# 9 Raleigh

Raleigh We are at Falls Lake Holly Point campground and getting a little closer to the day when we need to leave so I had some jobs still to do. We decided to stay in Raleigh for about a week to get the RV in better shape for the big trip and hang out with Ben as much as possible. My sister Darylene also came to see us on Thursday for lunch which was really great. She lives in Cary and brought us BBQ chicken from SAS cafeteria where she has had a very successful career as a computer smart person wonk doing things with statistics in ways that are over most peoples heads, definitely mine. Several years ago we were not getting along and I was so pleased that things got better. Time takes time. I was honored she would come by and hang out. She mentioned she was retiring from SAS at the end of June but was going to keep the cafeteria as it is so delicious. I wanted to install the new liquid level sensor system, run the cables that would operate the rear cameras, pull a 10 gauge wire to operate the rear jacks and add a wire to operate a thermostat for the baseboard heaters in our bedroom. I had read early on that when RV camping you should use space heaters in winter to stay warm because the campground provides 120 volts as part of your stay but you buy propane on your own. I liked the idea but I wanted to jazz it up a little so I installed permanent baseboard heat in all the rooms and under each toilet. We have two girls involved and camping is nice but cold toilet seats are not so great. The T-stats are mounted on the heater in the living room and when its nice ,78 degrees, in the main room its about 90 in our bedroom. A new wire to a new t- stat by our bed will be a nice touch when its cold out. All this needed to be done underneath the camper while I had all the belly pans off. Everything went pretty well but there's always mistakes along the way. I would say things when about as good as they needed to and we had a nice dinner at a Mexican place with Ben and Savannah on Sunday evening because we're leaving on Monday. Savannah stayed with Ben for two nights because she's not going to see him for a while. She stayed at his apartment for Saturday and Sunday night.

Azura, my Grand dog, had been enjoying all the extra attention Savannah offers so they all had a nice time. We had a nice dinner. For some reason I keep on misunderstanding the amount of time that it takes to get from wherever I am back to the camp ground by 10 pm when they lock the gate. I keep arriving to the gate at like 9:53 and in a sweat. While in Raleigh I did this about three nights in a row. On Sunday night when we left Ben's house and when we turned on the GPS in to get back to the campsite and it said time of arrival time was 10:01. Since the gate closes at 10 , I felt pretty stupid and I got on the highway and I tried to burn up as much asphalt as I could to trim a minute off. I was able to I was able to do so and anyway I was able to get the time down to 9:58 by the time I got off the bypass which was a very good thing. We could have left Ben's house at 9:30 but I was playing on his computer on Amazon. None of this would have been relevant but I had done it three nights in a row. Each night the process was all new to me with great stress each night. I have a pattern of doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. I worked all day Monday doing this and that and one of the important things that I needed was turn in some license tags to the DMV for the three vehicles that have been left in Wilmington. I did that and I sent some packages via UPS back to Amazon. The closest place to do this was Wake Forest and at the DOT place there was a unattended UPS truck parked. My packages were all prepaid labels and I tried to find the driver so I could just do a easy drop off at the truck.He/she had not a appeared for like 5 minutes or so and its 2:30 and I'm supposed to check out at 3. I just put the packages in the front of the UPS truck and wished them well. I was supposed to pick up Savannah from Ben's house while I was out but with the day getting away from me I asked Ben to bring her to near us when he got home from school at 4pm. The next thing you know and we didn't leave the campsite until 7:30 at night but we're in luck as they were not enforcing the 3 o'clock check out time. I just kept on working and hoping they wouldn't come by and the park ranger never came by so I kept on working. I felt I was hiding out trying to avoid the law at my site. I figured if they kicked us out we were leaving anyway. Ben met us at Lowes as I had to return an item. Thats' a whole other story. I"ll call it price check.