No Pain, No Gain.

Today's weather was one that you wait for every summer. High 70's, blue sky, white puffy clouds. We took advantage of it, put the bikes on the rack, and took off for the Hazleton rails to trails. We've done that trail a couple of times, but never ridden or walked the full 4 miles.

About 2 miles in is the Hazleton Municipal water reservoir. It's pretty cool, I didn't even know it existed :)

We decided to go the distance, pushing on past mile marker 3.

We got to another gate, but no mile marker 4. Hmm. We decided to turn around and make our way back. It's a nice ride, pretty level. Saw a couple rabbits, and a doe ran across the trail. Unfortunately, I didn't take the camera, these pictures are off my Iphone :) She is a little brown speck in the foliage, not going to try and post it here :)

On the way back down the trail, I ran into a gentleman with a pack on his back. I stopped to wait for George and commented to the man that I was ahead of my 'partner'. He told me he had 50# of rocks in his pack, walked this every day..."No pain, no gain"!

14 miles!

Today was a beautiful, sunny, hot day. Our second bike ride. Testing our mettle! George bought a bike rack for his pickup truck, fits in the hitch. Much easier~no loading them into the back of the truck. My Honda Fit would tip over backwards if we put a hitch and two bikes on it!

We found a webpage that lists bike trails in our area, mostly Rails to Trails. This particular one is about a half hour away from my house. We packed one of our goofy picnic lunches - grapes, cheese, and rice cakes. Then off we went!

The trailhead is at the Pennsylvania Power and Light Riverlands Park, across from the nuclear plant. It's approximately 10 miles long.

We started off. The trail didn't look well used. It's gravel, but overgrown a bit. I wanted to make sure we were going the right way, so took out my Iphone. Thank God for them!

The website assured us we were in fact going the right way. We trudged along, passing mile markers  :) The river was down below us to the right, and highway 11 to our left. There were some odd places where we had to get out onto Route 11, ride around a junk yard, then back onto the trail. Once we got past the junkyard, it actually turned nice! There were nice wildflowers.

About 4 miles into our ride, we went through the town of Shickshinny. They have a little park on the trail, so we decided that would be a good time to eat our picnic.

We needed the break! The trail was for the most part, level and flat, but it was HOT today!

At the 6.5 mile marker, there was a sign pointing towards the 'Search Cemetary. Pretty cool old family plots.





There weren't too many gravemarkers, but a cool find, nonetheless.

At this point we were trying to decide if we should keep going, or turn around. The whole trail is 10 miles long, so 20 miles round trip. It was pretty hot, and we weren't sure we should push it. So we flipped a coin (so to speak) and pushed on a bit longer. I'm glad we did!

We got to the point where we could ride down closer to the river.

This was our turn around point. Next time we'll start from the other end! We made our way back, stopping to drink lots of water. Did I say it was a hot day?!

Got back to the truck, loaded the bikes back on the hitch rack, and took off. Of course, our travels always end with a search for a local ice cream shop. This time it was 'Big B'. Their cones were terrific!

Stolen birdbath, a decision, and I got a bell!

I dislike, no, I hate the town I live in. I've lived here since 1998. Back then I could walk in town, leave the doors unlocked while I did, and never was afraid of being a single mom, alone. Things have changed, all over, I realize, but when it does, it takes you by surprise. Case in point, my beautiful birdbath sat in my front yard's flowerbed. The sparrows, robins, and even an occasional blackbird would drink from it. I loved sitting on my front porch watching them. Imagine my shock when I woke up Tuesday morning, looked down from the window to an empty spot where the birdbath used to be. Who would be so brazen as to open my front gate, walk in, and take a $30 plastic birdbath? Geez.

So, this leads to a decision. George owns property north of here, 2 acres. His parents' home is on one side, and the house trailer he used to live in is on the other side. When his parents died, they left he and his brother the house. George moved in with me, and he put his property up for sale. There is no mortgage. I've lived in my house for over 10 years, I still owe a mortgage on it. So here comes the decision..put my house on the market, move into his parents' house. This way we'll be saving the money that I would be paying on a mortgage. We'll be banking this, saving it for an RV. Hopefully my house will sell more quickly. At least all this sort of makes sense ;)

Oh yeah, the 'bell'..

I got home from work today, George had purchased a bike rack that fits into the hitch of his truck..and a bell for my bike :)

All I need is a bell!

Yesterday we took our maiden ride on our new bikes!


We had to transport our bikes in George's pickup truck, and drove a couple miles to our local 'Rails to Trails'. They've converted old coal train tracks into bike/hiking trails.

For our first venture, we went 2 miles in, and 2 miles back. Not too bad for the first time on bikes since I was in my 20's!

Can't wait to find more places to bike now! Maybe take a picnic next time :)

Father's Day

We hope everyone had a terrific day yesterday! I sure miss being with my Father every year. They live in California, and though we see them at least once a year (even vacation with them!), not being with him on the day of...you know..

George and I had a nice day. I surprised him, and took him out to brunch. His daughter and son-in-law met us there to surprise him too. The rest of the day was spent recuperating from yesterday's yard sale. We watched the US Open all day. My favorite golfer is Phil Mickelson, was sorry he didn't do as well as the day before. We've both been to the Pebble Beach course for the AT&T Pro-am, so was nice to see where we've been!

Now back to work. Be glad when our weekends aren't 'weekends'  but just another day of our RV life :)

First yard sale towards our RV life :)

The day started out nice. Warm, breezy, no clouds, beautiful! We put out 3 long tables, arranged things according to categories : electronics, kitchenware, craft items, old vinyl records, books, CD's etc. Threw some 'garage sale' signs on the telephone poles and gate, etc. We plopped ourselves down on our porch and waited for the crowds.

The people came slowly, but it was steadily busy. We made $200 in the first 1.5 hours. We did have some interesting sales, like the guy who really wanted
George's old cowboy hat, but had to go get money. We had it marked $2. He came back (drove his car) with $1.95 in change. We took it, he had so much heart :)

It was a great sale, all in all we made over $500! We boxed up what was left (not much!) and stored it back in the attic for next time. Through the day we talked about what we might get with the money we earned, and both decided if we had enough we would go ahead and buy a Sea Eagle. Woohoo!

I sat right there on the porch with the laptop and ordered one!

With the money we had left, we also decided to get ourselves a couple bikes:

Now we're tired! Tomorrow is Father's Day, I think we'll both be resting, tho...you never know...maybe a bike ride will be on the menu!!

Aha! and...Much better today, thankyouverymuch :)

If you read yesterday's post, I was very grumpy because of the photos disappearing in the blog. I had time today at work (shhh!) to do a bit of research as to *why* they disappeared. So...seems that since Blogger is a google product and Picasa is a google product, Blogger saves or stores your photos in Picasa under a 'blogger' file. Since I moved all my pictures (smugl'd) them, *poof* they were gone. Now I know to leave that file alone on Picasa, and I shall be fine ;)

So on to last night & tonight's activities..

Yard sale prep!

We sorted things out up in the attic. I live in an old Victorian house, so we had to bring things down from there..lots of steps! This was some of it half way down..George taking a breather!

Staging things in the living room..

This isn't even half of it! As of tonight everything is downstairs, ready for putting out in the yard tomorrow. I don't have a 'garage' or even a driveway. Live in the city, park right on the street. We have a true 'yard' sale!

I think George is pooped!


More pictures and tales tomorrow..wish us luck! It's supposed to be
85 and sunny!

Tired & grumpy :)

So...

I decided to start a smugmug account, as I like the way it works much better than Picasa. I have started uploading my pictures, arranging them in galleries, etc. Last night I used a program that smugmug uses called 'smugglr' (cute, huh?)..which grabs all of your pictures off of Picasa right into smugmug. Cool!

So now, tonight, I want to write and post pictures of yard sale preparation, and find that half of my pictures from old posts are completely gone! Grrrr..not sure exactly why, shouldn't have anything to do with the smugmug/picasa thing, as the pictures were uploaded from my hard drive, not the internet. So...I have spent the last 2 hours re-uploading them to each post that was missing pictures. Grrr again.

Tomorrow night when I'm not so "tired & grumpy", I will post pictures and tell about my yard sale preparations from tonight :)

Yard sale here we come...

Thanks to all the positive vibes sent our way. We are now very motivated, the weather looks good for this Saturday. I put an ad in the paper, no backing out now :)

George and I started marking the items set aside with a pricing gun (the perks of having a chip vendor in the family!). We spent an hour in the attic last night sorting through things, marking them, listing them, then bringing them downstairs to a staging area for Saturday's sale.

Tonight we spent getting the yard in shape, trimming the rhododendrons, and the forsythia, cutting the lawn. We need to spend a few more hours in the attic sorting, marking, etc. before we'll be ready for the sale.

We realize this is one of many yard sales we will have. A lot of the items for this sale is George's old stuff, duplicate items that he brought from his house. As we get nearer to 2012 we will of course be selling more and more of our 'stuff'.

We've decided to take any money we earn from selling things and open a new savings account just for RV life. We don't know what we will do with it yet, but seeing the savings grow helps keep us on track.

Woohoo!!

Things I won't miss when we have an RV...or...how our weekend went..

Yesterday, we left Hazleton and drove down to Nottingham, PA to attend George's company's Summer Social. It was held at the Herr Foods corporate headquarters.

It takes about 2 1/2 hours, but we decided to take the 'shortest distance' not 'shortest time', so it took us 3 hours instead. I liked the rural route it took us to get there better than the highway.

The 'social' was great! They fed everyone (1500 people!) a combination of hot dogs, bbq, chicken, homemade french fries, and sides.

There was a truck rodeo

Play area for children

And pony rides

We had a terrific time!

After the social, we decided to head into Lancaster to find a room for the night. This is the first time that we haven't made reservations in advance. Armed with hotels.com on my Iphone, we found a room at the Knights Inn for $50/night. Sigh..this is where the title to my blog for today comes from...

Things I won't miss when I have an RV:

Very thin TP

Very thin bathtowels

Sheets I'm afraid to sleep on

Carpet I'm afraid to walk on

There's something to be said for 'get what you pay for' :)

Sunday morning we got up, ate breakfast at Perkins (good ole' Perkins!). I wanted to take a drive through Amish country. I never tire of seeing the farmlands and Amish buggies.

On the way back towards home, we again took the shortest distance. Of course it happened to lead us through Hershey. "The Sweetest Place on Earth!" We did the best thing you can do there, take the Chocolate World tour. It's FREE :)

We even got asked to do a taste test in their sampling room on Hershey's Sugar Free chocolate. Scored a Hershey's bar for our trouble :)

As a few of you might know, we always look for an ice cream shoppe on our travels. This time we could have had Hershey's ice cream, right on the grounds of Hershey Park, but decided to find others. We ended up settling for DQ. Blizzard. It will do in a pinch ;)

Of course, we found an RV dealer on the way home as well:

Grumbine's RV

They're owned by Camping World. We looked in to a few motorhomes, but then the rain started and we had to leave. Have to go there on another day.

Selling 'stuff'

So, we're getting frustrated. We've tried craigslist, sold a couple things. Have two nice things on Amazon, nothing yet. Ebay works great if you have a good history. No one is buying there either. We couldn't get real motivated for a yard sale last weekend. We will try the yard sale in a couple of weekends. Yes, I know we have two years yet, but I need a positive sign that we are going forward with this.I know that everyone goes through this. Sigh...

Practicing at Locust Lake

Today was a terrific day! We packed a picnic lunch and headed up to Locust Lake State Park, not too far south of Tamaqua.

We rented a row boat, loaded up the camera, cooler, and picnic bag. George did most of the rowing :)

I tried my hand at it..

George was much better at it!

We rowed to the far side of the lake, into some reeds, and found some fireflies.

and an odd little bug..

Pretty soon it was time to eat something. We packed cheese, tortillas, broccoli, and grapes. Odd mixture but good!

It was a bit cloudy today, but warm. We rowed around the lake, it's not that big. We saw some pretty flowering trees.

After our nice tour around the lake, we took the boat back. We decided we really want to get a Sea Eagle now for our full-time future. This was the 'practice' part of our day. To see if we enjoyed the water, the rowing, etc. We would like to get one, they're inflatable, so it wouldn't take up much room in the RV.



On our way home, we stopped at Galen Glen winery to enjoy some wine tasting.

Bought a few bottles of wine there, it's not too bad! By this time, we're hungry for substantial food, so we stopped on our way through Tamaqua, at the 'Restaurant at the Station'. It's the old railroad station, turned into a great restaurant. No pictures, but the food was great!

Nice day!