Today's the day! Our first road trip. There's nothing like the excitement you get from kids when they realize they have their very own school bus! Well little kids any way. That excitement was certainty not shared by their mother when I pulled up in the bus to pick them up for the camping trip. There's a great many things my ex-wife and I don't see eye to eye on and this is obviously another. I will likely talk more about that situation some other time but as I said from day one this is about the kids, the memories, nature and adventure and sharing my love of god with them.
So we have officially embarked on our maiden voyage. Two nights of camping await us at the Oklahoma Lake Murray State park.
We had been on the road for about an hour when the water/oil light and alarm started going off. I have been watching over ever thing from the first day and the bus has run pretty good but the temp gauge has done a little dance here and there. It seems that I can run it as hard as I want to in town and it will stay at about 190 degrees. Open highway at 60 mph and it settles in at about 195 but when pushing her to 65 for 30 minutes or more it will be up to 210 and starts climbing up to 215-220 when we hit inclines. Within a couple minutes of backing off on the speed or pulling in to a stop it will be right back down to 190 or less. I'm gonna have to look in to this more next week after we get back to town.
After a quick stop to cool the engine down and a small speed adjustment we easily made the last leg to the campgrounds. This is certainly not the kinda camping I grew up on but it will have to do to start.
So we have officially embarked on our maiden voyage. Two nights of camping await us at the Oklahoma Lake Murray State park.
We had been on the road for about an hour when the water/oil light and alarm started going off. I have been watching over ever thing from the first day and the bus has run pretty good but the temp gauge has done a little dance here and there. It seems that I can run it as hard as I want to in town and it will stay at about 190 degrees. Open highway at 60 mph and it settles in at about 195 but when pushing her to 65 for 30 minutes or more it will be up to 210 and starts climbing up to 215-220 when we hit inclines. Within a couple minutes of backing off on the speed or pulling in to a stop it will be right back down to 190 or less. I'm gonna have to look in to this more next week after we get back to town.
After a quick stop to cool the engine down and a small speed adjustment we easily made the last leg to the campgrounds. This is certainly not the kinda camping I grew up on but it will have to do to start.
Now that we had arrived and finally found a decent spot to camp the first priority was to hang the hammocks. I have a true love of lounging in a hammock and have taken many opportunities over the years to hang one any time and place I could. I can often even be found sleeping in one daily as my regular bed. I hope that the kids will enjoy them just as much especially since I didn't bring anything else to sit on. We got our camp set up and had a snack then headed down the short hike to play in the lake.
The one thing that has been the hardest adjustment for me in the outdoors of the south has been the water. Back home in the mountains and valleys of Montana and the rest of the Pacific Northwest the water is so beautiful. There's plenty of sandy or rocky shorelines to play on and the water is so clear. You can usually see the bottom of the water till it gets about 10 ft deep and in some places much deeper than that even. I don't know how anyone truly enjoys playing in this muddy soup they call lake water down here.
The kids and I finally found a muddy bank that we could get decent access to the water from and made the best of it. We did a little swimming and of course caught a few frogs. My eight year old daughter has been very much like me as a child and is normally full steam ahead for trying new things in the way of the outdoors. My 4 year old son however is a bit more skeptical about trying things that look like there could be consequences. I cant blame him for being precocious as it is probably a good thing in the long run. This was really his first true outdoor adventure and I had to work at it some to convince him to hold one of the frogs I had caught. Once he had it in his hands however he quickly made friends and named him hopper.
As the evening wound down we made a little fire, cooked up some dinner, roasted a few marshmallows and relaxed in our hammocks. at the end of the night With a few minutes of work I had our hammocks hung in the bus and a couple of fans running off of my solar setup to help keep us cool. I tucked the kids in and we called it a night.
The one thing that has been the hardest adjustment for me in the outdoors of the south has been the water. Back home in the mountains and valleys of Montana and the rest of the Pacific Northwest the water is so beautiful. There's plenty of sandy or rocky shorelines to play on and the water is so clear. You can usually see the bottom of the water till it gets about 10 ft deep and in some places much deeper than that even. I don't know how anyone truly enjoys playing in this muddy soup they call lake water down here.
The kids and I finally found a muddy bank that we could get decent access to the water from and made the best of it. We did a little swimming and of course caught a few frogs. My eight year old daughter has been very much like me as a child and is normally full steam ahead for trying new things in the way of the outdoors. My 4 year old son however is a bit more skeptical about trying things that look like there could be consequences. I cant blame him for being precocious as it is probably a good thing in the long run. This was really his first true outdoor adventure and I had to work at it some to convince him to hold one of the frogs I had caught. Once he had it in his hands however he quickly made friends and named him hopper.
As the evening wound down we made a little fire, cooked up some dinner, roasted a few marshmallows and relaxed in our hammocks. at the end of the night With a few minutes of work I had our hammocks hung in the bus and a couple of fans running off of my solar setup to help keep us cool. I tucked the kids in and we called it a night.
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