August: Italy

Outbuildings began to be of stone

As we headed south into the Italian Alps, we noticed changes immediately.  No wood - almost all stone or stucco and bright colored houses began appearing.  The roads were different, too - very poor condition and things just appeared rather shabby overall.

Colorful stucco homes

Hilltop town in Lombardy Region

Limestone caves near Anzio, Italy

It took a couple of days to drive the long Italian peninsula to just south of Rome to meet with friends.  On the way, we stopped to fill up with propane, but our adapaters would not work with their pumps.  We need propane to run the refrigerator when we are not plugged into electricity (which now does not work), heat our hot water, and to run the propane generator, which would give us electrical power in emergencies and recharge our batteries.  Uh oh - major problem #2.  Okay, our electrician wizard will help when we get there.

 Unfortunately, the town is a beach resort and it would have been okay had we arrived in September when we were originally scheduled, but now we were here in the height of the summer vacation and there were cars everywhere and parked ine very direction on both sides of the street.  We could barely fit down the road.  We could find no parking closer than two kilometers from my friend's home, but they came to meet us.  We had a wonderful evening reunion with dinner overlooking the ocean...they live in a fabulously beautiful spot.  We met the electrical wizard and he knows his stuff, even though language is a bit of a problem.  He will take us around the next day to places where we may be able to replace the magic electrical box and find a propane adapter.

Absolutely no luck.  Everyone tried their best, but no adapters were to be found and the black box could be replaced, but it would take 3 weeks.  Temps are in the 90s during the day and stay around 80 at night.  We are parked in the public parking lot (legally), but not the safest place in the world, so we do not want to leave it there unoccupied.  Jack makes some calls and finds that we do not need the adapter in Germany, so we decide we have to get the propane and we tearfully say goodbye to friends, apologize for the abbreviated visit, but must leave in order to get to Germany as quickly as possible so we will have propane to run the generator to recharge our batteries and to keep the refrigerator running.

Winery Estate

We stayed at a campground directly below this hilltop town, but could not take the time to go visit.

Vineyards for miles and miles

It took another couple of days to drive north through the Italian countryside, up through the narrowest part of Austria through Innsbruck and into Germany where we happily filled our propane tank with no problems.  Hooray!  One problem solved and at least we have a bit of energy backup, but we are still dealing with no electricity other than what is in our batteries.  We are thinking that maybe Germany would be a good place to try again to find a replacement electrical box.