Johns Trippin'

I love taking a shower. I love it even more if it's hot. Scalding hot. I love it even more if it's scalding hot with good water pressure. I've used a lot of showers over the past 14 months. Some have been pretty good. Some have been entirely average. Some have been decidedly less than desirable. If you haven't showered while watching spiders crawl up the walls, you haven't lived. Or maybe you live in a real house. So that I can semi-objectively communicate a shower's quality to the members of my family, I've come up with a three part rating system. It's simple; I award 1-10 points for each of three categories: Ambience: How nice is the shower? Heat: Will it scald me if I turn it all the way up? Strength: Is the water pressure such that it will leave welts? We've come across showers that have scored a 10 in one or two categories, but we've never encountered the perfect shower. Until now. We are at Yanks RV Resort in Greenfield, California right no...

We took delivery of our new Jeep about a month ago. Once we did, I immediately started getting it ready to tow. This involved installing tow connectors (we outsourced this due to the need to cut into the steel bumper), wiring it to connect to the RV, and wiring up a supplemental braking system (required by law for if the vehicles become disconnected). It took me a few weekends of work to get everything in place, and we towed for the first time today! It was one of our shortest moves ever, just about an hour down a nice highway, which was a perfect test. No mountains, no back roads, and short. The view from inside I'm guessing Julie will start to miss her quiet time in the van, but it was great having a co-pilot. Don't get me wrong, the kids are great helps when I need them, but they come and go between front and back as we travel. And despite the fact that the RV gas mileage will go down, I'm definitely looking forward to only gassing up a single vehicle on travel days, e...

Salinas/Monterey KOA was an overpriced RV parking lot. The pool was was freezing and thus useless; Jordan's purple lips made me sad. We were squeezed in between our neighbors so tightly that we did not feel comfortable sitting outside. The campground sits right in the armpit of two major highways and thus the air and noise pollution were problems. Michael's nightly asthma and allergy episodes started here. Crime was present, which was evidenced by all the sirens, the arrest outside the RV Park and the bike that was stolen from us in the middle of the night. Nope, no one was sad to leave and continue our journey. However, there are some notable items... well, just one. The game room was very nice. All the kids improved their ping pong, foosball and pool games. Fortunately, we did not come here for the KOA but for places outside of the park. On Palm Sunday, we attended Gateway Church - Hollister. Caleb and Jordan loved getting Resurrection Eggs and doing a balloon science experim...