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Over two dozen cream puff shells cooling

July 5, 2015
by Nate

Bunny Ears, Cream Puffs, and Birthday Cake in Loganville

Our next part of the journey brought us back to my parent’s house in Loganville, PA. Sully got a late Easter present from my mom, a chocolate bunny with huge ears.

Sully started eating his Easter bunny from Nana by biting in to the huge ears

Sully started eating his Easter bunny from Nana by biting into the huge ears

We spent June 19 at my Grandma, Beulah Ness’s, house making Cream Puffs for the Loganville Volunteer Firefighters at Station 63. Her cream puffs are famous in Loganville. When she makes them in November for Christmas in Loganville she gets hundreds of preorders and extras are for sale at our church, Emanuel UMC. The cream puffs aren’t really filled with a whipped creamy topping like the name implies. They’re filled with a dense delicious egg custard in a large puffy shell. We spent the day in Grandma’s kitchen baking shells, cutting holes for the filling and mixing up custard. The next day Grandma was up early to fill the shells with custard and I delivered the tasty treats to the fire hall. Some of the guys were already out working the BBQ and grabbed their cream puffs before they made it in the fire hall. They’re a hot commodity in Loganville!

Measuring flour to make the cream puff shells

Measuring flour to make the cream puff shells

Over two dozen cream puff shells cooling

Over two dozen cream puff shells cooling

Natalie mixing up the custard

Natalie mixing up the custard

Sully taste testing the final product. Delicious!

Sully taste testing the final product. Delicious!

Getting some time behind the wheel with Nana out on Park Street

Getting some time behind the wheel with Nana out on Park Street

We celebrated Sully's birthday again, but this time with ice cream cake.

We celebrated Sully’s birthday again, but this time with ice cream cake.

June 26, 2015
by Nate

Astraea: Mobile

We started thinking it would be cool to travel in an RV or camper when we were bouncing down the coast of Baja. It sure would have been simpler to pull over somewhere and stop for the night instead of staying up on rotating watch shifts to keep Astraea sailing to our next port. Well, when we were in Florida, we had the time and a great internet connection for surfing the web. I found a cool looking tiny Toyota Winnebago RV on ebay in my hometown of York, PA. The bidding went higher than we were willing to pay on an unseen RV, so we searched more locally.

Coincidentally there was an RV show and sale in Tampa the weekend after and we looked at all the shiny new campers and motorhomes to get a feel for what new amenities were offered. After the show we searched Craigslist for local motorhomes for sale. Our ideal RV is small and economical. What really caught our eye was something built on a fuel efficient Toyota chassis that gets a few more miles per gallon than the larger motorhomes.

We found a 1989 Winnebago Warrior built on a Toyota truck chassis in Indian Rocks Beach, about 45 minutes from where we were staying at Natalie’s Mom’s in Tampa. We made a multipurpose trip out to go the beach and check out the RV. We checked it out and all the appliances worked, and it was clean and well cared for. We took it for a test drive and it drove well, too. When we went to negotiate and reached an agreeable price, I went back down to get some cash as a down payment and park the RV where we found it. When I went to start the camper it idled very rough and kept stalling out. Natalie got the camper parked where we found it and I told the seller we’d have to think about it, and that I wanted the RV engine checked out by a professional. We were really bummed after everything else went so well.

Luckily,  the owner took the camper to a local mechanic who checked out the engine and found some problems with the air intake and performed a compression check on the engine. The compression was good on all cylinders, around 120 psi. After hearing that the engine was OK we decided to make another trip to the beach to check it out again with the intent to buy the camper.

Say Hello to Astraea Mobile!

View from the front

View from the front

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