Wrap it up

So here I am, back in Naples for a few days.  I didn’t bother to do an entry for the last day of driving from Tallahassee because it was basically just me driving, fast. 

 There was an annoying thing about our last nights stay in Tallahassee.  Ali had some sort of dog friendly app on her Iphone that identifies hotels that are dog friendly.  She found the place we stayed through the app and called the number listed.  Well it was a front for Expedia.  Don’t ever call Expedia, the 99.99 rate we were quoted was almost a full $20 higher than what we would have gotten calling the hotel directly.  PLUS, Expedia, even though they took all of our dog information over the phone, didn’t include the pet charge in the fee so I had a nice additional $25 surprise waiting for me upon check out.  So in total, after taxes we spent $140 on a suite which was a huge waste.  Sure the suite was nice but it was totally wasted on us since we just needed a place to crash.  Several times on the trip we paid triple digits for a room which was just stupid.

F Expedia and any service like them. My advice is to find the deal through Expedia and then call the establishment directly.

  We pulled into our driveway a little before 3 pm which was very nice. Our house seemed intact although the lawn was approaching jungle-like status.  The weeds in the landscape beds were quite happy to grow quickly in our absence.

We spent our evening Saturday getting the van unpacked and stuff put away.  The real grunt work didn’t begin until Sunday when we tackled the outside of the property.

First up was the dreaded chore of weeding.  If you don’t weed before mowing/whacking the grass that flies into the beds makes weeding much more of a headache.  The garden was first to get attention.  There were weeds everywhere. The watermelon plant had grown out of control, escaping the confines of the fenced garden.  I cut it off until it was in a more defined space.  I am hoping the plant puts some energy into producing fruit instead of expanding it’s size.

The butter crunch lettuce I planted shortly before leaving immediately molted so I pulled all of that out.  The lone tomato plant we had left had bit the dust as well.  Ali pulled out the remaining carrots and I hacked out the carnations Ali planted in the front that became a tangled, overgrown mess.  After maybe close to an hour of work we finally had the garden looking presentable. 

We then systematically moved around the house, weeding methodically.  I felt bad because I knew Ali still not feel 100% recovered from her illness she acquired late in the trip.

Next was mowing/whacking.  Ali manned the tractor while I grabbed the weed whacker.  I got maybe 20 minutes into whacking when the weed whacker stopped running.  I was using the old Homelite, the newer Homelite had stopped working correctly a couple months ago.  The old one seems to have developed an issue running when it is very hot out for long periods of time.  It was very hot, in the low 90’s.

So I turned my attention to getting the newer whacker running.  It would only run if I had it on full choke, as soon as tried to open it up it would shut off.  I was getting incredibly frustrated.  I had so much work to do, I didn’t have time to f around with weed whackers.  I bought a fuel system tune up kit for the homelite awhile back.  I decided I may as well try installing it.  When I got the old fuel line and filter out I saw the filter had a coating of goop on it, presumably a side effect of that wonderful gas additive, ethanol.  It made sense that a nearly clogged filter would cause the engine to die in anything other than full choke due to lack of fuel.

So I installed the new fuel line and filter, confident that I had fixed the issue.  I fire it back up and still, it only wants to run at full choke.  F’ing thing!  Luckily the old whacker had cooled down enough at that point that it once again would run and I was able to finish the job.

On Monday I had another list of things I wanted to address. Early on I went to Wal-mart to get oil change supplies for the van AND the Camry.  My experience fixing the van on the road made me decide that it was stupid to pay the Toyota dealer tons of cash for routine maintenance.

The Camry was due for the dreaded 60,000 mile service.  If I remember correctly the dealer wanted to charge around $800 for this “necessary” maintenance.  Well I pulled out the factory maintenance manual and looked at what was actually recommended at 60,000 miles, basically just an oil change, air filter and cabin filter. WTF?  So the dealer knows better what the car needs than Toyota?  What a crock of shit.  So I changed the oil using Mobil 1 synthetic oil, swapped out the air filter and reset the MAINT RQRD message, total cost about 40 bucks.  Since the car is out of most of the factory warranties at this point there isn’t much reason to overpay the dealer to do things that I can do myself. While I had the supplies out I changed the oil in the party van as well.  I never got around to getting it changed while we were still out on the road.

Later in the day on Monday I got the urge to power wash the pool cage and lanai.  It was just getting gross.  The cage frame had ample amount of mildew on it that turns areas various shades of black and green.  I had starting feeling sick myself so my energy level was pretty bad but I just wanted it done.  I worked right up until dusk, finishing after 8pm.  I had everything washed, all that was left was to get the furniture and items moved back inside which I did Tuesday morning.

My Tuesday was pretty relaxed.  I was still feeling under the weather with a sore throat and runny nose.  Ali spent a huge amount of time out on the mower.  She mowed the back part of our property AND the neighbors yard.  Yea we once again have neighbors in the foreclosed house next to us.  Alison met the woman, supposedly they are doing some rent to buy thing.  The house will be occupied by this woman, her two kids, their two dogs and possibly her boyfriend, I’m not quite sure.

I met the boyfriend yesterday.  He seemed rather quiet and reserved.  I tried to engage him somewhat in conversation and offered him use of any of my stuff he needed to get going.  He obviously wasn’t very interested in talking.  Alison said the woman was very nice.  It’s cool that they have dogs, I think.  We’ll see how it all shakes out.

Let me just summarize the trip a bit.  Ali kept a spreadsheet of our expenses along the way and there were a hell of a lot of them.  In total we wound up dropping more than 4k along the way.  The van repairs contributed close to a grand to that total.

We used about 450 gallons of gas and we averaged close to 16 mpg which in the big picture is pretty poor but compared to PV 1.0 it is about a 20-30% improvement.  We logged a total of 6,575 miles even.

People always ask what your favorite part of the trip was and to be honest I can’t narrow it down to one.  Each stop was amazing in it’s own way, none were a disappointment. 

As before having the dogs with was a burden at times.  There were MANY things we could have / would have done if we didn’t have to worry about the well being of the two pooches in the van.  For example we literally RAN through Craters of the Moon because the dogs had to stay back in the van.  However some of my favorite parts of the trip involved the dogs like hiking up the trails in Aspen. Of course a dog is not a kid but we could both clearly see the excitement on their faces as they both got to see and do things they never did before much like a child would.

Certain moments stand out during the trip, both good and bad.  I remember lying in the grass outside the tire place waiting and waiting for those damn tires to arrive, wondering just how bad this trip was going to be if it started out this way. 

 I recall clearly feeling despondent when the belt broke in the middle of Idaho.  My mind raced through endless scenarios on how to not miss our Aspen reservation, none of them seeming very realistic.  The fact that we actually made it to Aspen was a minor miracle.

The belt snapping also was one of my proudest moments of the trip.  Being able to fix the breakdown myself and walking/running to the parts store multiple times to do it was incredibly frustrating and rewarding at the same time.  When I finally got the belt and idler pulley on and fired up the van I felt much like Clark Griswald at the end of Christmas Vacation, mentally saying to myself  “I did it”.

 L sitting in front of Mt Rushmore was a spur of the moment thing.  I had joked about L sitting on the trip but hadn’t considered it seriously.  Once the first picture was taken it opened up the floodgates for more.  I was always looking around, looking for good spots for a L sit.

When we arrived in Yellowstone in what looked just like a mid-winter day it was surreal.  Although Ali and I both hate the cold, to experience that kind of weather in the middle of June made the biting sting of the wind almost feel acceptable.  It was just so wild to be walking around in the snow.  It was also the first time either dog set foot in snow.  They weren’t bothered by it in the least.

We took so many pictures during the trip, beautiful, epic pictures.  We saw countless scenes that just took your breath away.  However out of all of those pictures I think this one is my favorite for some reason.

I’m glad to be home but I’m also glad that we took the trip, warts and all.  Overcoming adversity is what it’s all about.  In those two weeks we created many lifelong memories.

I am so glad that I was able to blog as I went.  Trying to recant all of this stuff after the fact would have surely obscured many details and been nearly impossible to pull back from my dusty memory afterward.

Back to the grind.