It's the middle of the night. I can't sleep.

I'm excited but it's drowned out by all the preparations I need to do. I'm exhausted and I'm sorry I haven't posted. I've been falling into bed at night.

I also understand that comments aren't posting. I'll work on that.

I leave Tuesday and should be in Quartzsite AZ by Friday afternoon. The weather looks good for the whole trip if I actually get on the road as I would like. Cross finger. I'm humbly asking my angels to watch over Elvis and I.

I have to turn over the keys to my house tomorrow, license the trailer, buy some groceries and finish packing. I also need to make a few other purchases for trip.

I haven't had enough time to practice some of the maneuvers I need to know, like backing up, for instance. I hope to turn on the furnace and water heater tomorrow. I was packing my stuff away today in the cold. I should have turned the heater on but I didn't expect to be out there organizing stuff as long as I was.

I have to tell you about the near trip-ending thing that happened on Thanksgiving. I hit a small bump as i was parking here at my brother's. The tailgate of the truck popped open and fell onto my brand new power jack. It was destroyed and I had no way to unhitch the trailer.

Mind you, I am extremely fortunate that the tailgate did not fall while driving over here. I hit plenty of bumps on the way. All the roads have dips and bumps. Even the interstate. I can't help thinking that angels were keeping that tailgate closed until I got here.

The next morning I made a couple of calls to mobile RV repair shops and got a wonderful, helpful and all around nice guy to replace my power jack.

If you're ever in the Portland area and need help with your RV, please call Wayne. Which reminds me. I need to write a Yelp review for him.

So Wayne and his helper took off my tailgate as well as replacing my jack. As this was going on, we discovered my trailer battery was dead. I ended up taking my trailer to his shop that afternoon so his teams could add another battery, check and charge the dead one, fix a running light that was out and fix the connector on the truck so the battery would charge properly.

I have to tell you all that I am very nervous. It is totally crazy to be doing what I'm doing. I've never driven a diesel truck or pulled a trailer before. I don't know how everything works on the truck or the trailer. Because of my months-long closing, I am not as prepared as I planned to be.

I really do love the truck though. I'm very comfortable driving her. I love her even though I had to detach the tailgate for now. There are some things I want to do to the trailer but those things will have to wait.

There is so much more I'd like to tell you but it's now 1:30 am. I don't know if I'll be able to sleep but I ned to try.

I'll post again as soon as I can; hopefully tomorrow night.