Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Odds and Ends

Here are some more Crater Lake pictures.
I threw this snowball at Kim - well kind of at her feet. Whenever Marcie from 40 Miles North sees their shirt in a pic, she usually emails me. Let's see if she does. Check out their web page at 40milesnorth.com. Order lots of good music from them. They have a great Christmas CD called "Incarnation". Better yet, just buy one of everything thay have. You won't be dissapointed.
We think our timing was about right for the fall colors.
Kim got amused with this little guy. They come for food but it is best not to feed them so they don't become dependent on us (I read that last fall in Colorado just after I had fed one - oops).
This is ice on the road. Miata on ice - that was fun!
Trees on the top of the mountain become deformed looking because the wind blows almost constantly and the tree learns to stay in the blown position. Amazingly we had no wind when we were there. These trees are just bent.


Today we leave Roseburg, OR for the west coast. It should be less than a two hour drive. Once there, we will follow the Oregon coast to California and see the redwood trees. That should be exciting. I usually wake up around 3 AM and lie awake a half hour or so and pray for others. On the days we move I wake up and am too excited to go back to sleep right away, so I blog or read and then go back to bed after an hour or two. It is about 4 AM now.

Usually due to the size of our rig we are crowded into a 65 or 70 foot space. This site is over 100 feet long. We have our MH, trailer and room for the Miata in front or in back of the unit. Our rig is 63’ 2” long, 12’ 8” high and weighs in at over 41,000 pounds – trailer and all.

When we arrived here two days ago, I was out talking to my neighbor Mel from Texas and we heard a loud crash. Mel was traveling with two friends and one of them pulled his pickup truck out from under his 5th wheel camper and forgot to put the camper jacks down first. It really wrinkled the sides of his pickup bed. I really hated it for the guy. We haven’t forgotten anything yet, but it can happen.

Speaking of mishaps, when we were traveling to Crater Lake I put my camera on my lap and forgot about it when I got out for to get gas. It is Canon Elph about the size of a pack of cigarettes. It landed on the door threshold when I got out and I didn’t see it and closed the door on it. It is (was) a digital camera and it broke the LCD display. It still took pictures, but I had to get a new camera. I was two years old and had served me well. Wal-Mart had another Canon like it and of course it had better features for less than I paid for my old one. As a plus, it uses the same batteries, memory card and belt holster as my old one.

A few months ago I contacted a man named Bob who places pastors in campgrounds in the south in the winter. I was considering doing this a year from now. The campgrounds we have stayed at always have a few full time residents but most of the traffic is transient. The southern parks have a large number of people that stay for the winter in the same park. Some of these parks want a pastor to lead services, organize small groups and be there for people in sickness or the loss of a loved one. Bob called a week or so ago and asked if we would consider taking a campground in AZ this winter. Kim and I prayed about it and felt that we should take some time this winter to meet with Bob and others we will meet who are doing this and learn some things from them before we make a decision. God may change our plans. We may pull into a campground and stay for the winter. We will stay open for God’s leading in this.

We have had a problem with our rear air conditioner since we got the coach and because it is intermittent, no one has been able to fix it. When at Quality Coach Service (QCS) last week, they said they would just replace it with a new one on warranty. We have two air conditioner units that are also heat pumps. This makes it efficient in that we use the campground’s electricity to heat instead of using our two furnaces that burn LP gas. Both our air conditioner units are 13,500 BTU. There is one for the front (2/3rds of the coach) with 9 outlets in the ceiling and one in the rear (bedroom) with only 5 ceiling outlets. This summer in some extreme heat our front AC ran most of the time while the rear AC cycled on and off because it is so large for the small area. QCS was going to replace the rear 13,500 BTU unit with a 15,000 BTU unit they had in stock. I paid them to put the larger one in the front of the coach and to move the front one to the back. This seems to be a better match for the larger front area. The larger AC / heat pump should handle the needs of the front of the coach.

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