Owl’s Fancy: First Month

October 28th marked our first full month living in the camper. There has been some adjusting, some adventures, and some odd moments. All in all though I think we are both more sastisfied living small than the house. Although I do miss the bathtub and really long hot showers. I can make do or find a work around.

Life with a six gallon hot water tank is interesting and you learn to be frugal with the both the time it takes and the soap. I have long hair, (Repunezel wouldn’t be impressed but most folks are suprised how long it is.) and my hubby has shoulder length hair. So do the math folks, you soap it lightly, get it rinsed and rinse again. Then the rest of the stuff. Although one serious perk of our hot water tank is that the water is seriously hot, so by using the cold to space it out. We have done pretty well avoiding cold showers. (So Far… we shall see)

For those of you going but isn’t gross having to empty your sewer water? The answer is no, once the hose is hooked up to both the sewer line and the sewer pipe. You never see anything so all you have to do is pull the handle and you’ll hear the water and stuff flowing down the pipe. One thing I really want to aquire is a sewer track. This nifty little gizmo is a plastic little track that you put your sewer line on and the track goes from 7.5 inches down to 4 inches to assist the gravity flow of the stuff down the pipe. Genius I know right. Once you hear everything flushes out, have someone inside pour water down the toilet and that helps flush out any residual stuff. Then push the handle closed. Viola done. Set up and tear down it won’t be that simple and we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Cooking and heating using propane has been a learning curve. I had never cooked on a gas stove before and I have a serious distrust of gas. I don’t know why, my grandmother cooked on a gas stove. My grandfather had gas grills. So it isn’t that I haven’t had exposure to gas. Once I got over my nerves, gas is a breeze to use for cooking. And the propane lasts pretty good just cooking. However throw in the gas furnace and a 30 lbs tank doesn’t go as far. And while there are plenty of places to exchange tanks they are all 20 lbs. Our camper uses 30 lbs so we have a local store that fills them. I do want to get a set of back up tanks, either 20 or 30 pounders.

So that pretty much sums up our first month camper living. One thing I haven’t mentioned is we are still unpacking and organizing stuff. All the folks you see on YouTube with everything perfectly organized. How? How do they do it? I don’t know. Food for thought as we move into the second and third month. Cheers, james

Owl’s Fancy: Storm

Gobby hanging out at the dinette.

Tonight is Sunday, October 13th and we are having a thunderstorm. Ordinaraily that wouldn’t be anything to write about other than the joy I get from watching and writing during storms. Miss having a front porch to sit and watch from. (A post for another time)

This is the beginning of our third week living a camper lifestyle. And this is the first storm we have had since we bought Owl’s Fancy, much less moved in. I have checked and I don’t see any water seeping in from outside. Yay! The sound of the rain, wind and thunder are magnified. But comforting.

I am hoping Hurricane Season is over and done for us. I don’t think I have enough zen calm to weather a hurricane in an untied down camper. Of course the weather and emergency folks will tell you to seek shelter in a permanent shelter. But luckily enough this isn’t one of those.

Our landlady/campground host had a tree removed from behind us because it was in bad shape. Tonight I am glad we aren’t worrying about it. The tree was hollow in the base and filled with the big black ants the size of your thumb knuckle. (Yucky hate those things)

Thunder is rumbling. Rain has softened. Dogs have been acting clingy all afternoon. They have been sensing the changes in the atmosphere. Gobby is currently hugging my husband. He is more panicky than Roxie. She is curled up in the blankets snoozing. He is having a panic attack, poor baby. He has never been that good with storms.

Well I think I have spent enough time writing this that the storm has passed over. Cheers, james

Owl’s Fancy: Week 1

So last Saturday we moved into our camper in a nice little campground. The move and set up went well. The biggest trouble we had was figuring out the handles for the grey water tank and the black water tank. Grey water tank handles sink and shower water. The black water tank holds toilet water.

In a camper like ours, we have to dump our black water tank every so often. Since there are two adults we figured twice a week would ensure nothing got too full and cause problems. So Saturday and Wednesdays are “dump” days. This task is made much easier because our site has a sewer hook up. So we just go pull out the black water handle, then wait a few minutes. Somebody flushes the toilet several times and then we close everything back up. The grey water tank stays open all the time so it just goes straight down the pipe when it gets used.

Our first full night Sunday at 2am, the dogs decided they needed to go out. It is dark and quiet in the campground, the stars are amazing! So I let Roxie, our older dog out first. I can trust her to not wander off. I proceed to hunt for Gobby’s leash (10 foot cotton lead rope from the horse section at Tractor Supply) and I can’t find it. It probably should be noted I can’t see without my glasses and yeah I didn’t grab my glasses. So I used Roxie’s leash which is a lot shorter.

I open the door, Roxie is on the steps and she won’t finish coming up the steps because Gobby was in the way. And she won’t hop off the steps. So in his infinate wisdom Gobby jumps from the camper to the ground. Except the leash is too short so either I fall out of the camper on to Roxie and the steps or let the leash go. I am not ashamed to admit, I let it go. I backed out of the way, Roxie came in. And Gobby was off.

Gobby is half lab, and guess what color of lab blends perfectly on a dark night. Yep, black lab.

Don’t be fooled by that innocent little face. Meet Goblin, aka Gobby.

So I grab a lantern, works well when you are illuminating an area. Not so well when you are actively looking a black dog staying just beyond the circle of light. Fed up I go back in the camper, grab my glasses and my keys. I rode around the campground twice looking for him. I finally catch up to him on the far side just a few campers down from our landlady, Ms. Phyllis. (She is very nice, not sure how nice she would have been if we had woken her up. I wouldn’t have been nice at all.) And all I could think was we haven’t even been here 24 hours and we’re going to get kicked out. Thankfully we didn’t cause a commotion or at least I don’t think we did. And we went back home and back to bed.

Cheers, james

A Page, A New Chapter

Meet Owl’s Fancy, our new home. A 27 foot 2007 Dutchmen camper.

Pretty soon, I will be moving from our house into a travel camper with my husband and two dogs. (Cue manical laughter) Seriously though, we are doing this to get a better grasp of what we want to and where we want to do it. We will be moving into a small campground that has full rv hookups available. Yay! No having to figure out the whole dumping tanks thing, at least not yet.

The campground is about 15 miles from our current location in Kenansville, North Carolina, about 45 miles from Wilmington. My husband says we live in a geographical anomalie because we are literally an hour from any decent sized city. Draw a triangle between Jacksonville, Goldsboro and Fayetteville, then stick your finger smack dab in the middle and you should be about on Kenansville. Duplin County at the very least. Pretty weird right.

We are keeping our day jobs and by cutting down on our expenses. We will hopefully grow a future allowing for our dreams. That is the plan at least, you are perhaps familar with the whole men and mice thing per Mr. Robert Burns. I cheated, I just looked it up. He actually used schemes instead of plans. In this situation, schemes may be the better choice. Ah well I will let you know how things go once we get started.

Cheers, james

P.S. if you have any advice, tips or quotes share them in the comments.