We did it. But first lets you get up to date on the days leading up to this moment.
I changed the date to sign our house closing papers to the 17th to having to wait around on the 21st to do it. Our daughter, Katie, and her fiancé, Tyler, arrived from Arizona on the Thursday evening to stay with us for our last few days in the house and to pick up some items they wanted. Here they are:
Our daughter Kelly also came into town for the weekend and our daughter Kim lives nearby. (Kelly on the right)
Kim
Ok, so now everyone is in town. Time to get the trailer. We brought it home and pulled it into the driveway for the weekend.
As you can see the truck barely makes it into the garage and the trailer hangs out in the street a few feet. I was going to try and back it into the driveway but I don’t think it would have been possible with the narrow street and the size of the trailer and truck together.
Now we began the process of putting our stuff into the trailer. This is by far the hardest part. I think the best way to have done this would have been to take nothing from the house and just buy what you need to fit in the trailer, clothes, housewares, everything. We continually had to reevaluate or decision to take something and many items did not make the cut. As we cleared out the house on Saturday, Fran and I slept in the trailer Saturday and Sunday nights. Now the story on the first night.
Just after buying the trailer and putting it into storage I went out one day to do some work on it. I suffered a lapse in memory and reversed the polarity on the battery when connecting it to the trailer (BLACK IS POSITIVE!). I corrected the problem and everything worked, but what I did not know at the time was that this error cause a series of fuses to blow in the convertor. Fast forward to the first night we slept in the trailer, Saturday. At 3:00am I awake to hear the heater clicking on but the fan is not coming on. I get up and turn on the lights and find them to be very dim. OK, we are plugged into power from the house, so what is going on. Now the carbon monoxide detector starts beeping its low battery alarm. Great! I am racking my brain to try and figure out what is going on and decide I will just disconnect the battery and deal with it later in the day. Well, now the heater will not work with no power and it is around 20 degrees outside. We did OK with the blankets until daybreak and then went into the house. I looked through the owners manual and learned about the fuses and, sure enough, they were blown. A quick trip to Meijer at 6am got the fuses and everything working, except when I reconnected the battery I should have unplugged the AC from the house as it shorted out and tripped the GFCI plug in the garage, which is 25 years old. It would not reset. So now a trip to Lowes for a new plug and install that. OK, issues solved, REALLY!
Saturday night we had a great dinner with the family at Tommy Nevin’s restaurant and Sunday we worked on the trailer.
Monday morning Katie and Tyler left and Fran and I cleaned the house and finished packing up the trailer. A quick trip to Goodwill and the storage unit got rid of the remaining items and we were back ready to leave at 11:15am.
Our neighbor took this picture
We stopped at a truck stop not far from our house to get the trailer weighed. As I did not know the process it was a little hectic and unhitching the trailer on the scale did not make the truckers to happy, but we got it done and weighed in at 14,620 pounds. A full 1,000 pounds under allowable (but we did not have any water or waste in the tanks), so we are good to go (Fran did not have to be left behind!).
On the road towards Memphis we stopped at Benton, IL at a KOA. The weather was somewhat warmer than what we left in Naperville (freezing rain). When unhitching the trailer we noticed that one of the landing pads for the front jacks had come off, so a repair will be in order. I got to de-winterize the trailer and figure out all the systems. Within an hour we had water (cold and hot), cable TV and dinner being prepared.
Still a little stressed over organizing our stuff. Right now things are everywhere.
sounds fun and chaotic. Praying for peace.
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