After a stay of 10 days it was time to leave Red Bay, Alabama. Consistent with our other stays in Red Bay we ended up staying there longer than we planned and left with additions to the RV that were not planned when we got to Red Bay.  We went to Red Bay for one reason – to have 5 windows replaced.  Tiffin had problems with the windows they put in the RV’s for a number of years – the seals in the dual pane windows would break and the windows would cloud up between the sheets of glass.  Since Tiffin has been replacing the windows and only charging for the labor to take the old ones out and put the new ones in – we wanted to make sure we got this done while the free window offer was good since the cost of the 5 windows was over $1000.00 Last time we were in Red Bay we knew we had some bad ones – but did not want to wait for them to come in.

This time we called and ordered the windows two weeks before we knew we would be there.  On our drive to Red Bay we decided to check the cost of two other items when we were there – a new mattress to replace the Sleep Number bed and a replacement for the combination Microwave / Convection Oven (which we do not think works very well as an oven).

We arrived in Red Bay on Sunday April 28^th and started our wait. The way it works at Red Bay is the next work day after you arrive a guy comes around to go over your list and give you some idea on when you might get in. It turns out that since we were there last – they added a new procedure another guy comes around to check on the 3 big issues – roof rails (done during the first visit to Red Bay), wet bay floor (done during the second visit) and the newest one – slide floor delamination.  Our hopes of a quick in and out trip were dashed when we were told that our slide floor was developing the problem. The technician said it was not bad and we could easily wait a year – but since we are heading west we really did not know when we would be able to return to Red Bay.

A little later the guy that goes over the lists came by and said that we could easily go thru a Quick Service bay for the windows and possible other things and the wait would only be a couple of days.  OK that is not bad, however the way things work at Red Bay is that you do not get on the list for any of the big three until your other work is done. I understand the reasons behind the system – but it was also a bit frustrating in that we really did not know how long we would have to be in Red Bay.

After we found out that it would be a couple of days for the windows, we made an appointment with Bay Diesel of Red Bay to have our annual service on both the engine and generator.  As I watched the service I noticed another Allegro Bus in their lot that
was the same model as ours, but with a difference – it had a shade awning over the three large hall windows.  Once we saw that we knew we would have to see how much it would cost to do, because we knew it would help keep the coach cooler when that side is parked toward the afternoon sun.

We got into the quick service (it is funny they call anything quick service at Red Bay) on Wednesday and quickly decided to skip the replacement mattress and microwave, but go ahead with the new awning. We were out of the bay with our new windows and awning by midafternoon. We talked to the scheduler who said we might get in for our floor on Friday.  We were hopeful – but Friday came and we did not get called in. We again talked to the scheduler who said perhaps Monday.  It is a little frustrating that
they can’t tell us when we would get in.

Since they have to pull the slide out of the RV and lay it on the side to take the floor out we have to clear everything out of the slide. This slide out has a number of cabinets, our table which is my desk area, and lots of open area (relatively speaking) that we use for storage of all kinds.  We got up Monday and moved most of the stuff off the slide to a big pile on our bed and waited. And waited. And waited some more.  I finally went to check and sure enough they were not going to get us in. They have two bays doing the slide floors and if all goes well they can do two rigs a day in each bay. They had
problems with one of the rigs so they were not able to get us in. We went out to dinner and sure enough we got the call telling us to be outside of bay 49 at 6:45am Tuesday. The problem was we would have to unload our bed and then get up early to move things around again in the morning. Of course we had so much time hanging around the campground and the store that we found out that they custom make dash covers to fit. So now Serenity has a new dash cover.

We got up early Tuesday, cleared the slide off and moved the rig in front of the bay. At 7:00 they still had not opened the door (the other slide floor bay was open and they pulled that rig in), so I went to check and there was a RV in the bay. Turns out they had to let something dry and then needed to do the final adjustments. We could have slept in for at least another half hour.  Between the lost sleep and the fact that Leslie had to back the rig up to the door a second time – she was not happy.

When we were in Red Bay last April they knew they were goin to have lots of slide floors that were going to need to be replaced and they were just starting the process. At that point it was taking a day or just over a day to do a single rig and they only had one crew doing the work. Since then they have perfected the process and now each crew can do two rigs a day (unless they run into problems).

They start the process by removing the slide topper (the slide topper keeps the rain off the top of slide).

Slide Floor Repair - Removal of Slide Topper

They have a crane set up and they strap the slide to the crane with massive straps and chains.

Slide Floor Repair - Crane Attached

Once that is done they have to take all the trim off inside the and disconnect all the wires under the slide along with unbolting the slide from the rails it rides on.

Slide Floor Repair - Crane Attached

Then it was time to actually remove the slide and lay it on its side so they remove the old floor and attach the new one. It was really strange to see the area that we sit in every day float thru the air and be laid on its side.

Slide Floor Repair - Removal of the Slide

Here is a picture of our house minus it’s living room.

Slide Floor Repair - Senerity minus her living room

They removed the old floor and then attached the new one.

Slide Floor Repair - Attaching the New Floor

View from inside as they move the slide back into position with the new floor

Slide Floor Repair - Return of the Living Room

Then they had to reattach all the wires, put all the trim
back inside, put the bolts back in and do all the adjustments so the slide
moves in and out as it should.

The amazing part – it took them only about 2 and half to 3
hours to do the job. It took us longer to put all the junk back where it should
go (actually we are not done yet).

The old floor is a really thick sheet of plywood with a
plastic undercoating. Water was getting in from underneath and causing the
plywood to delaminate. The new floors are built without plywood using a
aluminum frame. The one on left (not ours) is one that is pretty bad (although
I have seen worse), the one on the right is the floor they took out of our
coach.

Slide Floor Repair - Old Floor

We were done Tuesday – but stayed in the campground to get
enough stuff put back away so we could drive on down the road. Wednesday we
left Red Bay for the third time and hope it is a long time until we return.

Leslie wrote a blog titled “Where is Home” as we were heading out of Sanford to start out trip back to Seattle. When we go somewhere and people ask where home is we frequently get into a long discussion about living fulltime in an RV and our “Home” is where we park it.

Since we left the Seattle area in November of 2010, we have parked our RV in all kinds of places. Some of them have been wonderful like the state parks in PA and others have just been a place to park while we explore an area we wanted to visit (like the country fairground outside of San Francisco). Over the course of our travels we have come to see that just because we park our home somewhere – that does not really make that location our home.

For a location to be home it needs to feel familiar and safe. Obviously the Seattle area feels like home, Sanford, Florida feels like home, of course most of the Walt Disney World feels like home. I also think of parts of Portland, Oregon as home. Now this is not to say that we have not had a wonderful time in many areas of the country would go back and even park our RV in the same place. We actually visited Indianapolis twice and stayed in the same place. We had a wonderful time (OK so we were there for GenCon, how could not have a great time) – but we do not consider Indianapolis home.

Today we turned the corner on 4^th Avenue in Red Bay, Alabama and started the drive thru the small downtown area. We passed the McDonalds, the Chinese food  buffet, the
Pigly Wiggly and then turned onto 4^th Street to head to the Allegro Campground and the Tiffin Service Center it hit us. We felt like we were coming home.

This was very strange and more than a little perplexing. We do not like being in Red Bay. There is nothing to do or see in Red Bay. The campground is an old landing strip with the RV’s lined up in rows. And yet we felt a sense of comfort and calm as we pulled into the campground.

Well it might feel like home –but we are reminded of the Franklin quote about guests, like fish starting to smell after three days. We hope the winds continue to blow the dog food smell the other way and we can get out Red Bay in 3 days and continue our trip to another one of our homes – the Seattle area.

The dual-pane windows that Tiffin used for a few years lost their seals and fogged between the panes of glass. Tiffin has been really good in working with their customers regarding the bad windows – they give the windows for free and charge half of the labor to replace them.  Since our plan is to head to Seattle and we are not sure when we will be back in the southeast we figured we should head to one of favorite places – Red Bay, Alabama and have 5 of our windows replaced under warranty.

Our original plan was to leave Florida and spend a couple of days in the Atlanta area before heading to Red Bay. Well we needed another day at Disney and getting ready to move took a little longer than we planned so we ended up with only a single day in the Atlanta.

We left Sanford Friday and drove about half way to Red Bay, which put us about 90 minutes south of Atlanta in the Twin Oaks RV Park a very nice Passport America Park. We never want to make dinner after a day of driving our house down the road so we used UrbanSpoon to find a place for dinner – Steamers Seafood Grill and Oyster Bar. We started with the fried mushrooms. I had the combo of clam strips, scallops, and shrimp while Leslie had the shrimp. We each had the fries and cole slaw. The fried food had a very light breading and was very good. The cole slaw was excellent, but the fries were fair at best.

Steamers Grill

Today we got up and headed into Atlanta to visit the Jimmy Carter Museum and Library.

Carter Museum and Library

We started the tour watching a short movie that gave an over of Jimmy Carters life before, during and after his presidency. Jimmy Carter was a graduate of the Naval Academy and was planning a career in the Navy. When his father passed away he left the Navy to take run the family farm and peanut business.  We spent a few hours looking at the exhibits that detailed his early political career, the campaign for the White House, the various programs and positions he put forward, along with all the work the Carters did after he left office.  Of course one of the many things that Jimmy Carter is known for is the brokering of peace between Egypt and Israeli.

Egypt Israeli Peace Accord

This is our second visit to a Presidential Library and look forward to visiting some of the others as we continue our travels. Here are a couple of pictures of the replica of the Carter Oval Office.

Carter Oval Office

After spending a number of hours wondering around the museum we were both hungry.  We have a list of places to eat that we made from watching various programs on both the Food and Travel Networks. We have 4 places on the list for Atlanta – but could only eat at one. We chose The Vortex Bar and Grill and are extremely happy we did. We started with the Cheddar Balls O’ Glory. Let’s see fried balls of cheddar cheese served with jalapeno ranch dip – sounds good and it was. We then decided on two of their famous 100% ground sirloin burgers to split. We got the Yokohama Mama – this is burger topped with a teriyaki glaze, jack cheese, and a ring of grilled pineapple.  The other burger was the Big Bad Voodoo Patty which is a burger topped with a big helping
of their original chipotle cream cheese, 4 strips of perfect bacon, and sweet and spicy green pepper jelly. The burgers were amazing – some of the best we have had – ever.

Vortex Bar and Grill

When we arrived at the restaurant and there was a person in the parking lot charging $10 to park. When we inquired why he told us of the Inman Park Festival (http://inmanparkfestival.org/) which was a few blocks away. We wondered down to the festival and were amazed at the size of the festival and the number of artist.

Inman Park Festival

It might have been only a single day in Atlanta – but it was great.

Living in an RV is a very interesting experience. As I sat this week planning our next move I started to reminisce about how much my life has changed and yet in many ways how it is the same. I have never lived anywhere for very long. My apartment in Bellevue, Washington was the longest. I moved in August 2004 and out September 2009.

Five years is a long time in one house for me so living light isn’t something new to me. To Bill it is an entirely different thing. The house Bill lived in when I met him he had purchased just at 20 years before. Living light is newer for him.

However, when I move I usually put things in boxes and pack everything up. When we move the RV we have to pack things away but it is an entirely different process and there are things I have to concern myself with that you wouldn’t have to worry about. I never get to really “start” over. You know how nice it is to move into a brand new house or apartment, right? No dust, no dust bunnies hiding in corners, fresh clean carpets, often even the windows are clean. The oven doesn’t have splatters, the stove top is pristine and sometimes even brand new! When we move the RV the dust that has settled stirs. I am not Molly Homemaker. Anyone who has ever been to my house can tell you that. I think cleaning house is a last resort. There are so many things in life that are so much more productive. Dusting… why? It’s just gonna get dusty again. Heh

Now dust in a house with wheels is a whole different problem. Think about leaving your car somewhere for months where it could collect dust inside and then think about what that would be like with the windows down. I swear if you are traveling down I-95 behind us we must look a little like Pig Pen from Charlie Brown. Okay maybe that’s an exaggeration but I spent hours this week cleaning dust and pollen. This year the pollen in Florida was HORRID! Thank goodness Sunny, the Jeep, was already yellow. I saw cars that were not yellow going down the street with a nice yellow tinge to them.

We always try to vacuum and clean as much as possible before we leave for an extended drive and with this drive being at least 4-6 weeks it needed to REALLY be done. Also with the last few months I had to make decisions like this:

Let’s see today I can go to Disney for the day or I could dust. (Or)

I could clean the kitchen today or I could go sit and snuggle with the Nugget (aka Harrison my four-month old nephew) and the Nieceling (aka Isabella the painfull adorable two-year-old).

Nugget And Nieceling

So you see my dilemma don’t you?

Well now we are cleaned up for the most part and off to Red Bay, Alabama which of all the places we have traveled still remains my least favorite (and we got stuck in South Jersey for two weeks so that is saying something).

Red Bay, Alabama is the home of the company that built Serenity, the RV. We make an annual pilgrimage to Red Bay to have repairs done to the RV. As we are on the edge of the RVs warranty we want to make sure and have a few minor warranty repairs done while we are still on the East Coast, which won’t be for much longer. Then we will be prepared for the main part of our journey back to Seattle.

Now another thing about living in an RV is I can’t really say, “I am going home” when I refer to our trip to Seattle. While I consider Seattle one of my homes and it is the place we started this fantastic journey technically our home is where we park. I am, however, happy to be able to go “home” to see many of my friends and family and maybe even have a somewhat traditional holiday season this winter (we will see). While I love our RV life there are a few things about my old life I do miss and family at Christmas and more importantly Thanksgiving is one of them. We have an odd little family with Bill and his kids and his ex and me but we have so much fun being together and that is a big part of what I have missed.

We have just returned to our home after spending the last 4 days at Disney World. Most people that know us will not be at all surprised by us spending 4 days at Disney World – however they most likely would not really believe we went there because it was Marathon Weekend. However I am not a runner – the runners are crazy people.

So – where to begin? Leslie became a member of a Facebook group of people that love Disney some time back. There are a lot of nice people in the group and Leslie has gotten to know a good number of them and we have met a good number of them in person, mostly at the parks, but some during ourtravels. After the Princess Half Marathon last February some of the people that ran it started talking about in the Facebook group and posting pictures. Well it turns out that there are character photos that you can get during the runs that you can’t normally get. This got Leslie and a few of the other group members interested in running the Princess half in February of 2013.

After Leslie signed up for the Princess and really started to understand how she would need to train for it, we continued to talk about it and at some point I agreed to support her by running it with her.  I guess I should be clear – I agreed to attempt to train and run it with her, although I really did not think that I would be successful.

I was never a ‘runner’, and assumed that I never would become one. We started training with the Galloway run, walk, run method and started to have some success. We signed up and a 5K (3.1 miles) Glow Run in Iowa. We did OK – but after I ran 3.1 miles, I had no idea how I could continue for another 10. The day after the run we went to an amusement park – and I wa sore and really knew there was no way I could run 13.1 miles. Given our work and the weather in Iowa we had limited success with our training program. We started back up the training. We started to have some longer runs (like 4 and 5 miles), and although I was able to complete the runs I started to have problems
with shin splints. Leslie read about calf compression sleeves and since they were helping her I got a pair also and they helped me.

Our next race was another 5K – but this time at Disney. It was the 5K that is part of the Tower of Terror 10 Miler Weekend. The 5K was listed as a ‘Trail’ run – but we had never done one so we did not know what to expect. I run a bit faster than Leslie so we started together and after a little I started to run ahead. It was not long at all until my shins were burning – even though I had my calf sleeves on I had the worse shin splints I
ever had. I started walking slowly and it was not long until Leslie caught up with me.  I do have to agree it was fun seeing the characters along the path and we both got a great picture with the grave diggers from the Haunted Mansion. We completed the 5K – and I really did not think that there was any way I could complete a half marathon.

After the 5K I got a chance to speak with Jeff Galloway and learned that a likely cause of my shin splints was over striding. Who knew – I just assumed that if one wanted to run faster the obvious way would be to increase the stride so you could cover more ground. So we continued with the training and I worked at a faster pace with a short stride.  It has worked – I have not had much problem with shin splints. The training continued and the length of the long runs increased.

We signed up for the Jingle Jungle 5K that was part of the Wine and Dine half marathon weekend in November. This was a run thru Animal Kingdom and we had lots of fun. I realized that when I completed the run I felt pretty good (even though I got up at some crazy time in the morning since we had to be at the start of the race by like 5:30am).

Fast forward to early January, the training schedule said it was time for another long run – this time 10 miles. I did not dread it – although I know it would be time consuming (I am not fast).  Right around 9 miles into the run I was feeling pretty good – but my right knew started to have a good bit of pain. I slowed down and did more walking but by the time I hit 9.5 miles I figured I should stop. It hurt really bad I was very afraid and upset that would not be able to run the Princess Half. That was a bit of a strange realization – I was no longer convinced I could not do and dreading it – but I was looking forward
to it.

Well some rest for a few days along with some ice, taping and ibuprofen and I figured I should try a short run to see what would happen, since we had signed up for the Family Fun Run 5K which is part of the Maratho Weekend activities. The short run of 2.25 miles went well – no pain. So on Friday I did the 5K and got my best times ever (including stopping at some of the character spots). When I hit the 3 mile marker I heard someone next to me say something along the lines of just 1 tenth of a mile left and that he thought he might make it.  I was thinking– Just 10 miles left – no problem.

Family 5K - Bill in Epcot

Disney races are fun with the characters – but there is also the Expo before the race where you can buy all kinds of stuff for runners. This was the third Disney Expo we have been to and have spent some money at each one. One of the things they also have; are the medals they give out for the races – and the medals are pretty cool. There is a special medal for running either a marathon or haft marathon at Disney World and a half marathon at Disneyland in the same year – it is called the Coast to Coast medal and depicts the famous Partners statue of Walt and Mickey. Yeah I will need one of them some year. They also have a special medal for the Goofy Race and Half Challenge – it is for people that run a Half Marathon on Saturday and then get up on
Sunday and run a Full Marathon.

Well I am not sure what has happened to me – but perhaps I am becoming a runner even though I have not yet completed my first half marathon. I bought a runners watch that has a heart rate monitor and GPS in the watch. And perhaps I am just a bit Goofy because I bought a running shirt that says in training for the Goofy.  Today my training plan had me do a short run of 2.5 miles, which I did earlier today – I want to go back and do it again.

I guess I am becoming a runner – a few months ago I ‘knew’ I could never complete a half marathon in the time allowed, now I believe that with the right training I can run 39.3 miles in 2 days. That is just Goofy (or should I say Dopey).