That was a Blur!

We really thought that finishing the house would slow things down... but it seems that the exact opposite has occurred since our last post at the end of July.  We want to catch up on what happened and capture the high spots, low spots and significant events that have occurred during the second and third quarters of 2023.  One thing we know for sure, prices are still out of control.  We are really feeling it at the gas pump and the grocery store, even though we think that we are driving and eating less now.  It is good to have the major part of the new house completed and not need to pick up significant amounts of building materials and supplies every month. 

After completing the house project in May, we got back to doing more fun things; like going to the local charity dinner & dance with friends Carol & Jeff below.  This year's charity was restoration of the Snake River Valley.

Later that same August week, Gari had to have her wedding band cut off of her finger by the local EMS guys, after wearing it for 28 years.  Sadly it went missing soon after.  Maybe we will get new matching bands for our upcoming 30 wedding anniversary...

In September we got a visit from our Tennessee friends, Rick & Faithe, Hope, Hanna & Daniel; pictured below with Gari at Falls Creek in Swan Valley.

In early October we participated in the Swan Valley Cemetery clean up.  We missed the spring clean up as we were busy building in the house.  Everyone goes up with weed whackers, rakes, hedge trimmers and the like and knocks back the grasses and weeds from around the grave sites.

The local Longhorns, big and little alike, take a break.

We managed to squeeze in a few hikes up Palisades Creek, our favorite local hike.  The peak colors were gone by the time we arrived, but there was still a little color and lots of natural scenery as always.

Gari & Steve at Palisades.

Palisades scenery.

Palisades canyon tower, a fav.

We made it to Picnic Rock with Carol & Nemo, overlooking the creek.  Time for a snack!

Nemo ensuring that he gets his snack too!

A big event in September, we not only sold our original 5th wheel trailer Penelope but, we delivered it as well.  We made it a three day journey, over-nighting twice.  Below is the first overnight along the bank of the Snake river at the border of Idaho-Oregon.  It was 107 F when we pulled in and didn't go below 100 F until after 10 PM that night.  We stuck to the shade and opened Romeo's hood to let the engine heat escape the engine compartment.

Our delivery destination was Tulalip, WA just north of Seattle, WA.  We never look forward to pulling our big rig through major cities, but sometimes we just have to do it!

Our last picture of Penelope and Romeo, at Port Susan Camping Club, Tulalip, WA.  Good bye Penelope, you have served us very well and pray that you will continue to serve your new owners just as well.

Less stress on the way back home, with a quick stop at Snoqualmie Falls, Snoqualmie,WA

Then, we stopped in Pasco, WA and picked up a new and small bumper pull camper.  We have temporarily named her Juliet to go along with Romeo.  Surprisingly, the pick up wasn't as easy as it sounds, or as easy as we thought it was going to be....

We quickly discovered that we had a 17" mismatch between the trailer hitch and Romeo's hitch receiver.  After calling and running around Pasco, WA we found this nice SS riser hitch with a built in tongue weight scale.... but we immediately found that Romeo's bumper prevented the hitch from fully inserting into the receiver....

So, we made a deal with the same trailer shop that sold us the riser hitch, to fabricate a receiver extender.  One of the guys goes to work below cutting the 18" extension down to the 6" that we needed.  Long story short, he cut it off too short and it was closing time.  We left for an unplanned overnight in Romeo, in the local Walmart parking lot, not knowing how we were going to get this new trailer home.

Since we had bank transfer money problems we couldn't spend the night in the new trailer as planned. We arrived at the Walmart ready to settle in Romeo, when and Gari says, "maybe we could take the bumper off and the hitch will fit."  We made a few measurements, decided that it might work and set to removing the bumper at 10 PM.... in the Walmart parking lot!

Gari confirms the hitch now just fits!  It looks like we have a solution.  We just threw the bumper in the back of the truck and that's the way we rolled home with the new trailer.

Successfully and safely home!

When we arrived back home, we were happy to see the grass seed we had planted in September was coming in nicely.  Backyard below.

Side yard.

Front yard.

We even completed spreading the big topsoil pile that had been next to our driveway for the last three years.  We constructed a drain out to the road ditch to aid in water run off.  We had noticed that we would get a little pond out there when we had the bigger rains.... not anymore.

We even had a bit of time to get in a camp fire...

Then it was time to get ourselves and our new camper back to Yakima for a proper family visit.  We got to see lots of family and friends and it was an excellent 2 week visit.  We summarize with a photo of Gari and her dear old dad below.

We got to go up Sawmill Canyon with Scott and his young Brittany Spaniel pup Maverick.  What an awesome hunting dog.  Maverick located and flushed three Ruffed Grouse that day.  Very exciting!

After waiting for years, it finally happened... a visit from our Boundary County friends John & Susan!  No, that is not John & Susan below, rather it is their faithful friends, Wesson the Chocolate Lab and Smith the Golden Retriever.

Striking a pose...

That's right says our friend Nutz, that's Smith & Wesson!

John, Susan and Gari enjoy a nice white wine during happy hour.  Susan holds the happy hour clock, which we never did figure out when happy hour was over.  Best happy hour clock ever!

We got in a couple hikes, this one up our fav, Palisades Creek.  Susan and Gari at the small water fall.

Then we had to investigate a mysterious water leak coming from the underside of John & Susan's trailer.  John & Steve work to remove the aluminum belly pan to obtain a better look into the situation.

There were wires and pipes... the Sharkbite fittings made the plumbing work relatively easy.

We pulled the trailer into the Shop surgery bay and had the fresh water tanks out in a couple of days.  It was not an easy task, but was well worth the effort.

And there is the leak culprit; a 1-1/2" nipple connecting the two 50 gallon tanks.  The spin weld fittings on the tanks had failed.

Steve turned 65 y/o during this visit and placed a Greek order of gyros for dinner; John, Gari & Susan deliver in a sensational way below!  One fantastic birthday celebration and dinner for sure.

We fit in one more hike up Spooky Trail.  We were met with a beautiful snow at altitude as we negotiated Spooky.

Steve, Gari & Susan enjoying the gorgeous day.

Then it was time for John & Susan to head to their winter range in southern Arizona... we were sad to see the visit come to an end, and happy for our friends to be headed for their winter retreat of peace and solice.

And the sun continues to come up over the mountains.....

July 2023 in the Books

It finally warmed up here, maybe too much.  We had a number of days with the highs in the 90's and little rain.  At the end of the month we had a couple of pretty good thundershowers blow through and dropped about an inch of rain for the month.  We have been busy the last part of June and all of this month of July.  After achieving occupancy on the new house build in mid-May, we waited until mid-June and spent a couple of weeks moving over from the trailer and into the house.  By the end of this month, July, we are pretty settled in the house, although there are always things to do in terms of maintenance and new upgrades, so we continue to stay busy.  It was a bittersweet move after living and loving life in the trailer for 10 years straight.  We cleaned up the trailer as we moved out and now we are working on selling the trailer.  We have it posted on RVTrader.com at https://www.rvtrader.com/listing/2013-New+Horizons-MAJESTIC-5027086953  We still want to travel a little, but believe we can do so in a much smaller trailer, so that is our goal to downsize our camping equipment, now that we have a stick and brick home again.

We found all of our card decks when cleaning out the New Horizons trailer!

Jack and Sharon from South Dakota stopped by and were our first overnight guests in the new house.  We love these two wonderful souls and enjoyed the visit so much.  

Tom & Cathy from Arizona arrived for a summer stay the first week of July.  We met Tom & Cathy here in Idaho a few years ago and quickly became friends.  They have been full-time RV living for 20 years!  Makes our 10 year stretch look like a test run haha!  That's 100 lbs of Duke the Champion Black Lab!

 Steve, Cathy & Gari

Duke and Steve playing Frisbee catch.  Duke is a BEAST of a willing participant!

We mentioned a couple of months ago on our blog that we were having a terrible time with the kitchen countertops.   There were just a lot of mistakes and quality issues.  We ended up filing a claim with our VISA account.   Long story short, Lowe's lied in the VISA investigation, we were able to prove that by the emails we kept between us and Lowe's, and our VISA awarded us full reimbursement for the countertops.   Two days later the countertop installers (Lowe's  subcontractor) came and finally installed a proper countertop.  We aren't calling Lowe's after what they put us through.  We will see if they contact us.  This time Ben (L) and Noah (R) did a quality install.  Wish we would have had these two from the beginning.  Good job guys and thank you!

Back in business in the kitchen!  Gari is happy :-)

We have now turned our attention to the outside and started with installing a small irrigation system to grow a little grass around the porch so we can step off into some decent grass and not tall weeds and mud.  We decided to dig the trenches by hand after determining that the machine rental would be over $1,000.  This way we can put the entire system in for well under $1,000, maybe closer to $500.  It looks like Steve is happier to save $1,000 than Gari.

North side, green poly header pulled and starting to cover the trench.

East side, green poly header pipe installed and covered enough to hold it down in the trench.

South side, Green poly header installed, trench partially covered.  We did a beta test on this side.  We installed bedding gravel at the house foundation and outward for about 2 ft.  At the drip edge of the roof we laid a line of flatter rocks to prevent the roof eave dripping from digging another trench.  We will end up adding more washed gravel at the foundation and locking in the flat rocks.

 Working on the valve box placement.

Here's the sprinkler valve header that we built up.  The boiler valve at the top is access to blow out the lines at the end of the watering season.  We better do that with the cold temperatures here in the winter!

Sprinkler valve header installed in the valve box location.  The black mushroom thingy is a drain-waste valve.  It is a 1/4 turn ball valve that either turns the water on to the sprinkler system or turns the water off to the sprinklers and opens a weep hole at the bottom to allow the water in the line up to the sprinkler header to drain into a gravel french drain and empty out for the winter.

Steve prepares to place the valve box over the sprinkler header.

The valve box will sit something like this.  Now just need to back-fill around it.

Below is the setup for a sprinkler head.  The orange fitting is a saddle fitting that you just hand screw onto the green poly 1" header pipe.  The the smaller 1/2 black "Funny Pipe" just pushes right onto the orange saddle fitting.  Then you screw a 90⁰ elbow fitting into the bottom of the sprinkler heads.  The other end of the Funny Pipe also pushes right onto that sprinkler elbow fitting.  No clamps required.  The Funny Pipe is flexible so you can easily adjust the the location and height desired for the sprinkler head.  Easy-peasy... except for all the trenching and covering!

NE corner, sprinkler head not installed yet.

South side sprinkler heads installed.  Still need to haul in more bedding and topsoil and fine adjust the sprinkler heads.

East side same status as south side.

North side all set for topsoil.

And there's the mountain of topsoil to be spread around the house.  That will take us a few days.  Supposed to be a littler cooler this week, so that will be nice.

The last but not the least milestone was the blown in insulation for the attic.  We put R-21 kraft faced batts up in the ceiling this past winter.  BDI came out last week and added over an additional R-30, which was about 10 additional inches.  It looked like they averaged about 14-17" around the attic.  We suppose it will settle some.  We should have over R-50 in the ceiling now.  That should do it!  The arrival of the BDI truck was a bit of a surprise.  We were called that morning asking if that afternoon would work for us.  We said NO since the kitchen countertops were being installed that day.  The countertop guys finished up around 11:30 AM and we did get things cleaned up by about 1 PM.  That's when the BDI insulation truck rolled up.  We went ahead and let them install since the countertop guys were out of the garage by that time, so it all worked out.

Thomás climbs up into the attic through the only access that is in the 12 ft garage ceiling.  I went up a couple time to check the workmanship and progress and both were very good.  I believe they we finished in the attic in about 2 hours.  We were tired at the end of that day.

And we go out of this post with a pleasant summer sunset in the west....