Moving Day Fun

For anyone who thinks living the full time RV lifestyle is all fun and roses then you need to read this blog. Yesterday was moving day for us. It is a day I both dread yet look forward to at the same time. It is always nice to have new scenery and a new front yard and a new little town to explore, but the moving process itself is very demanding and physical. We were only moving 10 miles yesterday but it turned out to be one of our most horrible moves. So, the day started out beautiful. The sun was up and we decided to spend the morning doing our laundry. We found a place in the nearby college town and had the place to ourselves. It was clean and cool inside and we had six loads of laundry to wash. David dropped me off and he went to get some cash. I put the clothing into various machines and used the quarters I had to get a couple of machines started. David arrived back with money and I put quarters in the remaining machines…. Or so I thought! After drying everything I realized our towels were missing. I looked around and there they were in a washing machine….they had never been washed. Apparently when I was putting the quarters in the remaining machines I had missed that one. ARGH! That was only the start of our day. We got back to the RV and started packing and securing things for the move. I always do the inside things and David takes care of the outside things. Yesterday was one of those hot, humid, miserable days where you sweat like mad just standing still so poor David didn’t have a dry spot on him as he worked outside. It was time to leave and I followed David to the dump station then we were off to the new campsite. As we arrived to our site we were met with a loud clap of thunder and lightening and the rain started pouring. We decided to leave the truck attached to the RV and leave it sitting on our site and take the car into town to get something to drink and let the storm pass over before returning to set up. By the time we got back the storm had passed and I opened the door to the RV to go inside and start setting up again. When the door opened I was met with an overwhelming scent of vinegar! Whoo-boy, it was strong! I knew right away something was wrong. I looked toward the kitchen and saw a mess on the floor. One of the cabinets had popped open and the contents spilled out. A large bottle of balsamic vinegar hit the floor and broke into many pieces. Regular vinegar would have been bad enough but balsamic vinegar is syrupy and sticky and that dark red color. The kitchen floor was covered with the vinegar and pieces of green glass shards with other items sprinkled in the mix. That took forever to clean up and I am afraid the carpet in the office area is ruined now. I tried to get up all I could but it now has large maroon spots. I have to work on it more today and hopefully I can get it all up. Once I got most of the vinegar cleaned up and mopped the floor twice I then got started doing the normal routine set up inside. I quickly discovered I had forgotten to put away Millenni’s food bowl for traveling and the bowl had turned over and poured out all over the floor under the desk. I had our laser printer in the floor and dry dog food had spilled all down inside the printer. UGH. OK, OK, I got it all picked up and then went outside to hang my hummingbird feeders. David met me with a question that made my heart sink… “where is our rug?” We have a large outdoor rug that we put under the front awning while camping. It is a really nice rug that folds up nicely for moving. He had folded it and put it in the back of the truck and had placed two pieces of wood on top so it wouldn’t blow away during the move. It was missing. After a quick look around, hoping against hope, it was nowhere to be found. We hopped in the car and decided to make the drive back to the other campground, searching the roadside along the way. We arrived at the campground and drove to our site and had still not seen the rug anywhere. On our way there we did see one of the pieces of wood David had placed on top of the rug, it was laying in the road about halfway between the two campgrounds. On our way back we decided to stop and pick it up and drive very slowly around there looking on the roadside very carefully. Sure enough, there it was, along with the other piece of wood over on the side of the road in some high grass. We both breathed a sigh of relief. We came home, the strong scent of balsamic vinegar greeting us as we entered the door, and decided to call it a day. We were both worn out. This little move had taken its toll on us. Oh and I failed to mention that while crawling around on the kitchen floor trying to clean up the vinegar I cut my foot on a piece of glass I had missed. Nothing serious but just one more inconvenience as I had to stop long enough to clean it up and put a bandaid on it. So the next time you think the RV lifestyle sounds like a lot of fun, think again, sometimes it is anything but fun.