Never Made It After All That

Campground at Long Point Park in Florida

We stayed here for a week on our way to Georgia.

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Current Location: Gumlog, Georgia

For some fool reason I decided to go grocery shopping this morning. Well, it seemed like a great idea at the time. The fridge is almost empty. I am merely cooling air, two eggs and some condiments at this point. But first I had an inspiration  to do some work around the wheel estate.  Ha ha ha. What on earth was I thinking?

Well first, I got this bright idea to defrost the freezer. Good grief...what's wrong with me?

It had frosted up in the freezer to the point that the fins in the separate refrigerator section were frosting up too. This is never good. If the fins in the refrigerator are allowed to frost and freeze up in the refrigerator section, you are putting your food and the life of your refrigerator at risk. If you've seen the Dometic RV (2 door, 8 cubic foot) refrigerator prices that start at $999  and up, then you might understand why I want to take very good care of my refrigerator. 


A labor of love because defrosting the freezer is  as much fun as slapping your thumb with a hammer. 

Most RV's and motorhomes do not have frost-free refrigerators. This has to do with it working efficiently on propane. Frostfree requires a lot of electricity. Most RV refrigerators are made to operate on 110 electric or propane. Some even work on 12volt. Having the propane option is very nice indeed but means it won't be frost free, because then you will simultaneously need 110 electricity and propane to operate the refrigerator, and that defeats the purpose of having one that can run on propane only (with some 12volt thrown in to light the tiny burner automatically.)

Propane means my refrigerator stays icy cold while I drive. I have a built-in generator, but I prefer not to use it except when needed or once a month whichever come first. It's important to run the generator every month to keep it happy and  lubricated. I knew this from living on boats afloat and in far flung islands.

In the heat of the summer, my generator gets a workout anytime I go somewhere that Harley has to stay locked in the wheel estate, such as the grocery store where they are not fond of puppy dogs perusing the aisles. I have to keep his dog house (my little old motorhome) air conditioned while I shop.  I can accidentally lose track of time, days, weeks. I once skipped a whole year somehow.

Just in case I go through another of my time-warps, I surely don't want to  come back out to the blazing hot parking lot to find a fried puppy dog for dinner (no thanks!)

Back to today..... by the time I got most of the chores done, I was suddenly just pooped out.  The thought of going grocery shopping was becoming a distant memory. I drank a pint of water. Then I noticed my outdoor thermometer read 103F and the indoor one  89F despite my air conditioning but it was set to cool the minimum, I so wanted to crank it up to full blast.

I drank two more cups of water. I was using a 200 watt mini-heater to defrost the freezer. Fortuitously, the freezer thaws completely in about 30 minutes, but still that is a half hour of a 200 watt heater blowing around the freezer area and the wheel estate. I didn't want the AC on high fighting with it, because I wanted the defrosting to be over in a hurry.

So I  climbed up on my step stool to remove the awkward overhead air conditioning filters, which I took outside to wash. My medical equipment makes a mess of the filters, so I have to clean them often. This meant the AC was off with temperatures climbing.  I replaced the filters, turned the AC on high, then turned the heater off.  Mopping up the freezer, I was happy that it was clean, shiny and dry. Luckily none of my ice had thawed while sitting in the refrigerator section. Like most RV's I have separate doors for the freezer and refrigerator. This makes defrosting a breeze. Well sort of. In this case, a hot breeze!

By now, I was pouring out sweat, plus consuming more liquids. I decided to take a break. Too pooped to go shopping.  Whatever I needed or wanted was no longer essential.   I turned the AC up on high, but it is taking a long time to finally climb down to 81, now 80, hopefully it will keep dropping.

I rested all of 10 minutes when the lake park maintenance crew showed up with lawn mowers, weed-whackers and leaf blowers. This is one reason I love my current workamping situation, someone else does the yard work.

Back outside. I guess I had become very comfortable outdoors, as there was a lot to organize and do. I had to get my laundry off the line so it wouldn't slap the worker in his face while mowing. It was time for me to clear the overgrown grassy section of dog toys plus remove Harley's 100 foot tether. I had just put it up too, because Haley has broken his old long tether multiple times, escaping to the road.

He has zero moving-vehicle sense, so it frightens me when he breaks a tether, in this case repeatedly. I think it was just dry rotted from being used in the sunshine all winter in Florida, so into the garbage it went. I found some extra clothesline in my toy box, so I strung that up for him. I hooked his bungee cord, leash and then him to his new and improved tether. We played ball, which allowed him to run about 75 feet each direction.

Now I needed to clean up his toys before the lawn mower ate them,  take down his new tether(um, didn't I just put this up an hour ago?)

In other words, I should do a preclean so the wonderful maintenance guys could cut the overgrown lawn at my campsite. While I was at it, I tidied up the water hoses, the electrical cord and disconnected the sewer hoses so they could be moved out of the way.

Weed-whackers can and do knock a hole in a sewer hose, something I wanted to avoid. But unhooking a sewer hose in 100F degree heat, sent me reeling from the stench. Heat makes sewer smell much worse. Just like cold cabbage sitting on the counter has no odor. Put it in a boiling pot of water, now you have distinct cabbage smell. Well, sewer on a hot day is much like that, but only if you unhook the hoses. Yucky poo!

Sewer stench makes cooking cabbage smell like delightful perfume.

By the way, if you cook your cabbage with lavender herb (sold on Amazon) you won't smell a thing!

I gave the maintenance man quite a chuckle when I stumbled backwards with my face all screwed up in a green I-think-I-am-gonna-puke look.

Harley was on his leash, attached  to my wrist, trying to make best freinds with the guy while I was grinning like a happy fool because amazingly SMILING makes offensive odors tolerable.

It really works. Smiling has awesome cures, so smile more often.

The nice man offered to mow the lawn on his industrial riding mower. After he left, the next man came up to week-whack the weeds that couldn't be mowed down.  Thirdly (Oh I am so lucky) he used his leaf blower to clean my patio completely. WOW!

Before he arrived, just in case I could get him to use his blower on my patio,  I had neatened it  up substantially, moving all I could into one big neat pile, so he could blow it off fast. I figured if I made his work easier, he might know how much I appreciated this favor.

A "neat pile of stuff"  on the patio was dominated by an 8 foot, 8 ton  picnic table, five assorted folding camping chairs, one card table, a teeny tiny fan, a larger broken fan, a milk crate full of fire wood, a bag of kindling, a pile of dog toys, a side table made from a broken chair, a crock pot, the laundry basket, a bag of clothes pins, a 50 foot electric cord for lights, barbecue tools, firepit tongs, two planters with wanna-be wild flowers and a hippie chick sculpture a soon-to-be homeless couple bequeathed on me.

Sweeping this rugged concrete just shreds the broom and it's still a wreck afterwards, because this concrete is the super rough kind, like they were planning on paving a steep hill that has flash flooding but changed their mind and paved a patio instead.

By now, I was overheated, overtired, sweating out buckets.  Harley and I fled for the inside of the motorhome.  We turned the AC way down, then sat and stared at each other with our tongues hanging out.

We never made it grocery shopping after all. It's dark thirty now. Oh well!