Wade, NC – Really our first down day

Yesterday, we took things easy.  The first day we either didn’t face calamity or have to pack up and hitch up right after breakfast, it was really nice!

Tuesday when we arrived here, we had hastily unhitched and then ran Jeanne to Denise’s. Upon further examination of that setup, Mag realized that when she was guiding me into the site, she gave me the all good either too early or a little too late.  You can see in the photo that our stairs in and out of the trailer sit at the base of an oak tree.  Not necessarily a problem but another one of the many lessons learned.

What else did we learn today?  We had a sense we would be running down our propane supply so I wanted check our levels.  Manufacturers make gauges to monitor the level in propane tanks but they can be unreliable.  The only way to really get an accurate measurement is to weigh the tank(s).  We have two tanks on the trailer, 30# tanks and the tare weight (weight of the tank empty) is stamped on the tank. Propane weighs roughly a little over 4 pounds/gallon.  The process includes weighing the tank you want to measure, subtract from that the tare weigh and the result, the difference, it how many pounds of propane remaining in the tank.  Last night I weighed both tanks with a device I bought that you’d use to weigh a fish you caught; driver side tank was empty, passenger side had 10 pounds remaining. The decision was, do we need to run out and get our tanks filled or could be make it through the night?  Temps were going to be in the 20’s overnight but, more importantly, we had a pizza to cook in the oven.  We felt we’d have enough fuel so we held off until the morning, Wednesday.

We got the Margherita Pizza (frozen) with almond flour crust ready and waited for the oven to preheat.  After fifteen minutes, the pizza goes in.  For some reason, the over keeps going out.  I keep turned it back on but several times, it would go out after several minutes, or so.  After allowing it to disrupt my normally peaceful state of mind, I make one last attempt.  “Third time is a charmer?”  After about 15 minutes, the pizza is done and we sit down to a nice meal; we enjoyed it very much.  Pizza was pretty good!  We surmised that there must have been air in the gas line to the stove and it had finally worked itself out.

We slid into our sleeping bag about nine and both enjoyed a good sleep.  Tomorrow we’ll have another easy day, hopefully, we’re entertaining.  The Hillyers and Jeanne are coming for a visit.