Almost Ready

I think I'm mostly packed for the road trip. The in-bed tool box is full as well. The list is almost endless as it includes tools and supplies to install stuff on the RV plus stuff for the RV road trip plus stuff for the initial road trip south without the RV.  The tonneau cover should keep things reasonably dry and most things are in plastic containers or action packers.

Stuff in the cab that I didn't want to get wet which includes the solar charge controller and inverter. I don't want the stuff to go above the level of the seat backs. The tan "cover" is actually the pet seat cover that I had picked up earlier. I figure that I can just drape it over the stuff in the back seat to kind of cover it.

I just switched tires on the bicycle and doing some minimal maintenance on it. After some thought, I decided to take the old Specialized Hardrock that I had picked up at a garage sale. Today (Tuesday), I dug out the receiver mounted bicycle rack from the storage shed. I think the last time it was used was over ten years ago. Surprisingly, I still had the key for the cable lock built into the rack. The trailer has a sturdy 2" receiver to hold the bike rack. The tires were just street tread tires with kevlar beads from Walmart. I almost didn't even need tire tools to get them mounted on the rim. Things have really changed since the last time I worked on bicycle tires.

One of the items purchased for the trip that I haven't mentioned is the Travel Berkey water filter. It holds about 1½ gallons of filtered water and is sufficient for two or three people. I've had it set up in the kitchen for the last couple of months and the water produced is very good. Not tasteless like distilled or reverse osmosis. Supposedly it qualifies as a water purifier and not simply a filter. As part of the setup process, you put red food coloring in the upper reservoir and check to see that none of it makes it through the filters. I've heard a lot about this system. Now I need to figure out how to transport it. Maybe I'll just set it up in the truck and use it to make drinking water during the trip.

One more item that I have been sort of waffling on is an RV specific gps unit. The one I ordered was the Garmin RV 770 NA LMT-S which was just released last month. BTW, that was one of the reasons for waffling as the older unit may not continue to get updated maps. The RV specific units allow you to enter height, width, length and weight so you can avoid things such as low bridges or tunnels and has predefined points of interest such as truck stops, dump stations, propane sales and campgrounds. The other reason for waffling was that I didn't think we would need it in the western states. From what I hear, most of the RV routing issues are in the eastern half of the U.S. and Canada. But after talking to some other RV owners, I went ahead and picked one up.

And, yes, ScooterBob is going to be travelling down the Alaska Highway. Look for pictures and posts early next week whenever I can get WiFi.