Category: Around the Big House

Big House – Sunday February 14, 2021

This morning I went out to shovel the knee high snow drift in front of the house.

I found snow inside the garage.

The wind blow snow through the gap between the roof and the wall. We had lot of wind in the 60’s with gusts to 80. Snow fall was only a couple of inches, Brian 8 inches on Saturday and maybe a foot total today.

Benny looking for that perfect spot.

Big House – Saturday January 4, 2020

This will have several firsts:
First time to post with my new IPad keyboard the Garcia’s got me for Christmas.
First time to post using WordPress off line function. In one of the WordPress updates I read that they were adding the function of write a post offline and the posting later. I have tired several apps and none of them really worked.

I have had several motorhome projects since we got to the big house and his week I updated the front support for my fly rod storage tubes.

This was a quick design that I hoped would work. The challenge is that their is no way to connect the support to the back wall of the storage compartment without drilling a hole. I don’t like adding places for water to get in, so this is what I started with.

Running the piece of plywood across the top of the compartment solved my problem of how to keep the support on the back wall of the compartment. The support is sitting on the PVC fence post I use to store the folding ladder.

I really like this keyboard, I like typing a keyboard that has movement in the keys. The WordPress writing offline is not working so well, pictures are not attaching themselves to the post. Oh, well.

Follow-up, as soon as I turned wifi on this post published including the pictures. This may work, I’ll have to check on a few more things like publish, if the publish date is the date written or date transmitted to the web. I can always go back and change publishing date in WordPress options. This could solve the challenge of spending a day updating the blog after being without internet for extended periods of time. And I REALLY like this keyboard with backspace, delete, arrow keys, shift KEY for caps, it is full keyboard.

Big House – Saturday February 9, 2019

We will be moving south to Mariners Spring Training a few days. It looks like we will be leaving a few day later than originally planned.

These pictures were taken last Tuesday and yesterday we got an additional 6-8 inches. This is the biglyest snow storm we have had in 20 years and may continue for the next week. Oh well.

Here are some of the coach projects I have would on:

  • new slide toppers for bedroom and front room, Brian helped me install, the short bedroom slide should have been the easy one, it took 4 hours. had a challenge getting the existing broken off screws out. The long slide which should have been more of a challenge took 45 minutes.
  • replace the cable from the roof top Satilite down to the point where it enters the coach, sun had eaten up the cable
  • towing clearance light on the pickup had quit working, replace the the wiring, the cheap wire I used several years ago had just come apart
  • check all the batteries I put in last year, they looked great, not cororsion at all
  • changed engine oil and filter
  • greased chassis
  • new burner in BBQ
  • on the pick-up I lubed the side window tracks, got a Haynes repair manual on ebay and these were perhaps easiest door panels I have ever taken off, without the repair manual I’d still be trying to figure out how to get them off.

New 110 volt heating element for the refrigerator. I noticed the freeze had a layer of ice on the bottom. Started checking things and found the element was not getting hot. The circuit board looked fine so guessed that the element had burned out. The layer of ice was from me working on the coach with the 110 power off so the refrigerator was sometimes operating on gas and refreezing. I could order an element for $45.00 on-line or get it locally for $75.00. With the weather changing and us wanting to leave to go south I went with the local option. With the bad weather extending even longer than originally projected I think I went with the correct option.

Our original plan was to leave Sunday 2/10/2019 or Monday 2/11, it now may be the 22nd or 23rd after spring training starts. Oh, well – this storm extends from here all the way south to just north Redding California, not the best time to out on the road. As of today it is even snowing on the coast in Oregon and on the coast west of the Siskiyou’s.

We had tickets for the 5th Avenue production of “Rock of Ages” on today Saturday, however Christine emailed us on Monday saying the weather looked bad for the end of the week. We changed the tickets to Thursday night and we had a great time, it is fun music.

This is it for today, may go downstairs and tie some more flies.

Big House – Sunday August 5, 2018

Our last day’s drive on Monday July 31, 2018.

Second part of our Spring trip is complete.
Travel locations included:

Beavertail Hill State Park, MT
Badlands National Monument, SD
Custer State Park, SD
Mount Rushmore, SD
Deadwood, SD
Bighorn River, MT
Beaverhead River – Dillion, MT
Palisades BLM, Madison River, MT
Ruby Creek BLM, Madison River, MT
Richland, WA

Motorhome 3235 miles
Pick-up 2724
Gas prices
   High – Richland, WA $3.17
   Low – Gillette, WY $2.54
                Rapid City, SD $ 2.54
   Avg – $2.85
513 gallons

2018 travels map

Motorhome is 8875 miles
Pick-up is 3874

We will be leaving the first of September for northern New Mexico for two weeks of fishing on the San Juan River, Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta almost 2 weeks, than chase the warm weather until we head for the Big House and Thanksgiving.

Big House – Wednesday July 18, 2018

At the big house for a couple of days finishing a project.

When Tanya was three Dad and I built her a kitchen set; stove, refrigerator, pantry along with table and benches I had. In April I sanded them and get them ready to repaint however it was to cold to get them painted. I came home for a couple of days to paint them so they would have a couple of weeks to dry and I will take them to Jack and Bryn the second week of August.

Heading South For Baseball and Sun – Thursday February 8, 2018

Our current plan is to leave Saturday for the trip south to Peoria and a month of Mariner’s baseball.   This year we were able to get Spring Training Season Tickets and saved almost $300.00 in the ticket price.

I got a lot of things done to the motor home during our time at the big house.

Coach got:
A radiator flush, all new hoses and belts, spark plugs and wires.
New brakes and rotors all around.
Fixed the furnace again, this time I replaced the burner.
Restrung the window blind over the couch.
Couch got 3 new springs on the end we set on the most.
New sink faucet.
New show faucet.
Changed out the batteries, added two 6 volt batteries for a total four 6 volt AGM batteries, 440 amp hours of storage.
New battery charger with remote panel.
Replaced the XM antenna after the slide out broke the antenna wire.
Changed the oil and filter.
Changed the transmission filter.
Changed the oil in the generator.
Made a bracket so I can put the wind sock pole the rear ladder.
Replaced the plug on the 30 amp 110 power cable.

Anyway looking forward to 85 degree weather and some sun.