ependydad...Doug

Thanks everyone. Apparently it was all for naught as I'm a sucker for being close to the boats. We booked a "Preferred" site (thanks JASON!).

I am buying into DWVC.....Dollywood Vacation Club.  
 
You get DOUBLE the years.  
 
It's the breast timeshare deal around.  

My daughter has been sucked in by Duffy. Back at Christmas, she found someone with a bag or shirt that was like Duffy, but a girl bear. Turns out that girl bear's name is Shellie May and he's Duffy's boo. And, they are only available in Disney World Sea in Tokyo.
This past trip, we did 2 days in Epcot and failed to see Duffy. In my daughter's exhaustion, she broke down in tears when she found out we missed him by minutes. I told her we would order a Shellie May from eBay when we got home.
The first thing she did when we got home was found the Shellie May link that she saved. The price was better than others I had found, so I ordered it Wednesday 2/25. It arrived today (right in the middle of the expected shipping range). A little less than a week from Japan; color me impressed!
It could have been packed a bit more securely, but it came through safe and sound so I really can't complain.

Now, can anyone translate this?

What kind of flog? Maybe I'd like that...

We had them back in July or so when we were there.

Today:

Test tow that bad boy right to the nearest scales. :D

The kids ran and the adults walked (except for my potty break when I had to catch up!).
The blond lady in the picture - this was her first 5K EVER! She did a great job!
Now some rest, rope drop for Epcot and then a park day. Well, an abbreviated one- we're looking forward to naps!

Got it!

My mother-in-law painted ours (which we leave tomorrow!). I'd still like Buzz Lightyear and Jack Skellington bands.

My mother-in-law painted ours (which we leave tomorrow!). I'd still like Buzz Lightyear and Jack Skellington bands.

I feel like this is appropriate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpYVqZM4NnA

I designed a 20' overall length camper using Visio. But never pursued how to build it. It was fun to play around and see what kind of limitations there were.
 
Camper Design - sleep 6, under 20'

Haha... okay then!   At least you're going to give it a go!  Hmmm.... maybe I should get off the computer and at least do a few jumping jacks 

Unfortunately, build quality appears to be luck of the draw with most manufacturers. There isn't a brand that I haven't seen a horror story or two - everything from entry level campers to moderately priced ones to the pretty expensive $100k DRVs.
 
For me, it's more about looking at the manufacturer's track record in service and warranty support. If you can also luck into a good dealer, then all the better.

I feel like this is a case where being first might not be best. But, here's to wishing Snarky a Happy Birthday.
 
Kind of glad I stuck around and got over myself. :)

Maybe this will help:

As Jim Gaffigan says, "Pigs are magical creatures. They eat apples and turn it into BACON."
I think these people have the right idea- it's a pet AND a meal!

Taking a quick break from the trip report... As mentioned, the 10 year mark is officially today. We met a doctor at Hopkins who broke the news to us that our daughter had a brain tumor and that they took her for surgery about an hour later. We later found out it was a cancerous brain tumor called an ependymoma. She had a couple of more surgeries and had 6-weeks of radiation treatments.
Today Paige is a beautiful and vibrant young lady. She is an exceptional daughter, big sister, friend, student, and goofy kid. We're eternally blessed that she's free of side-effects, long-term effects, and physical deficits. She's above grade level in school and has even completed a couple of 5k runs. I love this girl to pieces!

I'm fairly certain that this is my first Trip Report. This is hard for me- I take a lot of pictures and usually am VERY wordy.
 
The initial plan was that we would leave our house in Maryland and head straight to Key West, FL. But things change... first my wife wanted to be able to make one of Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Parties. That pushed our departure timeline up so that we'd be driving on my daughter's birthday and she asked that she isn't stuck in the truck the whole day of her birthday. That pushed our timeline up another day BUT I also had to keep my time off of work to a minimum (luckily I work remotely, but a day in the truck isn't conducive to working). What started as a Friday evening departure turned into a Tuesday evening departure. The plan was to take a 1/2 day Tuesday, drive 1/2 way and as late into the evening as possible and then finish the drive on Wednesday.

For the trip, it would be my family of 4 and my wife's parents joining us. We would leave before them and then they'd catch up with us. Down in Key West, my wife's grandmother and aunt got a hotel and came to visit us most days.
 
But first, there's prep to get things ready.

The weekend before the trip, my in-laws came down to pickup the kayaks. We bought a new roof rack for them and put my kayak carriers and boats on top of their car.

(Bow and stern lines are required for highway trips.)

Since our plan was to overnight without hookups for the first time, I also upgraded my battery to a Trojan 27TMH. My local battery place beat online prices by a good $75 and there was no shipping because I drove up for it. The first step was to make sure it got a good full charge:


I learned a crap-ton about batteries and voltages and what full means and state of charge and all that jazz. Here I am checking it (with my brand new voltmeter):

(Trojan's User Guide was paramount in my learning in addition to posts on the Forest River Forums.)


A few weeks before we left, I took the hitch out of my truck and found that one of the lock-nuts for the U-Bolts for my B&W hitch had gotten difficult to turn. I took it off, later re-installed it, and contacted B&W to find out what to do. They sent out a set of 2 new U-Bolts and 4 lock-nuts to replace what was out there. I wanted to replace these before we left so that I could ensure the torque was correct on the hitch. First, I had to remove these lock nuts. Over lunch one day, I went out into a rare early December flurry and started working it.


I never thought I'd be so happy to break a bolt in my life (my first one, too!). The work was slow going and oh-so-hard before it broke:



We also had to load all of the gifts into the camper. Fortunately we have a u-shaped dinette with a lot of storage beneath it. Now you see it:


Now you don't:



The day before we left, I wanted to get the bikes hung on the camper with care. Over Thanksgiving, my father-in-law built me a pin-box mounted hitch that I put a bike rack into. This saved the bikes from going inside the camper and freed up our dinette during travel (which was important given our overnighting travel plans). Here's what the final product looks like:


However, I wanted to keep things interesting. To hang the bikes on the camper, the truck has to be pulled up in front of it with the tailgate just ahead of the bike rack. That put my door right about where the storm drain is in front of our house. About 97 seconds after I thought, "Man, it would suck to drop my keys down there.", I did just that.


As you can see, my brilliance told me to just lift the grate cover, jump down, get my keys, and re-place the grate cover. Reality had different plans. I managed to drop the grate cover down the hole (fortunately I didn't hurt myself in the process). I did recover the keys, but I ended up calling the police's non-emergency number (at 1pm) who put in a request with the utilities folks who left it this way until the next morning. But, here they showed up with a winch and chain.




3 trucks and no less than 6 guys turned out. My only saving grace was that they almost dropped it down into the hole as they tried to put it back into place without the chain. And yes, I went out and fessed up to my stupidity. We all had a good chuckle.


Being a family who adheres to a strict schedule is just not our way. I wanted to leave as close to 1pm as possible with an absolute no later than 2pm departure time. Well, we hit the 2 o' clock hour...


But, the truck looked cute dressed up as Rudolph:


My father-in-law suggested we try to make the front of the camper look like a sleigh. Great idea, but no clue how to implement it, so we didn't.


On the road and on our way, there was nothing to do but stop for fuel and food and whatnot. First stop, topping up:


Diesel prices being about $1/gallon cheaper than before made a nice difference in top-offs.



The plan was to stop at the Camping World in Fayetteville, NC because some (many?) Camping Worlds will allow you to use their service spots for an overnight stop. We did it last year in Tallahassee. The nice part is, they offer 30amp electric and water sometimes. I ended up getting mixed messages when I called on the day we left and was found that we weren't welcome. So we moved on down the road and found a Walmart in Dillon, SC to spend the night.

For those who do use smartphones but don't use the Allstays Camp & RV, consider it. It's $10 which is like a bajillion dollars in app cost, but it tells you of upcoming rest stops, truck stops (we were targeting Flying J and Pilots because we can pay at the pump in their truck lanes), Walmarts that allow overnight parking, and has the location of campgrounds. I can easily say, I wish I would have bought it earlier.

I called ahead to Walmart to ensure that we were welcome to stay the night. The friendly lady on the phone said it was fine and to just park out away from the cars. When we got there, their were 3 or 4 other RVs and a tractor/trailer already. We parked near them and started deploying our slides.

Our driver's side slide in the rear bunkhouse caused my camper to go back to the factory from October 2013-February 2014. Guess which slide would barely budge? Guess which slide design doesn't have an override mechanism outside of "push like heck"? There was no rain in the forecast and we have slide toppers, so we pushed it out enough for the kids to get through the door and figured we would deal with it in the morning.

Previously, I've always been able to get that slides to retract without a whole lot of issue. The morning was beautiful for the fight that ensued:


(Also notice the missing antler. Now that my son was turned around in his seat, he did something he's never done before and lowered the window on I-95. The antler was gone in an instant. We've since child-locked the door and now lock the windows.)

Regardless of how much I pushed, I couldn't get the slide to retract. I called the Sabre Warranty Manager to talk me through some ideas and started watching Youtube videos to find out what the heck to do.

I could reach the motor on one side:


But, not the other. A small person would need to go on top of the slide. I knew just the woman for the job, introducing darling daughter (who is clearly upset at being forced to help):





And now, when I said push like heck. I wasn't kidding. Here are blood bruises (aka hickeys) that I got from leaning into the slide:



The Sabre warranty manager setup a mobile towing-slash-RV repair-slash-mechanic-slash-other to come out and help me retract the slide. Fortunately, I got it in on my own. The problem with this slide, when the motors are disengaged, they're free to travel on their own. We could only get 1 motor to re-engage and drove gingerly to the nearest Home Depot where we bought 2x4s to block the slide from extending itself.

What should have been a 10am departure ended up with us leaving Home Depot at like 1:30. We still had 507 miles to go that day because I had to work the next day. BUT, I do believe that I'm at picture limit, so I'll stop here...

As Jim Gaffigan says, "Pigs are magical creatures. They eat apples and turn it into BACON."
I think these people have the right idea- it's a pet AND a meal!

Feeling like we need to start a "Kids Beating Insurmountable Odds" or "Our Miracle Stories" thread.  Two of our eight grandchildren were both with severe, life-threatening conditions.  I've shared a little on other threads.  But it is so heartwarming to hear the stories of others and to know that these dear, irreplaceable children do survive!

Congrats again on your daughter's progress, she's beautiful!

Congrats on 10 years!
And, after reading that I finally  know what in the world your screen name is. I have been trying to decode that forever and just never got around to asking you :D