O.K. I Lied

Well, not intentionally, but I didn't get on the road at the end of October as I had hoped.  My brake lights weren't working as I thought.  I want to know who's 'brilliant' idea it was at Dodge to not have separate wires for turn signal lights, brake lights, and tail lights???  Really, how hard can that be?  But NO, I have to get a car who's brake light wires are just a few filaments of wire INSIDE the turn signal wires!  Would that little bit of extra wire for brake lights have put the manufacturer over their wire quota or something equally absurd?  Such cockamamie designs these car companies come up with (my Ford Focus had an air filter that was $400 to replace!  And that was a low-end model car!) Well, after several more days of waiting and fixing, I finally got the brake light problem solved and can now tow Zelda legally.  On the bright side I did learn some interesting new things (in addition to the obvious wire shortage Dodge had in 2007), like there is such a mechanism that converts separate turn signal and brake light wires on a car to a combined circuit for a trailer's single lamp type lights.  That seems to be pretty common.  Of course I can't have anything common, so what I needed was a mechanism that UN-combined these two circuits going to the trailer.  Yes, I have to be difficult.  Makes life so much more interesting.

After a couple more days of madly purging and packing and repacking I was on my way - or so I thought.  [Insert minor anxiety attack on the amount of stuff I was still trying to take].  I thought I was doing so well, but when I finally got the car & trailer all packed - I freaked.  So, I made a trip to my friend's house, where the last of my belongings are stored, to purge & repack once more and I was (FINALLY) on my way to Minnesota the morning of November 3!

Grania and Zelda packed and ready to hit the road!

Two days to get to Minnesota to visit with my aunt and cousins for 5 days then I headed to Nebraska for a visit with the master craftsman who built my tearbaby.  He helped me take care of a few projects I wanted to do to the trailer and now Zelda is all tricked out!

So patient readers, today, November 12 is the first day of my new life adventure!!  It marks the first day I don't have to be any place by a certain time or particular day.  I am totally free!  It is a great feeling, but I will admit a bit discombobulating.  I am still living out of my car and trailer instead of living "in" them.  Everything is a mess.  I am making my way southwest to (I hope) warmer weather so I can set up camp for a week or two and try to get organized.

Tonight I am in northern Kansas camping at a "free"/fee-by-donation city park in Concordia which happens to have electricity (a very good thing since it's supposed to get down to about 29 degrees tonight and I wanted to be able to plug in my heating pad to stay warm in bed).  The coolest thing about this camp is how I found out about it.  I stopped at the local Wal-Mart to pick up a few groceries for the next few days on the road and as I was walking to my rig a man who had just parked next to me commented on how he liked my trailer and asked if I was camping.  I responded that my set-up was my home and he went on to tell me about this city park right across the street!  I feel like I have been inducted into the full-times club now!  Locals are telling me about campsites!  Way cool.  And Kansas seems to have a LOT of free / very inexpensive camping parks - way to go Kansas!!

My "free" campsite in Kansas - right next to a National Guard Armory and a small municipal airport.  I'm not sure who gets to play in the awesome tower in the background but I sure want to! 

So the next leg of my journey will take me diagonally across Kansas to its southwest corner then through the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas and down into New Mexico - where PLEASE Weather Goddess, let me find warm days and pleasantly cool nights!


(And are you hating these ludicrously short days as much as I am?)