Sunday, December 21, 2014

Keeping the Lance

There has been much debate in our house lately. Upgrade the Lance to a bigger trailer? Upgrade the truck & get a 5th? Upgrade completely to a class A?

After many discussions about what our ultimate plans are, we've decided to keep the Lance for now. We love it & just need to change a few things in it to make it more "us" and functional.

Upgrades we're thinking about:
Backsplash in kitchen
We'd like something a little lighter & more "tile" like.
Cabinets in kitchen - Maybe paint them?
Add shelving in bathroom
Cover for the water heater buttons
Right above the blue towel are the buttons. Too easy to hit.
Papertowel holder
Add real shelves to the pantry closet
Expandable shower curtain - Need to order from Lance
Upholstery changes - Still need to decide on a fabric to lighten the trailer up!
New flooring?


Upgrades we've recently done:
New vacuum - We got a Dyson
Add internet boosters - We went with the WiFi Ranger (below) & flag pole for mounting
Move the pantry items to one of the larger closets - We moved it all to the closet next to the door. We'll see if I'm still happy with it as next season goes on.
Move the other items to above the kitchen - I do like this!


Internet/WiFi Booster:
https://www.wifiranger.com/solutions-mobileti/rv-wifi-mobileti

Flag pole for mounting WiFi booster:
http://www.rvmobileinternet.com/resources/flagpole-buddy-ubiquiti-nanostation-gaining-altitude-directional-antennas/

Misty Mountain Halloween Trip, Charlottesville, VA - October 31 through November 2

This is long overdue!

Since I've already done a pretty detailed review of Misty Mountain Campground, I'll just blog what we did.

Upon arrival, we checked in & were directed up the hill. There's now a passcode & gate to get up the hill. I'm guessing they were having some issues with non-paying guests going up there, but it's just a suspicion that I never asked about.

The sites at this campground are definitely not level. We haven't really had to worry about leveling (too much) all season. We had some disagreements on where to put the trailer on the site because of how tight the sites are at the top of the hill. We'd definitely prefer the bottom area if we were going to stay here again.

Lil Lance all tucked in for the weekend
After we got the trailer put where we wanted it, we discovered a bolt on the weight distribution hitch was completely cut off. That side of the hitch has been giving us problems for a while, so it's not super surprising, but it scared the daylights out of us. We took a trip to Home Depot and got new nuts & bolts for that side of the hitch. We also got 2 extra sets of them, in case this happens again and we're not near a Home Depot/Lowes/hardware store.

Once we were done with our side trip, Jon was doing stuff outside & I started prepping dinner. We had friends of ours coming over (they were staying in the lower section of the campground). I had pre-made most of dinner, but needed to make the salad & heat up the main entree. In order to do the main entree, we had to use the oven. I made Jon light the pilot light. I was impressed about how well it worked!

After dinner, we made a campfire & did s'mores. Yum! I also gave the kids a Halloween present, especially since trick-or-treating was taking place the next day (the day after Halloween).

The next day, we took David down to watch the agility dog event that was going on. After that, he got a "bath" in our shower. That was an adventure! Then on to the awesome grocery store near the campground to grab lunch and then head over to Afton Mountain.

We did a wine tasting at Afton Mountain & then had lunch. Thank goodness they had just put up the "tent" coverings in their picnic area. It was WINDY and pretty cold.



We headed back to the campground & chilled out a bit before heading down to our friends' site for dinner.  Jess kept telling me I was paranoid about the dogs being in the trailer. I decided it was too quiet for 2 dogs to be in there. Their oldest daughter checked & sure enough... I was paranoid for good reason! Ah well, it was easily taken care of.  David decided to make himself at home, so we ended up washing their comforter for them.

After dinner, we headed back up to our site & headed to bed. The next morning, we got up, cleaned the trailer, winterized it (sad!), and headed home.