Well, we’re wrapping up a short stay here in Sacramento. Lot’s of lightning and thunder tonight, which is a bit different than what we see down in Southern California.

Diane and Molly have had a good time with at the Home-school Conference, and I’ve been able to get some work done, as well has a whole day and a couple evenings worth of work on websites and web hosting stuff. Lot’s of fun. Most of the effort was in getting our site moved to a new host, and then also setting up a new site for my sister’s office. Check out the work I’ve done at www.chelliegardner.com. This is the updated version that is currently at www.chellie-gardner.com. We’ve moved it from Joomla to WordPress.

Anyway, nothing major here. We’re at a KOA. The West Sacramento/Old Town KOA to be exact. It’s a pretty nice facility. A bit of an odd configuration for our site, and a couple others, where there are trees and/or hookups in odd places. I flipped a coin. Sewer hookup or awning, and went with the awning. Since the girls are gone all day, I’ve kept the dishes used to a minimum, and showered at the parks showers. We’re good to go, and will dump tomorrow on the way out.

There’s a couple RV parks that are IN Sacramento. This one is a pretty nice facility. Last year, we stayed at Cal Expo, which is just a big paved lot, with a bit too much slope for my tastes. The price is right there, but that’s about it. Diane is getting more involved with this Homeschool group, so I suspect we’ll be up here again next year.

Heading to Morgan Hill, CA next.

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Not that many noticed, but our Blog has been down a couple days. Our web host contract was up this month, so we’ve moved the domain registration and hosting over to a new reseller account I started with Host Gator. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to get a private web address and and site or blog of your own. I’ll gladly help, and we can work out the details of what you’ll get and what it would cost, depending on your needs.

Anyway, glad to be back and running. Now, back to the real updates! (And, this will test to make sure all the Facebook and Twitter linky links are working)

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We had some planned “whatever” time between our departure from Southern California, and our Sacramento destination. So, I had worked it out with one of our distributors to visit with them and a customer or two in Fresno. As a result, we picked Blackstone North RV Park as a place to stay for 3 nights in order to make the visit. Everything was set for Tuesday, so I thought. As it turned out, there was some confusion, and the distributor thought that the meeting was next week. Oh well. None of us had ever been to Fresno before, so now we can check that off the bucket list….

The one thing I can say about Fresno is that it is HOT. We thought that 95-99 was hot in Menifee, but it’s 101-105 here, and a bit more humid. AC runs for nearly 18 hours a day.

I was a able to work, and the Internet connectivity is fine. The RV park is fairly nice as well. The spaces are well cared for, hookups in great working order, and they are coming around a couple times a day to pick up trash and leaves. There’s a few “permanent” residents, but it seems most of the park is people traveling in the area to visit all the national parks and forests that are an hour or two east of here. The RV parks and campgrounds there are 2-3X the price, and often don’t have full hookups. It makes this a good place to connect your house, and then venture off to the wilderness.

We also took advantage of the extra time I ended up with yesterday, and got more information on the work schedule for September. If all goes as it appears, it looks like we’ll be heading out from California over Labor Day weekend, and just heading straight for the Atlanta area. I’ll do some work for a few days, then relocate Diane and Molly to a Thousand Trails park in South Carolina, and then I’m out on the road for work for about 10 days. After that, our plans are back on track, with a trip up to Indiana to visit family, then over to Pennsylvania and other areas to check out as we head to GA/FL for Nov-Feb.

But, today, we head to a KOA in Sacramento. Last year we stayed at the State Fair grounds, called Cal Expo. This year, some friends are joining us at the conference, and they only offer RV spots at Cal Expo. Our friends will be staying in a cabin at KOA with us for a few days. After that, Morgan Hill, CA.

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We set out for our Sacramento trip, and made an overnight stop in Mojave, at the Sierra Trails RV Park in Mojave, CA. It’s in between Mojave and California City, and not everyone’s ideal stop in the summer. But, we had hookups, it was only $15.25 for the night, and a POOL! Molly and I jumped in the pool for a little bit, before we headed back to the RV for some movies, dinner, and a good nights rest before the next leg.

It’s a pretty nice park considering the location. The normal rate is $26.50 per night, but we got it for half off through Passport America. Molly, the expensive child that she is, cost us an extra $2. 🙂

http://www.passportamerica.com/campgrounds/ca/sierratrailsrvpark

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Wilderness Lakes has been a pretty good “Home” base for our California adventures. It’s close to our old Orange County home, it’s free, full hook-ups at every site, and the amenities are good. It’s a nice place to bike, hang at the pool, allows campfires when burning is OK, and they let you wash your RV/car at your site. You can even do some work on the rig if needed, like my painting of some of the stickers.

Molly also went to Seaworld camp during the beginning of this visit. She had a GREAT time. I’m hoping she’ll put some blog posts together and tell everyone what all she learned and did while there. Fingers crossed! I took the day off from work in order to go pick her up on the last day. Diane’s back had been out for a couple days. Molly and I had a nice time touring many of the shows at the park and I enjoyed hearing all about her camp and what all she learned. The Clyde and Seymour show was awesome! We fed some Sea Lions too.

During this trip, Diane and Molly got to hang out with Diane’s Aunt who was visiting from Florida, as well as to attend the Home-school conference in Ontario. Lot’s of visiting with friends, Ed and Victoria, etc. I was also able to get some customer visits in, and plenty of work done. The red stickers are now 75% done. Most of the ugliness is gone. It also looks like the other stickers just need the old clear stuff off and they’ll be fine. The sun and some high pressure water seem to keep the peeling process moving along just fine.

Our next trip is up north for another Home-school conference in Sacramento, with some other stops on the way up and back.

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Molly and I enjoyed a fabulous hour-long scenic ride today!! The horses belong to Gentle Giant Drafts and Western Adventures, based in Anza and stabled at the Thousand Trails park each summer! Molly’s horse Snow and my horse Amber were very gentle .. and our guides, Megan and Lauren, were very kind and informative!! The ride began at the top of the RV Park and wound through the state park .. with stops at the remains of a 1800s Saw Mill and a small waterfall, creek bed crossings, and numerous views of fields/mountains/rocks. And we were fortunate enough to have a deer run across our path! I highly recommend going on a ride when in the park .. despite being quite sore afterwards, we thought it was well worth it!!

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It is so quiet, so peaceful, so beautiful up here at Thousand Trails-Idyllwild!! We are here for 2 weeks this time .. celebrating our 11th Anniversary with a Vow Renewal Ceremony and taking in some 4th of July festivities!! I’m hoping the small ceremony on Saturday, June 30 will go off without a hitch, but what kind of wedding doesn’t have its ups & downs?! I’m just excited to show David how much I love him with a celebration geared toward him .. with a few surprises and family/friends along for the ride! Photos to come!!

I’m watching good luck charlie and being happy like i do so today got to Idyllwild and in 3 days my BFFS are coming to see me so now i’m ssssssssssooooooooooooo happy and now we (me and my mom) are watching sister wives and the cat is being sleepy and i have stuff to do so that it for me see ya. meow cat!! ok bye 😉 <3

Hello world!

Our RV looked perfect and shiny on the outside when we purchased it back in February, 2011.  About 6 months later, I started noticing that the red swoop decals on the front of the RV were doing some weird stuff, and not looking good.  The one on the passenger side was really bad.  It seemed to be peeling off a layer that looked like thin lacquer.  In some places, it caused a black or really dark color to appear, almost making the sticker look like it was getting moldy.  Later, one of the white areas, also a sticker, began to look like it had rusty bits, and then the same lacquer like peeling.  While the RV was in storage, and there was a decent rain, I noticed large pieces and quantities peeling off both red stickers.  Using this info, I used some high pressure water at one point to take as much of the lacquer off as I could.

Once we got on the road, and in Indiana, I noticed the top area of the front of the coach looked like it had splotches of its normal shiny coat missing.  Also, some of the other stickers began to show signs of the same splotches and peeling.

At this point, I’ve concluded that someone in the past decided to give the whole coach a clear coat, but either didn’t properly prep the surface everywhere, or the stickers just didn’t like the type used.

Here are a couple pictures of the current sticker and front end.

So, I’ve gotten a quote for removing the decals and painting, and it’s VERY expensive.  More than we’d like to pay for something that is mostly cosmetic at this point.  I started investigating sticker replacements with the exact replacements from a Winnebago supplier.  These can still be pricey, and $150-$250 per sticker.  Less than painting, but still too much.  With all this info, I was thinking of just replacing the passenger side red sticker, as it was the worst, and the one we saw most often.

Before I ordered though, I saw a man painting some swoops of similar design on his RV, parked here at Wilderness Lakes.  I stopped by to take a look, see how he was managing it, and to get a look at the results.  He was a nice guy, and had gone through some of the same research that I’d done, and didn’t like the price.  His stickers were simply peeling and cracking from age and exposure as they tend to do when they get closer to 10 years old.

What he did was get some really fine sand paper, and some automotive paint.  In his case, he found an identical match.  He sanded the surface of the sticker to prep it to hold the paint, and then wiped it down with a cleaner/degreaser. He then masked off the stickers, and had some rolls of brown paper to help prevent over-spray from getting on the rest of the coach.  He then gave it some short light bursts of paint, letting it dry a bit, then giving it more, until he got to the color and look he wanted.  He then came along about 10 minutes later and gave it some clear coat over the paint.

I took this idea, and gave it a whirl on our coach last weekend.  I’ve only done a couple portions of the red stripe, but so far so good.  I can tell I need to do better at getting the painters tape pressed in better to prevent it from running behind the tape.  There’s some clean up to do when I work on this again this weekend.  How does this stripe look?

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