GREEN

The Sugar Beet Harvest is over and we have arrived at the Green River Lake State Park, in Campbellsville Kentucky. Here is a look out of the office slide window.

The campground has lots of Sycamore trees with varying shades of golden Fall colors that grace the air with their flights in the light breeze. Here is a look at the front of our campsite.

As in most of America’s Heartland States it is Deer Season and fishermen are still out on the lake. The beautiful trees also screen the satellites from our roof dome, so , we deployed our tripod dish. We receive the local TV channels out of Louisville, in addition to all that other satellite feed stuff .

 

In this campground there are no sewer hookups. We will have a “pump out” service that comes every Monday. Since we have three different dump valves, we have marked each of them with red tags to help the pump out crew locate them.

The campground has a store, a laundromat and a shower house. Several nice playgrounds and a ampitheatre just above the beach.

There is good internet wifi here with several repeaters scattered around the park.

We have two bars of cell phone signal here.

I’ll try to shoot a quick video look of the campground for a later blog entry.

VALLEY

The Sugar Beet harvest is over for 2013 ! Today is the round up day for us. That is the day that we round up our plunder and get ready to hoist the anchor so we can depart for Amazon dot com’s Christmas rush season. Here is a quick look at the larger than normal pile that Betty and I worked on this season. This first video is of the head end of the pile with the piling machine walked out away from the pile. Followed by a drive through the Sugar Beet Valley.

2013 Sugar Beet pile

To give a idea of just how big our pile of beets was this year, we shot a drive by video. Here is a look.

A drive by look at the pile

Each foot of this pile has 190 tons of beets in it ! Now, folks, that’s a lot of beets ! Remember that at this piling station, there are three large piles.

Here is a look at the chart with the tonnage figures on it. Note that the chart doesn’t go as high as our pile actually is. Our pile is 35 feet high and the chart only goes up to 34 feet !

Click on any photo for a larger view.

WET

Every sugar beet harvest season seems to be different, and this, our fifth, is no different in that respect. This one is wet. We are about half way into the harvest and are into one of several “too wet “shutdowns. Here is a look at our front yard in the Hillsboro RV park.

Wet ? Yeah buddy ! I guess it is !

The patio rug is under water, so we have to be careful when we step out of the front door. Poco sometimes forgets in his haste to be the first one out the door and before he can get stopped , he is standing in water !

If it gets any deeper our flag’s solar lights will go under.

Rainy day solution: Catch up on TV episodes, that were missed while working night shift, by streaming them down on the internet, while sampling some of Betty’s fine apple pies !

TOOTH

When we were scuba diving the changes in pressure would give us a heads up about a pending problem with a tooth. Those same pressure changes happen when you ascend or descend in elevation This year as we came down from a Summer at 10,300 feet high, I noticed a twinge in the tooth that had lost it’s crown, and had been replaced,  last year.

Naturally it got worse as time went by. Two days ago,  I had to find a dentist that could work me into their schedule. An extraction was in order, and, it didn’t go well. Though the Dentist did all that they could, it was a molar with three roots. A bit of an unusual tooth. Hidden under the crown, a cavity had started un detected and had gotten progressively bad over time. Wednesday morning when I woke up, I was in pain and my face swollen. I had to get off of the dime and take care of business.

A three root extraction can have complications, and sure enough, this one did. Two of the root tips broke off and they sent me to a oral surgeon to get them out. The surgeon was good, quick and efficient, so by 1830 hrs. we were headed back to the 5er’. The surgeon sent me home with a bag full of gauze, meds and care instructions

The next morning it is a whole new world !

Our rain shut down is over and we will be back to piling beets tonight !

.

DIFFERENT

This is our fifth sugar beet harvest up in the Red River Valley of the North. It is a cool workamper job with great co workers. Each season is different and that is one of the neat things about it. This season has been on again and off again, but we’re hanging in there and makin’ money while we’re at it !

 

That boom is 110 feet long and it makes a pile that is about 250 feet wide.

Yup, thirty two feet high !

If this season finishes up as they have it planned, we will build one of the largest piles ever ! One year our pretty standard size pile was worth 11 million dollars !  That means that there is no telling just what this years much larger pile will be worth.

We probably get more questions asked of us, about the sugar beet harvest, than our other jobs. Here is a link to a web site that will give much information about the harvest.

www.sugarbeetharvest.com

It is outside work in all kinds of weather, but it pays regular time, time and a half, and double time ! Our full hookups campsite is paid for us by the employer !

Good folks, good work, great pay, hey, it’s the beet harvest !

BOOBOO’S

When we completed our fourth year of full time RV’ing, three of those years had been in our Coleman 37’ fifthwheel.  Each of those three years had been different and had presented new challenges for us. Each year had brought new booboo’s to the finish of our 5er’. Here is a look at them.

This dent in the skirt of the living room slideout, happened on our first trip out when we had less than 1000 miles on it.

West bound on I-40, someone in the Eastbound lane clipped a orange, trashcan sized traffic pylon and it came into our lane, hitting the slideout.

Our second year in the Coleman, we were headed for the sugar beet harvest when we couldn’t avoid a piece of steel in the highway. It blew two tires and ruined two wheels, tearing loose the wheel trim.

Our third year in the Coleman we were up on the Lakota Sioux Reservation when we met a tractor pulling a large piece of farm equipment. I remember thinking, “how in the heck did we ever miss that thing!”. It was a gusty wind day and we didn’t know until a friend asked about a scratch later, that we hadn’t really missed it at all !

This is mine, all mine, no one else involved, to pass the buck to. I made too tight of a turn down in an industrial area, to get out of a cul de sac, and put the bumper of the Jeep into the rear corner of the fiver.

They are all very minor in nature, and more in the nature of a blemish than actual damage. But, and that’s a big but, it sure makes us wonder just what is in store for us out on the highway to adventure, this year as we begin our fifth year of full timing in our RV !

THRIFT

Each year when we arrive in the Red River Valley of the north, we look forward to a day of shopping in all of the thrift stores that we can get to. We look for things that we can wear and discard after the sugar beet harvest. The mud from the fields stains clothing enough that it is nearly impossible to get out. This year I needed a replacement heater to go in the cab of the piler. I found this one for $6.00 at the first stop.

Another thing that is of great interest during the harvest season is the weather.

I found this portable radio that picks up the NOAA weather for $3.00 at another stop.

It works on electricity or battery’s, pretty handy !

We found several other clothing items that were of high tech fibers for when the weather does turn.

The fifth year at the sugar beet harvest, we’re loving it !