Month: January 2018

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Third Year Budget Summary- 2017

Year Three was an important year in our travels because it was the first year where we lived off revenue earned exclusively from work kamping jobs.  In my mind, this was the true test of whether or not the lifestyle was sustainable for us long term. We are going to explore the answer to that question in multiple ways in the post, and dive deep into the specifics.  Some of you fellow “data junkies” will love that, but I appreciate many other people don’t care that much.  So for all of those folks, here is the short answer:  Basically our costs went down this year and for our basic traveling budgeting we broke even. We spent $41,653 and our cash flow was $40,122 for a net difference of -$1,531.  That’s pretty encouraging, and if I was a different kind of person I would leave it at that and move on, but as Paul Harvey used to say….”And now, the rest of the story.”

Our cash flow may have been fine, but our earned income was not nearly as good.  We started the year getting paid for our 2016 Christmas Tree job but that income was actually earned in 2016. So if you remove the $5,802 we earned at Christmas trees our income was  $34,321 which was $7,332 less than we actually spent.  Not nearly as good of a story when you look at it that way, but it actually gets worse, because we spent more money than our basic budget this year.  We had three major expenditures in 2017 that resulted in our taking $15,462 from savings.  Those expenditures, by the way, were the Mor-Ryde suspension upgrade, celebrating our youngest daughter’s 21st birthday in Las Vegas, and helping another daughter with some medical expenses that resulted from a childhood accident. The first two of those expenses were accounted for prior to going on the road, but the third was not, and either way the hit to the savings account does sting.  We started the year with $40,074 in savings and ended with $24,612 and obviously we would like to find a way going forward to put some of that back.  (As a side note this savings account does not include our retirement savings.  By mutual agreement, that money is in a “lock box” and will not be used to fund the lifestyle.)

So what conclusions am I drawing from this? Actually, the whole thing makes me pretty hopeful.  Our costs continue to go down (this year we spent roughly $8K -$10K less than each of the two previous years) , we completed all of the main work kamping jobs and now know what works for us, and we are also committed to staying on the West Coast for two years, barring any family emergencies.  We started the year with a job on day one, and we already have a job lined up for the summer. All that being said, we will need for me to take some kind of consulting work to put money back in the savings account, but since I wanted to do that anyway, I am fine with that.  Lee is also OK with giving that model a try, so my plan is to hopefully find something in October that will carry us through the end of the year. And if you are still concerned, here’s the most important reason I feel hopeful.  We are facing it head on.  Right now we are more aware of and have more control over our finances than we have had in our entire lives. Individually and as a couple. And three years in we have the knowledge and choice to make good decisions.  Certainly the unforeseeable can happen, but that is true in any lifestyle.  We choose to see the glass as half full instead of half empty and are trying to figure out how to fill it up all the way.

One last thing.  I promised to report out on revenue earned by the blog and wanted to include it here.  Since both of these income streams run about 2 months behind they only cover until October of this year.  The book royalties didn’t start until March 2017, but the Amazon Associates program is for a full 12 months.  We earned $424.30 through the Amazon Associates program and $404.73 in book royalties for a total of $829.  Since we used this money to cover the cost of our website and purchase a few other blog related extras (ie: our new tent) I didn’t include it in our annual revenue. I know it isn’t a ton of money, but I wanted to thank every person who took the time to contribute in some way. The fact that I sold 172 books means a lot to me and any time someone takes the time to buy anything through our link on Amazon that little extra is a nice bonus. I had few illusions that I would get rich from writing this blog, but making enough to at least cover the website and a few extras is very validating. So thank you for the support, both financial and emotional, it really does matter to us.  OK, onto the details.  Please feel free to stop here if this sort of thing gives you a headache! (I wish we could have Kai Ryssdal say “Let’s do the numbers….” – Lee)

Revenue

Let’s break this down a little bit and show you income by month. I added the earned column to the right to take out the money we made at Christmas trees in January.  I also included the source by month and added our basic expenses at the bottom so you can see the net difference.  It’s worth noting that even though we had some trailing income in April and October we did take those months off, and although some of that time was spent traveling to our new gigs we were also able to explore a bit and see family and friends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Expenses Summary

Here is the spreadsheet that shows our costs for the year, along with a spreadsheet showing 2017 Min, Max, and Averages and a three year comparison.    I will be getting into the details by category, but wanted to start with the basic information.  As I mentioned before, we were very excited that our Year 3 costs were roughly $10K lower than our two previous years.  This is absolutely a huge deal  and and will talk about that in more detail in each subcategory. Oh, and I included a pie chart for Lee.  Long time readers will get the joke. Alright let’s dive in. (I’ll do the jokes, thank you very much. And you don’t give people pie charts, you give people pie. – Lee)

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Worst. Pie. Ever. – Lee)

Category Max/Min/Avg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three Year Comparison

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Campground Fees – One of the major benefits of work kamping is not needing to pay for a campsite.  Even when we do pay for sites, we are much better at looking for inexpensive places and we use our Passport America 50% off discount quite frequently.  I adjusted the budget down in 2017 and will probably do so again in 2018.  We are averaging $104 a month or  $3.50 a day which is pretty darn good.  Significant drop from Year 1 when we spent $5213 in campground fees. 

Groceries – I am shocked to say we actually saw significant improvement in this category, with a YOY reduction of $1383. Even though we have spent a ton of time talking about food and made a concerted effort to eliminate waste, I would have guessed it had minimal impact.  Even so, I doubt I will adjust the budget in this category until I see sustained improvement.  Still it is a nice example of how you can see improvement if you focus on something. (This is Project Manager Speak™ for “I’m going to starve Lee to death.”. – Lee)

Dining Out – In direct contradiction to groceries we ran over by $928 in this category.  If you take them together we are still a few hundred dollars to the good, but obviously we would like to be on budget in both categories. The good news is we did hit a three year low in this category, but definitely still an area to focus on.  Part of the problem is I like going out to eat. It’s a great way to experience an area, and also something we enjoy doing socially.  What I think we need to reduce are those instances where we go out to eat because we haven’t planned any other food solution.  That is harder than it may sound, especially on travel days, but definitely doable if we focus on it.  What we can’t do is dine out cheap.  Well I can, but Lee’s perspective is if we are going to do it, then we should get what we want, which obviously makes it more expensive.  My desire to go out more frequently but cheaply is in direct contradiction to this.  This isn’t a new problem, by the way, just more extreme when you are on a fixed budget.  The key is attempting to find some balance, and hopefully we will be able to do a better job of that in 2018.

Entertainment – Unlike dining out, we did great in this category together.  We had lots of fun experiences this year, but largely chose activities that were reasonably priced or free. We ended up being $630 under budget, which also helped counterbalance the overage in dining out expenses. This was also by far the lowest annual cost we have had in three years even though this category includes books, music, and games.  No small feat, especially considering how much we like to read.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cell/Internet/TV – This category is our third highest in cost and includes both of our cell phones, our internet, and TV solution. Even though we ended up $193 over budget we actually would have been under if I hadn’t dropped my iPhone 4 and needed to replace it.  The good news is a few months ago we were able to sign up for a really great unlimited plan through AT&T so no more overage charges.  We are huge fans of the plan, and it has reduced our monthly budget amount from $440 to $230 in 2018.  This should result in an annual savings of $2500 which is obviously significant. Pretty excited about what is happening in this category!

Memberships – Our memberships stayed pretty consistent although we did drop the Executive level Costco membership and stuck with the traditional one.  We tried it for a year and just didn’t use it enough to warrant the additional costs.  Along with Costco we are members of Xscapers, Passport America, Amazon Prime, and we buy an annual National Parks Pass. We feel all of those expenses are worth the cost.

Truck Fuel – This is another category we watch very closely and is number two in overall expenses.  This year we spent $5733 and went over our annual budget by $933. Although the expense was less than last year, that was expected because we didn’t have a trip to Alaska, and was definitely more than we wanted to spend.  It’s pretty easy to figure out why when you see our driving route for the year and we know we simply can’t afford to keep criss-crossing the country every year.  That’s going to be tough because our family is mostly on the east coast, but we love traveling in the west, but we have committed to not going back east (barring family emergency) for 2018 at least.  Our financials also includes leaving Cambellsville, going to Columbus, and then heading back to Texas.  Here is a rough sketch of our travel schedule for calendar 2017. Looking at it this way it’s easy to see where the costs came from. (I find it very funny that we started in New Braunfels, TX, traveled 8,000 miles, and ended up exactly one year later only 400 miles from where we started. – Lee)

 

Truck Maintenance – This was another category I was very happy with as we hit a three year low spending only $721.  Expect this category to rise next year though as we have used all of our pre-paid maintenance and will need to pay out of pocket going forward.  We still have some time on the warranty in case anything major happens, but maintenance is on us.  Lee and I will need to sit down and estimate when those maintenance activities will occur and then come up with a budget going forward.  I’ll have all the budget amounts updated in our January budget report and will talk then about how we made certain decisions.

Insurance – Thankfully our RV insurance has stayed the same but our truck insurance has gone up, resulting in an extra $246 in 2017.  I did call and talk to our agent to see if we could get a better price, but apparently rates for everyone who bases in Florida were raised this year.  With the hurricanes that will probably be worse next year, but at this point I like the company and am not crazy about switching to someone else, even if I could get a better rate.  We have used it twice and had no issues either time, which is no small thing.  The really good news is our health insurance will be going down significantly in 2018.  Despite a lot of stress and concern over whether our ACA plan would be available in 2018, not only did we get to keep the same plan, but we also receive a larger subsidy (on the same estimated revenue) which will result in a $230 per month savings!  This savings, like the cell phone/internet savings, were largely unexpected and will really help us with our expenses in 2018.  And yes, we have no idea how long this will last, but I will accept the reduction gratefully for this year and deal with what comes in 2019.

Storage – No more storage costs going forward as Lee cleaned out our storage area, got rid of a lot, and put the remaining items in his parents house.  It was only $20 a month on the budget, but the additional peace of mind from knowing our items are with family is priceless.  For the record, I don’t regret putting our items in storage at all, and given the same circumstances would do it all over again.  But it was definitely time to deal with it, and we can go forward without those items trailing along behind us. 

Clothing – Once again we did really well in a category showing a 30% YOY reduction.  Mainly the savings came from buying fewer T-Shirts! (So in addition to starving, I will also be going around more naked quite a lot more than previously expected. I will apologize in advance for any disruption this causes. – Lee) We still purchased some work clothes, and I bought some new jeans, but in past years our greatest expense was in souvenir T-shirts.  Don’t get me wrong, we still bought them, we just bought less of them!

Laundromat – We only spent $21 last year at the laundromat because Lee either did our laundry in the RV or our work kamping job provided free laundry.  The only time we couldn’t do laundry for free was when the blankets needed done.  They don’t fit in our Splendide unit. This may go up in 2018 because our gate guarding job may not provide enough water for us to use our own machine, so I probably won’t change the budget.

Cigarettes – This category got even better as we only spent $701 this year. More than any other category the difference between our new life and our old life shocks me as we were spending around $6700 a year on cigarettes when we used to live in a house.  The difference?  We roll our own now, and unlike the first two years where we had to buy tobacco locally at varying prices, we now are able to order it in bulk online.  Being able to buy the tobacco and tubes online has saved us an additional $500 a year, and made it even more inexpensive.  And yes, I know, the cheapest thing to do would be to quite all together, but since that hasn’t happened yet I can still be very happy about how this turned out. Lee gets 100% of the credit for savings in this area. (For the one or two of you who haven’t heard it, let me share with you what every doctor has said to me at every office visit I’ve had for most of my life. They all say the same thing: “You should stop smoking, you could afford to lose twenty pounds, and you should exercise more.” Which is pretty damned rude, if you ask me, and I always want to reply “I can stop smoking, lose the weight, and get in shape, but you’ll still be an ass.” I never do though. I’m too polite on the outside. – Lee)

Personal Care – Pretty happy with how this category turned out as well.  We have seen a steady decline in the last three years and it evened out to only $382 this year. We get cheap haircuts at Super Cuts or Great Clips and we usually only get them once every two months or so.  This also includes hair product and the occasional pedicure, but we have both done a nice job in keeping this expenditure low versus the first year where we spent $754.

Shipping and Postage – This category has been a struggle in the past, but Lee has made it a priority to get it under control and our costs this year were $389. That may seem high but it is a 50% reduction from the prior two years and a significant improvement.   Some of the cost cutting measures he has implemented are holding  back our mail as long as possible, using their scanning service as a cheaper alternative, and making sure on every single delivery he chooses the lowest postage option.  Again this is all him, although I have been really good about only ordering things using Amazon Prime, but really Lee gets all the credit on this one. (Invariably, after I let mail pile up at the mail service until there’s enough to fill a Priority Mail envelope, and then waited a week or so to make sure there’s nothing else coming, and then I have them send it all to me, I will get a notification that we have received new mail the day after they send the pile. It happens every time. – Lee)

Gifts – This one is all me, and not in a good way.  Well, it was good for the people I bought gifts for, but not so great on the budget. I spent $883 in this category, and it was lots of little things. This category has also been all over the place over the past three years and although I made some improvement last year, this year it went back up again.  What can I say?  I love giving gifts, and this category also includes charitable donations which do happen on occasion.  The fact is though we are tightening our belt in almost every other category and I need to get serious about this one in 2018.  The best approach is probably to still buy gifts, but buy less expensive ones.  I wish I was more crafty so I could make stuff for people. Maybe that should be my New Year’s Resolution.  Find something crafty that I can actually handle.  I’ll let you know how it works out. (So in addition to having to see me naked, you can all expect to get things made from popsicle sticks and bits of twine. And we expect to see those things prominently displayed in your mantle when we come to visit. – Lee)

Home Improvement – This was another area Lee really focused on and the results are terrific.  He spent $1,700 less in 2017 than in the prior two years and this was no small accomplishment.  It’s not like he didn’t still do stuff for the house, but he found cheaper ways to do it.  Plus, lots of that creative energy was put into his summer job and since the company paid for the materials that was all free for us.  Seriously, I am super proud of how he did in this category, especially compared to how I did in my two weakest areas (dining out and gifts). (Tweren’t nothin, ma’am.)

Miscellaneous – We had $1,200 in this category, which is about what we spent in the prior two years. This includes things that don’t easily fit into any other category and this year the deductibles for the numerous times we tried to get the furnace fixed are in here.  We also bought some camping gear and added it to this category, along with miscellaneous items throughout the 12 month period.  I’ll try to keep a better eye on this category next year, so I can give a better accounting. 

So, that’s the annual budget report.  Thanks for hanging in there if you made it to this point, and once again I wanted to thank you for your support as we figure all this out.  (For those of you did hang in there and read all of this, now you are stuck with the mental image of me naked, so that should teach you a lesson of some kind. – Lee) We have a plan for 2018, and we both think it’s a good one, but this is real life, so anything can happen.  I will say that I am really proud of both of us for getting this far.  We were spending well over $100K per year at the end of our life and mainly I had no idea where it was all going.  (Chinese food and video games. – Lee) I do know that we didn’t have a lot to show for it, and those things we did have don’t come close to the experiences we are having now.  This life isn’t perfect, but it’s a good one, and it’s working for us.  Time to dig in and focus on putting some money back into savings.  That’s what 2018 will be all about.  That and Utah.  We are very excited about exploring Utah between gate guarding and our summer job. Take care everyone, and remember, it’s all about your choices!

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First Time with Frozen Water

If you have been reading all along, you know we have had several close calls with our internal water pipes freezing.  We barely got out of Alaska in time, struggled with it at the Beet Harvest and selling Christmas trees, went a year without a working furnace and made that work in below freezing temperatures in Campbellsville, and hooked up a space heater to keep the lines from freezing when our rig was in front of our parents’ house  with negative 6 wind chills.  We thought that was behind us when we got the furnace fixed, so it is with no little irony that I report, last night we finally froze up.  I say that, but I should be clear that at this point I have no idea where or how we are frozen.

I do know that we pulled into our gate last night and were dealing with temperatures in the teens.  We also had some water in our fresh tank, because we weren’t sure if we would have water at all. There are winter advisories in our little corner of the world, and the water tank and/or hoses that they supply were frozen when we got here.  No problem, we thought, and got our electric heaters up and running including the heater in the basement.  In all fairness we had a lot going on, not the least of which was making sure Lee got some sleep.  I wasn’t sure how late I would be able to stay up (turns out I made it to 3:30am, who knew I had that in me?), so I got a little concerned around 1am when I turned on the water pump to brush my teeth and nothing happened. The basement temperature was 34, but I immediately turned on the furnace to give it a little boost. Not much I was willing or able to do at 1am, so I closely monitored the temps and let Lee sleep as long as I could.

(So here’s the scoop on the water freezing. If you already know all this, or don’t care, scroll past all the italics. To start with there are actually two separate water systems Trace is referring to. Well, actually there are four, and in some rigs, five. So I’ll explain that first. The first is the city water, which is the connection to a constant pressurized water source from OUTSIDE the rig, which is basically the same as what would be in a house. The second is the fresh water tank, which is an on-board storage tank that you fill and use when you aren’t connected to city water. The third is the black tank, which is the storage tank for water from the toilet. And the fourth is the gray water tank, which is the storage tank for water from the shower and sinks. Some rigs have two separate gray tanks, one for the kitchen, and another for the bathroom.

When the temperature gets below freezing, and stays that way for long enough, you can have several problems. The liquid in the black/gray/fresh tanks can freeze, which isn’t really that big of a deal unless they’re really full, and the liquid can’t expand, which can crack the tanks. You can also get cracks in the fittings. The valves used to open and close the gray and black tanks can also freeze. And of course, if you’re not on city water, and the fresh water freezes, you can’t get any water from that tank. But it would have to be really cold for a long time for those things to happen. It depends on the starting temperature of everything, and then how cold it gets, and for how long. Once the outside temperature hits 32 everything doesn’t just instantly freeze. It all has to cool down to 32 and then stay at 32 or below until it freezes. And every material has its own properties of how long it holds heat, and where things are located and how they’re insulated comes into play. All of this is just to say that even though we’ve been in freezing temps before, we’ve never had a “freeze up” until now, but it’s helpful to understand all of this and think about it. How much you want to learn about thermal and fluid dynamics is up to you. The problem we ran into here is that although we started at well above freezing, we arrived in the dark after 7 hours of driving in below freezing temps, and once we got here it was around 12 degrees, and stayed that way all night and well into the next day. And we were on fresh water, not city water. And the city water system here at our location was already frozen, but I will get into that later.

If you’re connected to city water, then the problem starts where the supply pipe comes out of the ground, and to the spigot, and then the hose connection, and then the hose, and then where it connects to your rig, and finally, to some degree, where the pipes in your rig are located. Some campgrounds have insulation on their supply pipes and spigots, and in rare cases, heated pipes, and you can buy or make heated hoses. We use this one, and our friend Bill made his own. Generally, the point where you connect the hose to the rig doesn’t freeze, but it’s possible. Some people say that a 100 watt light bulb in that access compartment does the trick, but I’ve never had a problem in the compartment so I don’t know. I use one of these to check temperatures to see where problem areas are, it’s very helpful. I also use remote temperature sensors to see what the temps are like in various areas. You can use a single sensor and just move it around, or you can buy sets that will monitor up to 8. Or you can get really fancy and use SensorPush units, which allow you to use an unlimited number of sensors, and they will send data to your phone, and even send you text messages if temps go above or below limits you set! I told you it was fancy. If anyone ever wants to buy me a present, 8 or 10 those would be perfect. When connected to city water, I have two methods for dealing with potential freezes. If we’re going to be somewhere more than a night or two, and it isn’t already really cold, I use the heated hose.  It’s kind of unwieldy and hard to manage, because of the stiff wiring, and even more so if the hose is cold. If I get to use it, hooray, that’s pretty much all I have to do. It has a foam insulator at the spigot end which slides over the spigot connection and helps keep that from freezing. If I think that the spigot might still freeze, I turn off the spigot, disconnect the hose and completely drain it, then reconnect it. Most times, the next morning I can turn on the spigot and everything is fine. If I’m using regular hoses, I turn off the spigot, disconnect and completely drain the hose, and then reconnect it. In the morning I turn it on. If you don’t drain the hose, you end up with either slush, or a solid plug of water that blocks flow.

If you’re NOT connected to city water, then you actually stand a better chance of not having a freeze. The water in the fresh tank has to cool down and freeze, and if you’ve ever seen a pond not frozen when it was really cold, you get the idea. The real problem is the fittings. They’re much smaller, so don’t hold as much heat for as long, and there’s a tiny amount of water in them, which also will freeze faster. So you could have liquid water in the tank and the pipes, but one fitting could slush up or freeze enough to stop it. This is where each rig design comes into play. Ours has a corrugated plastic underbelly cover, then insulation protecting the tanks. The propane furnace pushes some of its hot air into the underbelly and that should help keep things just warm enough to prevent freezing. The pictures below should help explain. Not all rigs are designed this way, however. Our rig also has a “crawl space” where the furnace, water pump, water heater, and all the water lines are. That is an enclosed space and the furnace would normally keep it more than warm enough. But with our furnace not working, I put a thermostat controlled electric space heater there while we were in Campbellsville, and Columbus, which worked just fine. It was the drive from San Antonio to middle of nowhere west Texas with no heat running and a tank of fresh water that did us in. I should also mention that although my rig, and possibly yours, are advertised as “sealed” there are lots of little holes and cracks in the underbelly where cold air can get in. And “insulation” is perhaps a strong word for what amounts to a sheet of tinfoil.

My recommendation is to stay the hell away from any place that might get colder than 50 degrees. If that’s not an option, and you want to do the most you can, then start by getting underneath your rig, and if possible, remove the underbelly cover. Wherever you can see a water line or fitting, use foam pipe insulation or whatever will work, and cover as much of everything as you can, and seal up as best as you can the holes in the floor where the lines go through into the rig. Stuff every open space you can find with insulation. After the belly cover is back on, look for any spot, no matter how small, and try to seal it up with minimally expanding foam, or sealing tape. Then get into wherever you can in the crawl spaces and look for the top side of where the lines come through the floor. Seal those up. Cover the lines and fittings wherever you can, unless this is a heated space, in which case you might want to leave them uncovered. 

Some folks use skirting outside if they’re going to be somewhere for a long time, but we’ve never done that so I don’t know how well it works, but our good friend Jim has written an excellent post about preparing for an extended stay in the cold. We referenced that in a previous post. Other people cover the inside of their rig windows with insulation and whatnot, but we don’t want to do that. We also don’t have serious condensation issues, but we know that can happen in some rigs. Google around for more information on those things. 

The last thing I wanted to mention was the specific challenge of being at a gate which provides an above ground 300 gallon tank and pump and hoses for water when it gets this cold. When we arrived here the folks that we were replacing hadn’t done anything with the system, and it was completely frozen over. The hose was 50 feet of solid ice, and the pump was also frozen. The day after we arrived and I returned from the store it had warmed up to above freezing, so I laid the hose out in the sun and removed the pump and put it inside where it would thaw. I also took off all the connections and thawed them. The water in the holding tank itself had not frozen completely, but the outlet pipe had, and it never fully thawed, so I just used a corkscrew to pull out that plug of ice. Once I had everything thawed I was able to reconnect it and we took showers and did dishes. I disconnected everything again and put it in our heated storage compartment so I could just reconnect it the next day and do the same thing. Unfortunately, there’s really no solution to this apart from making a 50′ heated hose and putting a heater inside the box where the pump lives, and this cold snap is a freak thing that’s only lasting a few days, so if we get another cold snap I’ll just do the same thing. – Lee)  

All of that shows you how lucky I am to be married to this guy.  I wouldn’t have the first clue about any of that.  I am also lucky, because of this next story.  I tried my best to stay awake the next night but ultimately had to wake  Lee up at 3:30am/  Not only did he quickly get out of bed, but he also did everything he could to get me sleeping as quickly as possible.  I told him about the water, which he took in stride, and I also let him know that we had a weird timezone issue.  At the edge of this property we can literally stand with one foot in New Mexico and the other in Texas, and the closest town is actually in Mountain Time Zone.  So as I was waiting through the night my phone kept flipping time zones on me, which confused me to no end until I figured it out.  I wasn’t prepared to lose another hour to a time zone change, especially on no sleep, so I stayed on Central Time and asked Lee to find out in the morning what time zone the site worked from. Barely awake, and no coffee in him, he handled all of this with grace and I fell sleep pretty quickly and slept until 9:30am.

At that point I was awake, and although Lee wanted me to go back to sleep, I knew we had too much to do today.  We put together a plan of action based on priority, and once I was fully awake we both dug in.  This site is pretty unlevel, so the first thing was putting down some rubber pads we have and Lee driving up on them to give us a little more height on one side.  He needed my help with this little bit but afterwards it was all him.  And can I just say again how amazing that was?  The sun was shining, but it was still 23 degrees and he not only checked in vehicles but unhitched, leveled, got a few things from the basement, emptied out the truck, disconnected the propane tanks so he could fill them,  and eventually headed out to Odessa to go to the grocery store, hardware store, and to buy propane.  I focused on the inside, which was nice and warm, and checked the few vehicles in and out.

It turns out it was a real blessing that it was a holiday, because the Fracke sand trucks are off until Tuesday.  Those will be running in groups every 15 minutes between 7am and 5pm and it will be very hard at that point to get much done in the daytime.  As far as the frozen water goes, which is the point of this post, we mutually agreed to develop a “wait and see” attitude.  Food and propane come first, mainly because there isn’t much that can be done about it at this point, other than keeping the temps as high as we can.  I will say though that I am a bit frustrated.  We intentionally bought a “4 season rig” in which the tanks were somewhat sealed and heated by the furnace.  As Lee explained in great detail above, four season doesn’t come close to guaranteeing never freezing.  That would have been fine with me if the salesperson would have just been honest about it.  The sticker on the reason has a picture of a snowflake on it for heavens sakes.  Ahh well..lesson learned.

Once I was up and awake, Lee drove to Odessa, which is about an hour away, and went to both Walmart and HEB.  There is a tiny grocery store very close by for essentials, but a stocking up was definitely called for, since we had intentionally let our supplies run low as we wrapped up at Amazon. We don’t typically do a lot of cooking while we travel, and we spent a week in Columbus, and didn’t want a bunch of fresh food to go bad just from sitting for 10 days in the fridge. I watched the gate and things were pretty slow.  As the sun came out things started to warm up a bit.  Our rig was covered with a thin layer of ice from all the mist and fog we encountered while we drove here from San Antonio  which mostly melted, and it wasn’t absolutely awful when I had to step outside.  When he got home from the store, Lee decided to take a crack at getting us some water before the sun went down and the temps plummeted again. He took apart all of the connections from the water trailer, and after some effort was able to clear the ice and get some water flowing.  We both took quick, but very hot showers and then he disassembled it all again, because the temps were going down into the low teens.  Definitely not the best situation, but we can make it work in the short-term and hopefully no serious damage has been done to out water system.

The night went pretty well.  The generator powered flood lights are really strong so the area is well-lit, and there is enough road traffic that I felt pretty safe.  I can also see the lights from a nearby small town, which gives the illusion at least of not being isolated.  One of the first things I did here was write down the closest cross street and the numbers for the local sheriff and police department.  It’s pretty complicated because we are right on the border, but I would hope in a true emergency folks wouldn’t pay much attention to an imaginary line.

Around 3:30am I was pretty tired, so I woke Lee up and went straight to bed.  His morning went pretty well and he got to see our resident coyote.  (I have named him Cisco. – Lee) Around 4am it was sniffing at the vole colony across from us and stared at him for quite a while.  Then it wandered off but came back a few times between 4am and 6:30am.  So the guy before us was probably feeding the coyote which was pretty idiotic.  They generally are pretty shy around humans, but feeding them (as with any wild animal) is not a good thing and lessens their fear of people.  Lee did some research though and hazing them does work (ie: yelling and throwing things at them) but for the time being we will watch the situation and see how it plays out.  If there is no food it will hopefully move along to another area, although the vole buffet might work against us there.  Although they are nocturnal I did get a nice look at it the next day.  I was able to take some pictures and it’s a big one, about as large as a German Shepherd.

Amazing how they blend into the landscape


Lee named it Cisco

The rest of the morning for Lee was pretty busy with a fleet of about 5 sand trucks coming and going all day. They come in, are here about 15 minutes, leave, and are back in about 15 minutes. there were also some vehicles with folks coming and going to the frack site. Many of them left though, because the pumps were frozen, so the really heavy traffic didn’t come today.  I woke up around 11am (amazing how quickly I flipped my schedule to nights) and around 3pm Lee hooked up the water.  We took showers and did dishes and then filled up jugs for the toilet and coffee and then he disassembled everything again.  So tonight we should be able to get on our regular schedule.  Lee is 4am -4pm and I am 4pm – 4am.  This is different from most folks who do 6-6 shifts, but we both like falling asleep in the dark, and the earlier start time gives him a couple of slow hours to wake up before the “heavy” traffic starts at 6am.  These rigs generally run some staff 24/7, but the bulk of the traffic does come between 7am and 6pm.  That’s one of the reasons I really like working nights.  The more down time the better, and for me at least it is worth the additional cold to get fewer interruptions.

 

 

Our site. (Just off camera where you can see the black edge of a low box is a 500 gallon diesel tank. We’re more than 5 hours from the “office” so it helps to have fuel on site. Then from right to left is the 300 gallon fuel tank, the 500 gallon fresh water tank, our house generator, and then there’s another trailer behind that with a massive green septic tank. It has another smaller white tank in front of it that says “Treated Water” with a garden hose that snakes off into the bushes. I’m guessing there’s some kind of system that “cleans” the black water, I’m going to ask and see what I can find out. Behind that large green tank is a much smaller tank with a pump that’s used to transfer black water to the large tank. And the hose you see coming towards the camera is the air line for the bell. We like it much better than the motion sensors we had at our last gate, but I need to make some modifications to it in order for it to be perfect for me. – Lee)

I like how we have some brush surrounding us. Makes for a little bit of a wind break. You can see the air line for our bell going off to the left. There’s one for people coming in and going out, and they cross the road far enough away from us that it gives us time to get to the door so they aren’t waiting.

 

The gate which thankfully we get to leave open!

 

The light tower. (We like this light tower better than the one we had last time. It has it’s own generator and fuel tank, which is pretty small, but we like having it on the “curb” side of the rig because the rig does’t cast a shadow on the road. It also puts zero light into the bedroom, which is awesome for sleeping.

 

This road leads to the oil area. It is 4 miles away so no smell!

 

What we can see is this sand pit.

 

Trucks are taking out caliche,  which is used to build roads.

I’m going to go ahead and stop here, but I did want to mention the sunsets are absolutely gorgeous. (As are the sunrises, which she never gets to see because she’s sleeping. – Lee)   I’ll be providing updates as things happen, and we will see how much we have to say.  From our perspective the best thing would be a nice boring stint. I know it doesn’t make for interesting blog posts, but my life could use some boring right now.  Plus I really want to dig into the first draft of the book I wrote last year and hopefully I can get it to a place where I can epublish.  It tells the story of how we got started and since I didn’t share much detail in my early blogging days, there are lots of stories that have never been told in this blog. Some of them have made wonderful campfire stories 🙂


(And for you early birds, here’s what I get to see, pretty much every morning. – Lee)

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December 2017 Budget (With Revenue)

December turned out pretty well. We netted $1500 for the month, and that was after our travel costs to get to our new job.  This post is only about the month of December but I will be working on the annual budget and that will be out in a few days, so buy some popcorn now and avoid the long lines.  Details for this month are below.

 

Groceries and Dining Out  – This month was really low coming in $240 under budget.  The reason for this was spending time at our in-laws and then traveling to Texas.  Since we had next to no food when we left Kentucky, we bought fast food as we traveled.  If you lump all the categories together we were $64 to the good, which worked out nicely.

Entertainment – We went over by $59 dollars because we bought books prior to heading to our gate.  We also went to the Jim Beam Distillery and although the tickets were very reasonably priced, the souvenirs we bought, not so much.

Cell and Internet – After some difficulty we were finally able to get a correction on our bill and will receive a credit in January for the amount they have been charging us for my new cell phone.  If you remember I paid cash for the phone, but they have been billing me for it each month anyway.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to reflect the credit in this calendar year, but since it was only around $160 I didn’t think it mattered much in the grand scheme of things.

Truck Fuel – As you can see we spent over $800 traveling from Kentucky to Columbus and then across Texas. Will be interesting to see how this category turns out when we look at the entire year.

Gifts – We bought Christmas presents for the girls, and presents for my niece and nephew.  I honestly don’t know what to do with this category next year.  I’ll have to look at the whole year and Lee and I will talk about it.

Miscellaneous – Although the warranty company paid some of the bill to fix the furnace, we ended up paying $178.76.  I’m so happy that it is working now that it doesn’t really bother me, but it was not an expected expense.

I know this is a short one, but I wanted to wait until the annual post to get into more details.  I was happy though that we did manage to cover our travel costs both to and from Kentucky although it didn’t cover all of our living costs for October. Still, with the bonus at the end, it was better than I originally thought it would be.

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We very much appreciate any purchase you make via our website links.  There is no additional cost to you and helps support our blog.  Search Amazon.com here

Or you can check out our recipe book filled with 80 real recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. The cookbook specializes in recipes that have a limited number of ingredients, without sacrificing flavor and is organized into categories that matter to full time RVers such as Happy Hours, Travel Days, and Pot Lucks   You can preview the kindle version on  Amazon or the Apple version on Itunes.    It is available in paperback on Amazon if you prefer.

 

 

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Second Time Gate Guarding

After leaving Columbus and getting our furnace fixed (which is working great…hooray!) we made a beeline for Texas.  A couple of reasons for that.  First, we made less money than we thought we would at Amazon, and we needed to get some funds in the bank as quick as possible, but we also felt like the sooner we got there the better our chance of getting a gate. Lee has been monitoring the gate guarding Facebook group we are a part of and was seeing some opportunities in West Texas.  Unfortunately, you need to physically be in Texas to qualify for one of those since the need is almost always immediate, so we knew the sooner we got there the better.

The big question was where would we stay while we were waiting. We have friends who are spread throughout Texas, but most had plans for the holidays and we also didn’t want to go to a place just to turn around and leave.  And Texas is a pretty big state, so when we hit Texarkana Thursday night I asked Lee to call one of the Gate guarding companies and nail things down a little bit.  I liked the company we worked for last year, but they are only offering $125 and Lee wanted to maximize how much we made so he reached out to another company that was offering $175.  We knew about them from people on the group and since most folks were positive about their experience we decided to give them a try.  This decision was further reinforced by the fact that they have a “yard” with full hookups so we could park there and wait until a gate became available, so we headed south of San Antonio.

We knew it would be a long driving day, and since we were essentially going in a diagonal we had a couple of choices.  Take Texas State highways through a variety of small towns, or take the interstate and skirt Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio.   Neither choice was great for a long driving day, but ultimately we decided to go the interstate and thankfully we timed it so we missed quite a bit of traffic.  We also spent a bunch of time on a toll turnpike that bypassed Austin, which which was good, since we hit that area right around 5pm on Friday. It’s definitely not the way we like to travel and we really don’t like arriving at our destination in the dark, but in this case we just wanted to get there.  We switched drivers at every stop, which is one of the advantages of only having one vehicle, and rolled into the yard at 8pm.

Unfortunately it wasn’t that easy to find the entrance gate, and then Lee couldn’t get the lock to open with the combination we were given, but thankfully another guard rolled up and showed him how to open it. Since there are only three rigs back here, that was pretty amazing, and we thankfully backed into the spot and sort of collapsed. The only exciting thing that happened the rest of the night was Lee got up from his chair at one point and almost stepped on a mouse.  Lee said that right before that he saw some quick movement near a tire out of the corner of his eye while he was outside smoking, so he’s pretty sure it just came in to check us out after we got here, and hopefully it has left since the trap he set was empty this morning, and we haven’t seen or heard the little guy since. It’s 52 degrees here at 7am, which is like a heat wave compared to up north, so hopefully he will go back into the field he came from. (There’s also a cat that lives on the property, so we’re not too worried. Lots of people we know have had mouse issues over the years, and we’ve been very lucky with only two in all the time we’ve been on the road, and both of those were only in residence for a short time. I find that a little peanut butter on these works really well. – Lee) 

Parked in the yard

Lots and lots of extra tanks sitting around. These trailers are what they park on the remote site for water, electric, and sometimes sewer. The orange-ish tanks are diesel fuel, the short blank tanks are water, and the large green tanks are sewer. The tiny white tanks are treated water, part of the sewer tank system.

Thankfully we didn’t see the mouse again…Lee scared him I’ll bet, and we did have a full day to get some errands done.  We were initially told someone would be onsite to do our paperwork, but when no one showed by 2pm we called and learned they wouldn’t be coming until Monday.  That was fine, since Lee still had time to go to Costco and along the way he stopped at a couple Half Price Books Stores. We knew we would have lots of time on our hands and books are a great way to fill that time, so we had stopped and picked up some books in Columbus.  I was missing a few to complete a couple of series and luckily Lee found exactly what I needed.  I was pretty excited about that, and even more excited when we picked up all of the network affiliates with our antenna, because finally I was going to get to watch a game the following day.  I haven’t watched a football game all year because we couldn’t get TV in either Oregon or Campbellsville, and was pretty excited about just chilling on Sunday and organizing the RV.

That was not meant to be, because at 9am we received a call from the Gate Guarding company.  They had a placement they needed to fill immediatetly because of a last minute cancellation and wanted to know if we could head to West Texas.  She was very clear that we didn’t have to accept the position and felt pretty bad about making us drive so far, but we figured we would end up in West Texas anyway and the $175 daily rate was what we wanted. Last year we only made $125 a day for South Texas, and that extra $1500 a month is significant.  So we packed up quickly and were on the road within the hour and headed towards Odessa, TX.

Because it was Sunday and New Year’s Eve the roads were pretty empty, but Texas is a big state and things just take time.  We knew we wouldn’t get there until after dark, and talked about stopping somewhere close, but after talking to the company rep and the folks we were replacing we decided to head directly to the site.  We were a bit surprised that they were going to pull right out, but it made more sense when we got there.  The pad is small, as in we weren’t sure we would fit small, and no way could we both be there.  Plus it got colder and colder the farther north we went and by the time we got to the site it was 17 degrees, snowing slightly, and the wind was really bitter.  They helped us back up and get hooked up to electric (water was frozen, but we learned from last time and came with a full tank of fresh water) and gave us a brief overview of the gig.  Each gate is totally different, and this one seems much busier than the one we were on last year, so this should be interesting.

Unfortunately I wasn’t dressed for the cold at all.  I was shivering as we talked it through and finally ran inside the rig to get some ear muffs, which helped a little. Needless to say we got set up as quickly as possible and then said our goodbye’s and they headed down the road.  So here we were in the freezing cold, barely sure what we were doing, but hey we were in it together!  I was feeling like things would work out OK, when Lee casually mentioned that I shouldn’t be afraid if a coyote came to the door.  What?!!???!??  Apparently the guy we took over for has been feeding the coyotes at night and according to him he was feeding them out of his hand.  Since I work nights, that means they might be looking for the same treatment from me but that is absolutely not going to happen.  At first I thought he was kidding Lee, but Lee said nope he was dead serious, and I think the coyote story kind of put me over the edge a little bit.  Eventually I calmed down a bit but I’ll be honest it was touch and go for a minute.

This won’t be the worst thing we have done in the last three years.  It is going to be cold for the next couple of days, but we held onto our beet harvest clothes, and more importantly it is supposed to warm up significantly later in the week. so if we can just get through the next couple of days, we should be fine. Did I mention I didn’t have a chance to adjust my sleep schedule so I’ll be pulling an “all nighter”? Well there are worse things.  The woman I am replacing is 72 years old and she was standing out in the cold getting on with it so I definitely can as well.  And along those lines there are a couple of good things I wanted to mention.  First Lee found a warm spot by the generator.  The side of the generator cabinet has an grill where the air filter is, and nice hot air comes out of it. If you look closely at the picture below, you can see Lee’s hat next to the driver’s door of the truck, he’s standing right in front of that “heater”. It’s also less windy there, so that’s nice. Also the lighting is very good, which I appreciate, and best of all doesn’t completely light up the back of the rig where we sleep.  Lastly, we have an old fashioned hose and bell chime which is what used to be used at gas stations back in the old days when someone would come out and pump the gas. What’s great about it is that’s operated by air pressure in the hose, so no worries about “falsing” due to cats, birds, hungry coyotes, wind etc.  That was a huge problem for me at night on the last gig and I was really happy they provided us this kind.

Settled in for the night at least. Need to unhitch and level but that can definitely wait until tomorrow.

 

Our lights are across from us so one side of the rig is dark which is nice.

 

Old fashioned bell

 

And this is the hose that stretches away in both directions so we can hear if anyone is coming in or out. Working great so far!

 

Lee taking advantage of the heat.  You can tell by the smile he is happy about that.

So it isn’t all bad, and I am sure we will get acclimated quickly.  The good thing about doing this for the second time is we have a much better idea of what we are doing.  Stay tuned for future updates and Happy New Year to all of our readers.  If I don’t say it enough, we really appreciate your following along and all of the support!  We have a strong cell signal here at the gate, so as long as you keep reading, we will keep the posts coming.

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We very much appreciate any purchase you make via our website links.  There is no additional cost to you and helps support our blog.  Search Amazon.com here

Or you can check out our recipe book filled with 80 real recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. The cookbook specializes in recipes that have a limited number of ingredients, without sacrificing flavor and is organized into categories that matter to full time RVers such as Happy Hours, Travel Days, and Pot Lucks   You can preview the kindle version on  Amazon or the Apple version on Itunes.    It is available in paperback on Amazon if you prefer.