Year 1 Days 6 – 19: Making The Transition – Part 5

To get to our Boondockers host’s estate, we had to drive down a narrow dirt and sandy desert road, squeezing by saguaro cactuses, mesquite trees and various shrubs with sharp spikes all trying to reach out and scratch our new home. We also had to maneuver around various sharp curves and deep ruts in the road. While not actually off-roading, it was a close second.

Once we arrived at our host’s estate and set up our RV (i.e., leveled the RV, extended the slide outs which expands the width of our living room and bedroom, plugged into our host’s power and hooked up into his water system) we breathed a big sigh of relief. Whoo Hoo! We have arrived safe and sound.

We are ending up spending a couple of weeks here. During this period, each day we worked long, hard hours. We first had to learn as much of the ins and outs of the RV. There are so many systems, each very complex, that it takes a significant amount of effort and patience to learn where all of the controls are and how to operate them. We also had to outfit the Beast and each day we used our little Fiat to run to various stores buying everything from groceries, to pots and pans, silverware, glasses, a BBQ, propane tank, tools, a living room rug, etc., etc., etc. We also spent hours and hours trying to get our DirecTV system to work. Dealing with ATT/DirecTV over the phone has been a totally frustrating experience and really unnecessary. They have not fully integrated their two systems as it seems their right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.

Each day has ended up being a busy day and we must admit, we are exhausted. Along with working hard to turn our new RV into a home, we also juggled our time with our daughter and her family’s time. They are also very busy, working full time and raising three very active young ones. Thus, we had to drop what we were doing to run over to their house whenever the time was right just so we could see them and help in cooking diners and playing with the grandkids.

We also had to shoehorn into our schedule a driver’s class at the Southwestern Truck Driving School. This class was about 5 hours and it helped a lot as we learned how to back the RV, slipping into various tight spots. Mary Margaret was the champ at doing this. Whoo Hoo!
We also had to drive the RV over to La Mesa RV here in Tucson. There are a number of small things that needed to be replaced or adjusted which included ordering a new windshield as ours was chipped when they drove it from the factory in Alabama to the Mesa, Arizona lot. The windshield has been ordered and we will return to La Mesa RV this coming Monday so they can install it

This transition from living on a sailboat to living in an RV is just about over. We hope to start our first real trip sometime next week where we will drive over 1000 miles to go up to Denver, Colorado to see Mary Margaret’s High School friend and our son-in-law’s brother. Once we have seen our friends, we will turn around and head back west as we need to be in Southern California in early November for dental appoints and seeing friends there.