At Long Last

This is gong to be a long post.

I’ll take this in more or less chronological order. When I last posted I was getting ready to head for Elma to close on the house. The F-150 was acting up, misfiring on one cylinder, and I did not have time to trouble-shoot it so I ended up taking the Honda. (A neighbor worked on the truck while I was gone.) While cheaper to run than the truck, I could not take as much “stuff” as I had planned which messed up some of the moving plan.

Anyway, the closing on September 16th went OK. No surprises and we locked in a mortgage rate of 3%, the lowest rate we have ever had.

After the closing I went to the house and started unpacking the Honda. There were several other chores to be done in the few days I would be at the house this trip so I had to get right at it.

These will seem normal to people who have moved before, but it had been many years since we had to get these tasks done.

1. Notify Post Office that we were in town.
2. Open local bank accounts.
3. Open an account at the local agriculture store as that is where our propane will come from.
4. Take delivery of new refrigerator and dryer.
5. Meet with the guy who would build the “catio.”
6. Find a grocery store, hardware store, and lumber yard.
7. Build a temporary dog run.
8. Set up a temporary kitchen and bedroom.
9. Meet with the city manager and arrange garbage pickup.
10. Get water running in the upstairs bathroom.

It was a very busy week, topped off with a return trip to Colorado. I arrived home on Sunday. Monday Pam and I  picked up our 20 foot U-Haul rental truck. We loaded the truck, and my 12 foot open trailer, to be pulled with the truck, on Tuesday. Wednesday we headed for Elma.

We had problems with the truck overheating on the long grade up to Eisenhower Tunnel. This delayed us for a couple hours until Pam, who was driving our Toyota RAV4, could get me some anti-freeze.

Did I mention I had two dogs with me, and Pam had our 3rd dog and 5 of our house cats in her car? A real traveling menagerie!

That night we stayed in North Platte, Nebraska, a few hours west of where we wanted to be. This led us to get to Elma very late the next night and we did not get to bed until the wee hours of the morning.

The wind was blowing very strong and gusty. One gust blew the hood off my John Deere lawn tractor and crashed it into the median. (I was able to recover a few parts of it on the return trip, but it will still cost $330.00 to replace the main hood which broke into dozens of small fragments.) Other than that the trip went OK, just a lot of miles.

OK. So we arrived in Elma with the Toyota full of animals and the U-Haul and trailer full of other stuff. We managed to get Pam’s mattress set up and my air mattress was still there from the previous trip so we fed the animals and called it a night about 1:30 in the morning.

The next day we moved the cats into the house and started unpacking the truck. Pam had had a wonderful idea; she hired a local handyman, in advance, to come with a lift so items going up to the second floor could be moved in through a window. This worked slick. The handyman (Dennis) brought a couple helpers who moved larger furniture out of the truck and helped move boxes from the truck to the lift and into the house. Process took about an hour and a half. We had unloaded some of the truck before the help arrived and were really getting dragged out so it was great to have helpers do the rest of the heavy lifting.

The next morning we returned the truck to the nearest U-Haul location, Charles City, which is about 25 miles away. While going through town we found the HyVee grocery store, a well known chain in the Midwest, and stopped to pick up a few food items. We also located the veterinary service that will take care of our pets. It appears to be a very neat, well kept, and well run operation. They even have separate waiting rooms for cats and dogs.

Back to Elma to unpack which continued the rest of the day. Another night over and Pam’s sister, Becky, arrived from Rice Lake. Becky would watch the cats and dogs while Pam and I headed back to Colorado for load #3. Becky provided us with some great tasting food so we did not have to worry about cooking, a great help and much appreciated!

Load #3 was my F-150 pulling a 6×12 foot U-Haul trailer. Several of the garage cats were trapped and placed in Pam’s Toyota. I had the last two house cats, Antonio and Mr. Bibbs, in the back seat of the F-150. Most of the cats trapped pretty easily but one, Gwyneth, eluded the traps and is still in De Beque. If I can’t trap her she will become one more of the neighborhood cats.

Getting started a bit earlier, we made it up to I-90 in the western part of South Dakota the first night and into Elma by late afternoon the next day. Top of the priority list was getting the cats settled. The house cats went OK as they were in separate carrying cages, but the garage cats, we thought, would be a problem.

Turns out it was not so much of a problem. The cats sought to hide in one of the carry cases Pam had left in the back of the car, so Pam just closed the cage door, carried the cats to the cat shed, and let them out. Repeat a few times and all the garage cats were transferred without incident. What a relief!

Events started to blur into each other. We unpacked the washer and Pam started doing laundry. There was cleaning, unpacking, arranging, minor repairs such as putting in light bulbs and finding the water shut off valve for the outside faucets. I managed to get the lawn mowed as it was looking pretty shaggy after weeks of neglect.

The Dish Network installer showed up to install our TV service. That went OK but the dish had to be mounted on the detached garage to get a clear view of the southern sky. That meant the cable running between the garage and house had to be buried. One more job I had not expected to have to do!

Then, for me, back to Colorado and back to work on October 7th. I had been off for three weeks and managed a trip a week to Elma. Each trip, with a few side jaunts, ran about 2,500 miles.

So, where are we now? Pam is in Elma with all the cats and dogs, working on getting things settled. She is paining, cleaning, re-arranging, and working with Becky to set up the house. I am working my regular job in Colorado and trying to get the garage packed in the evenings. There is still a lot to do.

Two more trips for sure are in the works, and I may have to rent a local storage spot for some items, such as my motorcycles, to be moved later or even next spring. We will have to see how the rest of the move goes.

We have photos on several devices and it will be a while before I can get them assembled into a gallery, so stay tuned for photos in an upcoming post.