How Things Change

And guess where we are now?

Yup, back in New Mexico.

More big decisions being made and we’re trying to think big picture, rather than short-term living.

We loved Oregon – LOVED it – and while the rain got a bit much for the husband, I actually enjoyed it. Dogs loved the cooler weather; no snakes or nasty spiders; no humidity unless it was actually going to rain; a mist that was actually misty and cool, and just a little bit of SNOW; lots of places to walk; a huge dog park – didn’t make any new friends, per say, but they had fun – and having daddy home a lot more.

We loved Oregon but it was also getting a little expensive to stay at the RV place we liked so much – truly a gorgeous place with all the amenities and things we needed that were included in the monthly price. However, because of the season change to spring/summer, they no longer offered an affordable monthly rate so we switched over to a weekly one.

I had a job: A full-time, hands-on, hard-work kind of gig. I worked at a food repacking plant as a QA. It was busy work that kept me occupied for the 9 hours I was there every day – on my feet, exhausted, but also focused because you HAD to be to keep up. I was quite liked by my immediate supervisor and bosses, and I even made a few acquaintances. Of course, there were people who didn’t like me so much because I picked up the work very quickly and I was put into actual production work very quickly, and this pissed off some people, apparently. But that was fine – I wasn’t there to make friends, I was there to make money to support us. I was still looking at online work so we could head off on our adventures again.

The factory work was hard, tiring, and because of all the income taxes and union dues (which I wasn’t allowed to be part of until I hit 1600 hours of work… yeah… a YEAR until I was a member, but I had to pay the weekly dues which were about a third of my pay!) it became clear that while it was a relatively good amount of weekly pay, it felt a bit like I was working bloody hard for not too much gain every week. So I continued my search for online work.

While this was happening, my husband was doing his NG duty every month and finishing the qualification exams before heading to his training.

When he got a date for his training, and I got some online work (hopefully, long term) I quit the factory and we packed up (grabbing a few things from our storage) and headed off in Irma, with Ghost behind us, and we headed back down through Oregon, California, Arizona and then finally, back to New Mexico.

We’ve been here a few days now and the dogs are LOVING the yard again. The water is upsetting Gina’s tummy a tiny bit, but nothing major. The thorns are, as before, quite bad but we are solving that by buying some good Ruffwear boots for Odin and the girls. We’re going to see how much getting them rattlesnake vaccinations will cost, just in case.

We’re talking about staying, but it’s a decision we’ve got a few months to decide as April is the husband’s training month. After that, we head to Arizona for an experience in Overlanding that my husband is volunteering at; and after that, we’re heading back to Oregon in June, and we’ll make our final decisions after that. There are lots of variables and each one affects us in different ways, and in doing so, affects our final destination.

For now, the dogs are happy, we are settled in for a bit – so I can get some work done – and we can sort Irma out and the Jeep too. Azzie is doing very well now, thanks to her Posh Dog Knee Brace and she has actually been going on walks and playing without the brace for the last 2 weeks or so. We’re trying to rebuild the muscle on her left leg as it did diminish a bit – but not nearly as much as it would have atrophied if she’d had the surgery and been completely unable to walk. I can only sing the praises of the PDKB and I will continue to spread the word as much as I can.

 

The Vees Big Adventure continues, just not in the direction we thought.

On an aside: Amazon decided we could no longer keep our affiliate status as we’d not sold enough in 120 days to be “viable” so our link is no longer active.

 

We said Happy 9th Birthday to our Gina at the end of February, and Happy “5th or 6th” Birthday to Little Dude, Odin. Azzie turns 6 in mid-April and we will celebrate then too with Calichi Poochie Cones 🙂

 

Just wasn’t for us, I guess.

 

On the Road – Part One

Georgia

I’m finally settled in one place long enough to get an update in, with chores and errands and repairs done.

I’ll catch you up on the day we left Georgia, and the travel and driving and the places we’ve seen since then. I decided to break it up into sections as one post on the whole thing was not only making me feel very overwhelmed, I think it would have been too much writing in one go.

An unseasonably warm and humid October in Georgia had us parking Irma (as named after the Hurricane of epic proportions that we went to fetch her during, and the subsequent heartache and financial craziness she had us going through after that) outside our home on post during the day, and taking her back to the temporary storage at night. The first couple of days we ripped out, tore down, extracted, unscrewed, unbolted, removed and replaced a whole BUNCH of things from Irma’s interior and exterior.

We took stock of what remained, what we could upgrade, what we could live without and what we definitely needed to get.

 

The extra swivel chair by the door got removed; to be replaced with Odin and Gina’s favourite round, soft bed – Azzie sleeps just about anywhere, and we felt Odin would probably sleep on our bed most of the time anyway, but he does love that bed. (It has seen a lot of use since we started travelling, so we know it was a good decision to keep it)

The old microwave (“It totally works!” said the RV dealership… sure it does… but the door doesn’t open… so what’s the point, you conniving arsehats?) was removed, along with the various venting and stabilising bits. We would look for a replacement microwave at some point but could live without it at that point.

 

 

 

The built-in coffee maker was removed. RV dealer swore it worked, but by that stage, we believed nothing they had promised, and we didn’t need it anyway as the husband is a coffee purist and doesn’t drink “filter” coffee.

 

We also removed the hideous, frilly curtains and sidings, and the dangerous (for clumsy people such as myself) hooks and metal tie-backs. I created simple, black-out curtains from our old curtains from Germany, made ribbon tie-ups and velcro fastenings for easy cleaning and removal. It looked quite nice and pretty much matched the rest of the interior (pale blues, beige, and pinks – sounds worse than it is) and matched our aesthetic, so we were happy with them. Plus, they didn’t cost much to make; just some velcro, some hemming tape, and some ribbon. I only had time to replace the bedroom curtains at that stage – the long side windows came next, in New Mexico.

 

 

We went through all our clothes, our gear, the dogs’ gear, our kitchen, and bathroom stuff, and downsized dramatically. The rest got taken away by the military movers and put into storage for 3 months until we could get a storage place at our “end point’ of Oregon; donated what wasn’t going into storage. We tried to sell some larger items (the dining room table, mountain bike, etc) but I was a bit late putting up the adverts, unfortunately, so those items got packed up with the storage stuff.

 

We only got Irma back from the RV repair place in Augusta, in mid-October; because everything that the RV dealership said was working, wasn’t; plus there were so many OTHER issues that we had to get it all fixed to make her livable and up for long distance travel with us.

While Irma was being restored and repaired (which cost a hell of a lot of money) we got a small stash of “South African goodies” from the South African Store in Atlanta; we had a few final hikes in the forests as best we could with Azzie recovering from her ACL tear and getting used to her brace; we spent a lovely weekend early morning at a beautiful pond with our friend and her dogs. We had coffee with friends and a small farewell dinner with only a select chosen few of people that TJ knew from work. The few friends that I had made had left Georgia already, so it was just a gathering for him, really.

We basically spent the last few weeks of being in Georgia, trying to enjoy Georgia. It was warm, humid, and there were still loads of bugs and mozzies – very odd for that time of year – but we made the best of it.

The items we ordered from Amazon, to make our travels in the RV easier, started arriving so we had the fun of unpacking those and waiting for Irma to arrive to pack those away. We also tried out a few meals in the Instant Pot and we LOVED it! So quick and easy and the meat was tender and falling apart, no matter the type or whether it had been frozen or not.

Our housing final inspection day arrived and we were all sorted – house was spotless and Irma was packed in a flat parking lot just down the road so we could start the fridge up (we got so many warnings about operating the fridge on a flat surface that we took it very seriously) and get it cold enough to put our few items from the fridge and freezer in it. The fridge was one of the things fixed by the Augusta RV place, so we at least knew THAT worked.

The generator ran well, kept the AC nice and cool.

The dogs and I walked from the house to the RV; a final walk on the post and in Georgia.

It was bittersweet – I will miss the forests and trails and lakes and ponds, but I won’t miss the bugs and mozzies and humidity.

I let the dogs sniff and piddle wherever they wanted on the way to Irma and we climbed in and waited for husband to get done with the inspector at the house.

Around 13:30 he came back with the Jeep and we had a small, simple lunch and then we hitched up the Jeep for the first time (it was a learning experience, but we’d watched many videos so we had a good idea what to do) checked each other’s work and then got On The Road for real.

Odin was terrified of the movement and the generator noise, but he found his “safe place” in the passenger side footwell with me. He slept there for that first trip and has done so for all trips after that one.

 

The girls got up onto the folded down beds – we put both of them down for extra space and Gina liked the couch and Azzie liked the dinette bed. So we were all comfy and happy.

We waved a sad goodbye to Fort Gordon.

As Augusta, and Georgia, slowly slipped by, we remembered our time there; but we also looked ahead with nervous anticipation to the next chapter in our journey!

The Vees Big Adventure began on October 20th, 2017!