Camper life, continued

One of our favorite "upgrades" I forgot to mention in my last post. The camper came with a frosted glass in the door. The idea is to provide light without compromising privacy , since there is no window blind on the door, and the screen door is on the inside of the entry door. On the other hand, the frosted glass greatly decreased the viewable area from our dinette.

Last week, I took out the old glass and had a new piece of tempered glass cut. I installed it and greatly increased our vistas!

It is hard to give a true idea of how much the change improved our "outlook," so to speak, but in this photo, the window in question is the one on the far right.  The privacy issue was easily handled by adding some snaps to the inside of the screen door and snapping a curtain on them to cover the window at night.

On another topic. We experienced a great deal of condensation in the camper our first couple of nights on this trip. It stands to reason that two humans and two canines and a crockpot full of white bean and chicken chili would put some moisture into the air.  With the outside relative humidity at 100% and the ambient temperature around 55F, we had what amounted to a rainstorm dripping off of the aluminum frame of the escape hatch above the bed.

It finally dawned on me that we needed ventilation. So, last night we left a window open about an inch and cracked the hatch above the bed so we could get some cross ventilation. It worked! Well, kind of. The outcome was we awakened this morning to no condensation; on the other hand, we were pretty cold in the night. 

I guess I should have checked to make sure that our summer/winter sleeping bag (called a Travasak) had the winter (more heavily insulated)  side up. We also have a couple of extra blankets we could have used, one of which is an electric blanket. Oh, well, we live and learn. Next time we will be warm AND dry; but that will have to wait for another trip. We are headed home later this morning.

A little R & R

This is our first getaway of 2014 in Topper. Well, actually, we spent New Year's day in Topper at South Beach State Park. The weather was amazing; more like June than January, but my point is that this is the first time we have left home with Red Ryder and Topper this year. The New Year's trip began on December 30th of 2013 and led to our first Topper homecoming in 2014, but this week is our first getaway.

There, now that that is settled; we are having a ball in Pacific City at the Cape Kiwanda RV resort.  We arrived Sunday afternoon amid rain sprinkles and were assigned a space toward the back of the park. There are a number of trailers parked nearby, but they are permanent fixtures and mostly not occupied. It is almost as if we have the whole park to ourselves.

Monday was quite rainy, so we didn't get out much, but we did take the dogs for a walk around the park. Today, however, was quite different. The rain ended during the night. When we got up, the clouds were thinning, and by mid morning, there was a good deal of blue sky and sunshine. The east wind was blowing, which seems unusual for the Oregon coast.  Usually, the wind either blows from the northwest or from the southwest.

The outcome of this unusual wind was that we were able to walk on the beach with an uncharacteristic lack of sea breeze.  Instead, the ocean was very calm, with the east wind blowing spindrift off of the tops of the low breakers as they lapped at the shore.

The girls had a wonderful time running and playing on the beach without  leashes!  Jill and I had a most enjoyable stroll and picked up a couple of dozen sand dollars in perfect condition. That is something we have only been able to do one other time...and that was here on the same beach!

After our walk, we returned to Topper for a short rest. Then we left the girls aboard (they were both sleeping!), and went across the street to the Pelican Pub for lunch.  The feature for today was a triple chowder plate. In three small bowls, we were treated to the Pub's famous clam chowder, corn chowder with bay shrimp and a smoked oyster chowder that was unbelievably delicious. The Pelican never disappoints. We sampled their local, award-winning beers as well.

We returned to Topper to find the girls awake but not too energetic. I think they burned up a lot of energy on the beach this morning. One of the high points of the afternoon was discovering that the wi-fi service had been restored. Ergo, I can blog!

We were excited for this trip, since we have been making some changes in Topper. We changed out the rectangular table for a round one that allows us better access to the sofa. We also added some shelves on the slide out in what was originally intended to be the TV cabinet. Our TV is mounted on the wall, so the cabinet (designed for a CRT TV) was empty. By adding a shelf on top of the slide out shelf, we were able to make a nice pantry.

We also added some LED light tape above the dinette and over the counter by the stove. This gives us a nice even, soft light in these areas which previously had either no light or harsh light.  Finally, we changed out the brass and porcelain drawer and cabinet door handles (which screamed 1990s) for some contemporary oil rubbed bronze handles.

 
Eventually, we intend to redo the floor with some vinyl tile that looks like hardwood and replace the white laminate counters with something a little more interesting. As Jill says, we are feathering our nest.

Tomorrow, alas, we must go home. But we are very happy tonight to be having a mini-vacation from day to day cares.