Author: Lee and Tracy

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Fresh Water Tank Siphoning

Another guest post by Lee!

 

One of the odd little problems we have experienced with our rig is that when we fill the fresh water tank, water pours out of the overflow pex lines that stick out of the underbelly when it is full. Then when we turn off the fill water, the fresh water continues to flow from those pex lines and will continue until it stops, or until the fresh water tank is empty. Keep in mind this is not related to a full tank splashing water out while driving, it’s ONLY when filling the tank. Neat feature, huh? I poked around on the internet, and after getting distracted for hours by other unrelated but equally cool stuff, I have determined that it’s one of several problems. So let’s take a look at a typical fresh water tank so we know what we’re talking about! Here’s a picture.

As you can see, there is an inlet for filling with water, an outlet to the pump, a low point drain, and a vent. The vent allows air into the system when in use, otherwise a vacuum would exist, and the tank would collapse. When you fill the tank, and water reaches the vent level, it runs out the pex line at the vent.  Because the line opening is below the water level, it creates a siphoning effect which will continue until something breaks that effect, or prevents water from flowing out. This seems to be a common problem and there are lots of forum discussions about this issue, with various recommended solutions.  We first experienced it back in Quartzsite in 2015 and I installed a couple of push-on type quarter turn valves, similar to what you would see behind a toilet in a stick and bricks home. That allowed me to manually stop the water flow until the water level was low enough to break the siphon effect and I could reopen the valves.

UPDATE: A couple of folks have indicated they’d like a better explanation on how this phenomenon happens, so I am going to try it from a different angle. To begin with, in my attempt to locate a decent picture of a fresh water tank with labels for the various inlets and outlets, I chose one that doesn’t look like most fresh water tanks, and also doesn’t show the fact that the overflow line isn’t just attached to the tank, but actually goes inside the tank, and are often improperly installed or poorly designed so that they extend below the level of the fitting, sometimes by several inches. So there’s a more accurate representation of the tank itself, below this paragraph. In this picture, the 100 gallon tank is 81″ x 26″, and only 11″ tall. This is a crucial factor, because the vent hose goes in on the side, so it’s already BELOW the top of the water level if the tank is completely full. That’s how the siphoning gets started. Then, if the hose is improperly installed or poorly designed, and extends 3″ down, it’s maybe 4″ below the water line, which will allow 1/3 of the capacity to be siphoned out. Add to that the vacuum effect, because it’s a closed system, and it can pull down the center of the tank, which helps keep the siphoning going. Hopefully that makes more sense. The problem with my fix was that the valves were designed to sit in a house, behind a toilet, not bounce down the road, so the little handles fell off immediately. I bought another valve just for the handle, and kept it in my convenience compartment and just pushed it on when I needed to open or close the valves, and then took it off again and stored it. The problem with that fix was I could never remember if they were opened or closed, so I took to sticking a pen in the valve, and if it didn’t go far, I knew the valve was closed. If it slid in more than an inch, the valve was open. I’ve been doing this for over three years now. It’s funny what kind of weird things you get used to, even if they make no sense. Part of that is that we don’t boondock much, so we rarely use water from that tank.

When we got our Mor-Ryde suspension back in November my solution no longer worked. The pex lines come out of the underbelly, between the two axles, and I used to be able to just get down on one knee and reach under to them.  They were just behind the forward tire.

 

Now with the Mor-Ryde, the only way to get to them is to actually crawl underneath the rig on my back or side and reach up and around the new suspension components. Not ideal. Here’s a look at the view from underneath, and as you can see, the new suspension completely blocks the valves, which are the white plastic pieces attached to the red pex lines. The large mass of black steel to the right is where I used to be able to reach through.

And here’s a closer shot so you can see what I was using. The handles were not on, and I didn’t feel like crawling out to get them just for the picture. If he was really committed to this post he would have done that…just kidding hehehe – Trace

So, what I decided to do was extend the pex lines back to where the convenience center is, behind both sets of tires, and over to the driver’s side of the rig, so I could just reach down and open and close them easily. First I cut off the valves…

 

Then I added elbows and 5′ pex lines.

 

Where the pex lines crossed anything that could rub at them while in motion, I used a scrap of thin rubber to protect them, and zipped them together so they wouldn’t rub against each other or flap around in the wind.

 

Unfortunately, they didn’t reach to exactly where I wanted, but I didn’t want to buy 10′ of pex to use 7′, so I decided to live with the almost perfect location,  near the convenience center. I cut them back a little so I didn’t have to deal with the bracket for the rear jack, and offset them so I could easily reach the one on the inside.

Then it was just a matter of pushing on the new valves….

And wrapping and anchoring them.

Now they’re easy to reach, and I can open and close them with one hand.  I can also see from the position of the valve handle if they are open or closed. The whole process took about an hour, and cost around $36.00 with the parts I was able to buy at Home Depot.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I should have pointed out that this is NOT the best solution to this problem. It started out as a quick fix, and now I have just relocated my fix so I don’t have to crawl under the rig. If the valves are CLOSED and I fill up without opening them to allow the water to overflow, then I can rupture a fitting somewhere in the system, or my tank. If I forget to open the valves while using the pump, I can collapse my tank. The BEST solution is to have the vent higher than the top of the tank. However, if the siphoning gets started, that won’t solve the problem either, because of the vacuum. Some people have solved this problem by having the vent outlet higher than the tank, but of course then you have water spilling over inside the underbelly, which is not something I want. I’m also partly responsible for this, because I am using the fact that water starts flowing out as my “full” indicator. Otherwise I would have to keep running inside to check the water level indicator on the panel, and I don’t want to do that. For one thing, my panel only tells me water level in thirds, so “FULL” isn’t necessarily “FULL”. Also, I’d have to drop the stairs down and open the door, plus there’s all that running back and forth, which sounds dangerously close to exercise. In the past I have used my inline water meter to see how many gallons I have put in, but that only helps if I know I am starting with a completely empty tank, which I’m usually not. I think the real solution is a See Level system, with a remote display at the convenience center. Because it gives an extremely accurate reading, I can see what percentage the over flow begins, and the next time stop a few percent below that. And I also don’t mind remembering to open the valves, because to me the whole point is to be able to cram as much water as possible into the tank. 

 

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Phases of Full Timing

I don’t want to speak for anyone else here, but when I look back on the last three years of full timing, there have been distinct phases to this lifestyle for us.  We may be different from many people in that respect who have a hard line between their old life and their new life and just jump right in, but for me it definitely has been an evolutionary journey.  And since I like to look forward to a new year with a goal in mind, I thought I would take a moment and try to recap the journey so far.  I have written extensively about this in various posts throughout the year, but it never hurts to summarize things a bit, plus I have all kinds of free time right now since I am working sitting around doing nothing all night gate guarding.

It is worth noting that I believe Lee has undergone a progression as well, but because our circumstances and personalities are different it is not the same as mine.  I hope he decides to jump in here and share a little  (I may actually learn something) but he gets to decide how much he wants to share.  So this is my distinct journey and before I start I do think it’s worth saying that I seem to be a little unusual in this respect.  Most of the people we meet have been older and closer to retirement and they seem a bit perplexed by why I don’t just settle in.  My common response is I am only 50 (well actually 51 now but you know what I mean) and I have at least 15 years left before full retirement. So to me it’s very much a journey of personal growth and for me the only way to achieve that is through some reflection.

Year 1

Looking back, the first year was all about Overcoming Fear.  I was so out of my comfort zone that issues that seem relatively small now caused a significant emotional impact.  More than anything else Lee and I learning how to live together in a small space was challenging.  Add to that moving frequently, the basic mechanics of camping (we were relatively inexperienced),  staying with friends for weeks at a time, and figuring out how to maintain my professional career as we traveled, and it was a lot.  Consequently the first 6 months were a whirlwind of new experiences and at times I felt assaulted by all the new. Don’t get me wrong, there were some amazing moments in there, but it definitely took me that long to “settle in” and thank heavens I wrote this blog, because when I look back on that time it is all a bit of a blur.

I characterized that first year as having more personal change than I had ever experienced in my life, except for when I became a first time parent, and I still think that is absolutely true.  Some people thrive on change and enjoy the rush, but that’s rarely been me, and instead I often felt like I was flailing wildly in the deep end of the pool.  Finally things did settle down and I really started to feel the constraints of working a full time job within the lifestyle.  Lee left his job before we went on the road and since he settled into the lifestyle so quickly I thought the job might be the reason I was struggling so much.  As my friend Linda put it, I had a foot in both worlds, and  I found myself having a hard time emotionally committing myself to the life. To be 100% clear I know several people who have kept their jobs and acclimated just fine to the full-time lifestyle but for me it was a crutch, and was actually holding me back.

This became very clear when we spent some time in Glacier National Park with friends and I took 10 full days off, away from the stress and requirements of my job.  For the first time in years I was completely disconnected from my old life and the combination of good friends and gorgeous surroundings finally flipped a switch in me.  And to prove God has a plan, the day we left that park I received an email with an offer for a professional buyout.  There was no pressure behind the offer, I simply had enough years of service to receive it, but to me it seemed like a sign.  So after some thought I took the offer and within 6 weeks I was unemployed for the first time in my adult life.

It’s worth saying here that for anyone that is a ton of change in one year.   Let’s recap: Youngest daughter left the home (empty nest), sold our home, moved into an RV, and quit my job.  In all fairness most people (like Lee) experience all of that change all at one time, but I spread it out over that first year.  It might have been easier to do it all at once, I can’t really say, but I personally wouldn’t change anything because although it may have lengthened the transition time for me, it also allowed me to some extent to deal with each change as a separate thing, which I think was good for me in the long run.

Year 2

The second year was all about dealing with no longer being a professional, and Alaska.  The first was a very difficult transition for me.  My identity was very much wrapped up in what I did for a living and I truly mourned that loss.  Unlike people who go through this change in retirement, I knew I had many working years left so I needed to figure out what that looked like for me.  Alaska though was a great distraction.  Our trip to Alaska wasn’t just checking a box on a bucket list, it became a symbol of the new freedom we were experiencing in our life.  I never could have spent an entire summer there working my old job, and the experience of living there for several months really gave us an idea of what our future life could be.

None of this was a surprise for Lee, he had a clear vision of what he wanted his life to be like, but I truly lacked the imagination to understand the possibilities.  The sheer size and beauty of Alaska was beyond anything I had ever experienced, but the summer also included the realities of making money in a “low level” position.  Again, except for parenting, I don’t think I have ever experienced so many extreme highs and lows in such a short time period, but on balance we felt very lucky to be able to have the experience.

One thing I firmly realized that summer was our life was not going to be like many other full timers that we knew.  The phrase “that is not our reality” became a common one for me, as we watched (with some envy) many people who didn’t have to work spend the summer exploring. I think at that point Lee was still hanging on to the idea that we could “work a little, play a little” to maintain the lifestyle, but I knew from the numbers that it was more likely we would “work a bunch, play not so much”.  We had some conflict about that concept in Year 2, which was heightened by taking on two difficult jobs at the end of the year when we worked the sugar beet harvest and Christmas trees.  By the end of the year I was rethinking everything, but Lee was dug in on the idea that our financial situation was due to the special circumstances of Alaska, and things would level out and look more like other people we knew.

Year 3

Thankfully year three started out with gate guarding, which was a much better fit for both of us, and I made a mental commitment to try one year working Lee’s way. My only caveat was that I wanted to make sure we tried all the different major types of work, so I scheduled us for Amazon at the end of the year well in advance.  I gave quite a bit of thought to finding a consulting job, and even spent a significant amount of time looking for a position, but the timing never quite worked out and we ended up spending the entire year supporting ourselves solely with work kamping revenue.  Overall I felt that was a very good thing, and proved to me once and for all that the lifestyle was actually financially viable.  We both agreed that we didn’t have the money to deficit spend year after year, and year three was all about seeing what it actually looked like to earn as we went.

Ironically, I am pretty contrary that way, once I decided to just “go with it” in year three, things became much easier for me.  I largely stopped twisting myself in knots, well at least as much as I am capable of, and just went with it.  I was more surprised than anyone when it turned out we largely broke even.  Yes, we chose to spend money on some extra things, but as far as day to day living, we did pretty well.  Lee, on the other hand, I believe had a larger transition.  He realized that his work a little play a little life probably wasn’t going to happen and instead focused on finding ways to earn money that were the most palatable.

It also became crystal clear that we were very different when it comes to what matters in living this life.  Lee is one of those people that flipped the mental switch when he left his career, and as long as our bosses don’t micromanage him, he is generally fine with pretty much any kind of work.  I, on the other hand, really solidified the fact that I need a work purpose.  I discovered I don’t need to make a ton of money, but I do want to feel like the work I do has some sort of meaning.  Working for two large companies in year three, albeit in the lowest level positions, had a big impact on me, and helped me come to terms with what I wanted long term, and really start to explore how to make that happen.

More than any year prior it was about revenue and budgets, but what was interesting was even though we made less than we have made since we were “kids”, we actually felt more successful. And I finally felt comfortable.  By the end of the year I was owning who I was, and what I wanted, in a way that had been missing since we went on the road.   Since I didn’t have a clear vision of what this life looked like when I started, I fell victim to taking other people’s experiences and superimposing them on my own life.  Not surprisingly my life often fell short using that criteria, and it took until year three for me to truly define my goals based on my unique reality.  Letting go of the fantasy was a major breakthrough for both of us and the Amazon experience went a long way for both of us towards finally making that happen.

Year 4

So knowing all that, what does year 4 look like?  First and foremost we finally have a travel plan that involves jobs and a “route” that hopefully will work for both of us.  I stretched myself  and applied for a position where I can use more of my professional skills and feel very hopeful about what that looks like long-term.  We also are being completely realistic about what free time we will have, and this year is all about using part of that time to explore Utah between gigs.  In the past three years I judged my life based on how many firsts we experienced, and the beautiful pictures I took, but I have made my peace with the fact that the quality of our life is based on more than those two factors.  For those of you who jumped right in and got there quickly, you are probably nodding your head, smiling, and wondering what took me so long, and that’s completely fair.  I will say that if I had to go back and do it all over again, I wouldn’t choose to do it any differently.

For me it is definitely about the journey and not the destination, and one of the beautiful things about this lifestyle is we all travel differently.  Some of us take a little longer, but that’s totally OK, because we see extra things along the way.  And along those lines, my feelings about this blog definitely need to change in year four.  Over the last couple of years to some extent this blog has written me rather than the other way around.  Sometimes that is a good thing, because it forces me to get off the couch and go out and experience things, but overall I think it hasn’t been healthy to feel compelled to have experiences so I can have something to write about.

Interestingly, Lee went from finding the blog a bit of a nuisance to being concerned about what will become of it when I talk about my feelings regarding what and when I write going forward. He likes providing regular content and has promised to write more to help to help with the workload going forward.  I know you guys are probably excited about that, and I feel less pressure.  It’s a win-win.  Speaking of that, I did use the term workload on purpose.  When people ask how I manage to post so much, I always say I have treated it like a job, but as much as the blog has helped me over the last few years, sometimes that additional pressure hasn’t been good for me.

Talking about my feelings and the positive impact that has on people matters very much to me, and whenever someone reaches out and tells me I made a difference it truly makes it worth it.  But it is important to note that I am not making my living from this blog, and I need to get back to writing about what I want to talk about, rather than writing about what I feel I “owe” the readers.  Especially when I feel like I owe it on a schedule.  I think this has become especially clear to me over the last couple of months as I have experienced several negative comments. I’ve been pretty lucky in that this blog feels like a conversation, and I truly enjoy hearing from people, even when they are thoughtfully critical.  But I have zero interest in trolls.  Simply put, I’m not being paid  to take a bunch of shit from people, and since this blog isn’t paying my bills, I don’t have to.

Actually, I am trying to let go of feeling like I “owe” people in a larger context, and this blog is a good place to start.  I would like year four to be about living a life that makes me personally happy and fulfilled, and I really want to focus on that.  In the past,  I have spent an awful lot of time and energy worrying about other people’s well being instead of focusing on myself. It’s a difficult balance, because I do believe that a good person puts others in front of themselves, but I also realize that ultimately I only have one life to live and I should definitely make the most of it.  Hopefully I can maintain a balance this year by letting go of unproductive emotions and focusing on the positive ones.  That’s a tall order, I know, but definitely worth spending a year on. How that looks from a blog perspective I have no idea.  I guess we will all find out together.

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First Time Replacing a Toilet

For those of you who don’t like reading about bodily functions you probably want to skip this one, but for those who acknowledge that everybody poops, this is a detailed explanation of how Lee replaced our RV toilet. I mentioned in our last blog post that we were having some trouble with the valve in our toilet and that we had gone to Camping World to look at a possible replacement, but what I didn’t know during that trip was as soon as we arrived at our gate guarding position the valve would break and be stuck in the open position.  This meant that we couldn’t turn the water on in the rig at all, so it went from a future upgrade to an immediate need, which happens more often than I would like living in an RV.

Original toilet

 

Flush valve stuck in the open position, so you can see why we couldn’t turn the water on.

 

Add to that neither one of us had ever actually replaced a toilet, although Lee learned how to do it in RV Tech school and felt pretty confident that he could make the switch.  Thankfully we were only an hour away from a Camping World that had one in stock, so as soon as we got settled in Lee left and went to pick up the Revolution 320 that I had picked out the day before.  That was a bummer for me, because that meant I needed to stay awake until the job was done, but as I said, it was an immediate need so I just drank some coffee and watched the gate which was thankfully pretty slow.

The reason we didn’t buy the toilet initially was because we needed to make absolutely sure the measurements would work.  Lee had measured the height and width of the existing toilet, but since this one was 2″ deeper (from the drain hole to the wall behind) we needed to make sure we had the space.  I was pretty excited about the new model because it was made of porcelain instead of plastic, and feels much mor like a residential toilet.  I’ll admit it, I am not a fan of these plastic toilets, and after three years that feeling has gotten worse, not better.  Plus, they are pretty difficult to clean and the lack of a lip on the outside edge does lend itself to spattering. This toilet not only feels better, but also automatically puts a small amount of water in the bottom of the bowel after flushing which helps keep the seals from drying out, and cuts down on spatters.  I’ll let Lee explain the details of how he made the switch, but the whole thing went beautifully, and I am VERY happy.  What can I say, some things in life just matter, and if I knew the switch would have been this easy and would have made such a difference I would have done it a long time ago. It ended up costing $250 but I think it was worth every cent, and for those of you who know how cheap I can be about stuff like this, that is saying something!  Alright onto Lee’s description…

 

There’s actually not much to describe. It was probably the easiest RV related thing I’ve ever done. The most important thing if you’re going to do this is to make absolutely sure that the new toilet will fit in the space, and not interfere with anything else. In our particular case the big concern was the distance from the center of the drain hole to the wall behind. We were told that most toilets are 9″ on this dimension, but the one we wanted requires 11″.

Removing the old one was incredibly easy. I just turned off the water and disconnected the spin-on water fitting. Then took off the bolt covers and removed the two nuts that secure the toilet to the floor. Lift up and away, and it’s gone. Be careful how you tip it when you lift, whatever water is in the valve and inner hoses/pipe will leak out onto you. But it’s just clean water.

Have a towel handy to set it on.

I took advantage of having it out and thoroughly cleaned the floor and wall around it, which can be hard to get to with a toilet in the way. I really appreciated this.  That’s my guy, he always does the complete job. – Trace

 

 

I cleaned the mounting flange, which is the large black disc in the photo above, and checked to make sure all the screws were solid and tight. This is a flat round disc that is attached to the floor,  and the toilet attaches to it, so it’s good to be sure it’s well secured. Technically there should be eight screws in it, but four are also OK.

Next I put in the new T bolts that came with the new toilet, and carefully lowered the toilet onto them. I checked to make sure it was lined up properly and put on the included washers and the nuts, and tightened them down. A ratcheting wrench works really well for this, because there’s not enough clearance to get a socket over the nut. You have to be careful not to over tighten, because while the bowl is ceramic, the base is plastic, and you don’t want to crack it. You also want to alternate sides as you tighten them to keep everything even.

 

 

Then I covered the tops of the T-bolts with the covers, and reattached the water line. I turned on the water and did a seal test, and everything was just fine, no leaks inside or out. The original toilet had a center water fitting, and this one has an offset, but there was enough slack in the pex line to pull it up a few inches to make the angle. One of the problem we had that caused us to do all of this was that when the valve failed it would just run and run. The first time it happened I was sitting outside while Trace slept and I heard water hitting the ground. The valve had stuck open and filled the bowl, and then overflowed. Luckily I was there and able to turn off the water, and the valve “unstuck”. The second time it happened I was standing in the bathroom and couldn’t get the valve to close, so I was able to just turn off the water. But that meant that we had no water unless we popped the Johnny Chock in so the water could run down the drain. So the next thing I will be doing is putting an inline shutoff valve between the floor and the toilet fitting, so if I ever need to I can turn off the water to just the toilet. I will probably go ahead and do the same thing to the hot and cold on the sinks and shower while I’m at it, which will give me peace of mind and the ability to continue to use water in the rig if we have another failure and we aren’t close enough to get a replacement part right away.I would have done it at the same time, but I couldn’t lay my hands on a 1/2″ to 1/2″ inline valve. Apparently, they’re uncommon.

 

 

I also double checked the seat, and it was a little loose, so I tightened that up with a large screwdriver while holding the plastic nut underneath.

It’s Tracy again.  Once that was done we tested it.  We decided to use the internal water supply so I stood at the panel while Lee stayed with the toilet.  We ran water and everything worked fine and we were both pleased to see that after every flush a small amount of water comes into the bowl which helps keep the seals from drying out and to keep the bowl clean.

 

So here it is, in all it’s glory and again we couldn’t be more pleased.  I love the extra height, how it feels, and no more splatter because it has a lip!  We may seem a little too excited, but if you think about it, a toilet is something you use every day.  Why shouldn’t that be something to care about?  Plus I used the new toilet as an excuse to get some new bathroom accessories.  I kept the toilet paper holder, but the rug, toilet brush, and trashcan are new!

Fits perfectly and allows the door to open fully which was important since we do use those cabinets

Larger seat!

New toilet brush.  I made sure it was heavy and had a wide base so it wouldn’t just flip over when we travel.

New trash can although I really liked the old one so replaced it with the same thing

And the rug, which I obsessed over. Ended up getting a 100% cotton one because I was concerned the memory foam ones wouldn’t wash in our Splendide.

So if you are not feeling your old toilet…pun intended…don’t be afraid to put in a new one.  Just make sure you take good measurements prior to making your purchase, because once the toilet is removed from the packaging you cannot return it according to Camping World.

Supporting our Blog

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

  • As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.  Search Amazon Here
  • You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
  • You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on Itunes.

 

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And Just That Quickly, Things Change

One of the great things about being on a gate is that you have time to do all the little tasks that sometimes get lost in the day to day when you are traveling alot.  Right before we left the last gate I was finally able to update the pictures hanging in the rig of my two oldest girls, from their high school senior pictures to their wedding photos.  Since I haven’t had a chance to share these in the blog before I wanted to take a moment and show you the pictures we chose.  We even printed them ourselves (a first for me) and they turned out beautifully and now hang in a place of pride.

My middle daughter Kat and her husband Micah. It only took me 2-1/2 years to print the photo 🙂

 

My oldest daughter Kyrston and her husband Jeremy. They just got married this summer so I did a little better on the turnaround time on this one!

 

No matter what else happens in my life, I am truly blessed to have three amazing girls, and with these husbands I am going to have some beautiful grand babies!

OK, so back to our travels.  We had to wait at our gate until the service tech came out to take the equipment away, but he rearranged some things to get there a little earlier and we were on the road by around 11:30am.  It was a long drive from west Texas to New Braunfels, but we were motivated since our friends were there and made it in less than 7 hours with only two quick stops for food and fuel.  We arrived at the Lazy L&L Campground after dark and the office was closed, but our friends Kat and Bert went up to the office for us and secured a spot two doors down from them.  And when we arrived Cori and Greg were driving in themselves, and they led us right to the site.  Rock star service!!

It was really great seeing everyone and the campground was really nice, with extra large sites and a nice view.  After we got set up, Kat and Bert fed us some late night Bolognese (I know, fancy right?) and the we called it an early night.  One of the tough parts of changing gates like this is adjusting your sleep schedule, and I in particular had a hard time going to sleep earlier.

Our campsite was really cool

 

With a nice view. We couldn’t see the water but it was right in front of the house across the way

 

Really nice fire pits too, which unfortunately we didn’t get to use because it was raining

 

Our buddies Bert and Kat! So great seeing them.

 

The next day Lee walked down and paid for four days because we had been told we definitely, wouldn’t get a gate before Monday, and I ended up sleeping in until 10:30am.  I had planned on doing some exploring with Kat and Bert, but since it was overcast and rainy we decided to push it to another day.  I had just woken up when we got a call from our gate guarding company.  They had an immediate need for gate guards at a gate 60 miles south of San Antonio, and could we be there tomorrow?  Since the rate was $175 and it was in a much nicer part of Texas it was hard to turn down.  We did ask if we could wait an extra day, but they said they needed us right away so we said we would be there.  We hated to tell everyone we had to turn around and leave, but really felt like we needed to jump at the chance.  Plus, being so close to San Antonio makes it possible to still see people, and since this gate may only last for a few weeks there is a good chance we can get back.  The good news was the campground refunded us for the extra days, which was incredibly nice of them. By the way they have an outstanding monthly rate if you are ever looking for a place to hang out in Texas.  It’s $40 a night but only $14 a day if you stay for a month!

Once we found out we were leaving, Lee and I ran to Camping World because we wanted to take a look at toilets.  I know, my life is incredibly exotic.  Our valve had been acting up a bit and since it was three years old I wanted to see about getting a new one.  Lee could have just replaced the valve, but I really miss having a porcelain toilet and wanted to see what my options were.  Turns out they had one model I liked, the Revolution 320, but we weren’t 100% sure it would fit because it was 2″ longer.  Lee had measured the existing toilet height and width, but he didn’t measure from the hole to the wall, which is an important measurement when replacing toilets I guess. Anyway, it was fine, because we didn’t have an immediate need, and I was happy that we were able to take advantage of our time off to see it together. That is one thing that is a drawback of gate guarding; you have to do things separately, which normally we can make work, but this particular task really required us both to be together.

Afterwards he dropped me off at a nail place while he went to Home Depot and Office Depot.  I really wanted a pedicure since my feet have been pretty beat up since Amazon. I went to this really great place as a walk-in and got a pedicure and eyebrow wax for $43.  Awesome deal, and they were super nice.  The timing worked out perfectly too because Lee got done 5 minutes after I did, so we went back to the campground to get ready for happy hour.  Cori and Greg had made plans to have us over at their place for drinks and dinner and we were really looking forward to it. As always, we had a wonderful time, and we got to meet John and Cathy who met Cori and Greg when Greg installed their solar. It was really fun getting to know them and their two puppies Phoebe and Leila!

Cori, me, Kat, and Bert being goofy

 

Cori showing Cathy her springform pan for the InstantPot. I have to get one of those for baking cakes

 

Cathy showed us this cool pen she bought to mark her wine glass

 

She even premarked Kat and Bert’s for them which was super nice

 

And no surprise the puppies wanted to hang out with Greg and Lee. They know who is a soft touch.

We had a wonderful time, but had to leave kind of early because we needed to head out by 7:30am so we could get to our next gate by 9:30am.  Thankfully we hitched up with no issues and although I didn’t get much sleep were on our way in no time.  We met our service contact at a small yard and then followed him to our new gate.  In case you are wondering how the switch works, it’s a little tricky.  The pad only holds one, so they have to pull out before you can pull in.  Simultaneously you always get at least one truck and you are doing the pass over while traffic keeps happening.  This was our smoothest transition so far though because the road is actually paved!  And there is plenty of space for us to park while they finished disconnecting.

Waiting for their rig to pull out

 

Then we pulled in

Lee hooked up us lickety split and I watched the gate while he finished talking to our service guy.  It’s really nice here, with MUCH less dust with the pavement and the site was very level.  There is cow poop in the area, because apparently the cows like to come down this way to do their business, but it doesn’t really smell and the views are very nice.

I was a bit surprised when around 3:30pm I looked out the door and saw this

 

The trucks have to honk to get them to move. So funny, and beats the heck out of coyotes lol

We even can see the rig for the first time, although I am happy we are not right on top of it, but it’s cool to be able to see what is going on. We also really like our service tech and we met the company man who is extremely nice, which is great since those two people really can impact the experience.

You can see the rig in the middle of the picture, it;’s still pretty far away.

 

Here’s a closeup I took with my zoom lens

Cellular is strong, we can see the tower from our front door. We’re only 6 mile from town, and there is a Walmart, an HEB, a UPS store and Chinese and Pizza Hut right in town. The TV signal is strong and stable, which is awesome, because great football is on tomorrow.  So far we really like it here and are glad we accepted the job,  Not sure how long it will be until frack, but we will enjoy it while it lasts.  Plus, if we get another break we can pop back up to New Braunfels and stay with friends again.  Make a little money and be close to friends, it’s the best of both worlds! Plus there are at least 12 raptors in the field behind us.  Watching them swoop and dive is pretty awesome.

 

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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Are We All Done Here?

Sorry for the melodramatic title, but while I was sleeping this morning Lee got a visit from a new company man who told us we were done at this location.  Although we had heard that this is the way it happens in the gate guarding biz it was still a surprise as we would have thought they would have contacted the gate guard company before us. Keep in mind we took this gate over in mid-process (it has been open since October), so I suppose we shouldn’t be that surprised that all of the work finally got done.    Lee referred the gentleman to our coordinator and then sent her an email and waited for me to wake up.  To his credit he didn’t hit me with it pre-coffee (which is not a pretty sight) and allowed me to wake up a bit before he told me.  Then while I was taking my shower he called our coordinator who said she did get the email, and for us to stay put for the time being. There is quite a bit of caliche truck traffic here during the day and still some traffic for the well at night, so they are reaching out to the landowner to see what he wants to do.  We are in a wait and see mode, although we are starting the prep to roll out of here tomorrow if necessary so just in case I thought I would complete my blog post on West Texas.

We have driven through West Texas, but never spent any time here and I have to see it is unlike any area I have personally ever been in.  Our little corner spot, right near the border, is actually not too bad.  We have lots of wildlife in the specific area and the view goes on for miles.

You can see our camper in the middle right of the picture. Nothing as far as the eye can see

Our site

Along with the wandering coyotes we have a cactus wren building a nest

And some kind of a mouse/rat that lives right across from us.  So far he is staying on his side of the road.

And the sunrises and sunsets are really beautiful

So we like the particular location just fine, but of course we do need to access service from the nearby towns and that’s where it gets a little rough.  We are about 7 miles from Jal, New Mexico (pop 3034) and about 20 miles from Kermit, Texas.  The closest real town is Odessa which is a full hour away so we need to use these towns for the basics and the post office.  We’ve actually been in this situation many times, and I wrote a post about rural america last year when we were near Dilley, Texas but as I said, this is really different.  The biggest difference is the land here is primarily being used for oil and gas and there are no crops or livestock that we have seen.

The closer you get to the towns the more oil derricks you see

These gas plumes have a pretty unpleasant smelll

And there are these refineries(?) sort of randomly placed along the landscape

There is obviously money here, you can see it in the number of people working, and the infrastructure, so it is surprising to me how run down these towns are.  All these folks have to live and eat somewhere and like us an hour drive into Odessa isn’t really practical.  After getting settled in I decided to go out and explore a bit so the first place I went to was Jal, which is the closest.  We had some friends who said they might want to stop on their way to Arizona, so I wanted to check out if they had an RV park people could stay at.  We have been to oil towns before in the Dakotas and they usually have some sort of infrastructure, but it was clear pretty quickly that would not be the case in Jal.

The town of Jal

The local post office has been great allowing us to have our mail sent and holding it for us.

The town does have a beautiful library which was funded by the Woolworth family. Apparently they had a homestead here

But the rest of the town is in pretty rough shape

Except for a million dollar football field, which looks really incongruous surrounded by such poverty.

Amazing football field but this is the city park?

The whole town has a Friday Night Lights vibe, which is not surprising since that screenplay was written about the Odessa area, but despite loving that show and watching all the episodes I still found it surprising.  People seem unhappy, despite the availability of jobs, and it doesn’t seem as if that money is flowing back into the community.  A great example of that is the local country club.  There is actually a golf course here, which surprised me, but it is in a neighborhood surrounded by falling down houses. there was even a German Shepherd, with a trailing leash, that ran out into the road and tried to bite my tires as I drove by, which was a scene straight from a movie.

Country Club…that’s what it says on the sign

This picture sort of sums up Jal, New Mexico to me.  The golf course borders the oil containers.

After visiting Jal I decided to go farther afield and check out Kermit, still looking for a place our friends could stay.  Although Lee said it was more of the same, I thought I might have better luck so made the 20 mile drive south.  In my mind Kermit was actually worse.  It was a rough place and although the grocery store was nicer, the air of poverty and neglect was even more pervasive.  They also had a large football field, although not nearly as nice as in Jal, but their library was tiny and the Dollar Store was the worst I have ever been in.  The shelves were half empty and there was product on the floor and shoved into corners and it was really dirty.  I have to say I was surprised by that, because usually the dollar store in small towns is one place that is thriving, but not here.  As I said it was a rough place.

The town did have a skating rink which was packed at 2:30pm. My first thought was did they have a bar inside, which is kind of mean but I had to wonder.

These houses are on main street directly across from the grocery store and there was an empty lot full of debris

The inside of the grocery was light and well maintained but the people looking there seemed pretty unhappy. You can tell a lot about a town from the local grocery store

Most towns have sketchy side streets, but this was on one of the main roads.

 

The local donut store, which was closed when I got there, was one of the few businesses on main street

Kermit did have two small nail places and a hair cutting place (all with bars on the windows), but it definitely had a vibe and did not look like a place I would want my friends to stay. And I am not kidding about that.  We are all used to rural and even rustic, but unsafe is a whole different thing.  So I need to tell Kat and Bert they will have to visit us another time, because although they might risk it, I wouldn’t want them to.  I guess I wanted to share this because there is a perception that we move from beautiful place to beautiful place, but when you work that isn’t always true.  Usually I like going to places that are lesser known and really immersing myself in the local culture, but that is not going to happen here.  Which is OK, because first and foremost we are here to make money, and $175 a day is nothing to sneeze at.  Plus as I said our little corner is just fine, but I do think I’ll have Lee go into town from now on.

Quick Update.  We just got the call that we are officially released today.  Although they offered to let us go to a yard in Midland, we decided to head back over towards San Antonio so we can see Cori and Greg and Kat and Bert.  It’s kind of a long drive, especially if we end up coming right back out here, but it’s worth it to us to get some time to see friends.  We need to wait until tomorrow to drop off our paperwork, and then we will be heading out.  Not sure what will happen next, but I suppose that’s part of the fun.  I’m just grateful we made a little money and had some time to get some things done.  We will see how this all plays out.

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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Comparing the “Big Five” Work Kamping Jobs

When we started the full time lifestyle, I was still working my corporate job, but I always very interested in seeing what other types of work were out there.  Fast forward one year, I voluntarily chose a buyout, and Lee and I started down the path of trying to fund our lifestyle with work kamping jobs. I am an analyst by vocation and nature, so early on I stated I wanted to try everything at least once.  Lee agreed, although in all fairness neither one of us had any idea what we were getting into, and two years later we finally completed what I consider the “Big 5”  With current technology there are all kinds of jobs you can do to support yourself on the road, but the “traditional” work kamping jobs are all onsite positions.  In my mind they included Camp Hosting, working at Amazon, selling Christmas Trees,  Gate Guarding, and the Beet Harvest.

Let me start by saying, this comparison is based upon our experience.  I have met people who had a terrible time at the Beet Harvest, couldn’t stand Amazon, or made tons of money selling Christmas Trees.  Camp hosting in particular is an incredibly wide category and our few experiences in no way represent the large variety of working environments you could experience.  Our experiences are also only one season in a place.  Work Kamping in the same place can vary from year to year based on factors that change, such as weather, fellow employees, guests, and managers/employers.  And finally, our thoughts and feelings are of course subjective.  I did the best I could to provide a balanced view in the summaries (linked above), but if you really want to get a feel for each day-to-day experience I do recommend you read the daily logs which are linked in each summary post.

So why take the time to compare them if all of the information is situational?  Well, partly because I can’t help myself.  Analysis is what I do.  But also because I would have loved to have read something like this before I decided to quit my corporate job.  I don’t regret leaving that position; the company was poised for another buyout  and if I would have stayed there’s a good chance I would have been forced to quit or come off the road. More importantly, I had been there for 15 years and it was past time for me to try new things.  But if I had to do it all over again knowing what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have jumped right into work kamping jobs.  There is a huge difference between being a senior manager/knowledge worker and being the lowest level employee in physically demanding jobs.  And of course there is a big difference between working these positions a few months a year to supplement income and working them 10+ months a year to fund the lifestyle.

So please keep all of that in mind as you read this comparison.  Hopefully you will find value in it, but even if not, writing it has allowed me to put a cap on the “Big Five” experience, before we move on to figuring out the best way for us to fund this lifestyle, long term.

Money Earned

The main reason we do these jobs is to earn money. But unlike our old life, we are looking for more of a work/life balance, and money alone isn’t the biggest factor.  If it was we would go back to our old professions as none of these jobs come anywhere close to what we used to earn.  Instead we weigh every job on a Time versus Money versus Quality of Life scale.  So let’s start with the money earned.  Unfortunately, there isn’t a simple answer to the question of which job earned the most money.  So instead of a simple answer let me look at the revenue in multiple ways.

  • Hourly Wage – The highest wage we have earned was when we camp hosted in Alaska where Lee made $15 an hour.  At that same job I only made $12 so our “couple” average was $13.25 an hour.  We both made $14.25 in Oregon, but we were only guaranteed 34 hours per week.  We made $12.15 an hour during the beet harvest, but since we worked 12 hours days (with the last 4 hours of each day being overtime @ time and a half, and the full 12 on Saturday and Sunday being overtime @ time and a half) our hourly rate ended up being $14.58 an hour.  So depending on how you look at it, any of those three could have been our highest hourly wage.  Our lowest wage came from gate guarding, which was $5.21 an hour.  It is fair to note that this was for a $125 a day gate.  Our current gate is $175 a day or $7.29 an hour.  It’s also worth noting that Christmas Trees was the only job where we did not receive a set hourly wage.  The compensation was $2500 base pay and then commission, and bonus on top of that.  At the end of our season that worked out to $7.13 an hour.
  • Season Totals – I have provided the gross income from all of our jobs and then calculated a daily rate for days on the job location.  My rationale is that in order for us to work these jobs we have to be there, and often we were so tired on our days off we couldn’t do much in the way of sightseeing. The one exception to that was Alaska where we absolutely made the most of all of our days off.  As far as taxes go, two of the jobs we worked were 1099 jobs and the other 4 jobs were W-2.  The highest tax burden by far was Amazon where we ended up paying 21% in combined taxes.  Even our 1099 jobs weren’t that high because we were able to use deductions to offset some of the tax liability. 
    • Beet Harvest – $10,082 W-2 Gross; 39 days $259 per onsite day
    • Amazon – $11,825 W-2 Gross; 56 days  $211 per onsite day
    • Alaska Camp Hosting – $16,899 W-2 Gross; 110 days   $154 per onsite day
    • Gate Guarding – $9,750 1099 job; 79 days $123 per onsite day
    • Oregon Utility Park Camp Hosting – $16,527 W-2 Gross; 136 days $121 per onsite day
    • Christmas Trees – $6002 1099 job; 55 days $109 per onsite day
  • Fringe Benefits – Our campsite was included with every position, but it is worth noting that none of the jobs included a campsite I actually would have paid for.  Trees, Gates, Alaska, and Oregon all involved staying in a site that was newly created, and in all cases we did have some initial issues with getting all the services we needed.  Beets and Amazon provided a site in a traditional campground, but in both cases these were “parking lot” type RV parks that had minimal extras.  Here are some additional benefits we received:
    • All of the jobs included at least one free group meal and most included additional snacks or food items, or coffee/cocoa.
    • We received free wifi at Beets, Amazon, Alaska, and Oregon and free firewood in Alaska and Oregon.
    • All the jobs provided workers comp insurance except for Christmas Trees, which was a concern because there was some danger.
    • Amazon, Beets, and the Utility Park all offered some sort of medical benefits after 60 days.  We only took advantage of this in the Utility Park getting free dental which we were able to use for cleanings.
    • Amazon was the only job where we earned any paid time off, and received 4 hours of pay while we were there along with getting paid a full day on our last day even though we were released early.
    • We received “stay” pay at Beets, where we were paid for a half day if they called off the work due to weather.
    • We received gift cards and presents at season end from the Utility Company equaling around $35 each and we received over $70 in gift cards from Amazon, along with some Amazon logo items.  We received  lunch boxes from the Beet Harvest at end of season, and free salmon and moose meat from our Alaska job.

Working Conditions

  • Shifts – Despite the fact that these jobs are relatively low paying they have some of the most challenging schedules I have ever worked in my life.  The Beet Harvest was a mandatory twelve hour day for 16 straight days , Amazon and Christmas Trees were 10 hours a day, and gate guarding was a 24 hour shift which Lee and I split between us, generally resulting in a 12 hour day for each of us.  Alaska was an 8 hour day and Oregon was a 7 hour day, but the Oregon job had split shifts on the weekends so we both worked in the mornings and then again in the evenings.  Gate Guarding, Trees, and Beets were all 7 day a week jobs although the others gave us two days off, generally Tuesday and Wednesdays.  The exception to this was Amazon who gave us Fridays and Saturdays off, along with Sunday if we didn’t work overtime.
  • Environment – All of the jobs had a percentage of our time being outside except for Amazon which was in a climate controlled building.  The camp hosting jobs allowed for some flexibility so that tasks could be completed to some extent around the weather conditions and Christmas Trees had a large tent which helped protect us from some of the weather.  Gate Guarding was done from our rig and although we did have to walk outside in weather some of the time, again we were able to change our process some when the weather was particularly bad. I will say though that gate guarding was very dusty and it took months to get our rig clean.  The beet harvest was 100% outside and the weather was a significant factor as we experienced rain, snow, hail, heat, and lightning in the few weeks we were there.   We did have some days off if it was too cold, hot, or muddy but we worked many unpleasant days outside in difficult conditions.
  • Physical Exertion – Most of these jobs are physically demanding.  Christmas Trees was by far the most difficult as we had to lift and stage hundreds of very heavy trees with minimal staff to help us.  The Beet harvest was also difficult for me as I had to repeatedly bend over and pick up beets ranging from 5 – 30 lbs, and Amazon required that we walked 10-12 miles per day, with no sitting.  The camp hosting jobs were less strenuous, although I did have some difficulty with certain tasks like weeding and floor scrubbing that were a little more demanding.  The notable exception in this category was gate guarding, which required minimal physical effort.
  • Pace – Except for a few stages of the process, gate guarding had the slowest overall pace by far.  Since we worked out of our rig, all down time could be spent on personal activities.  Christmas trees was similar.  We had to keep an eye on the lot, but when there were no customers we could work on personal tasks.  Alaska camp hosting also had downtime, and I could use that time for personal activities, and we did have the occasional slow periods in Oregon as well, although the weekends were very busy.  From a pace perspective, the most challenging by far was Amazon.  Unlike the Beet Harvest when extra breaks were given during slow periods, Amazon was almost always a constant stream of work.  The breaks were strictly limited and there was absolutely no sitting while we were working.
  • Safety – All the companies we worked for cared about safety, but despite that we saw or experienced numerous injuries in every job we had.  Lee developed a serious shoulder strain working in Alaska and I fell into a gate and scraped my leg pretty badly while gate guarding.  Several people we know left Beets and Amazon because they had a serious strain or sprain and at Christmas trees one of the employees at another lot broke their foot. We saw several people with cuts serious enough to require stitches, and a really nasty case of poison oak in Oregon.  The worst safety incident we personally witnessed was at the beet harvest.  A truck rolled over and thousands of beets flew out of the truck bed.  Thankfully no one was seriously hurt, but the incident definitely gave us pause. The important thing to note here is with a single exception these jobs were not office jobs.  They required physical exertion, the use of power tools, and often exposure to heavy machinery.  They also often involve vehicles such as trucks or fork lifts and all the inherent risks associated with that exposure. That being said, in all cases we were provided some level of safety training and safety gear was also provided.

Quality of Work

This is a tough one, because more than any other category it is so subjective.  So, I can only speak from our experiences.  It’s also tough to sum up quality in a few sentences, but I am going to give it a shot.  They are listed below in order of which ones we liked from most to the least.

  • Gate Guarding –  Actual task time is generally pretty low, and you have lots of down time where you can work on personal projects. The work itself is pretty boring, checking people in and out isn’t rocket science, but the people were mostly nice and we did enjoy all the down time. There is also very little oversight, and as long as people are being checked in and out in a timely manner folks leave you alone.  If the weather is bad it isn’t fun, although you can often minimize your outside time by learning the names of repeat workers and waving them in and out from your RV. Wildlife is definitely an issue, and I mention it here because it did impact my quality of work.  Coyotes, rattlesnakes, cougars, vultures, and other birds of prey are all very common and although the lights and generator noise help to discourage them getting too close, you do have to be situationally aware.  Both of our gates had strong wifi and TV, which isn’t always the case, but we did experience several instances where our water or fuel was late and in one case we lost our power altogether.  These conditions do impact the work because it is not fun doing this job with minimal lighting or after not being able to shower.
  • Alaska Camp hosting  – Lee really enjoyed this job because he predominately did maintenance and his work was much appreciated by the owner.  They also largely left him alone, and allowed him to schedule his own day.  I, on the other hand, was severely micromanaged by the owner’s wife.  Almost every day she had specific tasks for me and her involvement in the minutiae drove me crazy.  That being said, I did love dealing with the customers.  We had lots of people from different countries who stayed at the campground and getting to meet them was wonderful.  I had lots of down time, which was initially difficult for me, but once I was allowed to bring my laptop in and work on personal projects during slow periods things got quite a bit better.
  • Beet Harvest – We both actually enjoyed the challenge of the beet harvest and despite difficult environmental conditions and the job being physically demanding we were never bored.  I liked the truck drivers, Lee loved running the piler, and I felt good about being up to the challenge.  The hardest part of this job was the team dynamics.  We were matched with a team of people at the beginning and with minimal instruction we were just thrown into working.  It took some time to find a working structure that everyone could live with and there was definitely some conflict until we got it all sorted out.  Overall though we did pretty well in comparison to other groups.  Several people had to be separated because they simply could not work together and dealing with “people drama” was a major part of the supervisors day. What was nice about the job though was we could actually see progress every day and our beet pile grew.  Both of us liked that.
  • Oregon Camp hosting – Our job here was “running the river” and our primary responsibility was keeping the pit toilets clean.  I don’t think I am too good to clean toilets but that was the bulk of what we did all day every day.  We did have some maintenance activities which were more fun and since we got to drive from location to location along a scenic road our views were stunning.  The people we worked for were also very nice and professional and we were given a list of tasks and largely left to accomplish them in our own way which was nice. We did have some very hot days and working outside in the full sun was difficult, but the truck was air conditioned and we were encouraged to complete our tasks during the coolest parts of the day.  My major problem with this job was definitely the lack of mental stimulation.  Since we were not able to do personal tasks during our down time we spent a ton of time babysitting the various locations. The people we interacted with were a mixed group.  Many were on vacation, but others were locals who knew more about the area than we did.  Consequently we spoke to numerous people who had complaints about how things were being managed.
  • Amazon – The work was physically demanding, fast paced, repetitive, and largely boring.   We experienced the largest amount of micromanagement of any work kamping job, and our time was tracked and reported down to the minute. The supervisors and fellow workers were mostly very nice and the company did lots of extra things to help and improve the work conditions, but just getting through some days was very difficult. We were able to cross train, which allowed us a little variety in our work, but mainly we did the same basic task all day every day.
  • Christmas Trees – More than any other job we have had, this job did not live up to my mental image.  Selling Christmas Trees sounds like fun, but it is hard damned work, and since our pay was dependent upon our sales, often very stressful.  More than any other job we have had, our roles were delineated by gender, and when I tried to cross those boundaries I was severely rebuffed.  I liked talking to the customers and I enjoyed decorating and spraying the Christmas trees with fake snow, but the rest of the job was miserable.  I spent an inordinate amount of my time with personnel issues which including hiring, scheduling, and firing people.  We were told we would put the tent up and folks would just show up to work, but that absolutely did not happen.  Our labor targets were also extremely low, which required Lee and myself to do a significant amount of the physical labor ourselves.  Worst of all, we had no idea how much money we were going to make until the very end of the season, and more than any other job we have had, we felt like we couldn’t just walk away when things got bad.

Surrounding Area

  • Alaska Camp Hosting  – More than any place we have worked, Alaska afforded us the opportunity to see many amazing things.  The short nights worked to our advantage because we had very long stretches of daylight to explore the area.  Most of these trips did require 12 hour days though.  The nearest large town was 3 hours away, and many other towns were over 5 hours away. The local town we lived in was very nice, and had a wonderful view of Mount Drum from right outside the campground. We also saw numerous moose in the local area and were able drive a short distance to see the copper river and eagles. The one thing that was lacking in my estimation were good restaurants.
  • Oregon Camp Hosting – Our campsite was right along the Clackamas river and our daily work view as we drove from place to place was absolutely gorgeous.  We were 7 miles outside of the small town of Estcada which had a nice grocery store and numerous small town events and we were about 30 minutes from a Portland suburb that had everything we needed.  It was also a great jumping off point for numerous day trips.  During the summer we saw Crater Lake, Mt. Saint Helen’s, the Oregon Coast, and numerous waterfalls.  Because we had 2-1/2 days off in a row we were able to spend time exploring the area.  Towards the end of the season though weather was a factor.  Once it got hot we were very tired from our daily jobs and did less and less as the season progressed.  Still we definitely made the most of our time there and once it stopped raining we really loved the area.
  • Amazon –  We worked in Cambellsville, Kentucky which is a nice town in the middle of Kentucky bourbon country. The town itself was very nice and had grocery stores, restaurants, and a ncie college where we were able to buy a meal ticket to their dining hall.  The town and college have numerous local events and many work kampers attended those.  It’s also in a beautiful part of Kentucky and many people went to several distilleries along the bourbon trail. We were only able to go to one, but we had a really nice time and enjoyed the experience tremendously.  The big problem for us was we were working 50 hours a week and too tired to do much of anything.  After walking 10-12 miles a day the last thing I wanted to do was walk any more, which is why we never saw Mammoth Cave National Park, even though it was only 45 minutes away. Many people we know did have the energy for sightseeing and there was plenty to see and do.  There were also numerous social events with other work kampers and happy hours galore.
  • Beet Harvest –  The beet harvest was in Sidney, Montana, which was pretty close to  Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  The town itself was very friendly towards seasonal employees and they had one of the best local grocery stores I have ever seen while we have been on the road.  There were also several very nice restaurants in town.  Since we did not have any days off (unless the weather was really bad) once we got started we were unable to do anything else in the area.  
  • Christmas Trees – We were in New Braunfels,  a very nice suburb of San Antonio, but aside from one trip to the Riverwalk prior to opening the tent for business we didn’t go anywhere.  That was because we worked long, hard days and even in the mornings when we were off we never knew when a tree delivery was going to come.  Leaving to go to the grocery store, the bank, or get a  haircut was a major challenge, and invariably if one person left something would happen that would require them to come right back.  So even though we had all of the basic necessities close to us, we weren’t able to take advantage of them.  The site itself was by far the worst we have stayed in.  It was on the corner of a lot next to a gas station and on a major road.  Traffic noise was omnipresent and there was a fire station right behind us, and alarms were not uncommon. Even though we were 15 minutes away from some very good friends of ours we were only able to see them a few times as we we couldn’t leave and when they visited it was just too busy to spend time together. This job was all about the work.
  • Gate Guarding – This was by far the worst from the standpoint of exploring the surrounding area for two reasons.  First these gates are generally in isolated areas and you are lucky if there is a small town nearby.  Secondly, because we didn’t have any days off together we couldn’t drive and explore, but even if we could have there really wasn’t much to see nearby. We were near the small town of Dilley, Texas which is a very depressed little town, and didn’t have any of the local events or charm that we saw in Alaska or Estacada.  The closest grocery store was about 40 minutes away and it was 1-1/2 hours to San Antonio,  which was the closest town. The best thing about the local landscape was the sunsets, but these ranches are generally lots of dust and grit and minimal vegetation.

So, that is my summary of all of the summaries, and I hope you found it helpful.  Again, everyone’s experience is very different so please keep that in mind when you are thinking about which jobs to try.  I’m going to take most of this information and update my Revenue on the Road page with it, but then I think I will be ready to move on.  I will still be writing about our jobs as they are obviously part of our lives, but I don’t feel the need to make that my focus.  We completed what I set out to do and going forward hopefully I will find more interesting things to write about.  For some of you I am sure that will be a welcome change, but for others I know you like reading about all these crazy jobs we do.  And that may still be a big part of what I talk about, I really am not sure at this point.  What I do know is that I won’t feel compelled to write about it anymore. That may not make much sense, and may not look any different to the casual reader, but it is an important distinction to me.

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What the Frack?

Yes, the title is a nod to all those fellow Battlestar Galactica fans out there, although I think they spell it frak, but it is also a phase in oil production.  We left our gate last year prior to this phase starting, so we were curious about what it would look like on a gate.  People talk about it as a busy period in gate guarding, so we expected sort of steady stream of water and sand trucks coming in and going out, but that hasn’t been the situation here.  Instead we are getting those trucks through all hours of the day and night but they stay on site for as much as 4 hours when they come.  I don’t really get it to be honest.  We only have one well, and we heard through the grapevine they are having issue with it, but having a truck driver sit for hours at a time seems inefficient.  I asked the question in our Gate Guarding Facebook group we are in, and I think what is happening is they use different types of sand for different parts of the process so sometimes they have to sit and wait until it’s their turn.  Weird to me, but that’s how it is.  Someone told me they have upwards of 25 trucks sitting and waiting their turn on occasion.  We had 12 last night and I thought that was a lot.

Turns out the frack in this location was just a few days.  When Lee was on duty the next morning lots of people told him they were done and moving on which surprised the heck out of both of us.  It’s not 100% complete though as they still need to move out all of the remaining sand trucks and equipment, but really the whole thing was much ado about nothing.  We hear people talking about fracking process and how much traffic there is, but that wasn’t our experience.  Hard to tell if we just got lucky or if the workload is overstated, maybe it depends on the well.  We have heard that this particular one has had some technical challenges and isn’t flowing as fast as they normally do.  Maybe that is why the traffic was lighter?

My first question was “How much longer will the gate be open?”  You would think that would be a very simple question, but it is a hard one to get an answer to.  As I have mentioned before, these projects are very segmented, with each group only knowing about their individual piece, and although someone, somewhere must be in charge of the overall job, finding out who that is and talking to them is not easy.  Here’s an example.  A guy came to fill up the gasoline in our light stand and I asked him how long they were going to be on the job.  My thought process was that when the light left, maybe we would be leaving too.  He responded, “I don’t know how long are you going to be here?” Alrighty then, sorry I asked.

I do know though that when these oil field crews are motivated, they get things done!  A group of trucks came in this morning and by 3:30 they were all moving out with loads of equipment on trucks.  There were 11 trucks in all,  full of huge equipment,  and I watched them stream past, amazed by how quickly they had disassembled the equipment. The good news for us is this crew has been a large portion of the traffic at night, and if they truly are done we would expect things to slow down a bit.  Not that it has been that busy, but hey, less traffic for us.  Here is a quick picture of a portion of the convoy that went by.

Another good piece of news is the weather has been really nice.  That is changing later in the week, but for now the temps are in the 60’s and even 80’s during the day.  As I am writing this I am wearing shorts, which is awesome!  It gets MUCH colder after the sun goes down, but I am dealing with that since most of my outside trips late at night are pretty short.  Most of the time I just wave the big trucks through, (we get the driver information at the beginning of the day) and I can use that to fill out my forms.   The small trucks I always go out and see the driver the first time they come in, but if they leave and return throughout the night I am able to look back on my paperwork and wave them through from the open door.  That’s what I like about working from the rig versus a guard shack.  Most of the time I am in my house.

One other thing I should probably mention is the coyote is still hanging around.  Actually we think it is more than one since Lee saw a pack of 5 of them down the road a bit.  So far they are maintaining a distance, although I was talking to my sister the other night and walked outside and one was standing at the light post and just staring at me.  That was definitely unsettling and I had to explain to my sister why I completely lost my train of thought.  So far I am leaving them be because they are staying outside of my circle of light at night, but if I see them closer to the rig I will need to take steps.  Somewhere we have an air horn that we bought for bears a couple of years ago and that will be my first attempt at getting them to back off.

The next couple of days were nice and mellow, and although there was a significant amount of traffic as they moved heavy equipment out the weather was nice so it was just fine.  Then on Wednesday we got a wind warning.  Around 2pm the wind started blowing, and the gusts were up to 60 mph.  As those of you who live in RV’s know, wind is not our friend, and the RV was rocking as we got hit by the gusts.  Huge tumbleweeds were blowing by, and everything that wasn’t staked down blew over.  I am not a huge fan of wind, and I especially don’t like it when it has grit in it.  This wind was full of pebbles and grit, and if you walked into it you got pelted in the face.  Not nice, and it was bad enough that we put on our safety glasses.   Thankfully the truck traffic died down significantly during the storm.  At 4pm though when I walked outside to check in a vehicle, no kidding, the wind almost pushed me over.  I had to turn away from it just to see to write on the paper and really it was pretty ugly.  Lee offered to take over for me until the wind died down and I took him up on it.  He’s heavier than I am and apparently hardier and although I want to do my fair share on occasion I am just fine with letting him take care of me.

In order to take this picture I stood on the top step with the wind buffeting me so hard I almost got knocked off. I know it doesn’t do it justice, but there was definitely a sandstorm!

On Wednesday we were down to about 2″ of water in the tank so I called our service guy to find out when our water delivery was scheduled.  It was pretty clear at this  point that no special delivery would be made, and I at least wanted to know when our regular one was.  He stated we were due on Friday, but also said he had a tank with some water in it and could bring it over.  I wasn’t sure if he would be able to make it because the winds were so strong, but was pleasantly surprised when he showed up around 4:30.  The weather was windy and getting colder by the minute at this point, and it takes a while to pump water from one container to another.  Plus, our septic pump wasn’t working either so Lee had him look at that while he was there. According to him he had never heard that we needed water from the coordinator, and in any event he recommended we call him first if there was an issue.  So we will definitely do that and Lee was really nice to him when he came. Obviously this is a situation where all the power lies in the hands of one guy, and all you can do in those circumstances is make sure he likes you.

After battling the wind, I was pretty tired in the morning and went straight to bed when Lee woke up.  After a somewhat restless night, I woke up with a pretty stiff face.  I really should have washed my face before I went to bed because when I got in the shower I realized I had a layer of sand and grit on it.  I scrubbed my face using Angels on Bare Skin scrub from Lush and then moisturized using Celestial.  Worked wonders!  I just need to make sure that I start washing my face before I go to bed lol.

Speaking of bed, I have been sleeping ok, but find myself waking up every morning around 8:30am.  The sun comes up on that side of the rig and shines into the room, and unfortunately that was waking me up.  Lee decided I needed my sleep though and took some black trash bags and blacked out the windows.  I wasn’t sure if I would like it or not, but it is pretty great how dark it is and there is a tiny bit of ambient light in case I do need to get up in the middle of the “night”.

Lee’s excellent taping job and much cheaper than blackout curtains

 

This is what the room looks like with the light turned off. Yep it’s that dark, and I slept great!

Oh, and we found out some really good news.  The frack stage is absolutely done,and next they will be starting the work over.  That means much less traffic, and according to what they are telling us the gate should be open for 3-6 weeks more.  On Friday, we received our full 500 gallons of water, and we were topped off on diesel fuel as well.  We are tracking our daily water usage now and have 35 gallons a day to play with until our next fill-up, which will be more than plenty.  So we are definitely settled in here, which is a great thing.  I am enjoying the downtime very much, and actually cracked open my rough draft last night and started to work on it a bit.   That’s all for this week, looking forward to watching fomr football this weekend.  The picture here is outstanding and it’s great to be in one place where I can just watch the games.

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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Nothing Is Ever Good Enough, But Not In A Bad Way

Today’s post is guest-written by Lee, for the tech heads out there, or the terminally bored.

I like to putter. I like to be in more or less constant motion (unless I’m staring off at the sky or the floor puzzling on something) and move things around and unpack things and rearrange them and repack them and reorganize them until I’m satisfied, which is never. The best I can ever hope for is to be less dissatisfied than I was before. I truly enjoy it though, and always have. I also like to tinker. I like to take things apart to see how they work, and see if I can find a better way to do things. Before I ever picked up a movie camera, these were my favorite things in the world:

 

When I was kid I got in a lot of trouble for taking things apart. Everyone was always “You broke this!” and “You ruined this!” and “This is why we can’t have nice things!

Pffft. It was already not good enough, I was just trying to figure out how to make it better. I think the real problem was that I was also a kid, and would lose interest or reach the limit of my knowledge/experience/skill, and just wander off to make something else better before I finished the first thing. I was also a big fan of Rube Goldberg, and would spend hours in the basement contriving unbelievably complicated “machines” using Legos and Domino Derby parts to do pointless, simple, stupid things. I once used the entire basement to make something that would just flip the light switch down. I couldn’t figure out how to flip it up. I was grounded a lot for getting bad grades (because school was boring) so I had plenty of  free time to do this.

Gate guarding is pretty simple: It’s a lot of doing nothing, and then suddenly a truck or a car will arrive or leave, and you need to log them in or out. This can be tricky, because you have to be sort of “on your toes” but unless it’s a really busy gate, an hour or more can go by between vehicles and it’s easy to forget you’re actually “working”. It’s also tricky because while you don’t have to be standing there when they pull up, you also don’t want to make them wait too long either. The solution to this problem, of course, is some kind of device that notifies you that a vehicle has arrived. At our first gate, we had super-neato-gee-whiz-high-tech motion detectors to sense vehicles coming in or out that would use state of the art radio waves to instantly send a signal into our rig which would then make a pleasant “bing-bong” sound to alert us. They didn’t work worth a damn. Half the time they didn’t bing-bong, and the other half they would bing-bong because of a bird a mile away, or a fly would fart, or the wind would blow. We got pretty tired of logging bird and wind traffic.  If a semi truck drove by the sensors would ignore it the way a teenager doesn’t see a trash can overflowing in the kitchen. So we could never really relax, because we couldn’t trust the system, and that sucked. And I tried everything. I moved them around, I masked the sensors with gaff tape (the best stuff ever invented, duct tape sucks, throw yours away and get some gaff tape like a grown up) and I tried aiming them every possible way you can imagine. Nothing ever helped, so we just lived with it, like a couple of Neanderthal gate guards. It was awful, I don’t know how we survived it. (As you can see Lee does tend towards the overly dramatic but it was a pain in the butt.  It was especially unpleasant for me at night because on a slow night the noise would startle me, but when I looked outside all I would see was a glowing pair of yellow eyes in the brush.  We had a black cat that liked to hang out on some nights and it was constantly setting off the sensor…creepy -Trace)

When we got to this gate I was thrilled to see that they had a much older, much better solution. The legendary Milton signal bell. For anyone over 50, you probably remember when gas stations had those awesome bells that would “ding-ding” when you drove up to a pump. If you’re under 50, there once was a time long ago when people called “attendants” worked at gas stations, and when you drove in, there was this awesome bell that would “ding-dong” when you drove up to a pump, and the attendant would come out and pump your gas, and even clean your windshield and in really ancient times, check your oil level. My hand to God, this is true. It looked just like this, complete with over saturated colors and period music….

The signal bell was a magnificent piece of engineering in simplicity, functionality and reliability, which is proven by the tens of thousands of them used in every gas station all over the country for decades. Wanna know how it works? Of course you do!

First of all, they look like this:

The original design is unchanged since the original patent (we can thank inventor and awesome guy Mr. George Van Zale for this wonderful piece of Americana) and Milton Industries still makes them, in America no less! Interestingly enough, they are sold mostly by a company called Milton’s Bells, which is owned by a totally unrelated guy named Milton who first saw one at a gas station when he was a kid, and was amazed that his name was on it. If you click on the Milton’s Bells link you get to hear the bell, which is a nice touch.

It is composed of a metal plate, with a bell attached, and a wire that is plugged into 120v AC. Underneath the bowl of the bell is a very sensitive diaphragm separating two conductive contacts.

The contacts are about 1/4″ apart, with the hot side of the electric circuit going to one, and the other is on the opposite side of the diaphragm. Then there’s a solenoid with a plunger/striker. Attached to the diaphragm is a length of 1/2″ rubber hose, up to 300′ long. The other end of the hose is either plugged, usually with a bolt or stopper stuck in it, or even more simple, tied in a knot. The air in the hose is thus “trapped” and at a constant pressure. There’s a 120v AC cord on the bell plate, and the assembly is either mounted vertically on a wall, or some models can be placed on a horizontal surface, like a table top, or the ground. What could be simpler? Maybe a trained monkey with a bell and a hammer, but those need to be fed and they throw poop, which is less than ideal.

When a car, truck, or a kid on a bike rolls over the hose, the weight squeezes the hose and at the bell end, a little puff of air pushes up the sensitive diaphragm. It doesn’t take much, you can even do it with your foot, and that puff of air pushes up the diaphragm and those two conductive contacts touch each other until the pressure is released. Usually it’s only for as long as it takes for the tire to roll off the hose. When those contacts meet, it completes the circuit, electricity passes through the solenoid, and the plunger/striker shoots out and smacks the bell. When the pressure is off the hose, the diaphragm opens, separating the contacts, which interrupts the circuit, and a spring inside the solenoid pulls back the plunger/striker to wait for the next cycle. Guys, seriously, this is nothing short of magic.

I found a great short video that demonstrates of all of this so I didn’t have to make one of my own!

Another great benefit of this design is that as long as you stay under 300′ of hose, you can use “T’s” and more hose to make “branches” to cover more than one location with the same bell. So at our gate, the hose crosses the ranch road at the entrance, about 75′ from our rig, and then again another 75′ down the road as you head into the ranch. This distance gives us enough time so that when we hear the bell, we can get up and go outside just as the vehicle is pulling up to our rig. It works really well, and is an excellent solution for the circumstances……..but it’s not good enough.

After doing this for a few days, I noticed a couple of flaws in the system. The bell sits on the ground just under our steps, and is plenty loud enough to hear inside the rig, unless you’re doing something noisy, like washing dishes, or watching TV. And you absolutely can’t use headphones. So problem #1 is that it can’t always be heard.

The other thing is while the “bing” itself is not unpleasant, and sort of nostalgic, when a multi axle vehicle crosses the hose, it doesn’t go “bing”, it goes “bing….bing….biiiiiing………….biiiing” while all the wheels roll over it, and it sounds more like an old telephone than a gas station in 1955. This is not a big deal when you’re inside, but if you’re outside, it can be really obnoxious. Especially if you’re sitting out in the nice weather, and the bell is only 2 feet away. It was designed to be heard in loud gas stations and over traffic and air compressors and guys named Smitty cussing because they scraped their knuckles trying to loosen a stubborn bolt. And it’s especially obnoxious after you’ve logged someone in or out and they then cross over the second hose as they continue in or out. At that point you don’t need to hear the bell, it’s just pushy and needy. So problem #2 is that even though it works really well, it works even when you don’t want it to. Here’s a little sample of how annoying this thing can be….

 

 

All my life I’ve been accused of being impossible to please. (Not true. Evidence: Pie & General Tso’s Chicken.) It’s just that once I realize something can be better, I generally categorize it as broken, and want to fix it. So, it bounced around in my head for a week, and I figured out a way to fix both problems, with very simple solutions.

Not Good Enough #1 – I added a clear 60w candelabra sized LED light to the circuit, mounted it on a little scrap of wood, and put it inside the rig. It’s small enough to go anywhere, it’s pretty bright because it’s clear and LED, and since by nature, the circuit is momentary, it flashes sort of like a lazy strobe, and allows me to use headphones to listen to a movie or a podcast or play a game without waking up Tracy, or just adds a visual cue to the sound of the bell, which helps to avoid hearing “phantom” bells. After I made it and was so pleased by how it did exactly what I wanted, I realized that I wanted to be able to move it around (See? Nothing is EVER good enough!) so instead of having it hard-wired into the circuit, I cut the wire and put a female receptacle on the bell side, and a male plug on the light side. Now I can add an extension cord and put it pretty much anywhere. At this point the only way to make it better would be to use a spring-loaded self-winding reel with enough cord to go anywhere I want, but that would be bulky and expensive. Or wireless power, which solve a LOT of problems, but doesn’t exist yet. Maybe before I die.  (Ok I have to jump in here.  I had no idea this was a problem he was trying to solve, so I went to bed and then woke up to something that looked like an 8th grade science fair exhibit.  Don’t get me wrong, the whole thing is pretty cool, but freshly awake and with no coffee in me I was understandably confused by what was happening. Then again I am married to MacGuyver so nothing truly surprises me at this point. -Trace)  Take a look at how it works:

Not good enough #2 – I added an inline rocker switch to the main power and mounted it to the outside stair rail. Now when I get alerted and I go outside to log the vehicle, I can switch off the power on my way out. I can log them in or out, and I don’t have to listen to the bells as they continue down the road, then I can switch it back on when I go back inside. (This is a pretty cool feature. For me the jury is still out on the strobe light, but I like being able to turn the bell on and off.  It’s pretty loud at night and sometimes trucks stop and sit on the air hose to talk to me and go off a ton making it hard to hear.  I also get worried in those scenarios the noise will wake Lee up, so now I can easily switch it off. It’s not something I would have even thought to ask Lee for, but now that I have it I am glad I do.  Lots of Lee’s inventions are like that. – Tracy)

It looks a little rough because it’s meant to be temporary. Added bonus, I oriented the switch so it’s rocked position is in the direction I’m heading, so as I go out the switch is pushed away from the rig, and as I come in, it’s pushed towards the rig. It’s not that big of a deal, but it’s the little things that make happy less unhappy. The only problem is (nothing is ever good enough….) I have to remember to flip the switch when going out, or coming in, or both. So I chewed on that, wondering if I could come up with something simple that would automatically do the switching as I went in and out, thus taking my ever decaying memory out of the equation. Pressure switch on the stairs? Plunger on the door? Electric eye beam? Trained monkey? Nothing seemed like it would do the trick without some sort of electronic circuit with relays or timers, and that started to get more complicated and/or expensive a solution than the problem warranted, so I decided that while what I have isn’t good enough, it’s good enough. (That’s progress – Trace)

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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Just the Way Things Are

If you remember, a few days ago we got a call from the gate guarding company asking us to leave the yard and head to a gate. So we immediately sprung into action and were out of there in under an hour, driving across Texas and taking over the gate that same day. That’s who we are, and how we work with people, so it keeps surprising us when that level of commitment isn’t reciprocated.  Admittedly, our experience with gate guarding is pretty small.  We worked for a small company last year that was obviously in transition, so we chalked up a lot of their disorganization to the fact that the company was in crisis.  Fast forward to this year, and we intentionally decided to work for one of the more established companies, in the hopes that we wouldn’t run into any issues.

Big shock, the experience has been almost identical.  You get a call to go to a gate with little to no warning, and when you arrive, it’s between you and the people you are relieving to do the switch.  They are in a hurry to get out of there, so you get some paperwork dumped in your lap (literally), a cursory explanation of the rules of that particular property, and then that couple is down the road.  That’s OK, you think, because the company you work for will have the information you need, except they rarely know what is going on in detail.  You are assigned a “local” technical person to make sure you have fuel for the generator, and water, but you won’t necessarily see that person for several days until after you arrive.  The scheduler tries to be helpful but they don’t really know, so all of a sudden you are the hot potato in a game between the oil company men and the gate guarding compan,y and you are also no one’s top priority.

I get it, I really do, but the thing that really drives me crazy is the broken commitments.  If you can’t help me, just tell me that, don’t say you will do something or call me back and then blow me off.  It’s unprofessional and it happens all of the time!!  Plus it’s not like we are that demanding.  The only thing we need from these folks is generator fuel, water, sewage dump, trash removal, and working floodlights.  And all of that is just so we can actually do what they sent us here to do. Oh, and of course, to get paid.  In all fairness they seem to have figured the last one out, but at times the other items seem a bit optional.  Then we have to end up escalating or talking to other people, and the whole thing just gets rather messy.  We are here and doing our jobs from the minute we set foot on the property.  All we ask is that they do theirs.  Pretty simple really. (This stuff makes me crazy, too, but I prefer gate guarding to most of the stuff we’ve done, so I try not to let it make me too crazy. – Lee)

I know all this sounds pretty harsh, but neither one of us has any patience for it.  Well, I say that, but of course we must have the patience for it or we wouldn’t be doing this.  And again, in all fairness once you have settled into a gate and know all the players things run much more smoothly.  Let me give you an example.  When we arrived here the previous couple stated that they were almost out of fuel in the floodlight generator (which here is a separate generator from the one that provides our rig with power) and they gave me the name and number of the guy who was supposed to deliver it on New Year’s Day.  I thought that was unlikely to happen, and it didn’t, but on Tuesday when we still had not heard from him I gave him a call.  He apologized and said he would call the fuel company and see if they would get someone out right away, and that was around 5pm. Again, I thought that was highly unlikely, so wasn’t surprised no one showed.  The next day Lee called and left him a message first thing in the morning, but we didn’t hear back from him the entire day.  We also called our local company contact, but he went into a rant about how it wasn’t his responsibility, and how that company owed 20 gallons of fuel because he had filled it last time, and the company we work for doesn’t provide the lights.  Alright then..that was different from our experience last year.  Our light stand was part of our “house setup” and they provided fuel and maintenance.  This company only provides two dinky light stands that you plug into your RV. Of the four lights on those two stands, 3 have bulbs, and 2 of them have broken switches. They’re the really lightweight kind you would use in your house, and they fall over in any kind of wind.

Finally, I decided to call the name on the equipment itself, since it was also on the paper I was provided with contact information.  Coincidentally that company is heavily involved in the frack  and the guy I called had just left the site about 15 minutes earlier.  I explained the situation and my concern about coyotes, and he promised to send someone out.  Well this time that actually happened, and the gentleman they sent seemed annoyed by the whole thing.  I went out and thanked him though, and got him to talk a little, and he shared that the company who owned the drilling rig had been filling it. Now that the drilling rig was gone, he supposed he would have to do it since they were in charge of frack.  “That makes sense,” I said, thinking it’s a good thing I kept dialing numbers, and I must have made a good impression because on his way out he handed me a card for when it ran low.  Problem is solved, but the Gate Guard company was absolutely zero help, which was really the point of this story.  Since they own the contract with the oil field companies and we are merely subcontractors, we are walking a pretty thin line here.  But as I said in the title, that’s just the way things are.

Knowing this, we are settling in.  Each gate is a little different, and this one has the sand pit pretty close to the gate.  From dawn to dusk trucks are removing caliche that is being used to build roads elsewhere.  This results in a truck every 5 minutes or so, and since it’s the same traffic going back and forth to a nearby construction site, Lee put together a plan to handle it.  At the beginning of the day he gets names, truck numbers etc, and then from that point on we just log them from inside the rig with the truck number as they come through without stopping them, or going outside.  Our front living room model RV is the perfect solution for this as we can sit at the computer and easily see the truck numbers.  We still get up for all cars and pickup trucks (along with any other frack related semis), but this reduces the workload considerably.  And we are both really thankful that we don’t have to physically open and shut the gate. Now you may be wondering who gave us permission to do it this way?  Well, that is one of the benefits of the disorganization.  We can set up what works best for us and if someone has an issue, they can tell us how they want it done instead. Since no one seems to be in charge we wouldn’t know who to ask anyway.

What else?  Well, we wanted to make sure we got paid, so we printed out our contracts and scanned and emailed them.  As a side note we do carry a printer and a wand feed scanner and although we hate the space they take up, we have needed them on quite a few occasions, and often without much notice. For instance, the closest place to us where we could get something printed out is an hour away. Generally that need corresponds with us being nowhere near a place that could handle printing and scanning for us, so it’s just easier to be self-sufficient in this area.  If you are thinking about going on the road and plan on working or volunteering I highly recommend bringing these items with you.  On a completely different note, the weather has improved, and we are able to leave the water hooked up all night.  It was 12° the first four days, and now it’s in the 60’s during the day. It is super dusty , with all the traffic, and our rig is already covered in dust. We learned our lesson last time and are keeping our windows shut!  It’s a bummer not being able to air things out, but this dust does get everywhere and in the greater scheme of things it’s better.  We still get dust though from opening and shutting the door, and of course we track it in on our clothes.  I only mention this because if you hate dust and dirt this is definitely not the job for you, because it is 100% unavoidable.

On Thursday night around 9pm our gate guard company service provider showed up.  We had asked him to call before he came, and he did, giving us all of 10 minutes notice.  Thankfully Lee was still awake, and worked with him to set up our black tank and get some information on the other equipment.  He also told us that the water was purchased from a water company and I was glad to hear it.  Gate Guard companies do not guarantee potable water, which is a big deal for me since I drink so much of it.  Since the water is coming to us fresh, all I need to worry about is the tanks and for the time being we are double filtering the water and drinking it.  We have a filter at the hose and I also use a Brita, and I hope that works out OK.  Some gate guards buy bottled water, but that is expensive and a pain in the tush, so I much prefer to use what they provide if possible.  The only disturbing part of the meeting was when we asked when we would get more water.  The folks before us left us with about 125 gallons in a 500 gallon tank, but our service rep said we would be fine for 10 days.  When Lee tried to express his concern, the guy kind of blew him off.

That just wasn’t OK with us and after he left we talked about what we would do.  The way I see it we are professional and low drama, but we expect the basics of timely fuel and water delivery.  Since this is a new company and their contract didn’t spell out how much fuel and water they will provide (some are very specific about that), I decided to call our coordinator.  I started the call very nice, and just looking for specifics on their water policy, but she immediately validated my concern.  She agreed water and fuel were the bare minimum, and stated we could always call her if we ran out of water.  That was good to hear because as I expressed to her we do use water.  Some folks treat this job as if they were boondocking, but in our minds the water and fuel are part of the compensation.  At this point we are still waiting to see when they come out.  For the time being we have enough and they have plenty of time to address it.

All that being said it’s been a really nice week.  We’ve settled into a routine, and both of us are working on tasks that never seem to get done when we are traveling.  Plus we have strong cellular and all four TV networks, which is awesome because I have the time and means to watch some football, right as the playoffs are starting.  Lee and I also had our annual budget meeting where we look at the year and adjust our targets for the next year.  Those are always pretty tense, but we worked through it, and I’ll be providing more details in the January report.  Mainly we are just happy to be sitting still for awhile.  As much as I like traveling and seeing new places, it’s also nice to just sit once in a while and both of us are enjoying it.  As proof here are some pictures of what Lee gets into when he has time on his hands!  No worries, everything was put back together before he went to bed and is working just fine.

 

 

Look at that happy face

 

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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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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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