Is Winter Over Yet?

By Regis,

Hello all!

In preparation for our 2018 adventure I was looking back and noticed we have not posted since January! Well, to be honest, we haven’t been doing much to share. Plus, It’s been COLD! Yes even here in Floridia it’s been way too cold to even wear shorts! Just last month we had frost!

In February, my mom came down to visit and we piled into the RV and headed to Clearwater on the gulf coast. My Aunt Toni and Uncle Mike were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. As I was in the wedding party, oh so long ago, I scored an invite! I felt very honored to be able to share the occasion. It was great to see everyone and to share some adventure stories with cousin Mike, including a story about Mt. Baker.

While driving back from Clearwater, it rained a good part of the way. I think, in the three summers of camping, we have not had to drive in the rain more than 2 or 3 hours TOTAL. However, it rained fairly constant on the way back to St. Augustine. One thing constant rain and driving 60-65 MPH will do is highlight any weakness in your weather proofing.

About 2 hours into the trip home Mom hollers from the back ,” There’s water dripping from the roof!” Linda was driving so I jumped up to investigate. Sure enough water was dripping just between the cab and “living room”. I went back to the bedroom and grabbed some towels and sopped up the water.

Later investigation showed that the water was dripping directly under an external roof seam. Now the manufacturer does do a good job of minimizing roof seams. In fact there are only two – one where the front cap connects to the roof and one where the rear cap connects. There are also multiple holes for vents, sky lights and AC units and such. One of the pre season tasks I do is to inspect the sealant around the roof penetrations and apply more sealant as needed. After last years trip I made a mental note to remove and replace ALL the sealant in the next year or two. Well it should have have been done sooner I guess.

Word to the wise. If seam sealant has been painted over, remove sealant and replace as soon as possible! Part of this seam had been painted to match the color of the front cap. However, the paint may have hid the true condition of  the sealant. So what looked good was not.

In other news, Linda has been planning and revising and revising the next trip! I think there are alternate versions as well. We have also been doing some projects on the RV. Nothing major, just little things to make day to day RV life better. I think I’ll write a post on some of those later, with pictures!

We have been organizing our stuff to take on this years trip. Linda is finding this to be very hard. We are planning to leave near the end of April and be traveling into September. Our longest trip yet! One problem with that is how much and of what type of clothes to bring. Ten sweaters and one pair of shorts or ten shorts and one sweater? Me, I have it easy, I have only one sweater!

I had started writing this post three week ago and the title is still true! Today April 10 and it only got up to 63 degrees (17.2 C). When will it stay warm?!