With the temperatures in the high 90's and very high, monsoonal humidity, cleanup could have been more pleasant but we got it done. Baby is now back in her storage slip.
It's always interesting returning home after a 4 month absence. Things fail that never fail otherwise. This time, we came home to phones that no longer worked and smoke alarms that were beeping like crazy. I bought new phones and replaced all of the smoke detector batteries only to find that, this morning, the Keurig coffee maker no longer worked. It must have just needed to be exposed to water for a while. By the time that I made a run to Home Depot for a new power washer hose (not trip related - it was leaking before we left), it was working fine (at least we didn't have to replace that).
The pump for the waterfall on the back hill freezes up whenever it sits too long (I'll be digging it up and opening it up to free up the rotor). The front fountain was also frozen (some sort of slug had taken up residence in the line - I used my air compressor to blow it out like a cork).
The ice in the ice maker is always kind of interesting. You wouldn't think that ice could dry out but I'd swear that that's what happens. The result is a solid matrix of scrawny ice cubes. The whole mess must be broken out and the bin must be soaked in hot water before new ice can be generated.
And then there's the ants. Last year was much worse. This year, I sprayed before we left but we're still battling ants. It looks like they're recent arrivals (they haven't moved in like last year).
We have very healthy weeds. We'll be working on those for a while. One piece of good news. Despite our best efforts, our lawn has always had huge brown spots by this time of year. While we were away, we allowed our gardener to replace our sprinkler heads and change the settings on the sprinkler timer. Our lawn looks wonderful (which is a little bit embarrassing in the middle of one of California's biggest droughts).
We experienced the same sorts of things last year. The water heater decided that that was a good time to start leaking gas. Major pieces of our almost new GE microwave decided to start falling off.
Last summer, we forwarded our mail to Briar's for the first half of our trip and then to Grant's for the second half. The first part went great but the 6 weeks of mail that should have gone to Grant's must have fallen into a black hole - we never did see it.
This time, we did a temporary change of address to Briar's house. The USPS told us to submit a cancellation form 2 weeks before returning home (the form takes 10 days to process). We submitted the form 3 week ago and returned home to find no mail in our mailbox. I was down at the PO today. They now say that the form takes 15 work days to process. The good news is that we got mail today.
That's it for this year.
Final stats:
- 114 nights on the road
- 44 stops
- 11,214.6 miles covered (6,928.6 towing the trailer)
- 9 states visited (3 that we missed last year)
-JC-
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