, something was. One of the brakes was locked up or something and when we got back, it was cherry red from heating up:help:. Mike would look at it in the morning. We thought we would leave on Sunday morning and my sister was bringing Mom here. Got up and Jack just didn't seem right. (He had a heart attack in January, 2007, a very close call.) Mike had to do some tweaking so the MH was going to his house. And he had to check the brake. When Mom and my sister got here, I had decided that Jack needed to go to the hospital to be on the safe side. He didn't argue. He ended up staying overnight Sunday to Monday and didn't get out till in the late afternoon on Monday. He checked out okay, thank God. In the meantime, Mike had called to see how Jack was doing and said that he had the MH up on the hind jacks to check the brakes and when he did that, the door to the MH flung open and the dogs all poured out:smack-head: They got them back in, again thank God.

We FINALLY got going on Tuesday morning, but talk about sitting on pins and needles We ended up having a good time despite our slow start. I didn't win anything, but the relaxation was sorely needed. We must really love camping as we have numerous other stories of our misfortunes with this motorhome and our other one. More later.