And We're Off!

It's official! Our first camping trip in our new camper has been planned for Turkey Run State Park. We will be leaving soon and can't wait!Here is the outside. It was brought to my attention that I had not posted a picture of it!

We made some upgrades to the camper yesterday as well as packed away the kitchen and bath.


It's just amazing to us how much storage we have. We added the cleaning supplies, blankets, laundry hamper, hooks for bath towels (not pictured,) and a rail for the top bunk. We also added shelving to one of the closets next to the bed, and the plastic bins we found at Walmart to hold toiletries as well as what ever we may need to put in them.



Just had to add this one of DH with his goofy smile! Hey, at least he's smiling. He never smiles for pictures!He's so cute! Just had to show him off!

One of the big upgrades was switching out the hardware on the cabinets to pulls instead of knobs. This is the old knob. We kept getting caught on them and it was hard for the girls to open the cabinets with these.

Here is Tony installing the new ones. He found a template to help with location of the holes. Took us a total of less than 30 min to do 13 handles!

And here is the finished product. It serves two purposes. 1) easier to open and we don't get our clothes caught on them and 2)They make a great towel holder!

I'm sure our first trip is not going to be without it's "Oh I wish we would have done ____ before we left." or "Next time we need to do ___ to____ and that will make better use of ____."

Check back often and look for more pictures and stories and I leave you with these words of wisdom that I'm sure most need to abide by......

When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money. ~Susan Heller

It's Here!

We finally brought our new baby home! Now if only the weather would get warmer so we can actually take it out! Here are some short videos of the inside!


This is the rest of the video. For some reason it would only upload in sections. Disregard me yelling at the kids! ;o)! Oh and my oldest, for those who don't know her, is not camera shy!

Camping....in our driveway

Diesel is hovering around $4.20/gallon here in Indy. We've already decided to keep our vacation close to home. And we decided, we will also make our first few nights in our camper, well, really close to home.......our driveway! Sounds crazy, eh? I thought so until I read in some of the RV forums that a lot of people are doing it because of the cost of fuel. And, as in our case, our kids can't wait to try it out. We don't have it yet and the temps are still dropping to low to try, but as soon as it gets here, both the weather and the camper, a camping we will go.

Next to follow is the fire ring and the smell of smoldering marshmallows, laughter, string lights hanging from the awning, and a sign saying the Keaton's Place. Oh,and we can't forget the sweet sound of the bug zapper buzzing in our ears.

Think the neighbors would mind?

Are we there yet?

Below is a list I'm starting of all the places we want to visit. I will add to this list when new places are introduced to us. these are what I can think of now and are in no particular order! If you know of a place that we must go see, please let us know!

St. Louis

Mammoth Cave

Tennessee

Appalachian Mountains

New England

Niagara Falls

Canada

Mackinaw Island

Wisconsin Dells

Disney World

Myrtle Beach

Dinosaur Valley State Park (fossilized foot prints of dinosaurs!)

Rocky Mountains

Grand Canyon

Lake Tahoe

Vegas

Yosemite

Yellow Stone

Black Hills and Bad lands

Mt. Rushmore

Devil's Tower

Remember When Gas....

.....was $.95? Remember when you really didn't pay attention to what it was per gallon? Remember when you could pull up to a full service station, ask for $5 worth and get more than a half a tank? It's slowly becoming a cloudy memory to me and that makes me very sad.

I was driving to buy the necessities at the store (eggs, milk, Rx.) I drove by the corner gas station and broke down into tears. $3.45! It is a total Keaton curse I tell you! I wish I knew which Keaton cursed us so I can curse them, it's just not fair! Just as we get ahead and decide to do something big, i.e. purchase a camper, something else comes along and steals our thunder! Usually, it's a major appliance needing extensive repair, or even replacement, or a vehicle with a transmission issue. It's never something a few dollars can fix. Regular gas isn't really the issue at hand here, it's the diesel I'm concerned about. Diesel is what fuels the truck that pulls the camper. Diesel is why my DH bought the truck in the first place....lower than average fuel prices for diesel. Diesel is what we need to get around this awesome country and enjoy our travels. And diesel, is now at $4 a gallon! What will it be in a month? We don't plan on going far, but that's beside the point. What's going to happen next season, and the next, and so on? I don't want to let gas prices dictate our adventures, but it sure is putting a damper on how I feel about the whole thing.

I found this website called Gasbuddy.com . You can type in your location and it will tell you the gas prices in your area. Great, right? Doesn't help me if the gas prices are this high!

Someone told me a joke, oh, about 20+ years ago. It goes-------save gas......fart in a jar!

Man I wish I liked beans!

We can't wait!

I'm restless. We want to get our camper here and play with it so bad. I feel like a kid at Christmas time!

My husband is the same way. He has found a couple of forums all about the RV life. It's a whole different world. Sailors have their own language: aft, port, bow, galley, head. Turns out so do RVers! RV lingo is something I wasn't planning on. Blackwater = sewage, graywater = sink/shower runoff, boondocking = Camping in your RV without water or electrical hook-ups. Oh and don't forget the abbreviations GTWR,GVWR,RBR,VBR! It's funny though to hear hubby asking about posting comments, and signatures, avatars, and abbreviations! I guess I really didn't realize how much I spend on my forums. Maybe too much, oops!

We checked out a bunch of books from the library about RVing. Really a bunch of common sense with some very good information thrown in the mix. My dad's hobby is flying. On the rare occasion I get to fly with him. It's interesting to see him go through his pre-flight check list. It's really the same for the camper. If you don't go through all the steps, something bad could really happen. Forgetting a toothbrush is no big deal, but forgetting to lock the hitch onto the ball could equal a really bad thing!

It is going to be a total work in progress and some of the things we see on these forums are crazy and some are genius! We will see which one we become.

I'm going to go with crazy!

This should be fun!

As a reader of a blog every now and then, I have yet to take the plunge and start one. We recently purchased a travel trailer (camper) for the family to have weekend adventures and week long to month long summer vacations. Of course about a week after we figured we could financially afford it, the gas prices skyrocketed and from what I hear, are only going to go up. Of course, that's the Keaton luck at it's best! Anyway.... I really wanted to keep track of our adventures and figured this would be great way to do it. I'm not a scrapbook person so that was out of the question, but I didn't want these adventures to go unpublished. This is perfect! So here we go! I'm not much of a writer, so bear with me if you will.

It's been 2 weeks since we purchased the camper and it's still sitting in the dealer's storage. We want to get it here as soon as possible, but we have yet to sell the utility trailer that is currently in the new camper's spot. This comes to us as a shock, for we were positive it would have been sold in less than a week. We have had more calls on people wanting to trade it for 4 wheelers, lawn mowers, even a 1989 Chevy Astro van! OMG!

As soon as the utility trailer is gone we will bring our new baby home! She's small and very basic, but she will suit us just fine.

Here is the "master bedroom" if you can call it that! It's separated by a curtain, but it does have a nice queen size bed with a real mattress! Better than a cold air mattress that slowly deflates, and at 2am you have to pull out the very noisy air compressor to fill it up only to get yelled at by the neighbors and wake your children!

And the girls have their own bunk house! There is also a full bath with shower! And a nice kitchen and fridge! I can't wait! No more cooking on a folding table over a messy and hot fire or propane grill, and washing dishes in plastic bins with ice cold water! We will still roast hot dogs and have s'mores, and make the occasional mush dinner over the open camp fire, but if I need to heat up some chicken nuggets because it's raining - I have a microwave! I know some people wouldn't call that camping, and maybe it's not, but it's still not a Hilton! Better yet, it's not a tent!

The colors below are ou colors, not what you see above.

Our first outing as soon as the ground thaw,s and the nighttime temps stay above freezing is going to be Turkey Run State Park. This is by far our favorite Indiana State park. The girls love trail 6, but are now big enough to do some more rugged trails! We can't wait!

Then there is the weekend we will be spending at Kings Island the last weekend in April for Layla's birthday. We have a RV campground called Cedarbrook we stayed at last year, and really enjoyed it! Very friendly staff and a pool and playground oh, and very clean showers should the need arise and we can't use ours!

Happy Trails!