It's happening! We're on the road...sort of. We spent the time from our last post when we got back from the wedding to a week ago going full force on the trailer. We managed to get most of the outside work done to get it ready to travel, including insulating the floor, re-installing the belly pans and banana wraps, getting the levelers and spare tire mount back in, along with scraping old seals out from around the windows and installing some temporary seals from Home Depot for the trip (appropraite seals will go in when the windows are overhauled).

Heinz spent a long Saturday grinding off the propane tank holder from the tongue and cutting angle iron for a battery box base. The next day he and Paul (a VERY helpful neighbor) spent a part of Sunday re-welding the propane tank holder, moving it forward along with adding the battery box base aft of the tank holder.

While they were busy doing that I spent the weekend prepping and painting the inside. It was a red-letter weekend in my book. Something completed that could be seen by everyone, didn't involve rivets (whoohoo!), and touched on the individuality of the trailer versus the grunt work. One morning went into washing down the walls and roughing up the old vinyl and new aluminum with some sandpaper, and the afternoon was sucked up by painting with primer (STIX from Ace Hardware). The next day was paint. If anyone ever tells you that Thai Gold is a good wall color...RUN!!! I put the first coat on and knew how a pumpkin pie feels in the oven on Thanksgiving Day! It was a warm day, I was inside the silver bullet, and the color was pumpkin orange - a bit severe. Needless to say, we went color shopping again. Day 3 was spent putting on two coats of Citrus Punch. I know that it looks a little overwhelmingly yellow in the pictures, but as we started loading stuff into the trailer it toned down. Another nice part of this color is that as the day moves on and the light changes, the tones change and it goes from a bright and cheery yellow in the morning to a warm citrusy yellow in the evening.

There was another red-letter day before we hit the road. We got the floor finished! This picture is of Heinz and I planning it out, sorry, don't have any of it actually installed. We got too busy trying to pack up what we needed in the house before the movers arrived to stop and take pictures of the installed floor.

But show up the movers did. They packed up the rest of the house in 2 days and rolled away with most of our worldly goods for storage. We finished packing up the remainder, loaded up the truck and the trailer, cleaned the house for the landlord, and rolled off into the sunset, or actually the sunrise.

First stop was Los Angeles to drop off plants for babysitting with our daughter and new son-in-law (welcome again to the family, Pete). Next stop, Kansas City and around a month with relatives for the Thanksgiving season. We made it in a marathon driving session from L.A. to KC in two days. The trailer pulled like a dream and is so smooth we almost forgot it was back there. We had great weather the whole way and some beautiful scenery in places.

The trailer isn't livable yet, but Carl has a full workshop in the basement. The bed is coming together as the rest of the work continues, so stay posted - updates will be coming.