Steph and Dud B's RV Screed

What a crazy summer! We had a lot going on. Steph has gone 1 year cancer-free on her first-line treatment. Our son got married. We're about to retire. We've got major construction at our house. And, we've camped. A lot. First things first. Steph was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer last summer, 12 years after her initial cancer diagnosis and treatments. We are very happy to report that the current treatment has been successful so far, with no evidence of disease on her most current scans. On top of that, she felt well enough to get out and enjoy this past summer. We certainly made the best of it. As I posted earlier, we started camping right after school got out in June (we're both teachers) with a week dry-camping at Hammonasset State Park. We had a nice corner site in the woods overlooking the tidal marsh. A week later we returned to "Hammo" in a different site - this one in an open field - for 2 more weeks.  In July, our son married Katherine, the lo...

We returned to one of our favorite places, Hammonassett State Park, for our longest run of dry camping yet. Hammonassett has lots of decent bathhouses in the campground. We always try to book a site close to one of them. The question was, how long could we stretch our black and grey tanks before we had to dump? The plan was to use the bathhouses as much as possible, saving our black tank for mostly middle-of-the-night liquid deposits, and only showering in the trailer rarely. We booked 12 nights but Steph had to return to our house on 2 of those days because of severe weather and doctor appointments. We never dumped. When we left the campground on the 13th day our tank readings were: Black 69%, Grey 75%, and Fresh 25%. Based on this, I think we can go a max of 15-16 days before having to dump in this situation.  There were definitely compromises we had to make. We either used the campground showers or used medical body cleansing wipes we found on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.co...

Happy Fourth of July! We just spent a week (6 nights/7 days) camping in full shade on mostly rainy/cloudy days. We were at one of our favorite oceanside campgrounds in Connecticut and we scored a site in a wooded section next to the tidal marsh. The clouds and 2 huge trees overhead mostly took our solar panels out of the picture. Mostly. More about that later.  We figured this would be a good test of our Lithium Platinum Package with its 640 AH batteries. We left home fully charged and used the fridge on 12v power for the hour drive to the beach. Since it was cloudy, that used 4% of our charge before we even set up camp. We proceeded to dry-camp for the week pretty much the way we had with our other trailers. We ran the fridge on propane, pumped water from our tank, used minimum interior lighting, and remembered to turn off lights we weren't using. In the end, that wasn't really necessary. Unlike our other trailers, we also ran the inverter to make coffee and run the microwave....

Sometimes you find a campground that just fits the bill. Aces High RV Resort in East Lyme, CT has been that place for us for decades. There's really nothing special about the place itself. A nice campground, but nothing exotic. Large-ish sites, heated pool, a small river and pond. We've been going there since they opened. The trees pictured above were freshly-planted saplings in a field back then. The location is pretty good. Close enough to visit the casinos or the shore, and there's a nice oceanfront boardwalk in town. They're open year-round, too (unusual in New England). But the best thing about Aces High is the people. The owners are very nice and have treated us very well for a long time. And the other campers tend to be a bit more mature than you might find elsewhere. Well-behaved children, fewer barking dogs. Quiet at night. We've rarely experienced any campground drama at Aces. What's the catch? It's not cheap. $95-$120 a night this year. So, we won...

First trip of the season. We took Eggcelsior back down to Hohenwald, TN for some warranty work at the Oliver Trailers service center. On the punchlist: check some drawer glides, replace some interior trim (the silver strip around the belly joint) that fell off, and (top priority) replace a faulty jack mounting plate that had a hole too big for its carriage bolt. This would be our first big trip with the Oliver after we brought it home, and the first real Oliver trip where Steph was feeling well. We ran short hops - 4 to 4.5 hour drive times according to Google Maps. Our days of 8 hour drives are in the past. Our first stop was Locust Lake State Park in Pennsylvania. We had advance reservations and chose a site right next to a bathhouse, (which we didn't really need because we were able to dewinterize before we left). A little unlevel, as you can see, but OK otherwise if you have a smaller RV. Wouldn't recommend for larger rigs. The next day took us to a commercial campground, W...