Skunked

Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Beaver Dam, WI

What a difference a week makes. Just a week ago we had a record heat wave... the longest and hottest period in four years. This morning I woke to 51f degrees. Inside the bus-house it was 61f... low enough that Dar was silently plotting a way to turn on the furnace without my knowledge. "Com'on, once the sun rises it'll warm up faster than a frat boy at a Megan Fox film festival."

Besides a bit of chill, there was something else in this morning's air... skunk. First I smelled it. Then, peering out the window, I saw it. Some unlucky polecat was rundown on the road right in front of the farm... and the morning's brisk wind was carrying the redolence directly at the bus-house. Man-O-Man! It looks like I'll have to peel that black and white fur pizza off the road and give it a proper burial. Living in an RV ain't all romance and recreation.

Yesterday we moved the bus-house downtown to dump our holding tanks. We've been at the farm for three weeks and while we still had remaining capacity in the tanks, I wanted get the wheels turning to lubricate all the moving parts and keep the camper in tip-top road worthy condition. And we really wanted to back onto our new RV pad and try it out.

Everything went well until we backed onto the pad. Apparently the underlying soils are still too soft and spongy to support the weight of the bus-house and it was cutting ruts in the crushed rock and actually sinking when parked. That was a disappointment. We called the contractor who came over and checked out the situation. He agreed to remedy the problem in the next few days by digging more soil out and replacing it with more crushed rock.

So, we're back on the asphalt for the time being.

T