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Title: My Screwy Vacation - VERY LONG BUT FUNNY Post by ExplodingEyeBall on Aug 3rd, 2006, 2:05pm My Screwy Vacation Our vacation was supposed to start on July 21st. our original intention was for me to come home at my regular time at about 4:30 and park my car, then hop into my wife’s truck and hook up the camper for our 3 day trip to Amana Colonies in Iowa. After returning from Iowa, we planned on resting a couple days before hooking the camper up again on the 26th for a 4 day trip to White Water Memorial state park in East Central Indiana. Sometimes, things just don’t happen the way you planned. At around lunch time on the 21st, my phone at work rang and as expected, I answered it. I shouldn’t have….. It was my wife on the phone and she didn’t sound happy. She told me that she just heard a loud pop in the basement while she was washing clothes and now she hears water running. I told her I would be there as soon as I could. I left work early and made the 15 mile trip home as quick as I could. When I stepped out of my car, I could see that our sump pump had been running almost non-stop for a while now. That is the only thing that actually worked right in this whole mess. I went down into the basement to see water shooting from the safety relief valve on our water heater. The water was going almost all the way to the far side of the basement. Fortunately, it missed the breaker panel. I shut off the main valve for the water and started thinking what I was going to do as thoughts of ‘No Vacation’ were bouncing through my head. I considered just replacing the valve but thought better of it since the heater was 16 years old and the valve probably broke for a good reason. I decided to buy a new water heater and try to get it taken care of real quick and maybe salvage the vacation. I disconnected the old one and moved it out of the way. We went to the hardware store and purchased a new water heater. I took it home and got it in place and connected the water so I could get some flow back in the house again. I then called a plumber since I didn’t want to mess with the gas and carbon monoxide vent. When the plumber showed up, he told me he couldn’t/wouldn’t finish installing this one since it was too tall for our basement and couldn’t be vented properly. He suggested a tank-less/on-demand system at the cost of over $4500.00 and started telling me about the financing they have available. |
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Title: Re: My Screwy Vacation - VERY LONG BUT FUNNY Post by ExplodingEyeBall on Aug 3rd, 2006, 2:05pm My vacation was almost permanently cancelled due to homicide charges. Fortunately, the plumber was a lot bigger than me and I chilled….. He gave me some advice on how to get a new tank taken care of if I could find one short enough. I disconnected and drained the new one I had just finished with. I then took it back for a refund and purchased a low boy water heater. The total amount spent now was about $450.00. At this point, I knew that we would not be going to Iowa. The hardest part was telling my 5 year old daughter this. I finally got the newest heater installed and used a flex gas line and got the vent hooked up. This project was finished at about 11:00 P.M. I then stayed up for the next 4 hours playing solitaire and checking on my bird every five minutes to make sure that he was still alive. At 3:00 A.M. I finally decided to go to bed and was happy to actually wake up at 7:00 A.M. alive. The following day, we decided that since I’m using vacation time, we might as well still try to do something. I got on the internet and reserved a camp site at Prophets Town State park in Indiana. We went and stayed there or two nights and actually got to relax a little. This campout was very peaceful and eventless thank God. BUT…….. It is a very new campground with virtually no trees on our end and it was very hot the whole time. We stayed comfy by moving our chairs with the shadow of the camper. We came back from the first camp out and relaxed for a couple days before heading out on the next one. This one was a 4-1/2 hour drive for us and was a little more work to get to. After we got to White Water, I realized that our camp site was VERY uneven. If not for the safety chains still attached to my truck, the camper would have been lost as it rolled down the hill into a ravine. The temperature was over 95 degrees and I told my wife that it would be best if she took Mackenzie to the camp store while Daddy fights with the camper. After over an hour of messing with the camper, I finally got it level enough to open up. At this point, I was soaked from sweating and ready to just call it a day. I started to open up the camper and the red cable that stops you from going to far broke. Fortunately, I saw it happen. I hope I just remember it next time. I continued on and at long last, over 2 hours after we arrived, we had our camper and canopy set up. Then the rain came….. Becky and Mackenzie were inside putting up the curtains when I finished setting up and they heard the first drops of rain hit the camper. I told Becky that I was going to play in the rain to cool off. The cool rain turned into a thunder storm of Biblical proportions. It stormed almost as hard as I have ever seen for close to a solid hour without letting up a bit. The lightning was hitting so close that I made Mackenzie go back into the camper. I thought for sure that a tree would get hit by lightning and fall on us. |
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Title: Re: My Screwy Vacation - VERY LONG BUT FUNNY Post by ExplodingEyeBall on Aug 3rd, 2006, 2:05pm After the storm came to an end, I decided that the place was called White Water because of the cascading rivers of water that were running down the roads for the next 45 minutes as the camp ground drained. It finally dried up enough that evening for us to sit around outside for a while. That night, it rained again. The rain went almost all night and stopped just before breakfast on Thursday. After we ate, the rain started again. It continued without stopping till 6:00 P.M. the total amount of rainfall in that area in those two days was over 4.5 inches. This is typical of our camp outs. Once the rain stopped,the temperature stayed in the 90s to low 100s for the rest of the camp out with humidity over 90%. Friday started out good. The weather was nice and the rain had moved out. We were really starting to have a great time and then…. The Clampets moved in. This is the only way I could explain this group of people. They came in on two camp sites and set up six tents and constantly had at least 5 vehicles there along with a minimum of 25 people and 3 dogs. They were the most obnoxious bunch of people I have ever had to share a camp ground with. They completely monopolized the bathrooms/showers and their kids were playing in the breezeway between the men’s and women’s rooms. Behind this group was another group of two families who decided that everyone in the camp ground likes rap and wants to listen to it at all hours. They were in competition with the people right next to us who fealt the same way about their country music. We coped by going to the beach and hiking a lot. We also took a day trip out to Richmond one day and to Metamora another day. On Sunday, a lot of people left the campground and it started to look real nice again so we extended our stay by one day and really had a nice day. I tried to keep this as short as possible and left out a lot of stuff but I think you get the idea. BTW: All of this is true. |
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Title: Re: My Screwy Vacation - VERY LONG BUT FUNNY Post by alchemy on Aug 3rd, 2006, 2:21pm wow |
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Title: Re: My Screwy Vacation - VERY LONG BUT FUNNY Post by jimmers on Aug 3rd, 2006, 2:24pm Sounds like my Disney trip from a couple of years ago. It would take about 10 pages of typing to explain it all. But, like me I'm sure you had some fun in between there somewhere. Funny story though, because sometimes ya just gotta laugh because there is nothing left to do but laugh. Jimmers |
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Title: Re: My Screwy Vacation - VERY LONG BUT FUNNY Post by ExplodingEyeBall on Aug 3rd, 2006, 2:33pm I could have easily gone over 20 pages on this one alone but I shortened it as much as possible. We did have a lot of fun in spite of the calamities. It even dried up long enough to get outside for a while. http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b6d623b3127cce8bd6102a1ae400000016108EZs2rJy0ba |
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Title: Re: My Screwy Vacation - VERY LONG BUT FUNNY Post by JeffB on Aug 3rd, 2006, 2:42pm The joys of camping! |
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Title: Re: My Screwy Vacation - VERY LONG BUT FUNNY Post by tanner on Aug 3rd, 2006, 2:48pm Great story and a gorgeous picture of Mackenzie! Ever thought about becoming a travel agent in your spare time ;;D....Tim |
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Title: Re: My Screwy Vacation - VERY LONG BUT FUNNY Post by LadyLuv on Aug 3rd, 2006, 2:54pm W :oW, It's a good thing that you have a sense humor... Now I know where that little dark cloud (that constantly hangs over my head) went for a few days. Sorry about all your misfortunes, but I must thank you [smiley=bow.gif] [smiley=bow.gif] for taking it away, even if just for a little while. ;) LadyLuv |
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Title: Re: My Screwy Vacation - VERY LONG BUT FUNNY Post by cootie on Aug 3rd, 2006, 3:21pm Glad to know were not the only ones that go thru the same senerio's with vacations and planned events we look forwartd to......shit goes wrong from the get go and usually just enuff to become a bit annoyin till the big mess ups happen. Like camping in an open field with a large group of close friends.......things seem'd to be going along ok and we have lots of huge canopys we setup for group shade and people bring grills and stuff. We rode the bikes out there and was about a 3 hour trip and really a hot weekend.....the ride is enuff to wear ya out (on an old Shovelhead) and then the setup begins in the hot sun. But things seem'd to be goin TOO WELL when a group pulled in we didn't know and setup camp rite next to us in this open field. Not sure why they had to get so close but they did and the camp area didn't get nearly as busy as was thought anyhow that weekend. They had a few tents and a big van. They backed the van up about 5 foot from our tent. So......around chillout time Friday nite sum of us decide to go to bed cuz we had a long day and a longer day comein up Sat with bands and stuff goin on. This other group decides to BLAST bluegrass out of the back of there van out of speakers half the size of our tent......holy crap !!!! They stayed up all nite long too yuckin it up and laughin and partyin but were QUIET as hell neighbors until around midnight. The same CD played over and over for about 3 hours till we wanted to CHOKE sumone......it was so loud our tent sides vibrated. Fineally onea the guys snuck over before daylight and shut the van doors cuz the people had all passed out on and in everything and didn't notice. So we were ALL burnt out as hell all day Sat from no sleep and grumpy and it got MAJOR hot that day also again. Sum of us went to bed early Sat which wasn't planned cuz we missed somea the bands but we were BEAT. The neighbors were quiet that nite that goodness and knew we were all pissed at them. Then onea the young guys campin with us that can't handle his booze gets mixed up and decides to go for a ride on someone elses bike.......'there's'.........so am sure they returned the favor gettin pissed off as us Sat nite when that happen'd and our friend is lucky he didn't get his ass beat for pullin that stunt. Seems every camp trip we plan shit goes wrong.......I need a REAL vacation not in hillbilly nation Pam |
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Title: Re: My Screwy Vacation - VERY LONG BUT FUNNY Post by Mosaicwench on Aug 3rd, 2006, 5:18pm Someday I'll tell you all about how it took us 12 hours to get from Milwaukee to Phoenix on an airplane . . . . |
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Title: Re: My Screwy Vacation - VERY LONG BUT FUNNY Post by georgej on Aug 3rd, 2006, 7:27pm Wow. You had some seriously bad ju-ju going on there. Maybe you should buy a lottery ticket. You're due. Heh. After reading your post, I realized you live somewhere near where I grew up--North Liberty, Indiana. The home place was right on what is now the border of Potato Creek State Park. 'Course by now, I've lived in Idaho since God was in the first grade. A lot of things have changed. Best wishes for a smoother vacation next time, George |
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