Answering Questions

It's Thursday afternoon just after 3 and we're on the road again making our way out of Delaware, OH. Our time was short, but very nice at Cross Creek RV Park. We rolled in at about 4AM and went to the check in office. After a few minutes of confusion we figured out the process of booking and finding a camp site to pull our ride into. We then tried to quietly make our way to the designated area. In our initial research about RVing we found out two unwritten rules of pulling into a park:

1. Be respectful of the people already there and sleeping. (SHUT UP!)

2. Your headlights, while great for illuminating the road, are an awful wakeup call.

There actually was a 3rd rule about not running your generator over night because of noise, but ours needs fixing anyway and who has time for 3 unwritten rules? I barely remember the first 3 on the written list of a given park.

Anyway, by the time we got to the park, registered, parked the RV, figured out hooking up the electricity, and settled in it was after 5 AM. The registration process wasn't the most clear so we decided to set the alarm for 9 to give a quick call to the front desk to be sure everything was ok. Long story short, they forgot to mark the site we used as reserved spot for today and we ended up in the premium spot of the entire campground. We ended up moving the RV to another spot so we could have a late check out (5 pm instead of noon). The plan was to get to the new spot, crash for a while, wake up, shower and get on the road again. However, RVing for the inexperienced brings a lot of questions and they pretty much start the moment your eyes open and fixate on the RV skylight opening to the Ohio morning.

Where do we go today? What time do you want to leave? You hungry yet? Daisy, wanna go to the dog run? Did we register properly? Are we sure the electricity is on properly and not draining the battery? Can Daisy really hold it another 80 miles before we get to the next rest area? How did Sebastian obtain a Tiger Woods type swagger in this RV when he becomes a 10 lb. blob of fur in a 4 door sedan? Some easily answered and others left to the mysteries of the universe. We should hire Robert Stack for the Sebastian thing.

RVing for the inexperienced also brings many questions from the friends and family that are following your progress online and through phone calls. Here are your answers folks. Keep the questions coming. Some could prepare us for something we hadn't thought of.

What was the first song you played on the road trip? -Cassidy Bowman San Francisco, CA
That's a great question, Cassidy. You'd figure that a couple who met because of and through music would have very strong opinions on the song that they shoved off too, right? Wrong. I had all intentions of making a ridiculously long playlist of songs. They'd weave through themes both emotional and geographical. We'd probably be somewhere in CSNY's Ohio right now and coming up soon would be Indiana by The Samples. Sounds great, right? Didn't happen. The first song we played was Fluffhead by Phish. Jennie wanted to hear Contact and put on Junta. Then we just decided to listen to the album rather than skip to Contact right away. Uneventful, huh? We did get Fluff's Travels as part of Fluffhead though so it wasn't long until a traveling theme arose.

Do you guys have a CB and if so...what's your handle? -Todd Hinchman Portland, OR
See above answer for playlist of songs for trip and replace "making a ridiculously long playlist of songs" with "buying a CB".

Have we Blogerick'ed yet? -Dan Melnick Chicago, IL
Indeed we have Dan. Indeed we have.

How are the pets doing?- Almost everyone we've written with/talked to. Planet, Earth
Sebs is a rockstar. Daisy is still on the beginner level of Guitar Hero III, but one more day in this thing and I think she might graduate to intermediate.

I was just reading the Blogericks updates. How does a RV park work? Are the "spots" pull in and pull out? You don't have to back that thing in anywhere or do any 3 point turns or anything, do ya?- Mike Powers Chicago, IL
So far, so good, Mike. We haven't had to back into any spots or do any 3 point turns. The RV parks have pull through spots, pull in/back out and back in/pull out. You pay a couple extra bucks for the pull through spots, but it's much cheaper than whatever we'd have to replace because we backed into it.

Are you able to add the time you are writing the blog so we all have an idea of the part of the day you're doing this?- Bonnie Mason (my mother in law) Lansdale, PA
Good suggestion Bonnie. Note the first line of this blog.

Ok, that's about it for now. We're heading west on Rt. 70 again and tentatively have the Terre Haute KOA as our destination. We may end up slightly further, but we'd like to settle in at a normal time tonight.

Jimmy