WORK!

Yesterday Keith went to work--finally! He's about 45 minutes away, so we won't be moving our house--again. We're still hoping he gets onto a pipeline job, because at least one of us is getting tired of the view of cornfields and irrigation towers out my front window! And, it pays more! :D We'll see how things go. Rumor has it that this job could last into next winter, and he's working with the same guy that he went to pipeline school with last winter AND they have put him on a dozer....

Our grandson had his second piano recital last weekend! Seems like it wasn't long ago when we were going to our daughters' recitals... But, she's 37!!! EEK!

It's officially Spring, here on our Hill. Was brushing my hair this morning, after walking the dog, and found a tick on my collar. *sigh* The final, sure sign that Spring has Sprung. I hate ticks.

Right now we're having what the weather man calls "Dogwood Winter"--had frost the last 2 nites! Soon the trees will have leafed out so much that it'll be time to buy a new, updated air card so I can get online. I hear they now come with little antennae and built-in boosters....

Well, the 'dish fairy' didn't come last nite and I left the sink full, so I guess....

Waiting...

Spring finally got here! It's too wet to plow, to windy to haul rocks, but it's Spring! I have a tulip and the hostas are up. :) Now, all we need is for the dirt movers to start!

Keith has finished up the revival of the car I drowned last Spring and jumped into reconstructing the corners of our big old S & S slide-in truck camper. The jacks had taken their toll on the old wood structure and we haven't been able to take the camper off the one ton in years! He spent the summer in it, last year, but had to tow his little pickup so he'd have wheels to get back and forth to work!

It turned out that the camper had some hidden 'issues' caused by leaks over the years--not something you'd expect in a camper that had spent most of it's life Out West. But it's been back here for 3 years, which is long enough for moisture to sneak into the cracks that had built up in the first 15 years of its life! It'll be better than new when he gets done with it!



Meanwhile, I've discovered a great place for RVers to hang out--and I go there every day! RVpics.com If you enjoy taking pictures as you travel, and seeing what others have seen--this is the place to be! Lots of great pictures, lots of information, and some really fun people from all over the Country--fulltimers, part-timers, snowbirds, some timers, and wannabees are all there!

The sun is almost shining today and it's headed for WARM. Gotta go do a little mushroom hunting! I'll let you know if I find any--won't share, but I'll let you know!

In the beginning...

In the beginning of our full time saga, we bought a 36' Kountry Aire 5th wheel. It had one little slide-out, for the couch, but since it was only going to be temporary, while we built a cabin on our little 2 acre hilltop, it was big enough! We prepared to hunker down for the Winter, fixed the porch, and Keith built a big garage behind it.

Come Spring, the Carpenters Union assured him that he would be 'traveling' to the jobs that no one else wanted because they were too far from home. So, since our only tow vehicle was too small to be dragging that 36' trailer anywhere, we found a small, light-weight Terry to take 'on the Road', when necessary. I don't even have a picture of it...that's how long we kept it! :D



We decided to that there was plenty of work going on around Rapid City, SD, so we pulled that Terry out there and Keith found a job for the summer. I spent most of the summer on the couch, since I managed to fall down the steps and severely sprain BOTH ankles! That Labor Day weekend, we took a drive up to Bismarck, ND and traded the Terry for a bigger Hitchhiker that the 3/4 ton pickup could still pull. We took it back to


Illinois for the Winter, then went back to SD in the Spring and spent the summer, again. We had become a 2 pickup family when the 3/4 ton had to spend time in the shop. The ancient Ford was a 'hooptee', but it worked for a work truck! Then, once again, we went off to Bismarck and traded again...

This time, we over-did it! Got more trailer than we had truck, but we found a bargain on a newer, 1 ton dually, sold the old Ford and stored the 3/4 ton before heading back to IL--and then Florida! This one was a roomy, Hitchhiker, with 3 slide-outs!












We parked the Hitchhiker on our lot, and hauled the old Kountry Aire to a dealer and traded it off, since it had become obvious to us that we'd be spending a lot of time on the Road, and that one just wasn't road-worthy. What we traded for, and took with us, was a 26' Holiday Rambler (back to the single couch slide!). It was cute and cozy and weighed half









as much as the big HH, and we were only there for a few months.

We had met a couple in the same line of work, and they were the reason we ended up in FL--they had family there and knew there was work. What none of us knew was that Keith would come down with the flu and the doctors would discover that his heart was on the verge of shutting down! Literally! After 6 bypasses he felt better than he had in years!

While he was recovering, we studied our options. There was a huge pile of medical bills and no insurance, for starters! So, we sold off the 2 big tractors that were up in IL, waiting for us to get them sold! Then we did the "logical" thing, we went shopping for a new 5th wheel! LOL!

We ended up trading both the little HR and the big HH for the quad slide we've had now for 4 years! First, we headed back North to fetch down the HH, dropped it off at the dealer, then took the HR and transfered into the new rig and headed back North with it! By the time Keith had dragged that behemoth up I-75, he was convinced that he was going to have to do something about a 'hauler'!

He bought a used Ryder truck, and made a lot of modifications and turned it into what we loving call "Big Bird"!

First Post to the new blog...

Here we go! I decided that we need a real Blog, devoted to our travels (when we have them) and our 'down times', which seem to take up half our lives! So, here goes:

Around the turn of the Century, after nearly 30 years of running a farming operation, we were downsized right out of business. What does that mean? It means that more than half of the acreage we farmed was rented from someone else--and they sold it all to another farmer! This left us with roughly 300 acres, including the house, pond, woods and outbuildings--not even close to enough to support ourselves!

Unlike so many farm couples, Keith and I had chosen for me to stay home, raise the kids and help him all that I could. Most couples have had to opt for the wife to work a full-time job and farm out the kids and hubby hires help, if it's not a 'family' operation. We don't regret our choices! Our kids turned out great! We were able to give them a 'church school' education, through the 8th grade, one went on to college and got a Masters Degree in Math and the other went into an Apprenticeship program and learned a Trade.

Meanwhile, we got busy and re-invented our life! Keith's other passion (besides farming) was to operate a bulldozer and other heavy equipment-=still working with dirt! But first he got into the carpenters union and gave that a try--and decided that wasn't what he wanted to do for the rest of his life!

Now, unless you are young and get into the Operating Engineers' Apprentice Program, you have to have enough experience that the Union will let you in as a Journeyman. So we set off for non-union States to get him some experience!

And so it went! SD, then FL, then SD, then FL and now he's in the Union--which means he makes about the same money--he just makes it all in 6 or 7 months and then tries to find something to do the rest of the year, to keep from driving us both crazy!

Details to follow in the next post, with pics of our various 5th wheel set ups and where we've been and what has happened to get us where we are today!