Looking back

August 21, 2015—We’ve been back almost a week, and I am finally taking a look back at our 4 1/2 week adventure.

And adventure it was:

• We had electrical problems. No AC for the first day. Jim still has to solve the electrical problems with a permanent fix, but at least he had a work-around so that we had lights and AC.

•  We had limited internet. I will not use T-Mobile any longer for a mobile hotspot. Although I checked ahead of time that I would have 4G connection, I rarely had it—only in big cities or along the interstate.

•  We had car-battery problems. We anticipated that the battery would die; Jim needs to put some type of trickle charge on the battery to keep it charged while the car is being towed. But we had another problem, too, which turned out to be a bad battery connection. The bright side: We learned how to get a car out of park when the battery is completely dead. And we learned about some fuses on the battery cable that need a good connection. Oh, and yesterday, we replaced the battery in the car. It finally died altogether.

• We had a near-accident. When the tow-bar hitch pin broke, the tow bar fell off the car, while we were traveling 60 mph. One of the safety cables also broke. Luckily (very luckily) we had no permanent or bad damage to either the car or the motorhome.

• Our trip was “highlighted” at the end by coming home to a dead refrigerator and putrid, month-old spoiled food. The problem was caused by an auto accident outside of my neighbor’s yard. A woman from down the street hit the transformer in the front yard, wedged the car between the transformer and the cable box, and turned the car on its side. The accident took out power for the whole neighborhood and caused a surge that took out the fridge. I now have a new refrigerator. I don’t know how much I will get back for the fridge and the spoiled food.

We traveled 3,048 miles round trip, spent $840 on diesel and only $587 on RV parks. I did not track our food expenses, but we did not eat out all that often. Neither did I track our amusement expenses. All in all, though, for having spent 34 nights on the road, it was not an expensive vacation.

Most important: We had a good time. My best times, of course, were spent with my family and with my Peru Group friends. But I enjoyed all of the trip.

Jim is ready to go again, but it will probably be October before we head out somewhere, because of medical appointments.

Until then,

Your Reluctant RoVer,

Linda