Charleston, heading north

Had a nice day in Charleston, wandered down to the old port district, and ended up taking a carriage tour of the city. Many things to see - steeped in tradition and pride. Few cities have been leveled and rebuilt as many times. From there, headed up the coast into the Carolina's, towards the cape there.

We are trying to stop earlier in the evening, so that we can finally get on more of a real East Coast schedule, instead of Delilah staying up till ten, and us barely getting out of dodge by checkout (typically 11). With getting up late, we eat late, so all the meals have been off - trying... to... adjust... We saw a camping area just north of the South Carolina Boarder, but decided to try to find something better, which led to finding nothing for a long time, and staying again in a cruddy hotel.

The East Coast, Finally

Well, last night we finally pulled in to Charleston, South Carolina. Been a long couple days since last check in. It has been cold, very windy (there was a tornado watch the night before last), raining, and did I mention cold?
We have managed to all get some permutation of sickness (D still coughing, B now working on allergies, and me still coughing up interesting stuff, and sore-throated). Looking foreword to things getting warmer sometime here, and just parking and camping for a bit to recover.
Barbara has a presentation in Chantilly VA on Thursday, so we will continue up the coast first, then cut inland to get there. Hopefully this big "Nor-Eastern" that is pummeling the entire east coast will peater out soon...
More updates and picts later - perhaps tonight...

The missing early days

Barbara was looking over the blog and brought to my attention that there were a few early days missing from the blog, that I should ad in before I forget about them completely.
After the first night in Tucson, we headed out to Bisbee Az, and stayed there two days. Cool little town - it was the metropolis along the route from TX to California in its day, and had quite a booming "entertainment industry". Later, mines took off and they pulled copper, silver, tin, gold and traces of other stuff from the area in profusion. There are over 2500 miles of mine shafts under Bisbee - far enough to have dug to New York City...
We went on a mine tour - ok, so Barbara got clostro and had to jump the train, but at least B and I did the mine tour. Pretty interesting really, but definitely pushing the attention span of a 3 year old as well. Amazing stuff they did for the last hundred years there - mining first with candles as only light source, and mules to pull ore to surface.
When copper prices collapsed in the early 70s, the then mayor of Bisbee decided to try to make the town a tourist attraction, and applied for and received a federal grant to recomission one of the closed mines for tourism. Thus the tour - given by one of the miners.
Then we went on to Roswell, which is decidedly something that you only need to spend a few hours in to get the flavor of. Went to the museum there, took some pictures, and got out of dodge. Alien lamp posts, alien coffee joints, conspiracy this and that. Enough to make even an x-files fan sick...
From there, continued on to Amarillo Tx.

A few days camping

Since leaving Kansas, we went through St. Louis, stayed the night there, at a parking lot with a power hookup, which charged "only" $23 for the luxury of parking on their asphalt (though they did at least have hot showers, which since we didn't have a water hookup, I took advantage of). We did the arch (impressive feat of engineering, with rather ingenious elevator system to get up), and toured briefly, before departing east again.

Delilah travels very well during the day, often amusing her self for hours with puppets, and self-created games, or playing with her old fall-back, the leap frog which she has gotten many hours of amusement from. Unfortunately, apparently on the subconscious side, she is less happy with the travels, and has been having "night terrors" where she will start howling in the night, but she isn't actually awake - eyes closed, sobbing, arches her back if you try to lay her down - inconsolable... Apparently these are common in some kids but new to us. The "good" news (if you can call it that) is that she only does it for a few minutes at a time, but some nights she might wake half dozen times.

Between the waking up with Delilah's hooting, and my returning sinus infection apparently making me snore even more loudly than usual, Barbara hasn't been sleeping too well. Any of you that have been around B when she is more than a few hours shy of her quota of sleep will know that it is an unpleasant world to be in... To mitigate things, we decided to stay last night in a mini-suite in a hotel in Henderson Kentucky (after a run through Illinois, and brief stint in Indiana). The stay went well other than Barbara ended up twisting a leg a bit getting into the pool. After judicious application of healing techniques, it seems to be doing pretty well now, but obviously slowed things down a bit today.

We decided to take just a short drive to Bowling Green Kentucky, and will stay here a few days, to R&R, and do some real "RV Camping" at a KOA here. KOAs are definitely "deluxe" both in their accommodation's, and their price - about $30/night. But they do have full hookups (30A power, water, sewer, cable, optional phone, and wireless (shared though, so slow)), along with a nice play area, walking trails, and optional rentals such as bikes, fishing (catch and release) in a pond, etc.

I've gotten setting up the internet to a science finally, though it still takes about 20-30 minutes to make it all happen. Starts with turning on the GPS to get the LAT/LON, write that down, dialing that into the first program on the computer, which spits out the heading, inclination and skew. Next, you take a compass and start looking at the indicated heading for holes in the tree coverage, which tells you where you can set things up. Then, setting up the tripod, mounting the head, leveling it, then mounting the dish and the horn, wiring it up with the local indicator, dialing in the settings using a secondary compass (since you can't have one near the running dish, or the fields skew it). Hopefully you have long enough cables - if not, add the extension. Now, running back to the computer, configuring (after translating from degrees, minutes to decimal degrees) the sat modem, then out to the dish again to aim, tweak, then back to the computer to test... If all is well, you end up with a pretty reasonable internet connection. We've been able to use our Vonage VOIP phone here (though I can't seem to have it stop forewording calls to B's cell, when it's not on), and have two laptops (his and hers - how romantic) jacked through a router.

Picture of our nerd cabinet with all hardware included for reference. Satellite modem, VOIP box, router, UPS, Phone, host of wall warts, photo and regular printer, way too many cables, and our 20" LCD TV included...


With me doing all the driving, and most of the set up (Delilah helps some :) ), Barbara has been doing most of the cooking. Tonight's repast included Thai rice with shrimp, Basil, Garlic, and peppers, a salad and bread with vegi pate. Not bad for an RV meal I'd say...

Been raining and windy, but staying cozy in our RV. Got an "oil heater" which will supposedly do a better job keeping us warm (instead of hot and cold). Internet service is slower, but still working ok, so can't complain.

We'll be here until Friday AM, then on again. We've given up on Disneyworld for this trip, since B has an awards banquet on the 19th, and would mean a lot of driving between now and then. I'm sure that we will return again and do at least Disneyworld and a cruise, and perhaps some of the southern states that we won't visit on this trip some year in the future...

That's about as much as I can justify pushing out into the digital cosmos today...

On from Kansas

Had a nice stay with friends in Kansas for a few days. We had originally planned on camping with them, but temp was in the 20s/30s so decided to just stay at their place. Leavenworth (famous for prison row a ways away) is a pretty out of the way area, basically 20 minutes to almost anything. My buddy, Mark, has amassed an impressive collection of "grown up toys", ranging from ATVs to farm equipment, trailers to Toy Hauler/RVs. Keeps him self busy during the winter when not working at Sprint, on a million projects, including framing in the basement as a guest house in the future, etc.

It snowed there this AM, and Delilah enjoyed catching a few flakes on her tongue. Left around noon (seems to be our standard departure time), and got in to St. Louis about 6PM after a couple stops along the way. Always goes slower than expected, but getting the kinks out of the system - at least mostly. I think that I left one of the laptop chargers at Marks, fortunately I have a universal one that will do...

Tomorrow, on towards Atlanta - unsure how far we will go.

Texas to Kansas

This entry is from last week - Friday morning, April 6th. Didn't bother connecting to internet that night, so just posted today.

The above pictures include "The Worlds Biggest Cross (from somewhere in Texas, of course), which somewhat ironically had its gift shop flattened by a tornado, and snow from Southern Ks.

Since Amarillo, the weather has been turning colder. Thursday riding through northern Texas and Oklahoma, had the heater on much of the time. Northern Texas is certainly prettier than central, with a very “great planes” look to it. Passing in to Oklahoma, only signs were duplicated – one either right next to, or in front of the other. In most cases, they were identical, but in a few cases, the “new” sign had deleted a city from the list of destinations… Perhaps a government coverup for an abducted city (sorry, still recovering from Roswell J ).

We are now in the little town of Wellington, Ks. Po-dunk camp ground (someone used to have a farm here), charge $22 for about $2 of power and water – what a racket, but tired travelers and all, we bellied up. It is snowing, though the snow melts when it hits the ground. I wondered why the heaters were going all night. Relatively cozy in our little beds here.

One tire is nearly tread bear, we will have to get a replacement in Wichita. Hope to be at friends in Leavenworth KS tonight (Friday) .

Finally, on the road

Well, we are now officially on the road. Got out of town a bit before noon on Saturday, and made it to Tucson for the night. Morning adventures included the realization that the pressure relief valve on the water heater was too sensitive and needs replacing. Made a trip to Camping world and got the parts, but haven't installed yet. Also of course bought a bunch of other odds and ends - pimping da ride, I guess...

Visited the Desert Museum outside of Tucson, and very much enjoyed it. Javalina critters (look like pigs, but only distantly related), caves, desert humingbirds, etc. Very nice.
Then, after a slight detour, on to Bisbee Az, for two days.
Today did the mine tour (ok, Delilah and I did, B chickened out :) ), and walked around the town some. Really quaint area. Victorian era houses, but mostly smaller (mine workers, etc).
Obviously got the Satellite Internet working. Turns out the you don't want to use a compass on the dish, since the cables signal tweaks the compass. Complications, but only 20 minutes this time...
Delilah, unfortunately, has a bit of a bug (runny nose, grumpy at night, a bit of a fever). Hoping that she will sleep better tonight. Makes for a long night for all...
Tomorrow off to Roswell, on the way to Leavenworth Kansas a few days out.
Some day I'll figure out how to push pictures up on this thing...