i guess we got the brave thinking that it might be our one day home, but in the meantime, we bought a house too.
its hard to work on something that is a distance away from you in storage, and the brave was out of sight and out of mind.
time to move it to the new house!
it had been sitting since october of last year with only one crankup, and we were worried it wouldn't start.
primed the carb with some gas, and it roared to life!

off we went!

over the river and through the city


and finally, both homes at home!

hopefully after things with the new house settle down a bit, we can refocus on the brave.

Trips are on hold until we raise the dough to buy new tires. Shouldn't be terribly long, though now we have to get it inspected by the end of the month too. Oh joy!

So, with the bathroom hooked back up, we commenced packing and hit the road. Our destination was set for Heavenly Acres, Andrews college friend was getting married and he was promised to be able to see three friends he hadn't in a long time.

At just a little under two hours away, this is an awesome privately owned campground.
Right when we got there and pulled in, we spotted an old Winnebago in the woods.

Upon closer inspection later, we found that it was a really cool, early 1970's Winnebago Indian. The color of green the stripes were painted was glorious.



Super cool to see. Heavenly Acres offers RV hookup, tent camping, and cabin/caboose/rv rentals. Such a cool place. They had about five old train cabooses set up as cabins, they had actual cabins, and they had several RVs that you could rent. Each campsite had a nice firepit, and the lots were huge. Very different from our Grey's Point trip!





The RVs for rent were huge and cool, newer models that probably didn't run.
This did blow our mind...the paver prop-up job was just hilarious. Sketchy.

We made it to our site and set up. Had time to settle the dogs a bit, walk around and explore, and say hi to the bride and groom before wedding time. Perfect!

We realized it was going to rain later that night, and took the opportunity to roll out our awning. It kept our bikes nice and dry in the downpour later.

The wedding was awesome, the bride and groom used the dialogue from the wedding scene of "The Princess Bride" as their opening, it was so good. Very short, sweet and personal ceremony, the bride and groom came down the aisle together with their dog, Oodin. Very sweet.

Everyone got to hang out after the ceremony (which was held beside a raging campfire) into the late night, the bonfire was kept burning HUGE, the wedding favors were s'mores so the kids at the wedding were sugar crazy. As little lights, Heather took single LED's and put them in small glass mason jars and in paper lanterns, they were so pretty.
We were pretty exhausted from waking up so early to fix the Brave and ended up turning in a little early. It was a very eventful and full day, it was great to see Andrew catch up with folks he really missed.
We woke up the next morning and got to have breakfast with Heather and Jason and their family.

There was a bunch of firewood left over from the bonfire, so we set out bringing it up to our campsite to burn. I made at least ten trips down to the bonfire and back up to our site with my bike basket as full as it could be.

Dottie got to hang out with all the kids before they left, which she absolutely loved. We took the dogs on several long walks around the campground and every time they got swarmed by little kids that just wanted to visit. The dogs eat that stuff up!

Dottie loved sprawling on her cooling mat after our walks, she napped quite a bit on the picnic table.

We took advantage of our free time and gave the Brave a bath. It looks a lot less dingy now, the white is bright and the stipes look much better.

We cooked lunch outside and enjoyed the lazy day. The weather was perfect and cool, it was just delightful to sit and relax with no stress.

The evening wore on. We both agreed that RV-ing is the life to lead.

We had some leftover glowsticks from the wedding, and we used them to make collars for the dogs. Not only did they light up the ground for our city dogs in the woods, but we could see where they were easily. They were on leads tied to the heavy picnic table, but Idle always wanders and was so easy to spot with his brightly glowing collar.

It also made for funny pictures while the dogs were wrestling.

We had a nice relaxing night by the fire, just sitting with the dogs, unwinding.

We managed to burn off all the remaining logs. The oak trees above us were glorious!

We woke up early and started getting ready to go home. We wanted to do a couple things at home on our day off, so we wanted a nice early start.

We packed up and headed homeward. Sad to leave, but glad to go home. About forty minutes into the drive, Andrew and I both noticed a loud thumping that sounded like a flat or going flat tire. We pulled over at a gas station to check things out, but all the tires looked normal. They certainly looked evenly inflated, so we assumed the noise was one of the small doors that had come unhinged during the drive. We grabbed a bite to eat and hopped back on the road. As soon as we were on the interstate the noise started up, louder, and the whole RV was shaking. We had no idea what the hell was going on, but something obviously wasn't right. Then, KAAPOW! I checked the mirror to see tons of debris shooting out of the back of the RV. We slowed to a stop and pulled off on the median. Immeaditely I noticed that the tailpipe was on the ground. We cut the engine.

Then we noticed the tire. WOW.

We de-treaded the entire right side rear inner tire. Holy crap. Andrew pulled chunks of tread out of the undercarriage of the Brave, noticing that in addition to snapping the exhaust bracket, it had sliced open the wheel well. DANG!


With no jack, we were screwed. Thankfully, being aware of the fact that we know not very much about RV-ing, the weekend we bought the Brave we also bought a Good Samaritan membership. Its basically road assistance for RV-ers, like AAA. A couple phone calls later, help was on its way. Thankfully we had a spare tire.
Andrew walked back down the highway to get our shredded tire out of the road.

Oh the carnage! Not wanting to be litterers, we tossed it in the RV to get rid of it.
About an hour later, help arrived. A state trooper had come by before and had given us a flare, sitting on the shoulder in the RV with 64 East traffic blasting us was terrifying, and the flare acutally encouraged people to move over. A second trooper arrived after "Rollin Wheels" came, and sat behind us with lights on for their safety.

They jacked the RV up, swapped wheels in just a few minutes, and after quick paperwork had us back on our way. If you get an RV, get Good Sam. It was totally worth it.

Well, we made it home, alive. The last leg of the trip was super stressful and undid all the relaxing we did at Heavenly Acres, so I guess we need to hurry up and go on another adventure!

Finishing up the bathroom

We spent the week trying to squeak in trips to Pleasants and Home Depot when we could in search of the correct fittings for our toilet issue.
We were planning to leave for Heavenly Acres Saturday morning/early afternoon, and we were just running out of time. We decided to square away everything that morning, our schedules were just too tight and Saturday was the only time it was going to work out.
We woke up early and started sanding the wood filler we put in the old holes in the floor. We pulled out the remainder of the random hunks of old carpet that were jammed in the cracks of the floor between the plumbing and walls, and gave it all a good vacuuming.


We laid down the metal brace plate we wanted to have to make the floor/toilet less wobbly and got it set up for installation.

We mounted the brace plate and then placed the collar over it, so everything would be lined up and predrilled for mounting over the rubber floor.

We laid down the rubber floor we had precut and sliced an exploratory hole where we could feel the center of the brace plate.

Then, measuring how much floor would be covered by the toilet base, we measured and marked a small square where the pipes would connect throught the floor. Then we cut it out!

We gave it a test run and checked to make sure everything was lining up.

Then we mounted the toilet for real. We mounted the collar on top of the rubber floor for a better seal, then the toilet bolted to the collar. We plumbed it back to the main line with the new fittings we bought from Pleasant's (we bought fittings that had a ball valve for easy cut off, that way if it didn't work out we at least could stop water from blasting in!) and we were done!


Our awesome new rubber floor was looking great, the toilet felt stiff and not shaky, and we still had three hours to pack the RV before we left for Stanardsville! Rad!

This weekend we dedicated our time to re-connecting the toilet and laying new rubber floor in the bathroom. We wanted to get it all set for our trip this coming weekend.

Well, as we know, nothing is ever simple with thirty year old vehicles.

First off, Andrew adjusted the idle 3/4 of a turn and it completely solved our stalling problem. Thank goodness. We drove it out to Cartersville to a boat launch Sunday and had NO stalls, at all. YAY!

That said, the next day we took the Brave to Lowes to buy new plumbing fittings to replace the ones on the toilet...the original threaded attachments were all correct, but someone had simply glued flexible tubing to rigid tubing down the line as a fix instead of actually using the correct stuff. The connection blew apart there at Grey's Point, so we wanted to re-do it the right way.

We spent about three hours at Lowes, both inside shopping and in the parking lot working. First off, we needed to remove the old collar fitting where the toilet mounts to the floor. It was bolted down to the plywood foor with the old original orange carpet under it, and the pipe from the blackwater tank was glue welded to the collar.





We bought a small handsaw and cut the collar/connecting pipe off the blackwater tank from underneath the rv. It was quite a chore, as there was very limited moving room under the rv for you to operate a handsaw, and you could really only use one arm to do it. It was strenuous and awkward, but Andrew and I took turns cutting until it was done.







We wanted to high five each other after that was done, for real. While we were cutting it, the blackwater tank sprung a tiny drip leak at one of the seams of the patches. GREAT. We can easily fix it temporarily, but it just drives home our need for a new tank.

Once the old collar was off the floor, we were able to use a section of rubber tubing (it comes in all kinds of diameters in the ABS plumbing section at Lowes) to seam the pipe coming off the tank to the bottom of the new collar.



Trust me, it took a lot longer inside Lowes coming up with a solution to seam the two pipes than it took to actually do it. Thankfully, we drove the RV to Lowes and could take measurements in the parking lot as we needed. It was a big help to have it right there so we purchased the correct sizes of fittings.

After that was all situated, we went back into Lowes with the fitting from the toilet to try and find a match. There was none. The plastic fitting was a specific brand that was extinct to Lowes. It is called Flair-it PEX fitting/tubing, and apparently Pleasants Hardware carries it. You can order it online as well.
After literally an hour trying different fittings and potential solutions at Lowes, we had to call it quits. Nothing there was going to be a confident seal or fix, and we needed to find actual Flair-it PEX parts.
We will work this week on getting that resolved, provided that Pleasants has the correct parts.



That aside, we wanted to use the rest of the daylight and wonderful weather left to get the rubber flooring at least cut and ready to go when we have the correct PEX fittings in hand. We measured the bathroom floor, squared up our piece of rubber floor, and made the correct cuts. Andrew read online that cutting rubber floor can be a MAJOR hassle because the material has such a high coefficient of friction, and that it is best and smoothest cut by using soapy water as a lubricant. Well it worked like a charm. The floor piece was cut with no problems and little strain.



We mocked it up in the bathroom to make sure it is a tight fit, and it is.



We want to apply a metal reinforcing plate around the collar to really beef up the toilet support, and we need to get our PEX fittings, then we will be ready to lay down the floor! Before we left for the day, we filled a few small holes with wood filler and left a container of Damp-Rid in the bathroom to absorb any moisture left over from the flood at Grey's Point. We will sand it, sweep and vacuum before we lay the new floor.



We are amped and pretty set up to get this finished this week! (as long as we can actually get the fittings in town...)
GO TEAM!