Exciting News!

Happy Monday morning to you all my friends. We have got the most gorgeous sunshiny day and it’s supposed to be 59°F today. The temperatures are supposed to plummet to below zero later this week but I’m determined to enjoy the warmth and the sunshine today. Zoey and I will soon be going out to take a walk around the neighborhood.

Thank you so much for your prayers for my friends who are sick. To answer a few questions, Steve is doing much, much better. He’s still in the hospital and after being intubated three times(!), he will be going to a long-term care facility for rehabilitation. He is still requiring oxygen most of the time. For those of you that don’t remember, Steve is in his early 40s and has had Covid and been in the hospital for over two months!

My friend Ellen who also has Covid and is in the hospital in Spokane, had a procedure to remove numerous blood clots from her lungs. She also has Covid pneumonia. I talked to her last night and she’s hopeful that she may get to leave in 5 to 7 days. Ellen‘s brother was our former pastor in Spokane. He passed away in December, but it was from complications of diabetes and kidney failure. There seem to be a little bit of confusion on whether he had Covid or not from some questions.

But, my best friend Jenny in Spokane now has Covid. She tested last Tuesday when she first started feeling sick and it was negative. I made her retest on Saturday and it was positive. She sounds horrible and has a terrible chest cough. Please add her to your prayers.

Whew! That’s a lot isn’t it? And on the title of this blog post you’ll think, “what in the world is wrong with this girl’s brain that she says this is all exciting news?” Well, get prepared for a lot of photos because I have something to share with you. Before we even went to look at trailers on Saturday, we had narrowed it down to three finalists. We were hoping we could find one of them. We didn’t want to be traipsing in and out of trailers that other people had been in, or spend much time at the dealership because of the dreaded Covid. We have been researching and watching videos since we sold our big trailer last summer. We set that money aside and didn’t touch it because our dream was to replace it with a smaller one that we could travel in. Guess what? We did it! Saturday we signed the papers for a 2022 Alta East West. It’s 26 feet long. The only thing it doesn’t have that we wanted was a fireplace. They are so convenient to heat the trailer without using propane on chilly nights. However, it is definitely something we can live without, it was just a wish. Without further ado, here are some photos of the inside.

I love how light and bright the kitchen is. The lighter cabinets make a huge difference in the feel of the trailer. There is not a speck of carpeting in this camper which I love. No more hauling a vacuum cleaner around with us. That little drawer on the very bottom of the cabinet on the left is called a pet feeder. Inside it is an insert with a place to put your dogs food and water. I don’t think we’ll be using it for that because I could see my self kicking it every time I walked by! The refrigerator is a 12 V refrigerator. That means that it runs the entire time you’re driving down the road and you don’t have to worry about your food spoiling. They used to always just be electric or propane but you were supposed to shut the propane off as you drove and obviously you couldn’t have it plugged in while driving so if you were going very long distance your food was in danger of spoiling. It looks like the same size as normal trailer refrigerators but it’s actually 2 cubic feet bigger, because they don’t need as many mechanisms in them for the 12 V.

The square thing above the television on the roof is the air conditioner. This trailer is also ductless so there are no AC or furnace ducts in the flooring to get stuff dropped into them. They’re all integrated into the walls and ceilings. Those are those little black circles you see on the cabinets. Our big trailer was like this and I just loved it.

Here is the bedroom. These trailers come standard with king size beds but we are having them switch it to a queen size mattress. We don’t need a king size bed and a smaller mattress will give us more room to walk around, plus all of our bedding is queen size. I like the little drawers on both side of the bed to keep small things like Chapstick in. They are actually good size drawers that we may actually use for things like underwear, etc. Behind those drawers you can barely see a little cut out. There’s one on both sides you can put water, books or whatever you want back in there. It’s like a little nightstand. Apparently, they actually designed it to hold a CPAP machine.

Here Dennis had lifted the bed up to look at the storage options underneath. We had never seen this before in a trailer, but it sure is handy. There are two nice size drawers with the tray on top and the open space is perfect for a laundry basket.

The booth will sit six people and will make into a nice size bed for Piper when she goes along with us. Underneath you can see that there are drawers under each bench that are quite large. They will be great for using as a pantry. The sofa that you see makes into a queen size bed but we’re having them exchange that for theater seating which is two recliners. I need to have a recliner for my back and we don’t need to be able to sleep six people in here. We have never had roller shades in any of our trailers before but I’ve always wanted them. They come standard on this trailer. And I like the little light fixture above the booth too.

The bathroom is huge! I actually think it’s the biggest bathroom I’ve ever seen in an RV. This photo shows you the medicine cabinet and vanity. The medicine cabinet has tons of storage inside of it and there’s lots of counter space on the vanity. More than we have at home! I have no idea what I’ll put there!

The shower is nice size too and there’s more storage in those square cubbies behind it. They will be perfect for towels and toilet paper, etc.

Here’s a view of the bathroom from the main room. Both the bathroom and bedroom have sliding wooden doors.

This closet is just inside the front door. I don’t know what it is about this trailer, but it seems so much bigger than 26 feet. It has solid steps not the flimsy trailer steps and with my clumsy body they will be great!

This is the view from the front of the trailer.

Now, one of the reasons I am so excited about this trailer is although we can’t go full-time like we had planned before, we’re hoping to be able to take trips throughout the year for several weeks to a month at a time. As long as I’m here to take mom to her doctors appointments and make sure her meds are taken care of, it should be fine at least for a while. Our plan as it is now is to go to Spokane for 3 to 4 weeks in the spring. Paul and Lori want to meet us in Montana to camp. I really, really want to go back to the Black Hills this year sometime. We used to go every year when we lived in Omaha but I’ve only been there once in the last 20 years. I love the Black Hills best of all the places I’ve ever been.

My friends, I feel so blessed that we were able to find this trailer. We had no intention of buying a new trailer. We have been looking and looking and looking and looking at used trailers for the last eight months. There just is nothing small that isn’t completely beat up that we could find. However, they gave us such a good deal on this trailer and are willing to do all of the things that we asked them to do. The trailer already has solar on the roof so we can do what is called Boondocking. That is where you camp with no hook ups. No water, electricity or sewer. A lot of people do that on BLM land or national forest land. We are really looking forward to doing some of that. The solar will run our lights and refrigerator and recharge during the day with the sunshine.

Gosh! Have a bored you all enough? I never really thought when we sold our other two trailers that even though we set all of the money aside and didn’t touch it, that we would ever be able to get another trailer just because of our life circumstances right now. I kind of gave up on the dream. But Dennis is determined to make this work. It was our dream to travel full-time during retirement. And even though that won’t be possible now, he says we should be able to get out for some shorter trips. I feel so blessed. I know I said that before, but it’s true. Our God is amazing. This is the dream we’ve worked and worked for for years. I sure hope we get to do some of it and nothing comes up to surprise us.

Now for what you probably really came here for. I’ll show you what little crafting I was able to finish this weekend.

I finished another baby sweater except for the buttons. The previous one I made was 0 to 3 months and this one is 6 to 9 months. Can you see the mistake I made by the left button band? It’s about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom. I purled when I should have knitted. One row. I’m so irritated with myself. I just noticed it about an hour ago and I’m debating whether to rip the whole thing back to that point to fix it. I probably will because I’m not going to be able to stand knowing that mistake is there.

On the needles is a hat to match. I have never knitted a hat that had to be seamed when finished. I sure hope it looks OK. I’m ready to begin the crown decreases now.

I also started another pair of socks. I’m still on the cuff and haven’t decided if I want to knit a pattern or make them plain vanilla like the last ones. The yarn is fairly “busy” so I’m leaning toward the plain vanilla. What do you all think?

Whew! This was a long long post wasn’t it? I’m sorry for doing this to you on a Monday morning, but I was excited to share with you. I sure hope you don’t all think we’re spoiled and selfish. We have worked for this our entire lives. As I said, our dream has always been to travel around this beautiful country of ours when we retired. One of the main reasons is that we want to be able to travel is so I can meet some of you. Can you just imagine actually being able to see each other face-to-face and share a hug? After Covid is over of course. We were so careful that we would not have to go into debt to buy a trailer. I sure hope we are able to fulfill these dreams and do some traveling so I can meet you.

Take care of yourselves and please stay warm. I’m praying for all of you on the East Coast too just seem to be getting slammed by the winter weather this year

Blessings and love, 

Betsy