House Is Finally Up For Sale

We officially put the house up for sale a few days ago.   Signs are in the yard and on Route 1, we have listed the house on Craigslist, Zillow.com (and Trulia.com - same company) , and several other sites like Homebuyer.com, fizbeaux.com, fizber.com, etc.  and we have already had several inquiries and one showing with another showing scheduled for Monday.  We are very hopeful the house will sell quickly as it is a pretty desirable property.  It has one of the better ocean views in the area (at least from the poor side of Route 1 - the non-ocean side), and is very private.  You can check out our website to sell the house at http://dick46.wix.com/belfastmehomeforsale or see our Zillow listing at   http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/15-Ryan-Rd-Belfast-ME-04915/2137945746_zpid/?view=public

Shake Down Cruise

We took the trailer on the road for the first time - a shake down cruise more for Donna & me than for the truck and trailer.  I have quite a bit of experience pulling trailers so I wasn't too worried about that - just need to build up my faith in the security of the 5th wheel hitch - these are new to me.  We made a few laps around town and ended up going to the National Guard parking lot (big lot that is empty during the week) and practiced backing up, checked the turning radius and experimented with how sharp I could turn without having the trailer hit the tool box.  All went well and we made it back without incident.  Now disconnecting the trailer was another story.  We could not get the hitch to release no matter what we did.  In a brief moment of weakness I decided to look at the manual and sure enough, the Curt hitch operates differently than the ones on the You Tube videos.  One minor change in procedure and the trailer released from the hitch.  

Final Preparations #2 - 5th Wheel Updates

We bought our 5th wheel last fall - a Forest River Cardinal that is about 31ft. long.  As 5th wheels go this is a fairly small one but we think it will be big enough for just the two of us and Darby (our dog). It has all the basic 5th wheel stuff - living room, kitchen, bath with shower, a queen size bed and a considerable amount of storage.   

Darby - Our 7 Year Old Mountain Cur

It was lacking a few things however.  We wanted to have the ability to stop anywhere and be self sufficient so that meant we needed to add batteries, solar, an inverter, and wi-fi.  We ended up adding 2 batteries to the existing 2 battery bank giving us 4 - 205 Amp batteries,  We added 4 Renogy 100 Watt solar panels to keep the batteries charged, and a 1500 Watt pure sine wave inverter to give us the 120V power we would need for computers, electronics, lights,, etc when we were off grid. 

The Battery Bank 

 The Solar Panels 

Solar Charge Controller - Inverter

We also wanted to have decent Wi-Fi as much as possible whether we were at an RV park or elsewhere. We installed a Radiolabs Wi-Fi Repeater than is a high power external Wi-Fi antenna capable, under the right conditions, of connecting to wi-fi over a mile away.  I have done some initial testing of it and it seems to work quite well - we will see how it goes.  These were developed for marine applications but can work quite well on land with line of site or near line of site locations.

  Our 5 Ft. Tall Wi-Fi Antenna

Final Preparations #1 - Getting Rid Of Stuff

Well, we are getting closer to the day we will be permanently on the road.   We have nearly completed selling and disposing of our personal possessions through a combination of Craigslist, one large yard sale, Goodwill and the county transfer station.  We sold the Durango on Craigslist and believe it or not, we sold the Ram 1500 as a result of the yard sale.  When we got the signs for the yard sale I saw some for sale signs and made a last minute decision to pick one up and put it on the truck at the yard sale. To our surprise we sold it to someone that saw it at the yard sale - never had to advertise it on-line.   I have owned this truck for 10 years so it was a little hard to let it go - but go she did.    Here are a couple photos of her from the day of the yard sale.

 And here is her replacement - a 2014 Ram 3500, diesel dually with 8 ft. bed.  This may be a little overkill for the size trailer we have but we wanted something that would pull the trailer comfortably and safely.  It is also large enough that if we decide to get a heavier trailer down the road it will be able to handle it.

We decided to get the factory installed 5th wheel prep kit added which made it easy for us to install the 5th wheel hitch.  Photo below of the Curt 20K 5th wheel hitch installed on the RAM "picture frame" adapter.  The hitch fit perfectly and is easy to install and remove.