Trial Run

Yesterday we set out for Shady Cove RV Park, just outside Hattiesburg, MS (about 70 miles from home) for our trial run with Filbert.

Lots of lessons learned.

Hazelnut (in purple harness) is not happy when the RV is moving. Not much we can do about that except be patient and hope she acclimates. Nutella (in pink harness) was the champ of the ride here. She was not frazzled in the least. In fact for most of the drive, she comforted Hazelnut.

Gracie freaked a bit when we hit the road, but then I put her in the bedroom and closed the door and she seemed to calm down a bit. We thought we'd have to have her travel in her carrier but the bedroom seems to be a better alternative. When we're stopped, she seems happy enough in her "perch".

Derron managed to get all the stuff hooked up - sewer, water, electric...and we had heat last night.

Good thing because it dropped down to 19 degrees!!!! Very glad I decided to go with a down comforter in the bedroom.

We cooked a dinner of meatballs (I made them ahead of time and froze them), sauce and pasta. Not bad for a camping meal.

We got the dogs' kennels set up last night and them inside without too much trouble.  They seemed just fine until 4:30 AM when Nutella started crying. We took them for a walk to settle them down. Yes, 19 degrees is really, really cold! We think tonight we'll see about them sleeping with us. Hazelnut seems very comfortable in the bedroom...in fact she's in there now sleeping. But we'll see.

Nutella is pretty happy lounging on the couch.

We decided taking the kennels down every morning and putting them up again in the evening would be a huge pain in the butt. So Derron came up with a good solution. He was able to put Nutella's (in its upright position) up in the perch (and still leave plenty of room for Gracie). He folded Hazelnut's with her cushion in it and got it up there too, with a blanket on top for Gracie. Should make for an easier deployment tonight...

So what else did we learn on the trial run so far...disconnect the water hose if there's a chance the outside temperature will drop below freezing. It's 12:32 and we're still waiting for it to defrost so I can wash breakfast dishes and we can take showers. We also learned our refrigerator does not work, contrary to what the service technician told us. We looked it up online and there's a recall on our refrigerator for a part that controls the temperature - exactly our problem. Good thing Derron brought a cooler full of ice. 

And finally...although we have good WiFi here, we don't have cable - fine with me - but Derron's hellbent on finding something to watch. He's forgotten how bad local daytime TV is. Thank God for Netflix.