What a site this morning!

While sippin' my first cup of coffee this morning, gazing out my favorite window, this is what I saw. This was sooooo cooool! Four hot air balloons were launching about 100 yards out of the campground with the perfect view from our rig!

I ran to the bedroom, and woke Trish... I said, "Baby, wake up... you have got to come see this" Needless to say, she is so into stuff like this, she put on her jeans and a sweater and ran outside with her camera and telephoto lens and took about 200 pictures in the next 30 minutes. I will go through them and add a few to our "current sites" folder here on the BLOG. What a great way to start a Sunday morning! This was such an incredibly peaceful site...

Jim

Merry Christmas from Phoenix

I hope everyone is well! Trish was down with the flu for a week but is doing much better... Praise the Lord for that, I lost about 7 pounds! We are planning a trip over to the Grand Canyon for Christmas. We are driving the Jeep and leaving the Rig in Phoenix so we should be able to get some interesting pictures. I will post them in our "current sites" link in the upper left of this BLOG site. Stay tuned...

Boy... We have so much to be thankful for. A lot of the people here in Phoenix seem to be hard hit by the current economic conditions. There are so many houses here for sale and so many foreclosures. Most of the full time RVers we have met are just happy to see the price of gas and diesel back down to where they feel they can travel more often. We were so fortunate to sell the Florida house when we did. We closed on it in June of this year and from what we understand the prices in Panama City Beach are still falling. It seems we got out just in time!

We are so happy we decided to bring the Jeep along. It really works well for the days we go out and sell for Air Photo. It should also allow us to explore some parts of the desert and get some interesting pictures. The landscape here is so different from anything we have ever seen. So far the weather has been good except for the storm that dropped snow in Las Vegas! It was cold, rainy and windy here in phoenix. It also dropped 12 inches of snow in Flagstaff which is about 100 miles north of us... Today it is suppose to be sunny and a high of 63... That's more like it!

More later... Merry Christmas!! or should I say, "Happy Birthday Jesus ! " Thank you GOD for this perfect gift you have given us... This gift of eternal life truly defines LOVE in the purest form... Thank you Lord for you alone are worthy of praise and worship!

Jim ( A King's Kid!)

We are in Phoenix for Christmas and the Winter

Merry Christmas to all! We have moved from Athens, Alabama to the Pioneer RV Resort in northwest Phoenix... What a great trip we had! 1800+ miles of really beautiful country and trouble free travel with the 5er. Trish drove the Jeep and followed me towing the 5er. That was the only part of the trip that could have been better. With a larger truck I would have felt good enough to double tow the Jeep behind the 5er after we reached Texas and the rest of the trip. We saw many 5ers double towing with the same truck we have...

The truck averaged 11.5 MPG and the Jeep averaged 23MPG. We were pleasantly surprised to see the price of diesel and gas drop as we traveled west. In Alabama we paid $2.59/gal for diesel as we were leaving, the last fill up about 100 miles south of Phoenix we paid $2.03/gal. That made the trip cheaper than we budgeted for!!

We are so amazed at the landscape here... Trish is enamored with the very large cactus plants that are everywhere here in the desert. This campground has them growing wild all throughout the landscape and it is so different to us. Fascinating to say the least...

We are starting to work our first roll of film for Air Photo, Inc. this week. It is taking a little "getting use to", to be able to find these homes because the streets and driveways are really different for us. Different as they are not your typical concrete like in the east. Everything here is gravel, rock, or very coarse sand. Again... I will say fascinating to us. This is such an interesting lifestyle for Trish and I. We are experiencing very new and different things!!

The picture was taken the day we left Alabama... We had planned to leave on Monday.. but it snowed that day, we postponed our departure by a day. Tuesday was very cold with a heavy frost. WE DO NOT OWN AN ICE SCRAPER... This is Trish scrapping the ice off the mirror with her American Express card!!! TOO COLD, we are heading south and west.

Phoenix is much warmer... Much more to come... and more pictures soon... Jim

It's Raining Air Photo Reps !

Well, we are in our 4th week here in Athens, AL and there are now two other couples in the area that are working for Air Photo. We had our first get together this past Wednesday for a Mexican Lunch at La Alameda in Huntsville and really had a great time. We decided to make it a weekly event to have lunch and talk about our fulltiming experiences and the Air Photo Business.

Trish and I plan to be here through December 1st and then head out to Pheonix, AZ for a few months. The weather here in Northern Alabama is beginning to get a little too cold for me. This coming week the night time temps are going to be below freezing with a few nights in the low 20s... When the water hose freezes it's time to GO...

We are working some everyday and are having fun everyday with this new lifestyle and learning all along the way... More later!! Laugh some today, it's really good therapy!!

Jim

What a Week!....or Two..

Well we made it to Athens, Alabama safe and semi sound... and the truck is running good again! Boy, what a two week adventure! After leaving Maine we were stranded on the interstate by a failed fuel pump and spent the weekend in Mount Pocono, PA. Great people helped us get back on the road and we made it to Fredericksburg, VA. Our plans were to receive our training from a lovely couple for our new job as part of the ground crew for the, "Air Photo, INC". We will be marketing their product in various areas around the country. This is such an interesting business model. The company is based in Washington state and takes areal photos of unique homes and hobby farms all over the USA and then mats, frames and sells the photos to the owners. They use RVers to market these photos and pays them a commission based on what they sell. Perfect... for us! We are so excited. So.... we get to Fredericksburg, as we are trying to get into a very tight campsite, up a hill, we blew the front pump seal of the transmission and spewed fluid all over the ground! I managed to limp, with the trailer attached, about 1/2 mile to the Ford dealer. They gave us a place to park the trailer, ordered a new transmission, and had us ready the next day by 5:00 PM. Again, great people helped us get on our way. Now here we are in Fredericksburg , VA to get trained but no campsite.

So we met my brother, Larry and wife, Margeret at a campground in Quantico, VA for a long weekend and had a great time. We had a campfire two nights and roasted hotdogs and marshmellows. Lots of coffee and conversation... and a bottle of wine or two... Over all a great time and then left Tuesday to head south.

Air Photo pointed us to Huntsville, Alabama to be trained and then work the area around Athens, Alabama. We found a great campsite in a small park for $330 per month! So things have a way of working out. We should begin our training this coming week and also begin working by ourselves.. We need to replenish the coffers after the fuel pump and transmission. This is a beautiful area we are really looking forward to getting started!

Hello Houston... We Have a Problem!

Well, we have a little problem with the truck... While negotiating the Pocono Mountains in PA the truck lost power on Interstate 380 while heading south. I suspect we filled up with diesel that was loaded with water. About an hour after filling up with fuel the service engine soon light came on and two minutes later we had no power. We are so fortunate that there is a Ford Dealer 10 miles away and a towing service 2 miles away. After contacting the towing service they dispatched 2 tow vehicles. One was a "roll Back" that loaded the truck, the other wrecker was the "Mother of all Wreckers" that I have ever seen! It had a small 5th wheel hitch mounted on a hydraulic boom that went right under the front of the Excel and towed it with sooooo much ease... it was an incredible site. I wish I had a picture of Trish climbing up into the monster truck!

The folks at the Towing service are letting us stay in the yard of their business along with providing a 20 amp electric service and water hook up.( No Charge) We should find out Monday morning about the truck. This all happened on Saturday so no one was working in the shop to diagnose the problem. Just another exciting day as a fulltimer! We are doing fine and are amongst some wonderful people. Just when I am about to give up, God reminds me of who is really in charge. I am so happy to be "one of his"...

Preparing to Leave Maine...

Well we are about to leave Maine and head to Fredericksburg, VA. for the month of October. We really like Maine and have put it on the list of places we would like to spend the summer. The Bangor area all the way to the coast is really a nice area. The folks here are friendly and helpful to RVers and the Pumpkin Patch is a very nice and clean park.

Our current plans are to leave on Friday and break up our 900 mile trip to Fredericksburg into 3 legs. We head south but will move west to avoid, Boston and NYC traffic so it adds a few miles. We will try to update along the way as long as the Datastorm dish can get beyond the trees. That is the downside of having a dish on top of the Excel. We are considering adding an aircard for use in just such a case. More later, we are sure having a great time and have met some really nice folks...

JC