Laura and Sasha's Excellent Adventure

Answered a question posted on the Guestbook. The answer is located at the bottom of the Question and Answers page.

Middle of August and we have some pictures!  Especially of the Shenandoah hike we took.

August is now up!  I took some pictures on the first of August, so that you could see how the garden is doing, We have had rain, so no drought conditions so far this year. But the zucchini and squashes are still not out of control. Maybe that starts in August, but it has not happened yet.

July Expenses are in! The best month ever as far as expenses go! We went below the $1K threshold for the first time ever. Yet we still were able to have loads of fun.

Happy Birthday to Sasha - July 22nd is his birthday!  My Parents and my sister and her kiddies - Brenden and Lindsay came over from southern Virginia to go with us to Luray Caverns the next day (July 23rd) and boy do we have pictures. So many, in fact, that I made July into two pages. So July 1st through 21st is the first page, and July 22 through to the end of the month is on the second page. That way the page does not take so long to load. 

We have lots of pictures up for July, plus more insights. Also, a new page is up called Questions and Answers that you can see on the left navigation bar. Some readers have been asking us questions and we thought it would be nice to let others read and maybe get information for their own usage. So read away!

July is now upon us, I have been working out in the garden, we went for a nice hike but mostly we have been working, working, working. So not as much to write about. But Happy Independence Day to all!

We have the June expenses up shortly - it was an expensive month, almost spent $500 in groceries this month. That was partly to buying massive amounts of berry picking, and also because I was doing buying for "provisions." I will explain after the June spreadsheet. I will also have up the Quarterly Expenses.

I am going to try out something a little different. I have tended to write almost everything down here on the website, and so June was a pretty long month, and the page was really long. I am going to try to have a weekly page. Right now it makes no sense to do a daily page - there really is not that much going on to do a daily page. Bloggers have the software set up in such a way that they can do that, but we tend to overwhelm the blogging software with all of our pictures, so that is just not going to happen.

Also, just found out, that starting on July 15th, SPRINT is no longer unlimited wireless card service. They now have a cap of 5 GB per month. So they have turned out to be just like every other company out there. It truly is a shame, and I guess ultimately we will have to budget in for a DataStorm system (Although Sasha is not so sure about the datastorm...it costs a bundle and not sure if it truly is the best). Since we do not watch TV, we do not need satellite for TV, just for internet. 

More Updates in June, especially trying to do a garden - a square foot garden. We will see how it turns out, but for now, some updates for June. The garden is going well, and I had a book club meeting on Tuesday, June 24th. Seeing everyone and having a great dinner are always the best. Really recharges the batteries.

MAJOR STORM - No One Hurt, No Rigs Damaged - But VERY VERY Scary in an exciting kind of way.

June is here and it is Hot, Real Hot, What the Hey!  One day it is nice, cool and in the 70's and the nights are in the 40's and 50's and then the next day it is mid 90's and 70's in the evening. It turned to summer immediately. This seems to be happening all over Northern Virginia and other places too, but I just don't like it. We had tornados in the area on June 4th - very weird, especially as you think of tornados in the mid west, not here.

I wanted to address one of the questions/requests that is in the guest book - about email the website to their friends. As soon as I figure out how to do that, I will put a link either up on the left with the navigation or on the right above the ads. So that is coming.

Plus, I am might try a shout box, which you can put right on the page. I have seen other websites doing that, it is like adding a widget (an extra add on feature) to your website. As the guest book is a third party widget, so too can this shout box be one.

I also changed the hosting with my website. I still have the 1and1.com company hosting the website, but I did not need as many features for the business version, so I got the "home" plan. At $4.99 a month, that just can not be beat. I have a little box on the right side so you can check it out. 

The May expenses are up! You need to scroll down to the bottom of the May page to see it. We will have June up shortly, but as it has just began, it will be a while.

OMG - May 15 already! OK, I realize I have been slacking off but we were getting exclusive material for Gordon White's Truck Camper Magazine article and Northern Virginia had its Major festival at the beginning of the month. But still, bad Laura, and promise to do better. You would think with working part time for a private campground, I would be able to get things done. But I also have been consumed by a book I am reading for Book Club, a computer game (Farm Frenzy), and learning more about stocks via Updown.com. Please check out May 2008 for the things we did (also Mom's Day - Happy Mom's Day on May 11!) 

Also, since so many people are asking about Your Money or Your Life book, I put it as a direct link on the right side of the page. It is also on the May Page as well, which is up now.

April has been an expensive month! The April finances will be on April page. Just scroll to the bottom. We seem to be eating out more this month, maybe because we are getting used to being where we are, getting to know it. Sasha also has a larger commute, so we are trying to figure out schedules and such. I have finished out the Month of April and will get the Full Timing in a Truck Camper seminar up in the next couple of days. But April expenses and what we did in April are now up and ready to be read.

At the Mid Atlantic Truck Camper Rally from April 17th to April 20th: It is turning out to be the biggest one yet. I will be doing a seminar on Saturday and there are other seminars on Friday and Saturday to go to. Plus they are feeding us well and we get to see everyone.

Been In Northern Virginia 2 weeks: so far so good. Check out April for more info as to what we have been up to. We are planning to go to the Mid Atlantic Truck Camper Rally next weekend, I am doing a seminar on Full Timing in a Truck Camper. Should be exciting. I'll try to have the seminar outline up tomorrow. The Full Timing in a Truck Camper Seminar (outline) is now up on the website for anyone to download. I will have Sasha print out a few of these for the seminar, but you can also print them out as well. Thanks.

April Move to Northern Virginia: We have now moved to the Northern Virginia to a private campground.  I'll have pictures of the site as soon as it stops raining or blowing wind. I expected rain (it is April after all) for the next couple of days, but the wind is something fierce. So Check out April 2008, life in a private campground.

Last Weekend in March, Last Weekend at Prince William Forest Park: We have one more group of people that have come in, Sasha is coming back from Florida, and I am now back at the camp. Check out March 2008 (and scroll down) to see some of the pictures that we both took on our travels: Sasha's Trip (he on the motorcycle and me with my family.)

(In March) Latest & Greatest News : When you want to check the Long Trip of 2006 - our life altering experience, well, I have been making changes so that it now looks like this website, rather than the old one. Please take a look. Also, the pictures load quicker and easier. I went to all of the pictures in 2006 (about 650 of them!) and resized the picture and then compressed them. I was able to do it quickly using a script (kind of like a Macro) in Jasc Paint Shop Pro program. So if you click on one of the thumbnails on any of those pages, the picture will download quicker.

As you can see, I have changed the website around a little bit, so that we could give you the latest and greatest news around, and have it on the home page.

I've put in a few new pages, as you notice on the left, there is an About Us page which has some information, plus most of the words that were on home page originally. You can also see the page for Full Time RVing in 2008, we are in the cabin camp but I do not seem to have a page with the both of us at the cabin. I will try to get one taken in the next couple of days, so that we can change the picture here, which although nice, is not where we are now.

We are now in February, I will write a couple things here on the home page, but if you want the full scoop, go to the February page. We have been reading a ton of books, probably because with the writer's strike going on, no good shows are around. So lots of reading. You can check out the books that we have read, they are on the right side of the website. It works well that way, as I can have a running tally of the books, and if you decide to buy a book, click on the link, buy the book, and we get a slight re-imbursement from the ad. Just clicking on the ad will not give us residual income.

It is now March, not February, and I am still playing around with the look and feel of the website. Unfortunately, both Sasha and I got colds mid month, which is slowing up my efforts to get the camper and trailer packed. We also want to get passports dealt with, so that we have another form of ID - as May 15th is just around the corner and the Universal ID (I think it is called something else) comes due. Without this, you can not get onto a plane. Not that we plan to do much flying, but two IDs are usually needed for loads of things, so we might as well get it done.

Also, I managed to get back into Google AdSense, a way to get ads on the website, for residual income. So on some pages you will see Yahoo's ads, and on some pages you will see Google's ads. I think since last April, we may have made about $50 for the ads, obviously not that much, but every little bit counts. I really do not know how some people get 100s of dollars from the ads, there must be serious amounts of people clicking ads. I am NOT suggesting you click, only if you find an ad to be interesting.

You may also notice that the page is wider now, than it was before. I have been able to change the layout on the home page, and now will have to figure out how to do it on the other pages. I am hoping to get a wider picture to put up on the home page, kind of a panorama view of something, hopefully us and the rig.  NOTE: I put up this picture of our stuff, when we were out in Rabbit Valley for our Long Trip in 2006.

February News: We have some great news,  we are going to the Mid Atlantic Truck Camper Rally this year. We were not able to go last year because we were selling the house and we were afraid we would not be able to make it this year because of a new job for Laura. Although I was disappointed that I did not get a job with the National Park Service in Shenandoah this year, I was able to get a job with a private campground in Northern Virginia.

The job at the private campground will be similar to working at the Visitor Center at a National Park. I will be answering phone calls, emails and talking to customers about reservations, working at the camp store, and doing work on the computers. Plus, giving out information on what there is to do around the area. It is a partial volunteer/partial paid position, working for the full hook up site and then the rest of the hours I will get paid for each week.

The campground is 50 miles away from Sasha's work, so the commute is longer than at Prince William Forest Park, but you are on the same road for almost the entire way. So Sasha figured, if he has to do a longer commute, might as well have some fun with it. SOOOOO we decided for him to get a motorcycle. Our parents are freaking out of course, and are totally against it, but Sasha is a careful person, plus the motorcycle is relatively big, and he will have all sorts of protective stuff on, so I will only have to worry in the morning and evening. When he is commuting. Oh well.

We will not be getting the motorcycle until late March, as he (and I) will be going to Florida for a quick trip. He and I are going down to Florida late Sunday night (after the campers leave), and we will stay at my parents' timeshare. He will stay until Tuesday morning, and then it is off on his own adventure. While he is doing that, I will be with my parents and Sister and Brother-in-law, and the kiddies at Disney World. I would come back Thursday night, in order to check out the next group and check in another group. I told Sasha that each time he gasses up the motorcycle, he has to give me a call. That way I only have to worry every three hours or so.

So we will have the motorcycle at the truck camper rally, as well as our ATV and motorcross bike. We plan on getting some riding in somewhere before and after the rally. Have not quite figured out where yet, but there are a few places to go so that should be fun.