I always seem to start off my blog with “well”, so this time I guess I’ll just start off with ” I can’t believe the time has gone so fast”. As you should know, I have my niece, Melissa, living with me and her dog Bonnie, a long-haired German Shepherd with an attitude. When she isn’t at her Tuesday &  Wednesday college classes, Melissa likes to sleep till 1 o’clock in the afternoon and then just sit around and watch TV or play computer games while texting her Facebook friends. I’m always trying to encourage her to get out and do things and see things that are in the local area. And to exercise and train Bonnie. She just laughs and says she is training Bonnie to be a nice calm dog to sit next to her. However the truth is Bonnie harasses the boys constantly, and is always trying to escape out of the house. And when she does escape she just runs wild throughout the neighborhood barking and harassing everybody and listening to nobody. So it is amazing to me how people (in general) waste time doing things that should be so low on the priority list while more important things slip away in time. And so, it is this excuse of common human nature that I am gong to use to ask you all for forgiveness that it’s been so long since I’ve done any blogging.

Since I last blogged, we have closed on the house and moved in and have completed some major renovations (mostly to the outside), and done the typical customizing the house on the inside like painting that anybody does when they buy a new house.  I have been semi-consumed by the new job. The company had two corporate audits before I got there and had ignored the findings and required corrective actions from the audits. So now the plant manager is trying to save his job by getting roughly 2 years of programs completed in record time. And one of the big deficiencies found in the audit is that the company isn’t training people on required training that they are supposed to have according to the OSHA act. So I have  been working on those training programs and finally handed those off to our training department and they have actually force trained the 1700 people currently working there. But to throw a wrench into the whole “catch-up plan” is that now we are calling back 700 employees who were on layoff for the last 2 years to ramp up the 2nd shift at the plant.  The good news that will make more work for me though is that I am supposed to be getting an assistant sometime in the next month. So I need to prepare for interviewing and assigning them tasks.

But we have maintained our sanity by getting out onto the trails and getting some videos out. We have done videos on 3 of the Local North Carolina state parks: Stone Mountain State Park, South Mountains State Park, and Hanging Rock State Park. Each of those will link you back to the video if you care to click on them. We also went exploring just up the road from where we live and found a really nice place called Rockface Recreation Area. It’s the last time I use the drone which was way back in January. The winter weather around North Carolina mountains is quite rainy. And when it’s not rainy it’s foggy. So we haven’t done much drone photography, and the drone batteries don’t stay charged. But I think those videos were some pretty good representations of some of the things that are within an hour’s drive at the most from where we are.

I haven’t had much time to do anything with the camper. After all I have a new house that needs a lot of work and so I really need to dedicate myself to house repairs and in changes that will reduce my costs of owning these this house. Some of the things we’ve done is run gas lines to my gas appliances (stove and dryer). We are putting additional insulation into the attic. Which actually requires removal of a bit of vinyl siding. We have determined after a month and a half of living here that the bedrooms are only half insulated because of the way the main roof cuts off the roof over the bedroom so no insulation was put in there. Something my house inspector really should’ve noticed but didn’t. I also have a fairly cursory bathroom in the basement which is only half built. It has a toilet and a sink, and a drain for a shower. But appears the drain for the shower is in the totally wrong location and is through the floor of the basement foundation so to finish installing the shower I need to do some major concrete removal and replacement. Whoever built this house had a lack of knowledge in construction requirements. I hate to say it because it’s probably a prejudicial stereotypical response but all my friends in the North warned me that things are cobbed together in the South, which I’m finding somewhat true.

Anyway it’s February 10, 2018 and we already have reservations at 4 different campgrounds. So the Aliner will come out and we will get back into the woods. Camping down here is a lot of good Glamping with big rigs and super RVs dragging large pickup trucks or diesel trucks dragging four axle monster 5th wheels. It may take me a while to find the off the beaten path campgrounds or I can drag the Aliner in, but trust me we will get out there where no crowds have gone before. So stay tuned, and I will be back much sooner than my last break. My hope for this blog was always for it to be at least every 2 weeks, if not every week.

Stay happy, stay safe, will see on the trail
Rick, Caesar, Dakota