Is it really 5 days now? (Finger counting.. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and 29 in each leap year). Yep. 5 days to go.
Kind of getting worried now by the way. Sarah has been talking about packing. I told everyone that we could only take soft bags (easier to store in the RV), and now I'm bombarded with questions.
What size bag?
How much weight can we take?
Can we take four bags each?
Can I take the coffee machine?
Which is worrying. One of the coffee machines looks like this:
Which, you may argue, is bad enough. I mean, what do we say at immigration?
"Anything to declare?"
"Well.... about 1kg of Colombian ?"
"Ok. Thanks. Just take a seat in the little room over there. No, it doesn't have windows."
But the other one looks like this:
What do I do? Take the built-in microwave with it? The whole cupboard unit?
Oh dear.
Also got some lovely hints from Tom today (thanks mate). Seems that snakes, scorpions, bears, spiders etc are dangerous.
On a more positive note, I contacted a campsite in Sequim (pronounced Skwim apparently) in Washington State, inside the Olympic park; our first destination. I'll reproduce the whole email:
Full hoop-ups are full but do have dry/tent sites with water and restrooms available. The rate is $30.00 per night. Thanks! Don
----- Original Message ----- From:
To:
Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2009 12:29 PM
Subject: Feedback from web site 07/07/2009
Which in itself is hugely interesting. Full-hoop-ups are full! Well I should hope so. You don't pay for a half-full hoop, do you? Anyway, the good news, I presume, is that although sadly they don't have any hoop-ups left, hook-ups (by a process of elimination) are presumably in plentiful supply. So that's good. I'm still left marginally confused by the second half of the message however. Dry sites with water???? Something of a contradiction n'est pas?
Emmm.. this American adventure promises a whole new culture ;) Hooray.
Meanwhile Tom has been providing us with more invaluable information. e.g. A reminder that it will be hurricane season in the South. Thank you Tom. Apparently it's not just the wildlife that can kill you in the land of the free.
Incidentally - it's not ACTUALLY free. In fact, some of it can be quite expensive. Naturally I've made a budget (for those who know my love of detailed planning, please stop laughing). Looks like about $50 per night on an RV park. But for that you get electric hoop-up (?), waste water (sewer to you and I), a good sized portion of Nevada, Cable TV, WIFI, hot and cold running maids, and a beautiful vista.
On top of that there is of course food. We may get around to testing out the hobs when desperate, but otherwise the plan is fire-pit, bbq, or eating out. I have no idea about the price of food in the US, (they traditionally just ride out and lassoo dinner), but I reckon at Dutch prices that'll be about $50 per day too ?? (for 4).
Fuel - well, I won't even bother counting that one. I think it'll be about $2.70 or so per gallon (US Gallon= approx 3.8litres). It's probably cheaper than the water.
So as you can see, an accurate, careful and reliable plan.
(Please no-one refuse to accept a reverse charge call if you get one mid-August).
Ok. Til tomorrow.