Back Home for the Summer

After a little over 8 months of traveling, we settled down at our seasonal site in Pennsylvania for the summer. It stills feels like we are travleing though since we are in and out of Pittsburgh a bit as well as made a trip back to Ohio since we have been here.

In the last post, I mentioned that we were at Thousand Trails Indian Lakes for two weeks. We didn’t do much site seeing in the area since we were there mostly to spend time with our daughter Kim and son in law Greg. We had a very nice visit and got to spend some time with them which we highly enjoyed. Trent had a blast playing with their dog Freddie who is a black lab about the same size as him. With their fenced in yard, the dogs were able to run and play to their hearts ontent. We enjoyed watching them have fun.

trent and freddie; don’t they look like twins?

The only touristy thing we did was to visit the Underground Railroad Museum in Cincinnati. If you have never been there, I highly recommend it. We thought we would spend an hour or two there before heading to Kim and Greg’s on the first Saturday we were in the area. We ended up being there about 3 hours and still didn’t see all of the museum. I would say we really enjoyed it but it isn’t something you enjoy; more like somber reflection. The area that impacted me the most was on modern day slavery and human trafficing throughout the world and how trapped people become. Very scary statistics. We will plan another visit, to see the areas we missed, the next time we are in the area.

We found one scenic park to visit in a nearby small town while we took Trent to the dog groomer. I made an appointment and thought the groomer was in Batesville, IN and instead it was in Brookville, IN. Luckily that wasn’t too far away so we kept the appointment. While he was at the groomer, we found a local diner to eat dinner and then went to see the park at the local dam. It was pretty and gave us something to do while we waited on Trent. Always nice to find local scenery to enjoy.

After we left Indiana, we spent 2 nights in Zanesville, OH. We had hoped to visit friends but didn’t even call anyone since neither of us were feeling well. We basically hung out in the RV coughing and trying to sleep. Afterwards, we headed to Thousand Trails Kenisee Lake which is in north eastern Ohio. This park was only about a 30 minute drive to the seasonal campground where our fifth wheel is parked. I had booked us for a week at this park to give us time to set up the fifth wheel which Tim thought was way too much time.

we had a very nice site at wolfies campground in zanewville, oh. too bad we weren’t feeling well enough to really enjoy it.

We headed over to Shady Acres the first day to hook up the batteries and start to de-winterize it. Well we discovered a bit of a mess. It appeared that mice and either chipmunks or squirrels had gotten in over the winter. We found 2 dead mice in the bottom of one closet in the bedroom and many signs of other rodents like nuts and poop in the bottom drawers, under the bed, etc. So we ended up needing to clean everything really well which took a good bit of time. We went over daily and worked for a few hours doing a section at a time. We had to empty and clean every cupboard and drawer as well as all of the outside storage areas really well. We ended up asking the campground to let us stay a second week to give us time to finish cleaning carpets to get rid of any smells.

the site at kenisee lake was also very nice. we got to spend a bit of time here enjoying the park on a few days while we waited for the carpet to dry in the fifth wheel. this park had lots of green space and trails for walking trent.

Luckily we got it done and moved the motorhome into storage on the day we had to head into Pittsburgh for a couple of weeks for doctor appointments. Tim did a second cleaning of the carpet and left fans running to allow it to dry and then we left. He also looked for gaps where they could have gotten in and used steel wool to fill every little gap he found. I am sure we still have more work to find every possible gap and get it closed off. Ugh! What a mess.

We were a bit worried leaving for two weeks but we had too much going on to stay there. I had a couple of doctor’s appointments then we had my family reunion on Saturday which we had to leave early to head back to Cincinnati for Kim’s residency graduation. It is hard to believe that it has been 5 years since she graduated medical school. This past year, she passed the Pediatric boards and completed her fellowship in Adolescent Psychiartry. It was a beautiful day and wonderful celebration. She is staying at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and will be on staff in the Partial Hospitalization department. We are so proud of her and were so glad we could travel there for the graduation.

We returned to Pittsburgh for another week of appointments for me then we headed back to Shady Acres. Since we have been here, luckily we haven’t seen any more rodents inside. Unfortunately, a wood pecker started visiting our RV and must be seeing his reflection in a window and he started flying into it and banging his beak against the window. We have hung balloons up and ended up buying a couple plastic owls and other shiny spinning things to try to keep him away. I am hoping our current set up will do the trick. So far it seems to be working!

hopefully this plastic owl is scaring the woodpecker away

Needless to say, it has been hard to enjoy this site. The campground is nice, quiet and peaceful but a bit too wooded for us to be comfortable leaving our RV here over another winter. We had been on a waiting list for an annual site at Three Flags in Wildwood, FL and they called us recently and offered us a site. It costs a good bit more, but we decided to take it. We are now looking at getting the fifth wheel move there and using the motorhome in the summer up north. Hopefully we can find or hire someone to move it prior to our lease being up at Shady Acres and hopefully keeping it in Florida over the summer will be better from a rodent perspective. We have confirmed that we are allowed to leave the air conditionaing running when we aren’t there, so that should keep the humidity and mold concerns reduced.

As you can see, living the RV lifestyle definitely has some hassles. It seems that our long term plan of having one parked north and one south is going to be difficult. On a positive note, we have now traveled to 33 states with our RVs and most that are left are in the north central and north west areas of the country. We need to travel in the summer to get to those so we should be able to use the motorhome for that. I think we will be doing that slowly. After 9 states in the past 8 months, we are tired of moving so much. I think we will primarily be snowbirds, spending most of the year in Pennsylvania and Florida for a while.

we enjoyed a campfire one evening at shady acres

Sorry about the long gap between blog posts. As you can see, we were pretty busy. I hope to write a post every month to keep you updated on our lives. Till next time……

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