Since our last posting, we have finished most of what we needed to do before we put the house up on the market. Some things we have hired out, some things we have done ourselves. Just glad that we are nearly done, and we hope for a good, quick sale. If all goes well, we hope to be on the road again by early May regardless of the house selling or not.
This past week there has been a PGA Golf Tournament at Innisbrook, which is about 2 1/2 miles away from where we live. They drew a big crowd, and it seemed to be a successful tournament. As for us....watched a small bit of it on the TV, and watched the MetLife Blimp fly over the golf course from our sliding glass window.
Above you can see the top of the fence and the tree which the squirrels lives in, and below is a close up of the blimp.
The dogs sure love to play with the squirrels. From what I can tell, there are two which have made the tree their home. They will run down the tree, get on the fence, run over and jump onto our small utility building, then vanish into the trees beyond....sometimes running along the back fence to the utility pole. Skruffy runs all over trying to chase them, while Bubba watches over the situation and only runs after them when there is a "good shot" of catching one (in his mind....they have absolutely no chance of ever catching one!) It sure does wear them out, that is for sure....
Above I got a picture of one of the squirrels sitting on the stump of a limb. Below is a picture I captured last night around midnight of the results of Bubba and Skruffy's day. (And no, I did not pose them for this picture....just saw them laying there, both on their backs, sound asleep....)
In my last post I talked about how I cleaned the motor home's batteries. Since it was the first time I ever did it, I took a before picture, and hence, I might as well get a after picture too. The before was to show me exactly how all the cables were connected. I actually got pictures of the entire system, as shown below, but also of each individual battery and the cables connecting them. I then made a diagram which I really used to put them back together again. Basically, to tackle this type of job, as easy as it was, it is best to be prepared for getting it all back together again....
As you can see from the pictures above, the batteries were very dirty with area of the dreaded "white crap", officially known as Potassium Hydroxide, and mostly known as Alkaline Battery Corrosion. I prefer the "white crap" name, easier to say, and with my mother living 3,000 miles away, she is too far to wash my mouth out with soap for saying "Crap". (Which is the same as the Greek word "skata"....but I know I will be seeing mom in a few months, so I don't want to go there.....)
Around the group of four 6 volt batteries is metal battery holder which originally had a rubber coating on it. Some of this coating had fallen off, so I had to remove all the loose coating, clean up the white crap which was growing on the exposed metal, and then re-coat the metal. The quickest, cheapest way to re-coat was to wrap up the entire metal with a real good thick electrical tape, and for that job, it takes a Gorilla....
Below you can see the finished product. I checked each battery with a Battery Hydrometer, added distilled water to each cell, and cleaned up all the posts and the connectors and the outside of the batteries. I also cleaned up the area that the batteries sit on, and the surrounding walls and supports. It took around 5 hours, but worth every minute of it.
I am just glad that I did not wait any longer. New batteries like the ones we have run around $100 each. Good Trojan AGM Batteries run around $250 each, more if you have to have the shipped to you. I think these batteries will last another few years...of course, by the time they do need to be replaced, the price will probably be 25% more than they are now.
After much consideration, Marcia and I have decided to sell the house, and make the condo we own in Holiday our permanent residence. We hope to have the house ready for putting up for sale by mid to late March, and we figure it might take a few months to sell. Then we will be hitting the road for perhaps 16-18 months before we return to the Palm Harbor area for the winter, if we are blessed to travel that long.
We have been busy these past two months....well if you call having that darn flu being busy. We both went through the first wave in late January, and then ten days after recovery, got hit again in early February. This second wave hit us both hard, and we now just have that lingering cough that seems to be the bi-product of that particular strain of the flu. This past week we have felt much better, and have been actively getting things done around here.
In early December we had lawn put in the front and the back of the house. The lawn is very thick and we have had many good comments about it. We put it in because the dogs needed lawn, and because it will help sell the house, which even back then we felt was a possible option.
Views of the front of the house with the motor home parked in the driveway.
Both Skruffy and Bubba love the lawn, and with the local squirrels around here, are having almost as good of a time as they did in Sacramento at Uncle Arny and Aunt Sandy's house. Only thing is, there are not as many squirrels around here...perhaps because it is not uncommon to see three to six Bald Eagles circling the neighborhood on most days.
Bubba and Skruffy (above) trying to communicate with the dogs who live behind us. While below they are in search of the Squirrel.
Above Bubba is sniffing along the north side fence right under the big Squirrel Home pictured below.
While Skruffy is on my outside chair's footstool on the lookout, while below she is looking intently at Bubba....if he indicates any signs of squirrels, off she will run.
This year is a bumper crop year for Bald Eagles around here, according to local news reports backed up by Marcia who has lived around here for twenty years or so. I guess they love the "not-so-cold" weather that we have. Oh, it did drop down to around 35 the other night...but typically it is no lower than the mid-50's, and many nights in the mid-60's, with daily highs of up to around 80. I think I have worn long pants about seven times now...three of which was due to having the flu. (Tried to get a picture of an eagle today, but the overcast weather seemed to keep them away. They won't be around too much longer, as it will get to 82 degrees today...but the snow up north is something the eagles are not ready to face just yet....nor are the snowbirds who have come down south to get away from the cold northern weather.)
In a future post I will go over our up-coming travels, and when we hope to start, along with a post about cleaning out the battery compartment and cleaning up the house batteries. And for our friends in Arkansas, we will be there in early May for a week for my youngest son's graduation from the UofA, so some of you will be seeing us then.
