Our Drive to California

25 June 2012

Last Saturday we left on our big summer vacation to the Redwoods in California! We worked on fixing up the trailer for 3 solid days before we left and I was so excited when we were finially finished that I couldn't wait to leave. So...we left at 10 p.m. I drove until we reached Fort Stockton, TX where we set up camp in a Walmart parking lot. Apparently, many Walmarts allow RVs to set up in their parking lots. It was free and we had a great place to shop near by.

The next day, we planned on stopping in Arizona but at 11:00 p.m. it was still 101 degrees. We didn't want to pay for a hotel and we didn't want to sleep in the trailer in that kind of heat so we just kept driving - all night and all the next day and then most of the next night. The next morning, Tuesday, we arrived at our campsite in Mill Creek campground near Crescent City, CA safe and sound - mostly.

We stopped at a cute little park for lunch. The town reminded us of a nice version of Dilley, TX.

 

Holly has been working on making cute faces for the camera.

Tyler did a SUPER job of climbing this giant tree!

Just outside San Francisco Holly used my camera to take about 22,000 pictures of the truck's dash board.

Here is San Francisco from the Bay Bridge. We didn't get out, so all of our pictures of the city are through the car windows :(

The Golden Gate Bridge.

On the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge we stopped for lunch at Panda Express. When we tried to merge back onto the freeway, we found that our trailer tire had a slight problem. Just our luck! This is why you shouldn't try to travel on Sunday. Karma will get ya!

We put on the spare but found that it also had problems. We bought two new tires mounted on two new wheels and put them on the trailer in the Target parking lot. After 15 minutes we heard some strange noises. We stopped to find that the original tire had bent the frame when it popped and that a big piece of metal was now rubbing against the new tire and scraping off the tread - just like it had done to the spare. We had to go to Walmart and get a sledge hammer (to bend the metal back) and yet another new tire. This set us back several hours and made it necessary for me to drive all night - again.

When we got to our campsite at 5:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning we opened up the trailer to find this big mess. The popped tire had shredded the plastic wheel well and flipped big (and little) pieces of tire and lots of water up into the trailer. We cleaned up for over an hour and then repaired the wheel well with Gorilla Tape. We might take off the tape and fix the wheel well for real -  but then again we might not.



Stay tuned. Tomorrow I'll post some good and fun pictures from our trip.

Trailer Rebuild

20 June 2012

I decided to make a special blog just for our trailer modifications. There are lots of people out there with leaky Coleman trailers and it would be awesome to share our experience with them. If you want to see it, click on the link below :)

http://www.popupperegrination.blogspot.com/

Fixing the Trailer: Part I

The storage area of our new trailer was leaking because it had a big crack in it. So we took it to Camping World and asked them to fix it. We also asked them to reglue the trunk lid stabalizer, service the fridge, replace some broken vents, fix a big smashed corner, and fix the leaky drain under the sink. The guy we left it with was really nice and seemed like he was totally competent.

We called them a few times. Once they said everything was on track. The second time we called they said that they had it in the shop so it hadn't been out in the rain all weekend. The third time we called their phones were broken and we never got through. The fourth time they said they were waiting on a third estimate for the body work. The fifth time they said it was all done and we could come get it. So last Sat we drove 40 to pick it up.

We found our trailer full of water (from the rain). There were a bunch of bolts through the lid to keep the stabilizer on the trunk lid, and one of the cracks was filled with messy silicone caulk. Nothing else had been done. We were mad. We didn't pay.

Now we have our trailer back but it's still leaky and now it has a bunch of bolts and silicone all over it. I read some forums and blogs on line and decided to try to fix things myself. I think I have time before our vacation in June.

Here are some pictures of what Jared I did today. Most of them are of the gross mold we found from all the water damage.





Here is the original damamge to the corner.



We found this under the cracked corner.

This is yellow mold. I've never seen anything like it. It smelled so bad and had "roots" or something.

This was under the crack by the lid. It's green/black mold. Mmmmm.

Here is some more yellow mold mixed with black.

Here is what our trailer looks like now. We wrecked some of the really important plastic pieces taking them off so..... I guess we'll either have to buy or make new ones.

Car Talk

29 Jul 2011

Here is a conversation we had in the car today.

Jared: So which root beer does everyone like best? Barqs or A&W?
Tyler: Barqs! Barqs! Barqs!
Me: A&W.
Holly: Sopa?
Derek: Yay! Root beer double!

So there you go.

Carlsbad New Mexico

30 Jun 2011

So our big summer vacation begins. We started out by driving to Carlsbad, NM. Normally we try to stop in New Mexico as little as possible, but this time we thought it might be neat to check out the caves. We were right. They were VERY neat. I'm so glad we went. When the kids get older we will have to go back and go on some of the guided tours off the main trail.

This picture was taken with my camera's timer. The problem was that the camera was really far away from the family and so I had to run pretty far to get in the picture. I kept telling everyone to look at the camera until they saw the red light flash but they didn't listen to me. We took four pictures and this is the best one - I promise.

Cave creatures.

An awesome photo of the cave.

Derek as a park ranger. We took this picture at the visitor's center above the cave. You have to ride in a VERY OLD elevator to get down into the cave (I think you can hike too but it was really hot.) While we were at the visitor's center I did two telephone job interviews. Jared did one at the hotel that morning. We did two more on the road just after we left Carlsbad. I'm happy to report that we eventually got all the jobs we interviewed for. Yay us!

Dinner at the Carlsbad, NM Chili's. It was terrible. Slow service and microwaved leftovers. This was where I remembered how much I don't like New Mexico.

Mmmm...after a long day all we want to do is lay down quietly and go to sleep (ha ha). Not Holly though. She wants her eyes to start glowing so she can pretend to be haunted.

North Padre Island National Seashore

16 Jun 2011

Here are some pictures of us at the beach in Corpus Christi. We were really wondering about this sign. Shouldn't it say 'Beach Closed'?

Here is a super cute photo of Holly and Tyler and ... Derek's butt.

Derek and Tyler spent a lot of time making castle-ponds for the little crabs that I was catching out in the surf. Doesn't the background of this picture look like a painting?

The water was VERY warm.

And ta-da! The Holly and her hair have arrived! Now we can get this party started.

Texas State Aquarium

June 15, 2011

While we were in Corpus Christi to see the baby sea turtles, we went to the Texas State Aquarium. It was so cool! They had all the best kinds of animals, penguins, turtles, dolphins, otters, sharks, etc. and a fun splash pad for the kids (that we didn't know about until we got there so we had to skip.) What a great place to visit.

Baby Sea Turtles

6/14/2011

Last weekend we took a trip down to Corpus Christi to see the rangers release the baby sea turtles on the beach. The most endangered type of sea turtle is the Kemp's Ridley sea turtle and its natural nesting ground is messed up or something, so 20 years ago they started releasing babies on North Padre Island. Eventually the females came back and started laying eggs. People find the nests and the park rangers take them to an incubator and then release them when they hatch. They are soooooo tiny and super cute.

The turtles have to be relased at sunrise (cause they run toward the sun - not really, but I guess they are supposed to) so we had to get up super early. Tyler was thrilled.

Here's the rangers getting the babies out of the coolers. This was just one nest and it had 100 eggs. All of them hatched.
The volunteers held nets up over the babies to keep the birds from taking off with them.

They brought the turtles around for all the kids to see.

One of the volunteers used my camera to take this amazing picture.

I just LOVE this picture. I think it's so beautiful.

Aye! Sea Turtles!

6/14/2011

When I gave the volunteer my camera I didn't realize that I had it set on video. He was really nice and did this video as well as taking some pictures.

Snake Farm

6/13/2011

A few months ago we took the kids and Nancy to the Snake Farm. We saw it on an episode of Dirty Jobs and since it's just down the street we checked it out. It was very cool (well hot actually) and very snakey. The kids liked finding the top 10 most venomous snakes in the world and I liked the petting zoo - which only had goats and the like - not snakes.

K - you can't really see it in this picture but I have NEVER seen a snake as big as this albino python. It's over 9 feet long!!!

Derek was afraid of the goats at first but they were pretty pushy and he eventually gave in and just held out his hand so that they would stop chasing him.

Feeding this llama was weird because it has three lips and they are kinda scratchy. It's hard to describe, just believe me, it's weird.

These goats didn't want us to leave.