We’ve been hunkered down at the Elks Lodge in Colorado Springs hiding from the rain and hail over the last several days. Looks like we came back to Colorado a little too early 😐 Luckily, any hail we got at the Coach was only pea-sized, – no damage so far; ‘knock-on-wood’. There have been reports of damaging hail and some flooding in outlying areas… I hope our luck continues to hold out and springtime gets here soon.
Pikes Peak in the background over the Urban Escape Vehicle.
We haven’t even been able to do much at the house due to the crummy weather. Everything I need (or want) to do, requires good weather, i.e., pull dandelions/weeds; spray weed & grass killer on the landscape rocks; spread grass seed on bare spots, etc.,
At least Stilla has had plenty of opportunity to hang out with our daughters and grandson. The grandson even got to sleep-over which is always a treat for him until he gets bored and realizes that we don’ t have an X-Box 360 or Playstation 🙂
News on the home-selling front; We got an offer! However, the potential buyer has to sell his present house which (I’m told) isn’t scheduled to close until mid-June. As a matter-of-fact, we countered his offer but haven’t got a formal response yet… apparently the potential buyer wants to get through an inspection on his present house first. Meanwhile, the potential buyer has scheduled an inspection on our house for this Friday, which (I assume) is a good sign that he’s serious. While waiting; we continue to have showings; four more this past weekend. All we can do is wait and see…
In other news: We plan on joining my Dad and Stepmom this coming weekend for “Spring-Fling” with the Family Campers & RV’ers (FCRV) in Brush, CO. This is supposed to be the “kickoff to summer”… we’ll see if the summer really “kicks off” 🙂 I’ll keep you posted.
Also – a ‘shout-out’ to Daniel Malmquist who stopped by for a quick visit recently. Daniel is a long-time reader of the blog and friend. Stop by anytime Danny…
I know my readers will be disappointed; but sorry, no pictures today 😐
We’re still parked at the Colorado Springs Elks Lodge. We paid for a month-long stay here so we can; 1) Work on curb appeal at the house to help it sell, 2) visit with family, and 3) maybe save a little money until the house sells.
We spent the first couple days after arriving last Wednesday evening catching up with friends and family, which is always nice. This weekend was spent over at the house pulling weeds and mowing the lawn. Many thanks to my Dad and Stepmom Elaine, who sacrificed their Saturday helping out… ♥
We had a couple of showings at the house while we were working on the yard; one couple had nothing but good things to say, but are looking for more rooms on a single level and since two of our bedrooms are on the walkout basement level, I don’t expect an offer. However, at the risk of jinxing myself; another guy came by without his realtor, so I gave him a personal tour. I heard from my realtor last night, who told me he was contacted by that guy’s realtor, and apparently an offer is forthcoming! Sure hope it’s a reasonable offer… I’ll keep you posted.
The last couple days have been pretty wet. Good thing I got the mowing done before this latest storm cell dropped in. It rained all night and more is expected throughout today. The burn scars in our area (Waldo Canyon and Black Forest) are especially prone to flooding and are under a flood watch right now.
When the weather clears, I hope to get some ‘Weed-b-Gone’ on the lawn, and some ‘Grass & Weed’ killer on the rock areas. Otherwise, I don’t know what else I can do to help the house look any more desirable without spending big bucks on things like; granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances, or “real” hardwood flooring, etc.,
So, I’m sorry – but there’s only boring stuff going on right now with the Urban Escape Vehicle blog… hopefully the house will sell and things will pick up soon… stay tuned 🙂
It was a loonngg travel day today (Wednesday) and it didn’t get off to a good start…
I don’t know what it is about the truck tires; they must have nail magnets inside 🙁 I did my morning PMCS, (that’s Preventive Maintenance Checks and Services), for you non-military types, and found the right rear tire pressure at 28 psi. The tire pressure should be at 35-40 psi.
When we arrived yesterday evening at the Roswell Elks Lodge, we were able to pull right into a site without disconnecting the truck. So this morning; after we pressed buttons to raise the jacks and pull-in the slides; we just towed it over to the local Discount Tire in Roswell, NM.
The technician pulled off the tire and immediately identified a nail stuck through the tread. This is the third time we’ve picked up a nail! Luckily, they didn’t charge us for the repair. Discount Tires will continue to have our business 🙂
After the ~hour long delay to get the tire fixed; we continued north on the shortest route towards Colorado Springs. We have 439 miles to travel today! Stilla is anxious to get back to see our daughters and grandson, plus we need to do something to help get the house sold. The house has been on the market now for over 90 days, and now that the weather is getting nicer, we are finally starting to see more showings. So, we probably need to work on the lawn; maybe fill the hot tub; de-winterize the sprinkler system, etc.,
Here’s some pics of the seemingly endless highway…
Once we got on I-25, Stilla took over the drivers seat for a while.
Yah… this is the life, I should let her drive more often 🙂
Of course as soon as she took over, we had to go through a long construction zone. She hates this… and it always seems to happen when she drives, which isn’t too often, but she did just fine. No cones were killed in the making of this blog post 🙂
Little Coach didn’t even seem to mind Mom’s driving too much.
We stopped for fuel at Russell’s Truck Stop near Springer, NM. I always like stopping here because they have classic cars on display. They switch them out every so often so there’s always something new.
I took back over the driving duties and little Coach took his usual spot on Mommy’s lap again.
We started to see some snow as we got close to Raton Pass.
It looked like the winter weather has been doing a number on the highway… we had to dodge quite a few potholes and notice the fallen rocks:
Yup… that’s snow on the side of the highway… haven’t seen that in a few months 😐
Leaving New Mexico sign…
and the Welcome to Colorado sign.
Then we got another “Welcome to Colorado” in the form of a rock hitting the windshield! A little red pickup sans mud flaps passed us shortly after crossing into Colorado, and “Wham” we have something new to fix now…
New rock chip in the lower left side of the passenger windshield.
We pressed on.
Nice rearview mirror pic. There’s snow in ‘them-there’ mountains.
And we finally rolled into Colorado Springs just as the sun was going down over Pikes Peak. Whew… 440 miles today!
I had called ahead to reserve a spot at the Colorado Springs Elks Lodge #309. We were able to get one of the more desirable spots along the inner fence-line facing the pool. The Elks 309 website says the following about their RV Parking: “13 Hook-ups on a black top surface. Electric (30 & 20 A) available to all. Water available during non-freezing weather. Water faucet always available at the lodge building. Dump station on site. $15 per night ($5-dry camping) No reservations, first come first serve. Plenty of dry camping area.”
Our spot has 30-Amp electric, water, and a small diameter (PVC) sewer line that runs above ground. We’ll have to use a macerator to use the sewer, unless we drive over to the on-site dump station. For those that may not know; a macerator chops up the waste and reduces it to allow flow through a standard-size garden hose.
View of Pikes Peak this morning over the Coach.
And here’s another picture of the windshield rock chip. I put one of those round protective stickers on it that we got from RV Glass Solutions when we had new windshields put in a couple years ago while at the FMCA Rally in Gillette WY. I suppose we’ll try to live with it for now as long as it doesn’t get any bigger or start to crack.
Here’s our view of the pool area out the front window, it’s still covered of course… we’re not in Arizona anymore 😐
So, we’re baack! We’ll find the camp-host this morning (Thursday) and pay for a month in advance, which I hope is still a reasonable $350.
We’ve put over 4000 new miles on the Urban Escape Vehicle since we left in January. We put the house on the market (January 10th) and departed Colorado for the SouthWest.
Some of you that read this blog may recall that we last came back here in October 2014 after our ~6000 mile tour of the Pacific NorthWest. Click HERE for my blog post from the 1st of October 2014. We came back then for two reasons: 1) Our son William was coming to visit from Germany, and 2) Our renters had stopped making payments. So we spent the first couple weeks enjoying time with our son and the next couple/few months dealing with the renters and working on the house to get it on the market. Hopefully we can get it sold here soon.
Regardless of the house situation – we look forward to catching up with family and friends while we’re here. It’ll be nice to see the kids, grandson, my Dad/Stepmom, etc.,
We are finally getting close to being able to put the house on the market. The carpet is finally done, I guess the adage; “3rd time is a charm”, is true. The original carpet guy finally just paid a competitor to order and install the carpet at his expense since we had already paid. Here’s a view of the stairs in progress.
And, here’s a picture of the finished stairs for your viewing pleasure.
The downstairs “family room/game room” looks a little weird with the light brown color carpet (called Honeycomb 201). It used to have a light blue/gray carpet that complemented the wall colors. I hope a potential buyer doesn’t “dislike” it.
This is the bar that we’re including with the house. I just wasn’t going to remove that back piece off the wall because I anchored it with lag bolts to the studs and ran electrical outlets to it when I originally finished this room. Removing it would just create too much additional work with drywall, paint and texture issues.
We had new carpet put in the Master Bedroom and walk-in closet along with the stairs and everywhere downstairs except for one of the bedrooms where we decided to leave our King Size Bedroom set. We just didn’t want to move it again and figured it might add value and an additional incentive to buy the house for the new-owner(s).
This is the chandelier we put in the dining room. The old one was just fine, but it was brass. This was no easy chore due to the extremely high vaulted ceilings. I even had to make another trip to Home Depot to get more black chain so it wasn’t hanging too high. It doesn’t look too bad I guess.
The driveway concrete repair has been the most expensive task so far. This is where I used to park the Urban Escape Vehicle and the concrete just wasn’t thick enough to handle the weight. It had some pretty major cracks and had settled in places. The concrete guys did all the tear out and re-pour in one day.
We were finally able to paint the Den after I got the tenant’s stuff out.
Here’s a view out the front Den window looking up the street. We haven’t been able to easily look out this window for a while due to the “stuff” I had to move out from the former tenant’s.
We still have to clear the previous tenant’s stuff out of the Master Bath so we can give it a good cleaning and re-caulk where needed.
And there’s some wood-laminate flooring repairs I still need to make in the Great Room… sure glad I kept a couple boxes of the original floorboard.
We still need to finish re-staining the deck also, but that’s contingent on good weather, hopefully it warms up soon.
With any luck, we’ll finally have the house on the market at the beginning of the New Year.
We finally took a day off (Sunday) from working around the house to help our friends Daniel and Monika move their daughter’s belongings back to their house. Dan keeps up with the blog and knew about the new trailer purchase. We were happy to be able to help, because as you know – what goes around comes around.
Daniel
We were able to make quick work out of all the stuff that needed to be moved, the trailer ramp made loading easy.
While we were on the way back to Dan and Monika’s house with the trailer loaded, we stopped by the house of our mutual friend’s – John and Angelika. The Christmas lights and decorations are looking good Angelika 🙂
We wanted to drop off a Coca-Cola Cooler that we gave them. It’s much more satisfying to give some of our things to friends or family as opposed to selling them at greatly reduced prices or even taking things to Goodwill or ARC Thrift Stores. We already gave John and Angelika our “retro” Jukebox that Stilla got for her birthday several years ago. At least it’s in good hands and getting some use instead of being put in storage.
NSM Jukebox “Digital Thunder” on the wall at our house (pic is a few years old)
While stopped at John and Angelika’s house – I used the opportunity to install the load-leveling hitch that I just got in from Amazon.com. Their little cul-de-sac is much more level than the one at our house, and it’s important to do the installation on level ground. With John and Dan’s help, we did some measuring and got the hitch installed at the correct height. The load-leveling bars take a lot of weight off the hitch ball and distributes it more evenly, I’ve heard it described as functioning in a manner similar to a wheelbarrow.
After we unloaded the trailer, Dan and Monika treated us to lunch at Applebee’s. Thanks again Dan and Monika!
We visited for a while back at Dan and Monika’s beautiful home and admired their awesome deck while our little dog “Coach” checked out the back yard and probably left his “calling card” somewhere… sorry about that Dan 🙂
Dan and I also made tentative plans. If the timing is right, Dan offered to help me drive our stuff down to storage in Casa Grande. With his help, we could drive straight there, drop off a load, maybe spend the night and then get right back in record time. Dan is a professional truck driver by profession, (after his illustrious Army Career), so he’s no stranger to driving long distances. We’ll have to see if the timing works out…
After chatting for a while and saying our goodbye’s, we drove straight back to the Urban Escape Vehicle which is safely parked at the Elks Lodge overlooking the pool that is (sadly) closed for the season. This is the first day in – what seems like ages – that we didn’t spend the day at the house cleaning or painting something.
It was a good day off 🙂
Urban Escape Vehicle at the COS Elks Lodge RV Park
