Getting ready to start our adventures this year has been a full time job of preparations all winter, now we are in the final stretch and getting excited to hit the road.
First was finding renters for our house to maintain it while we are gone ✅ which worked out really well when some friends were looking for a new place to rent. Next was accumulating supplies for our crafting cargo trailer. Since we work camp in exchange for free camping sites by working at park museums… we wanted to have plenty of supplies to perform demonstrations with. That and because I enjoy doing my crafts anyway lol.
I already had spinning wheels✅ and did demonstrations using spinning wheels and drop spindles last year but I wanted to add weaving to the list of accomplishments too. I’ve always wanted to learn to weave! So over the winter I contacted the local weaving guild and took some lessons and purchased ✅a folding floor loom, a small antique table top loom, and was given a vintage inkle loom. I also explored tape looms and decided to make some of those which started me on woodworking, so I ended up getting a few hand powered old school tools✅ which I can add to doing demonstrations with but also use for myself (I’m not much with power tools lol). I also do knitting, crochet, and sewing lessons and demonstrations. So that meant scouting the local thrift stores for supplies. Lots and lots of yarn, cloth, sewing thread, extra knitting and crochet needles/hooks etc. ✅it’s amazing what you can find in the thrift stores! I even found another loom for $5! Score!
Since I told hubby “if he thinks he’s gonna sit in the RV and watch TV all the time he’s gonna have another think coming” …and he needs to find a hobby lol …he has been learning and exploring with a few crafts of his own. So far he is really liking leather tooling and tin smithing✅. We even found a few “schools” for him to attend this summer for some short courses in his chosen hobbies along our travel route. That should be lots of fun!
So now that the cargo trailer is packed to the gills with mostly yarn✅ lol it was time to start working on packing up the house and moving stuff into the RV. Deciding what was going into storage and what was going with. Fortunately I’m not one to keep a bunch a junk (minimalist) so that wasn’t too hard of a task. The majority of my possessions (aka furniture and stuff) actually belong to my service dogs or the cat lol. The rest is tons of yarn, a chair, and a bed lol. But since the crafting supplies are going to be literally paying our way for traveling (work camping programs) … I consider those as exempt (aka not clutter lol).
Next was safety. Since our RV is an older Class A… time to spend some $ and get it completely inspected and do any repairs needed to make sure it is road worthy. We took it to the local diesel truck repair place and they did a 200 point inspection✅. Repairing things as they went. This was well worth the money as they caught a few things that would totally have had us stranded on the side of the road or worse had they not been repaired! Next was doing some changes for comfort which we were able to do ourself and with a bit of help from a carpenter friend✅. We switched out the old box TV for a new modern flat screen. Got a cell phone booster. Turned one of the cubbies that held an old box TV into a cat cubby for Miss kitty. Purchased “higher hanger” brand hangers to give us some extra closet space. Things of that nature.
I found some really nice have duty upholstery fabric at the thrift store over the winter so I made covers for all the chairs, couches, dinette cushions✅ (mainly because we have pets but also because it looks pretty lol) Things along that nature all had to be prepared in advance… then we played a fun game of Jinga! In other words…. puzzling out how to stash and pack everything we needed and wanted for our travels. Hence the crafting supplies in a small cargo trailer and everything else in the RV. If we decide to just do some regular tourist type traveling instead of work camping it should be easy enough to drop off the cargo trailer at a family members house or storage place for temporary storage and then go back to pick it up lol.
As you can imagine I’ve have multiple and very lengthy checklists we have been work from for a while now. It seems like as soon as we get something done we add 10 more things to the checklist… but we are finally at the end of all those checklists!!! So exciting!!!!
Conestoga Chuck and his sister lil bit know we are getting ready to hit the road and they are both getting super excited! They love to travel! So does miss kitty lol. We humans are sorta excited too lol. It took years of planning and many months of preparations and a test run last year… but we are now officially ready to realize our dreams! 🙂
So if you have been wondering why Conestoga Chuck has not been writing much lately, now you have your answer! Be sure to stay tuned for the further adventures of Conestoga Chuck as the time is very very very close for the real adventures to begin! Which was the original reason and idea behind the start of the Conestoga Chuck webpage 🙂 we have all been preparing a long time for this adventure! So let the fun begin! 🙂
Conestoga Chuck 