Bears?

My Blog buddy Wayne over at Wayne’s RV Travel Blog is contemplatin’ a Yellowstone trip and lookin’ fer’ advise on what to do if you encounter a bear in the wilds. So me bein’ me I thought I’d give a little insight that’s been out there on the web fer’ a spell.

First off he say’s If you encounter a bear you should talk quiet to the bear & not shout. Me I’m gonna be screamin’ like a girl and runnin’ fer the hills while that bear is rollin’ on the ground laughin’ at my reaction. I‘ve always been told that bears can’t run straight downhill cause their front legs are shorter than their back and they’ll tumble end over end,  so I’ll be puttin’ that tale to the test. And as I told Wayne, Ya’ don’t necessarily have to outrun the bear, just yer’ partner.

Here’s some sound advise posted by the Fort Steele Campground, Cranbrook, BC.

Also Wayne points out if your plannin’ on puttin’ up a fight, that bears do not play fair and you can expect a low blow at anytime. So I figure to take a page from the commercial salmon fisherman & beat ‘em at there own game. Check out this video.

Well I hope this provides some help, or Not.

Hope to see ya’ down the road as we’re:

Dancin’ on the Wind.

Topsy Turvey Day

Well after the rush of yesterdays visitors showin’ up a day early we had a leisurely mornin’. Breakfast, more coffee and Linda on her computer & me on mine. Our grand-daughter had gone off to spend the weekend with her friend. A braver girl than I. Seems when I was a young lad I never wanted to spend ‘Overnighters’ at a friends house,I always preferred being at home. I would go camp in the woods at the drop of a hat, under the stars or under a lean-to that we had constructed of branches with leaves on top, but stay at someone’s house fer’ the night, NOT!

So the plan was to pickup Ashley around four Sunday afternoon. Since we were going south anyway we wanted to stop at a Save-A-Lot grocery store that we like and I had seen a great deal on a 2000 watt inverter at Harbor Freight stores we decided to make an afternoon of it.

First stop was Subway for a BMT sub, our favorite and something we haven’t indulged in in quite some time. Mmnn… it was tasty! With our bellies full we headed south headed for Harbor Freight.

See I’m getting’ together supplies to prewire for solar on the 5’ver. Gonna build a battery bank of 4 or 6 batteries and build a box to enclose ‘em in the front basement where the existing batteries are. Still haven’t decided on 6v or 12v fer’ the battery choice. The advantage of the 6v is they are true deep cycle and have heavy plates, providing longevity. But if one 220AH battery goes bad I lose two, because being 6 volts they have to be wired in series/parallel to get 12 volts. That being the case I lose 220AH from the battery bank. The 12volt, 125AH batteries are much more readily available and if I lose one I’ve only lost 125AH of the battery bank, but I don’t believe they will provide the years of service of the true deep cycle 6v batteries. Somethin’ I’m stewin’ over.

Anywho…,The inverter I was interested in was on sale with a coupon for $129, regularly $199, seventy bucks off sounds good to me! I figured this would be great for the 5’ver, givin’ us plenty of power for the money and if it lasted till I can replace it with a more standard inverter/charger all the more better. More Better? Is that really correct? I always kid about somethin’ bein’ better or More Better. Like peanut butter spread on somethin’ makes it better, but bacon wrappin’ somethin’ is ‘More Better’! Kinda like worse and More Worser? Singles, doubles, triples and Fourples!

Anywho…. back to the day. We finally found the Harbor Freight store, seemed like every plaza we came to we said “this is it”. Only to drive down the road further. We had been here but it was several years ago and we don’t frequent this area so our ‘Old Timers’ was comin’ on strong. After findin’ the inverter section I picked up the box and thought, Holy Crap! This thing is gia-normus! (heavy too).

          

Why would anyone make a 2000watt inverter with one duplex outlet and no hardwire capability? Cost? Gee the 1000watt model has three outlets. Go figure. Well I decided against this inverter and started to look at the smaller ones, but the price difference made me step back and wait till they’re on sale, $129 fer’ 2000watt, $99 fer 1000watt. Back to square one. I saw a 1500 watt model at a Flea Market booth a couple o’ months ago, should have grabbed it at $30, but I thought I wanted bigger at the time. Live & learn, at least it just cost me some diesel fuel & nothing more.

Durin’ our shopping-less spree our grand-daughter called to see if she could stay till Monday, cause the kids have off for MLK Day. Sure why not. So now we don’t have any schedule to keep so we browsed several stores till it was dinner time and Linda & I went to dine at Applebee's. We did the ‘two for twenty’ meal and had Buffalo tenders for an appetizer and each had a 7oz sirloin. The meal was excellent.

Afterwards we headed home with a stop fer’ diesel thrown in, YIKES! $3.49 fer’ fuel? We found some fer’ $3.31 a gallon, still was $38+ fer a half a tank. Then it was home to let this full tummy recoup and relax and read some blogs. Linda couldn’t keep up & pooped out around 9.

Well we have the house clean from top to bottom and a good thing cause the ‘Campin’ Cousins’ are comin’ to Florida. They arrive this Thursday at noon and will be here for 5-6 days.

Yipee! We can’t wait.

OK what’s everyone using for batteries, 6V or 12V, what’s the advantage of yours? Give me your opinion. Maybe I’ll be able to make a decision!

Well that’s all the excitement I can stand fer’ now. Hope to see ya’ down the road as we’re:

Dancin’ on the Wind.

California Girls

Linda has been expectin’ a visit from a girlfriend from California. This is someone from her childhood days and hasn’t seen in 28 years. Carolyn has been corresponding with us cause we planned to stop and see her when we make it to California. Turns out she & a girlfriend had booked a cruise sailin’ out of West Palm Beach and had two free days in their tour package. They decided to take one of those days and come to visit us at home. Well Sunday was the day we decided on and Linda told them to come whenever and we would make a day out of it including dinner. In asking what they liked in the way of food, Linda found that Carolyn loved peanut butter, so she promised to make her a cake with chocolate peanut butter icing for dessert.
Well of course we had to spiff up the house a little, for company from so long ago. Just the usual vacuuming, dusting, scubbin’ floors, cleanin’ showers & bathrooms. Ya’ know the kind of cleanin’ job that makes the house look like, ‘No one lives here’!  Ya’ know like the Motherly Household Police were gonna descend on us with their ‘White Glove Inspection’ and do a ***Sparkle Test***. Come Friday night we were pretty set except fer’ a couple more things that needed attention.
Well Saturday we were still in bed at 8 o’clock, not unusual fer’ us retired folks when the phone rings and it’s Carolyn. Seems their hotel is in Ft. Lauderdale and they’ve just stepped off the ship in West Palm Beach and figured that they were closer today so why not just drive up now instead of going south to Lauderdale then all the way north again on Sunday. Yeah that makes sense.
“Yikes”!!! So now their an hour & a half from here and we’re in bed. There’s cake to be baked and dinner to prepare and cleanin’ to be done so’s we can sit and chin wag fer’ the day, not to mention some breakfast to shove down this ole’ boy’s gullet follered by lots o’ coffee.
So off we went cookin’ & eatin’ & cleanin’ all at the same time. Coffee in one hand vacuum in the other, I’m a housewife’s dream! Everything came together and the girls found us with the directions Linda gave them over three consecutive phone calls. Who needs GPS?
I had never met Carolyn or her girlfriend Linda and it’s been a long time fer’ my Linda so we just played ‘catch-up’ all day. Carolyn’s girlfriend Linda, yeah just what I need another Linda, lives north of San Francisco while Carolyn lives in Anaheim. They have know each other for many years meeting in the Chicago area when they were both first married.
Well we visited and laughed and had a good ole’ time fer’ the whole day.

Here’s Linda, Carolyn & Linda

We had a wonderful dinner of Spaghetti with Italian sausage & meatballs, Salad & garlic Bread. My girl has always pressed her own garlic and there’s no better garlic bread to be found.

After dinner Linda’s sister Joyce & husband Alex came by to see our visitors. We laughed some more, then had cake, before we went back to visitin’ some more. Joyce had to leave cause she’s pickin’ some other cousins up at the airport late that night, poor girl.

From bottom left that’s Carolyn, Alex, Joyce, Linda & Linda.

Looks like everyone’s havin’ a good time.

Ah Good friends + Good food = Good Times fer’ all.

Well around nine, the girls had to leave for their drive back down to Ft. Lauderdale and their hotel. They plan to rest up around the pool tomorrow before their flight home. Safe travels girls! We had a blast!

Well that all fer’ Now. Hope to see ya down the road as we’re:

Dancin’ on the Wind.

A Play Day & A Work Day?

Today is Wednesday and we are going to head for home. The last couple of days we’ve not been too busy, but we did get to play mini golf at Disney’s Winter Summerland Miniature Golf ,that we had to pass on last year when we were here. Ashley chose the Winterland course and off we went. Both of the courses are designed to have vacation travel and Disney themes with most of the holes having travel trailers in their theme. Kinda’ like ‘Redneck Mini Golf’. It seems I lucked out & soundly thrashed the girls this time out. That’s one fer’ the fellas with the ‘Y’ genes.

Yesterday we went to work. Ya’ see our girlfriend Rose works for Disney & they own ESPN. Have you ever seen one of those stunts where they hold up cards in a stadium to spell out somethin’ or make an American flag?

Well that was a little side project of hers so she kind a’ drafted us to help her with a project for an upcomin’ stadium stunt. She wasn’t sure how many folks were going to show up to help with this project, she said you never know till they show up. We were to stuff cards in plastic bags that will be distributed in certain sections of the stadium.

22,000 of ‘em

Givin’ someone a helpin’ hand sure, I’m all fer’ that. Stuffin’ 22,000 cards in envelopes or whatever fer’ 8-10 hours like Chinese coolies, fer’ some fella whose makin’

‘BIG BUCKS’

from it, Not!

“You work much fasa, stuff bags Barry-son”!

We were not real enthusiastic about helpin’ out that much, until the mention of getting’ paid came up.

Money? Heck yeah we can do that!

We arrived at the print shop at 5:30PM and there was only a few people there. The printers hadn’t even folded any of the cards yet. Oh Boy I thought, “Is this gonna’ be a fiasco or what”? While we set up tables and chairs to work on, the cards started to filter in and we got to work. Little by little more people started to filter in to help and in the end I guess we had 20 or 30 folks.

Well we stuffed and we stuffed and we stuffed. Then some of the more experienced people started sortin’ & checkin’ and packin’ boxes. All the while us less experienced folks kept stuffin’ and stuffin’. After stuffin’ all those cards had to be sorted into boxes by stadium section, row and seat. By 10 we had every single card in it’s own little plastic bag ready for sortin’, checkin’ & boxin’. I spent the last half hour cleanin’ up and sealing boxes, arrangin’ ‘em on pallets for shippin’.

This is what the cards look like when we received them folded from the printer.

And this is what they look like opened up for the display.

This stunt is for the KC Chiefs game with the Baltimore Ravens, which I believe is scheduled for Sunday, January 9th at 1:00 PM ET to be broadcast on CBS. I believe the stunt will occur during the first ‘Time Out’, in the first quarter. So if your inclined, tune in and view our handy work.

Now there were three of us workin’ on this project from our family, and Linda & grand daughter Ashley worked some Monday night makin’ out cards correspondin’ to the layout of the gig in the stadium. Those cards eventually wound up, one in each box of sorted cards.

If we could find work like this on the road on a monthly basis we could probably supplement about half of our rent for the month.

Well that’s all I have for now. Hope to see ya down the road as we’re;

Dancin’ on the Wind.

Goodbye Snowbirds!

I’m behind on my postin’ so I’ll try play catch-up here. Bad Barry.

We stayed at Prairie Lakes till Friday Noon then let out fer’ Bass Pro Shops in Orlando. After sayin’ goodbye to all our friends, we were on the road. Along the way we stopped fer’ a little lunch at one of the Gazillion shoppin’ plazas.

When we finally made it to Bass Pro, I was reminded why I don’t like big cities. Two hours to go fifty grueling miles, so many lights, so many people rushin’ goin’ nowhere fast.

We returned the hikin’ shoes Linda had ordered and she selected a different pair after tryin’ on 6 or 7 pairs. One thing about my girl, she’s not one to jump at buyin’ when her feet are concerned. Then we browsed the campin’ section fer a while, didn’t find anything we couldn’t live without, so we made tracks.

Headed back south fer’ Kissimmee to our girlfriend Rose’s to visit fer’ a spell and celebrate the New Year with her. We arrived around four and backed in and got setup. Linda made spicy chicken tenders for us all for supper then we settled in to watch a movie, then off to bed.

I thought I’d leave ya’ a with few fireside pictures from campin’ at Prairie Lakes Wildlife Management Area. Just chose a few cause there was about 20 of us that night at the campfire. This is one of those little known ‘Boondockin’ jewels that reside in your area as well as mine, if ya’ live east of the ‘Big Muddy’.

I hope everyone had a wonderful New Years celebration and we wish everyone a healthy & prosperous New Year.

Got to go, so that’s all fer’ now. Hope to see ya’ down the road as we’re;

Dancin’ on the Wind.

A Northern Snowbirds Visit

Howdy ! we’ve been tryin’ to get out to go campin’ fer the last month or so and I finally made it. I figured my knee is OK, I’m kinda’ getting’ used to hobblin’ around, and the weather is supposed to be good fer’ the next several days so why not!

We decided to leave out from home on Wednesday morn & head fer’ Prairie Lakes to see who was here from last year and visit a mite. As luck would have it it was really cold overnight Tuesday and our water softener which is outside acted up. actually it hung up between cycles,  Probably froze overnight in the 26 degree weather, so I had to get that corrected before we headed out. I fiddled with the dang micro processor controlled thing and thought I had it corrected, so I went about the business of loadin’ the camper. About an hour later I discovered the softener was readin’ an error again so I worked on it again, this time it took. Musta’ been usin’ the wrong magic screwdriver the first time. Then we had to wait fer’ the softener to finish regeneratin’ so we could fill the camper tank & get showers. We finally rolled out around Two in the afternoon.

The fifty eight mile trip was uneventful and we pulled into camp around 3:20. As we rolled in I could already spot folks rigs from last year, Ken & Deedee, John & Donna, Bob from MI, Fred & Pat, Ed & Jan & Bonnie & Cy. Ken & Dee got a new class A rig since last year and Fred & Pat traded from a class C to a travel trailer.

Here we are setup to enjoy a couple o’ days.

Well gotta go visitin’. Hope to see ya’ down the road as we’re:

Dancin’ on the Wind.