Temperatures in the low 90s gave way to temperatures in the upper 90s and low 100s last week. Which, of course, made the journey back from our awesome camping trip into half a nightmare.

We arrived at our campsite Friday afternoon as planned, then argued with the pop-up camper, trying to get it set up correctly. This is the second time we raised the lid since we got the new motor installed, and it decided to quit rising before the top was fully extended. The motor worked as designed bringing the top back down, but lift it to where it needed to be? Oh, hell no. We spent the next forty minutes manually moving the gears to get the top where it needed to be—what a pain in the keester.

Once we got our rig situated, we looked around and discovered a group that we had met on the highway were our neighbors. We’d been wondering whether we would see them at the event or not. Lo and behold, there they were right next to us.

The half a nightmare part came when we found the weekend traffic. We were about halfway back to our stomping grounds when we ran into the mess. Our route was pretty locked in by then, so finding an alternate with a camper following us was out of the question. The speeds got slower, the volume got heavier, and the air got hotter. The acrid odor of burning brakes and hot clutch kept us company. Luckily, the afternoon storms kicked in ahead of us. The rain was a memory of damp pavement, the smell of petrichor, and a sudden drop of temperature. If that hadn’t happened in one of the most dangerous sections of highway, it would have been pleasant.

We landed safely just after the sunset before it got too dark. We were so glad to be off the highway that we just sat on the bikes for a moment to reorient ourselves. The dogs, of course, we’re losing their minds waiting for us to get in the house.

Monday morning started with me hitting the ground running. That was not part of my original plan for the day, let me tell you. I’d planned to spend the day resting from the hell-ride we experienced the day before. When I looked at my phone, I saw that one of the septic companies I had reached out to a few weeks prior was trying to reach me. I met the tech an hour later and spent the day “supervising” as we got our septic system inspected, cleaned, and upgraded.

The week stayed busy. Our extended family celebrates some twenty birthdays during the summer. With that in mind, we did a lot of cake and ice cream this week.

I got to work on my sunburn some more on Thursday when our donated shed finally arrived.

I’ve been working with a veteran’s resource group that helps vets in need. They worked hard to secure a storage shed for us to have something other than our trash trailer to store our tools and the few items we recovered from the debris. Now, we just have to get everything moved over to the new shed. We’ll probably also need some shelving and such, but we can do that ourselves. Meet our Tuff Shed and our first new building.

I’m sure the coming weeks will begin to get busier. We still have a lot of work to do to get back into our own home, but we’ve started moving forward, and it feels good.