What is this?

If you come to this website, you might be wondering what is going on here. Well first off, welcome to my site. It is a collection of stuff about two primary things, our travels in our RV and about my Role-playing Game hobby, which at this point I am attempting to do some stuff while we traveling.

2021/10/29 10:35 · Jeff

Last 5 Travel Journal Entries

Not Sure What To Do With This Site

I have to admit, I'm not sure what do with this site now. It will remain up for a long time since It's cheap to keep. But I'm not sure what to do with it overall.

2024/09/06 13:57 · Jeff

No More Entries

Since we stopped traveling there will be no more entries.

2023/12/12 13:32 · Jeff

Broken A Frame Trailer Jack

Well we broke the trailer jack on the trailer. I think I over extended it and striped the worm gear or something. Really hard to say exactly. I just now that I raised it up to put the trailer on the truck and luckily when it failed it was right over the ball and it seated.

Finding a replacement was both easy and hard. It was easy because we needed just an A Frame Trailer Jack that has a mounting plate with three bolt holes. It's a pretty standard item. The hard part was because we have a box on the tongue, we needed one with a side mounted crank. That was a little harder to find. When I was calling around. the places that had a side crank ranged from 40 dollars to 120 dollars. Needless to say we went with the place that had one for 40 dollars. It took all of about 10 minutes to replace.

On a side note, the place we got the jack from can also lift the trailer if we want. It's something that the wife has been thinking about. When she talked to them, they were better priced than other places she had gotten a quote from last year and they were only a week or so out. Which is super reasonable. So know we have another thing to think about.

2022/12/27 13:26 · Jeff

Camping Laws And Regulations The Things You Do Not Know

In the last two months while boondocking, we have been asked to move by various officials from various agencies.

In the first case, it was a US Forest Service person telling us that we were camping include a recreational exclusion zone and that the only camping was in the nearby free campsite. In the second case, Game and Fish came out to tell us we were camp too close to water hole for the animals.

In both cases they cited rules and regulations that unless they told you to leave, you would have no idea that they even existed. Even the officials had a hard time telling us were to find the rules or where the exclusion zone were. They would try to tell us maps that you could get online but we looked at those maps, they had nothing about those exclusion zone. Or they couldn't tell you were the regulations were actually posted.

Generally speaking, I tend to follow the guideline that if there are no signs and there is a fire pit/fire ring , then it is likely safe to camp there. It seems sometimes those sites in places that violate the laws and rules that as a camper you will be unaware of. So never assume that where you camp is 100% good I guess.

I really wish you could put in a Lat and Long in a website and it could tell you the camping regulations for that area (in general) and/or if you can even camp there. Sadly, there is not central clearing house for those sort of rules. So my take away is for everyone to be aware that even if you think you can camp or boondock somewhere, there actually might still be laws and regulations against it so be careful.

2022/07/19 09:03 · Jeff

Last 5 Trailer Conversion Entries

Battery Bank Usage

So far, we been doing really well on the battery system. We have 3 85 amp hour deep cycle marine batteries. Which means we have an effective battery bank of 127.5 amp hours. For those doing the math, it is 85 x 3 batteries x 50% = 127.5. The 50% is how low you can discharge the deep cycle battery without hurting it.

So far running the everything we haven't had an issue with bank. We had a similar bank in the 5th Wheel and it didn't seem to do as well. We believe there must of been a drain somewhere in the system.

Right now we seem to be able to run the following (within reason of course) without issue.

  • Toaster Oven at Night for a about 40 min
  • TV for 4 or 5 hours at night
  • Speaker system at night
  • Mini Fridge and Freezer Overnight.
  • Laptops during the day.
  • Hair Dryer during the day.

In General during the day, with the panels, we pretty much have no issues. We have to see how that changes when it is really cloudy. It is primarily at night that worries us, but so far even with some usage, we have only had to use the generator once and that's when used the crockpot and toaster oven for a long time. Even then I'm wondering if we could have made it through the night without running it.

2022/04/26 12:00 · Jeff

Conversion Photos

The new trailer


The new trailer before we started doing anything.


Various layouts we were trying. The hard part was figuring out where the dump tanks we able to go, so we could build around it.


Tanks and platforms above the tanks installed.


Toilet Installed


This is battery storage area under the bed. Yes it has plenty of ventilation for the deep cycle batteries. This is also where the inverter and charge controller for the solar panels will go.


Yes it is a mess but we are putting the power center near the bed. The shelf above the power center will be where our small TV goes.


Close up of the power center install.


Some of the outlets we installed in the trailer.


The 45 Gallon Fresh Water tank. It cramed in near the bed but suprisely, we don't have an issue with it.


A friend helped up make the frame of the bed, the battery will go there and there is storage under the bed as well for boxes and stuff.


Early look at the kitchen area. You can see the sink installed nearby.


Buiding some walls for the shower and toilet area.


Shower and Sink area.


Some Views of the semi-finished inside of the Trailer.


This is a custom box we built. Inside is the propane tank and the water hoses. On the outside we have the shore power connection and and outside outlet.


2022/04/26 11:35 · Jeff

Lack of Updates on the Conversion

I really meant to do a whole slew of pages on the conversion process. Needless to say, doing the actual conversion took priority over doing a series of blog entries.

In the end, we did get the following hooked up into the conversion.

  • 45 Gallon Fresh Water Tank
  • 40 Gallon Black Tank
  • 40 Gallon Grey Tank
  • 20lbs Propane Tank
  • 2 Burner Stove Top
  • On Demand Hotwater Camping Shower
  • On Demand Water Pump
  • 800 Watts of Solar Panels
  • 3 Deep Cycle Batteries for Storage
  • 2000 Watt Inverter
  • Power Center
  • 5 AC Outlets (1 outside/ 4 inside)
  • Shore Power Connector
  • Inside Toilet
  • Mini Fridge (We also have a small freezer in the truck bed)

Overall, we did pretty good. It should be noted that we also have two 55 gallon water barrels in the truck that we only fill to about 50 each. So when filled between the RV and the truck, we have about 140 gallons of fresh water (which should be enough for about two weeks).

2022/04/26 11:26 · Jeff

Finishing Up Storage Platforms

I have to say the waste tanks have been the hardest to work on so far. We have a lot of starts and stops. Some of it had to do with that flooring we are going to put down. Or which sink we were going to put in.

In that later case, we needed to figure out which sink we were going to do so we could finally decided where the drain hole was going to be. That was not easy by any stretch of the imagination. We look at many different options and finally decided on one that was cheap and allowed us to install it the way we wanted to install it. Once we knew that, we were ready to go on the drain pipe hole.

That in turn finally allowed us to screw all the boards down and put sidewalls on the platforms.

Now the fun is installing the flooring. Which will allow is to put the sink in, put the shower pan down, and install the toilet. Not to mention the vent pipes for everything.

2021/12/27 08:07 · Jeff

Waste Storage Install Part 3

What a week. We have not gotten as far as I would have liked on things but where the tanks were going to go kept moving around as we were undecided about where other things were going to go.

Finally after we decided to not use a few things were going to recycle, we come to a design that we initially had. We finally got some screws in some wood and we got started. The hardest part has been getting the tank box built in a way the wife approves of. Now that we have that done, I think we can make progress. I know the wife fears will will not have this done until next year. I don't think we can survive the current RV that long. I know I do not want to.

2021/11/29 10:46 · Jeff

Last 5 Gaming Blog Entries

Still no news

I still have nothing to say on this front. It's been a while but I just have not had any news.

2024/09/25 10:08 · Jeff

Still on Hold

I just wanted to let people know that this section of the site will likely be quiet for a long time. I just do not have time to game at this time.

2023/09/15 11:36 · Jeff

Nothing New Here

Nothing new to report, Gaming is on hold for now.

2022/04/26 14:57 · Jeff

Starting a Play by Email Game

One of the disadvantages of being on the road all the time is the lack of ability to play Role-playing games with a steady group. After we are not in one place long enough to really play with a face to face group.

Of course there is the obvious solution of using one of the virtual table tops system. It is one I really thought about doing but once I got on the road I found that I really did not have as much time as I thought I would. I was not going to be able to play online once every week or even every other week. So this put me in a situation of what to do?

So, I decided to go back in time a bit and start up a play by email game with some of the players I had on Roll20. I was originally going to try to use the Roll20 forums for a setup game but the players were not getting notifications about posts. So, I decided to setup an actual mailing list. The upside for me being that I can easily check email via my smartphone anytime on the road and I can reply with it too.

The hardest thing was deciding on a system. It needed to be system lite for sure. After all, the Play-by Email was going to be a lot more heavy on Role-playing than dice rolling. After thinking about it a while, the final decision was to run Tremulus again. If nothing else, it provided a good story-telling foundation for the PbEM.

So far we have only gotten to the character creation and the first emails. I will post more as we play more and I will let you know how things go.

2021/10/29 08:13 · Jeff

Last 5 Radio Blog Entries

iOverlander

While traveling on the road full time or even part time, one of the most important thing to find is a place to stay overnight or even a few days. One of the most important sites we have found for this is recently is iOverlander.

The App has a nice map that uses your phone's GPS to help display places next to you. People make entries and rate locations. They may or may not give you a lot of information. It also lists other resources that might be needed like dumps and water. Although for Dumps, I find something like Sanidumps to be better for the listings. Still it is nice to have stuff in only one App.

The only thing I do have to say is that to certain degree I have found most iOverlander reviewers are not in 5th Wheel or Travel Trailer RVs. Seems like most are of the Car or Van variety. I say this because of the locations given look like they are only meant for a car or a van. We had a hell of a time getting back up a road because it lead to point that we couldn't turn around, which meant we had to back up the road, which was not easy at all. I am thankful to the reviewers that tell you if their RV fit or not at a location.

2022/06/13 14:15 · Jeff

T-Moblie and LG IMS Service Failing

It seems like T-Mobile dropped the ball with LG Phones recently. Both of our LG Phone on T-Mobile got the error that the LG IMS service kept failing. At first I thought it was just something bad with my phone and I did a factory reset which did nothing. Later I learned that my wife's phone was also having the same issue. So I looked up the error and T-mobile and several pages popped up to explain that this issue just happened.

Seems that T-mobile was pushing out an update across their network that affected LG phones. Of course it does not help that LG has gotten out of of the cell phone market. I am going to guess that is why T-Mobile did not notice that the change was going to affect people with LG phones.

At any rate a fix is forth coming and there is a fix that you can do to stop the error from popping up although that fix is not an official fix. Still it did solve the issue on both our phones.

2022/05/24 13:03 · Jeff

CB and Other Radios

Not that I plan on getting one, but it was interesting to see that at the Flying J the other day, I saw a bunch of stuff for CBs. Things like power cables, microphones, antennas, and antenna mounts.

I guess I am surprised that some truckers still use them or have them. The only thing I can assume is that since it still requires no license some of them still find it useful.

I have had a CB before but never really used it. I have also had my Amateur Radio (HAM) rigs in my car/truck before. That was not something I think the wife wanted in current truck. So I paired down to some handhelds for this adventure. I would have liked to at least have a GMRS mobile rig but it was the same as the HAM radio too many wires for the wife, so handhelds again. Although to be honest, none of the GMRS mobiles look that great to me. Most are basically just the handhelds with an external antenna. Most do not even allow you to hit GMRS repeaters. You are almost better getting an illegal radio modification to do GMRS on a radio with another service as well. Not that I recommend that, I am just saying that I can understand why people do it.

2022/05/13 13:51 · Jeff
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2022/05/13 13:45 · Jeff