North Port Florida

Now in North Port, Florida

We are now in Del Rio Texas

We are now in Del Rio Texas

Grand Island NY - Arrival and Lesson Learned!


Thursday:  Arrival at Grand Island NY -  More lessons Learned!

We got up this morning and ready to travel to Grand Island NY.  Grand Island is 190 miles from our current campsite in Cortland NY.  We will take I81 30 miles north to Syracuse and get on the I90 toll road for 145 miles to Buffalo and then the last 15 miles on I290 North to our next campsite on Grand Island.  We have a reservation at the Cinderella Campground and motel.  It will be our first full hook-up site.

We did pretty good getting ready to leave, took us about an hour this time.  I plan to tell all of my lessons here so everyone gets a since of what this is like.  Two little things happened and we learned two lessons and, so far, without real damage to ourselves or to our rig.  First, I didn’t follow the check list item to inspect the underside of the rig before we pull away.  We were both sitting in the truck, I put the truck in drive and just then I said to myself, self, you should look under the rig.  So I put the truck in park and went to inspect the underside of the rig.  Sure enough, I had left the front landing gear down but a few inches from the ground.  I did not go back and raise them after I performed the pull test to make sure I was coupled to the rig.  If I had not stopped to check, I most probably would have seriously damaged the landing gear.  My next stop would have been a service shop for a MAJOR repair.

The next issue and lesson was at the dump station.   This was our first time at a dump station.  This station was a good one to learn from as we were the only people there, no line to get in.  I pulled the rig up to where I thought I was close enough to the sewer pipe.  I turned off the truck, got out and found that I was more than 15 feet away and downhill from the sewer pipe.  I mistakenly decided not to move the rig up a few feet where the rig would be closer and, more importantly, uphill from the sewer pipe.   "I sound so lazy as I read what I am writing here".  Anyway, I put my 2 sewer houses together to make a hose of 25 feet and attach to the rig and Patty holds the other end in to the dump station pipe.  I first dump the black water tank and after some time the fluid stops running but the hose is full as the dump station is up hill from the rig.  I now open both grey water tanks and the flow starts again.  At least the fluid is now mostly clear.  When the flow stops this time I need to get the remaining fluid out of my hose and into the dump station pipe.  So I pick up the hose sort of in the middle, (its heavy) to get fluid in to the dump station and out of part of the hose.  Seems the fluid created a suction lock and would not drain.  So picked up the hose closer to the dump station pipe and that seemed to work.  After getting some of the fluid out, I went back to the center of the hose and again raised it up.  That’s when shit hit the ground, literally!  The connection between the 2 hoses parted due to the weight of the fluid and the fact that I didn’t do a good job of securing the pipe connection.  I got my feet soaked with mostly grey water which had a stink to it I got the hoses back together correctly and finished up.  Now I needed a shower.  Luckily there was a shower house next to the dump station so I could wash up.

The 2 lessons: 1. ALWAYS inspect the rig top, sides, bottom before pulling, FOLLOW the check list!!  2. Don’t be lazy!

The drive to Grand Island was very easy.  Put the cruise control on for most of the trip and just took it easy. 
Grand Island is an Island in the middle of the Niagara River.  It is located about 20 miles south of the Niagara Falls and borders Canada on one side. 


 The tent area of the campground

Our rig 2nd from right

Patty’s parents came to visit and had dinner with us.  That makes them our first house dinner guests.  After dinner we went to a local restaurant / bar where a friend of theirs was the entertainment.  The Friend, Burnsey is an old time Jazz/Ragtime piano player and singer.  He is quite the character!  We stayed for a couple of hours and drank way too much wine.  A good time was had by all!

Patty's Parents and Burnsey

A guy playing along with a ukulele

Tomorrow is reported to be cool, 73f and rain.  We are really looking forward to some quite time.  We have been working pretty hard the past couple of weeks.  It’s also going to be nice staying in one place for 10 days too! J

Stay tuned!

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