Category Archives: Family-Friends-Home

Post related to our family and close friends and projects around the house.

2014/04/10 (R) Dunedin (FL)

[Photos related to this post will appear in a separate gallery post.]

I confirmed yesterday that our awning windows would not be reinstalled until Friday, which left us free to go do something today. We made sure the office had my cell phone number and then left around 9:20 AM for Dunedin, Florida about 30 miles south of where we are currently “camped” at Suncoast Designers. Most of the drive was on US-19 with road construction and moderate-to-heavy traffic the whole way. US-19 from Weeki Wachee south to St. Petersburg is just not an interesting or pleasant drive.

The destination was worth the drive, however, and we arrived at the eastern edge of Dunedin around 10:30 AM and parked near the Serendipity Café. Over the next hour we walked through Dunedin’s historic downtown area to the marina on the Gulf of Mexico and back to the car. Dunedin is the sister city to Stirling, Scotland and the historic downtown area reflects some Scottish heritage; at least the Scottish Heritage Center is there.

It was a gorgeous spring morning for a leisurely stroll with clear skies, bright sunshine, and temperatures around 70 degrees F. This was the sort of day that shows a town like Dunedin in its best light. Dunedin had a nice look and vibe to it–a bit upscale yet funky at the same time–with an assortment of unique restaurants (no chains), shops, and art galleries. It was visually interesting without being pretentious.

We were back at the Serendipity Café a little before 11:30 AM. We got a table for four and Donna and Michael arrived shortly thereafter. They had suggested this restaurant because it was approximately midway between our respective locations and it had some vegan items on the menu. Donna and Michael are members of our FMCA Freethinkers chapter and spent a few nights at Williston Crossings RV Resort in early January where we had a chance to finally meet and get acquainted. They have been vegans for a very long time, so we also have that interest in common. We were glad we could arrange another get-together with them before we left Florida.

We lingered over lunch for 90 minutes enjoying good food and good conversation. I had a “Green Monster” smoothie made with spinach, pineapple, mango, and papaya. Linda and I split the Asian kale salad which included carrots, red pepper, and roasted pumpkin seeds in a ginger/sesame/tamari dressing. We then split the Penne Fresco; brown rice penne pasta with tomato, zucchini, kale, capers, white beans, olive oil, and dill. The ingredients formed a light sauce that tasted like butter. Served slightly warm, it was pleasant and delicious. We split a muffin with dried cherries in it for dessert. It’s always a treat to find a nice little restaurant with vegan choices and even better when we can share it with friends. BTW: every dish at Serendipity Café is organic and gluten-free.

Donna and Michael had been on the Holistic Holiday At Sea cruise in early March so we compared experiences. They were on a different/newer ship than the one we sailed on so we could not directly compare notes on that. They found the educational aspects of the program very informative and decided to drastically reduce the amount of oil they use in their cooking. They were less impressed with the dining, finding many of the dishes bland compared to how they cook, the serving sizes too small, and the meals generally lacking in an adequate quantity of fresh vegetables. They ended up supplementing the special vegan dining with vegetables from the regular buffet. I think that IF you want to go on a cruise, and IF you are a vegan, and IF you would like to take something home from your experience other than a few extra pounds, then the HH@S cruise uniquely meets those requirements. If you are not really that interested in a cruise and/or gourmet vegan dining then VegFest in Pennsylvania provides the same or better educational experience for a lot less money.

We left the cafe around 1:00 PM and made the 3 mile drive north up the coast to Causeway Blvd, so named because it crosses two bridges on either end of a sand bar to form the causeway that connects Honeymoon Island to the mainland. We had to wait briefly for the drawbridge to lower to get onto the island, which got its name when someone many, many years ago built 50 cottages there for honeymooners to use. The first part of the island has some commercial development, but most of the island is Honeymoon Island State Park; the reason for our visit.

We used our annual Florida State Park pass to get in and headed to the nature center to rendezvous with Donna and Michael. The nature center is elevated, probably as protection against hurricane storm surge, but as a result it provides an unobstructed view of the park and surrounding water from its wrap-around deck. We got some good tips from the ranger about an active Bald Eagle nest and a Great Horned Owl at the north end of the Osprey Trail. We also noted the cautions about Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnakes that inhabit the island in significant numbers. The largest North American rattlesnake, it is one of the six venomous snakes found in Florida.

We drove to the trailhead, parked, and headed out, but not before changing lenses on my DSLR. Any chance I had of capturing wildlife images would require my 100-300 mm zoom lens. The trail out was level, dry, and firm but not hard, with adequate shade. The trees were mostly shorter palms with occasional taller pines, and a light breeze found its way in from the water. The Osprey Trail was appropriately named. We saw at least a dozen Osprey nests, most of them occupied with immature birds. We eventually found the Great Horned Owl roosting high up in a pine tree. The Bald Eagle nest was at the very end of the trail, by definition, as the park had closed off the entire tip of the island to keep human visitors and their pets from disturbing the birds. The pair of adult eagles had successfully hatched two eggs and the immature birds were already fledged and out of the nest. We only saw one adult bird soaring high up and far away, but the nest was impressive enough even without the eagles in it.

We took part of the Pelican Trail on the return hike thinking it might run along the water, but it was separated from the shore by high, thick vegetation. The trail was sandy and lacking in shade, making for a slightly more difficult hike. The air temperature was only 77 degrees F, but the sun was very hot, and we were all glad to get back to our cars. We chatted a while longer in the parking lot, said our farewells, and went our separate ways. Well, initially we went the same way; we were on an island after all, and there was only one way off.

Causeway Blvd becomes FL-586 which we followed east for about five miles to northbound McMullen Booth Road. We followed McMullen Booth Road, which became E Lake Road, north for about 10 miles to Trinity Blvd. Trinity Blvd cut ENE to the southern terminus of Little Road, which we followed north for about 12 miles back to New York Ave. From there it west just a mile or so back west to Suncoast Designers.

We were surprisingly tired considering that it had been a relatively easy day. Linda had some Tofurkey brand “fake bacon” made from tempeh so she made vegan BLTs for dinner along with a simple green salad. We went for a walk after dinner and strolled around the Suncoast property with Bill and Nancy who own the Newmar Essex next to us. A Country Coach Affinity 770 pulled in after we got back and the owner, Steve, came out and joined the conversation for a while. As dusk turned to night the air temperature dropped. We all started to feel the chill and retired to our rigs.

2014/04/07 (M) Big Wheels Keep On Turning

Leave a reply

The boots may have been made for walking, but the wheels were made for turning and it does not make much sense (to us) to own a motorhome and not use the motor to move the home around at least occasionally. Checkout time at Williston Crossings RV Resort is nominally 11 AM. We were planning to leave by then, but a call to Suncoast Designers at 9 AM caused us to push our departure time back. They suggested we not arrive until about 4 PM to make sure we had a place to park with hookups. That put our departure time target at 2 PM. We walked up to the office to make sure this would be OK. It was; we have been here a long time and been good residents, and no one was scheduled to go in to “our” site today.

Given some extra time we had not planned on, we went for one last, long walk around the RV resort. How different it looked and felt. The resort is turning over from long-term winter/seasonal use to short-term summer/vacation use and there were many empty sites. Eighty-nine rigs left yesterday. Many were Carriage 5th wheels that were part of the 70 rig Carriage Travel Club rally that was here all last week. But some were winter seasonal residents who have been dribbling out since April 1st and will continue to do so into May. We were not the only rig pulling out today. Our other neighbor, Sharon, is leaving this coming Sunday. A few rigs were pulling in, of course, but the departures currently exceed the arrivals on any given day.

When we returned from our walk I mixed up a batch of the concoction we use in the waste holding tanks (48 oz PineSol, 48 oz water, 1cup Calgon). I dumped the black-water tank and back-flushed it, followed by dumping the grey-water waste tank. I ran additional water through the drain hose and then disconnected the hoses and fittings and stowed them for travel. I reconnected the water softener and filled the fresh-water tank. Once that was done Linda helped me disconnect, clean, and stow the fresh water hoses and the water softener.

We tend to forego coffee and breakfast on travel days, but had a little of both this morning as we were not leaving right away. Because of the delay in our departure we did not have lunch. To pass the time I continued with travel preparations. The last time I had the coach batteries connected I noticed that the Pressure Pro TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system) was not reading one of the sensors (PS outside drive tire). We have a repeater for this system that I plan to install in the rear of the coach someday, but for now it gets attached to the rear view mirror of the car. I took care of that task and then decided to move the car up onto the patio next to passenger side of the coach. I left the ignition on to power the repeater and connected the coach batteries to power the TPMS receiver. After a few minutes all of the tire sensors were active and the tire pressures were OK for travel. I disconnected the coach batteries and put the car back in front of the coach.

At 1:30 PM we started our final travel preparations, clearing off the counters and moving stuff from the cockpit to the sofa, the bed, and the bedroom floor. At 1:45 PM I shut off the 240/120 VAC electrical power to the coach, disconnected the shoreline, and stowed it in the slide-out tray over the DS drive tires. I installed the screw-in cover for the utility port hole in the bay floor, and closed/locked the bay. I then checked the Magnum 4024 to make sure it had switched to inverter mode, which it had.

Once the shore power is cut we seem to develop an increased sense of urgency about leaving. I think this is due, in part, to the fact that I do not have the ZENA power generator operational yet, so our house batteries do not get charged while we are driving. That’s OK, up to a point; the battery bank was designed to be large enough to run the inverter and power reasonable loads for a reasonable length of time. But the sooner we leave, the sooner we arrive, and the sooner we arrive, the sooner we can plug back in to shore power. We have an auxiliary power plant, of course, so we always have the option of using that if needed. The other reason we are probably anxious to leave is more psychological. Once we are completely disconnected (physically) we are become disconnected mentally, although not necessarily emotionally. We are no longer “tethered” to that spot, and that means it is time to go.

I connected the chassis batteries, fired up the engine, and set the level low system to the driving position. While Linda moved the car to street I drained the auxiliary air tank using the nice dry air from the main engine air compressor. With John’s assistance we got the coach out of the site and lined up on the street. Linda pulled the car up behind the coach and we went through our procedure for hooking it up to the tow bar. We did our standard light check and found that the turn signals on the car were not working. A quick check of the connectors on both ends of the cable revealed a socket on the car end of the cable that was corroded. I used the awl on John’s Swiss Army Knife to clean it up. A recheck of the lights indicated that everything was working. After a final “goodbye” with John and Ali we were on our way.

Our departure delay meant we would be traveling SSW into the sun at the hottest part of the day. The air temperature was 85 degrees F when we left, and the engine ran slightly hotter than usual, indicating just above 195 degrees F on the coolant temperature gauge, so I decided not to run the coach air conditioning. The drive to Hudson was warm, but not unbearable. A cold front was approaching the gulf coast of Florida so we had increasing cloud cover as we progressed south and west towards the coast, which helped keep the cockpit from getting too warm.

We had a nice run from Williston to Hudson. We headed south out of Williston on US-41/US-27/FL-121. US-27/FL-121 split off to the west a mile south of town, made a sweeping turn to the left and then followed a nice straight line SW for 17 miles to its southern terminus at US-19. This stretch of FL-121 is straight but hilly. With the cruise control set the engine is very sensitive to hills. I always know we are on a grade, however slight, by the reaction of the turbo boost gauge and the pyrometers.

Most of the rest of trip was on US-19 except for the last three miles. Traffic was light until we got to Crystal River, which had slower speed limits, lots of stop lights, and lots of vehicles on the road. It opened up a bit after Homosassa Springs, but got congested as we approached Weeki Wachee where FL-50 ends at US-19. From Weeki Wachee to just north of Hudson traffic remained slow and congested with increasingly dense commercial use on both sides of the road and stop lights every mile. Just north of Hudson we turned east onto Little Road, which immediately swung south, and followed it for about two miles to New York Avenue, where we turned west and went another mile to Labor Place, the location of Suncoast Designers.

The coach ran fine, although the Check Engine Light came on almost immediately and was on more than it was off for the whole trip. That did not surprise me as we had not done any work over the last couple of months to fix the fuel temperature sensor voltage problem that is apparently setting a fault code in the DDEC II. I had hoped that the repairs we made in the dashboard wiring harness would fix the speedometer/odometer problem, but they did not; the gauge sat on zero for the whole trip. The left pyrometer (exhaust gas temperature) gauge, however, was much more responsive and tracked the right pyrometer gauge much more closely than it ever had before. It appears that the wires we repaired were for this gauge rather than the speedo/odo.

Once we pulled in to Suncoast Designers we pulled to the side of the road, so as not to block traffic, and unhooked the car. While Linda parked the car I found the office and checked on parking arrangements. Suncoast Designers has at least a dozen RV sites with water and 50 A electric hookups. The only one open was a somewhat tight spot between two other large Class A motorhomes that required me to back in. The maneuver was made more difficult by the fact that the road in front of the sites had a curb on the far side and was not wide enough to allow me to swing the front end without scrubbing the front tires. I repositioned the coach so that I was turning in from the driver’s side, but Linda and I could not figure out how to get the coach into the site. The guy next to us on the driver’s side offered to help. A former truck driver, he knew exactly what to have me do. Unlike some RVers, our pride is not injured by not knowing how to do something, and we gladly accepted his help.

I pulled past the site close to the front of his rig and then turned out to the passenger side, putting the coach at an angle to the open site. He had me back part way into the front of the site at that angle and then turn the steer tires full left to start to bring the coach around. He had me stop and then turn the steer tires full right and pull forward. Steer tires full left again and back up some more, then full right and pull forward. We repeated this one more time and finally had the coach lined up straight and centered between the coaches on either side without having hit either one! Linda was keeping an eye on the back of the coach the whole time (to make sure I did not hit anything) and guided me into our final position. We then leveled the coach and shut the engine down.

The outside air temperature was only in the upper 70’s, but it was 90 degrees F in the coach and the outside humidity was high. In spite of having nine windows that open, the three ceiling vent fans are not very effective at cooling down the interior under such circumstances. In theory we can run all three air conditioners on a “50 A” shore service, but we have tripped breakers before when doing that. (The issue is that circuit breakers are commonly designed to only carry 80% of their rated current on a continuous basis, so two of our A/C units plus a little bit of miscellaneous load can exceed 40 A on one of the legs.) Besides, as soon as I plugged in the Magnum 4024 was going to switch to charger mode and start recharging the house batteries.

I got the shore power connected and checked the Magnum 4024. It went into bulk charging mode and started charging the house batteries at 86 Amps. Since it is a 24 VDC charger, it was drawing ~1/5 that much AC current, or ~17 A, the equivalent of one of our air conditioners. The front (living room) and center (kitchen) A/C’s are on separate legs of the 240/120 VAC power supply, so we can run them at the same time. The bedroom A/C is on the same leg as the front A/C and the Magnum is on the other leg. We ran the front and center A/C’s along with Magnum and let the bedroom stay warm for the time being.

Suncoast Designers provides free WiFi for customers camped at their facility, but the signal we thought was theirs indicated it was “filtered” and we had not obtained the login information from the office before it closed. We used our Verizon MiFi instead and had a good, strong signal. I had a chance to ask our neighbor (helpful truck driver guy) later, and he said the open signal was the one they were using. Although it was a weak (one bar) “g” signal, our WiFi Ranger latched on to it without difficulty.

Linda needed a few grocery items and located a Publix grocery store on Little Road less than three miles from Suncoast Designer’s. As evening settled in we switched off the front A/C and turned on the bedroom unit. Linda reheated some of the leftover Sloppy Joe’s from the pot luck dinner the night before, and we had that on the skinny buns we have started using, along with a simple spinach salad and a few Fritos corn chips.

After dinner Linda sent e-mails to several of our new friends from WCRVR while I checked in to RVillage and took care of a few e-mails of my own. The overnight temperature was forecast to only drop into the upper 60’s with high humidity, and with rain starting before sunrise, so we decided to leave the rig closed up and the kitchen and bedroom A/C’s on all night. We rarely do this because of the noise and because we prefer fresh air, except when it is too warm and/or too humid. Considering that we had traveled less than 100 miles and been on the road just under two hours today, we both felt like it had been a very long day. As much as we enjoyed the social life at WCRVR, it was nice to not have anything to do but go to bed and get some rest.

2014/04/06 (N) A Vegan Farewell

2 Replies

Ali had this idea earlier in the week that a nice way to send us off would be with a pot luck dinner at their site. The only catch was that all the dishes had to be vegan! Our new friends have expressed some curiosity about the way we eat, and apologized for serving dishes at previous pot lucks that we could not eat, but I don’t think they anticipated actually having to eat any of it. I think they were initially apprehensive about the vegan pot luck dinner but they were good sports about it and took it as something of a challenge.

At last count it looked like we might have 12 people there and half dozen dishes to choose from. Linda decided to make the Sloppy Joe’s she served at our open house back in October. The 60 people who showed up wiped them out, so we know they are something non-vegans will enjoy. One of the reasons for her grocery run to Gainesville yesterday was to get the Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP) that serves as the hamburger substitute in this recipe. She normally buys Bob’s Red Mill brand but Publix, in spite of having a large selection of BRM products, did not have the TVP. That required an extra stop at the Earth Origins market where she found what she needed in the bulk food section.

Our major focus today, besides the pot luck dinner, was getting the coach (and us) ready for travel. It had only been moved back and forth about 3 feet a few times since we pulled in to site 439 at WCRVR on January 1st, so the engine oil and tire pressures needed to be checked. We also wanted to leave with all of our clothes clean, so my first chore of the day was doing the laundry while Linda made the Itty Bitty Carrot Cake Cookies. The laundry takes an hour and 45 minutes to do. The cookies took most of the morning.

The old adage “a place for everything and everything in its place” is more than a goal when living in an RV; it’s a necessity. Still, over the last three months some things have come out of storage and stayed out because we used them on a regular basis. It was now time to return them to their travel locations. While Linda straightened up the interior of the coach I checked the engine oil and coolant and re-packed part of the front cargo bay. When we pull out tomorrow everything has to be stowed and the dining table, counters, and end tables cleared as anything loose in the coach can slide and get broken or become a projectile in an accident.

With the housekeeping chores out of the way Linda turned her attention to preparing the Sloppy Joe’s. The recipe is from the “Hell yes it’s vegan!” website and claims to be the original/authentic recipe with the exception of the TVP in place of the hamburger. It uses ketchup instead of tomato sauce; sweet yet sharp from the vinegar.

John took the final reading on our electric meter this morning and turned it in to the office. The Sloppy Joe’s were on their own for the next three hours so Linda walked over to pay our final electric bill and return the mailbox key. Sometimes it’s the little things, like giving up a mailbox key, that most underscore the reality that your status somewhere has changed.

We have recently been unable to connect Linda’s computer to our network via WiFi, which meant she could not access the NAS where I store photographs and the files related to our website and blog. We have had the same issue with our wireless network at home and got around it by using an Ethernet connection. I was looking for a charging/data cable for my Palm Tungsten T-3 when I “discovered” that we had network cables on board. We plugged her laptop into the Amped|Wireless router and voilà; there was the network and the NAS. She was able to quickly back up files going back to mid-March. I have been holding off deleting photographs from the Compact Flash cards until I had them on the NAS and on her computer.

By mid-afternoon the coach was in pretty good shape for travel and the Sloppy Joe’s were slowly cooking to perfection in Ali’s slow-cooker. John escorted a trailer to the site on the other side of theirs, and Ali was already sitting outside, so we took that as an opportunity to give them a card and small gift; our way of saying “thank you” for being good neighbors, making our evenings at the fire pit memorable, and bringing us in contact with a larger circle of friends at the resort.

We had a chance to sit outside and read for a little while. Around 3:30 PM Linda starting taking the various components of our contribution to the pot luck dinner next door to John and Ali’s site. We took our four Zip Dee chairs and settled in with a couple of glasses of wine to chat for a few minutes before everyone else showed up around 4PM. Jim (Sunny Fox) Rowley came down and had a drink with us but did not stay for dinner. He and Janet had just returned from a week at Disney World and were very tired. Everyone brought their own libations. The mood was mellow, the conversation was good, and the food was spread out buffet style.

And what a spread we had! Linda provided the Sloppy Joe’s and buns as well as the cookies. Ali and John provided green salad, grilled bread with bruschetta topping, a citrus and strawberry fruit salad, and meatballs (for those who could not bear the thought of not having meat with their meal). Jeff and Kathy brought a vinegar-style Cole slaw. Charles and Sandy brought a couscous and black bean salad. Doug and Paulette brought a potato and vegetable salad. Jack and Silvia brought fresh cantaloupe with walnuts. Every dish was outstanding and, being mostly cold dishes, perfect for a very warm spring afternoon. The only other times we have had that kind of selection of vegan dishes was on our two Holistic Holiday At Sea cruises and at our open house last October.

As dusk set in the party broke up. We lingered a while to chat with John and Ali, but the mosquitoes and other small insects were numerous and persistent, and we finally had to retreat to our respective RVs.

The very last task before we pull the coach out of the site tomorrow will be to drain the waste tanks, top off the fresh water tank, and stow the various hoses, electrical shoreline, and water softener. Once we have the bus out of its parking place we will find an out-of-the-way spot, hook up the car, and be on our way.

2014/04/05 (S) The Last Campfire

Leave a reply

I am really glad that I installed the Feedly app on our iPads and figured out how to use it. I enjoy starting most days with our freshly ground and brewed special blend coffees from Teeko’s (Howell, MI) while I easily read any new content on the nine or so blogs that I follow. I also subscribe to our blog, which makes it easy to check on how our posts appear on an iPad. Sometimes I catch typos and I can log in to WordPress from the iPad and fix them.

We got an e-mail yesterday from the Escapees RV Club reminding us that April 6 was the last day to order polo shirts for the upcoming Escapade. Apparently we missed the original announcements (we get a LOT of e-mail and do not always read the commercial messages carefully). We followed the link to the special website and ordered one for each of us to pick up when we check in at the rally next month. It’s always nice to have a new polo shirt, especially one that clearly identifies us as RVers. The other reason to order is that I prefer a pocket for my eyeglasses and the pocket shirts are only available pre-order. We also experienced at the Escapade last July that the limited stock of available shirts sold out very quickly.

As long as we were doing RV-related things online we registered for the FMCA Great Lakes Area Motor Coach Association area rally in June. GLAMARAMA14 will be the second area rally hosted by GLAMA. The first one was last September and two versions of an article I wrote about the event were published. One version appeared in the newsletter of the FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches (GLCC) chapter. The other version was the cover story in the January 2014 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine. We will once again be parked with our GLCC chapter.

While Linda went to Gainesville for some specialized grocery items I worked on e-mail and RVillage stuff and then finished/uploaded my blog post for yesterday. I was reading the Harvest Hosts April newsletter and decided to see if Don and Kim had joined RVillage. They had, and had already created a Harvest Hosts Group! We joined the group and sent them a friend request, which they accepted.

I had an e-mail from Chuck indicating that he might have a problem with the Vanner Equalizer on their Prevost H3-40 chassis batteries and wondering if I knew where it was located? On the drive up from Pelican Lake in Naples, Florida to the Prevost Community rally at LazyDays RV in Seffner, Florida they got a telltale light indicating the upper and lower halves of the 24 VDC chassis battery bank were out-of-balance. It just so happened that I did know where the equalizer is located, but only because I had stumbled on it while servicing our chassis batteries not long after we got the coach. (It is mounted on the underside of the chassis battery tray or the adjacent chassis electrical disconnect tray.) I sent him the info and he called later to chat.

We are already thinking about what we have to do to be ready to leave on Monday. I shut of the fuel polishing module and removed the paper towel I had wrapped around the check valve last weekend to absorb fuel from the tiny leak. Polishing is just a term for “finely filtered.” The pump ran continuously for about six days, long enough to slowly filter most of the fuel in the tank at least once. The fuel polishing module draws about two (2) gallons per hour from the main diesel fuel tank through the pickup tube that supplies the Aqua-Hot, pumps it through the dedicated Racor water separator/filter for the Aqua-Hot, and returns it to the tank. Because the fuel is moved through the filter so slowly it is better able to remove any moisture, debris, and organisms that may be in the fuel.

We came in to WCRVR January 1st with a nearly full fuel tank, so the FPM needed at least four days to filter the 200 gallons we had on board. Of course, we have used the Aqua-Hot while we were here and also run the main engine, both of which circulate fuel through Racor water separator/filters, but not so slowly as the FPM. The pickup tube for the Aqua-Hot (and the one for the auxiliary powerplant) are (supposed to be) only 3/4 of the way into the tank (from the top) to prevent them from using all of the fuel in the tank. (We have a practical range of 200 miles on a 1/4 tank of fuel with a comfortable reserve; 250 miles if absolutely necessary. At 300 miles we would risk running out of fuel. That would not be good and require the engine to be re-primed once we had fuel on board.) The main engine pickup tube, however, is near the bottom of the tank, so running the main engine also has the effect drawing the fuel from the bottom 1/4 of the tank and returning it to the top, thus mixing all of the fuel.

I had disconnected the water softener yesterday so AALL*BRITE could use the water supply to wash our coach. One of my last chores before pulling out will be to dump the waste tanks and top off the fresh water tank so I reconnected the water softener in preparation for this task.

We gathered at Jack and Silvia’s site at 4 PM for happy hour along with John and Ali, Doug and Paulette, and Jeff and Kathy. We enjoyed a glass of the Barefoot Moscato that Jeff and Kathy gave us last night as a “thank you” for helping with the electrical issues in their motorhome. We also had a chance to chat with Paulette more than we have up to this point. By 5:30 PM we were all getting hungry and returned to our respective rigs for dinner. Linda made Cauli-power Fettuccini Alfredo for dinner using a recipe that replaces the traditional cream-based Alfredo sauce with a sauce made from cauliflower. She had not made this dish before and had to substitute angel hair pasta for the fettuccini. It was very tasty. In addition to Sloppy Joe’s she is making Itty Bitty Carrot Cake Cookies for tomorrow’s pot luck dinner. The cookie recipe calls for rehydrated raisins that have soaked overnight in water, so she had to get that started today.

Tonight was the last campfire we will attend at Williston Crossings RV Resort as we are scheduled to leave on Monday. The highs have been reaching into the mid-80’s, the lows only into the upper 50’s, and it has stayed light much later due to the switch to Daylight Savings Time and the steady advance of spring. These factors work against the appropriateness of a large fire and at some point, perhaps soon, WCRVR will stop having the Friday/Saturday night campfires until next fall when the long-term seasonal residents return. That won’t keep people from gathering at the fire pit to hear Smitty, Jeff, and others who might drop by, play their guitars and sing their songs.

Alas, we will not be among those retuning. As is clear from my many blog posts over the last three months we have enjoyed our stay at Williston Crossings and would not hesitate to come back here. Indeed, we recommend the resort without reservation to anyone visiting this part of Florida. But we are at the beginning of a journey in which we hope to explore and experience many places in North America over the next 20 or so years. There are too many unvisited places for us to return to one so soon, if ever, no matter how nice it is.

2014/04/04 (F) Converted

Leave a reply

AALL*BRITE showed up this morning as scheduled to wash the coach and clean/polish/seal the Alcoa wheels. The three man crew started on the roof and worked their way down and around. They used a “spot-free rinse system” that did not require them to hand dry the coach. When they were done with the wash and rinse they went to work on the wheels which were a messy job that involved a lot of hand work. The coach looked good when they were finished.

I went down mid-morning to check on Jeff and Kathy’s motorhome. Everything had worked through the night. I went back later and disconnected John’s 20 A battery charger. I then had Jeff disconnect the +12 VDC house battery cable. With the converter 120 VAC power cord was still unplugged the voltage at the converter output terminals was zero, as it should be. I plugged the 120 VAC cable back in and re-checked the voltage at the output terminals. It measured 13.5 VDC so the converter was, in fact, producing an appropriate voltage with no load attached. That did not prove that it was functioning properly as it could still be unable to maintain that voltage while supplying current to a load, but it was at least trying to do something.

The house battery bank had been disconnected for over 15 minutes. The resting voltage was 12.7 VDC, so the batteries were fully charged. My best guess was that Jeff and Kathy did not have a battery problem. I unplugged the converter and reattached the DC negative cable. We then reconnected the battery bank positive cable and plugged the converter power cord back in. The voltage measured 12.68 VDC. We decided to leave it this way and check it every couple of hours.

The RV technician who does work in the park stopped by and talked to Jeff for 5 minutes. He said he would order a new converter and schedule them for service on Wednesday, April 9. Apparently he presumed that Jeff and Kathy were being taken care of in the meantime as he offered no assistance or suggestions for how they might keep their rig functioning for the next five days.

Over the next four hours the voltage gradually dropped to 12.45 VDC, strongly suggesting that the converter was not maintaining the charge on the batteries. Just before dinner we unplugged the converter 120 VAC power cord and reconnected the 20 A battery charger. Later at the fire pit Kathy mentioned that the air-conditioners had stopped working so I walked over to check the situation. I found the battery charger set incorrectly, so I reset it, but I was not able to get the HVAC controller/thermostat to turn either unit on.

We spent the rest of the evening at the fire pit talking and enjoying Smiity’s music. Our friends from Ontario, Jack, Silvia, Doug, and Paulette came for a while and Smitty did quite a few Gordon Lightfoot songs. (I don’t know if Canadians like Gordon Lightfoot more than anyone else. He is certainly one of our favorite singer/songwriters.) Kathy brought down a couple of bottles of Moscato as a thank you for helping them with their electrical problem. That wasn’t necessary, but I certainly appreciate it. Charles and Sandy joined us for a while. They have relocated here from Texas and are looking to buy a business and settle in.

By 9:30 PM it was just John, Ali, Linda, and me. John has assumed increased volunteer duties at WCRVR from April 1 through November that include closing up various buildings at night. I spread the fire logs out on the grate and we returned to our rigs while John attended to his chores.

2014/04/01 (T) No April Fool

Leave a reply

Today marked the one year anniversary of Linda’s retirement from Metropolitan Baking Company where she was the controller/treasurer and HR person for 10+ years and the outside CPA for many years before that. She is still working for the bakery as a consultant, which was part of the reason for her return to Michigan in late February, but she has also been learning how to be retired over the course of the past twelve months.

Carriage Travel Club members. How to tow a 5th wheel RV in style!

This is now the 5th month in which I have been continuously away from “home” even though the number of days is less than 120 and will only be 126 to 129 days by the time we return to our house. That may be the longest I have ever been away from a fixed/permanent residence in my life. The only time that would come close to that was my first year in college when I lived in a dormitory for the school year. Even then, it was two semesters with a break in-between, and the semesters were only about 14 weeks in duration as best I recall.

Carriage Travel Club banners. They have ~70 rigs at WCRVR all week for a rally.

I was reading a post in Nick Russell’s Gypsy Journal blog the other day where he provided answers to FAQ’s he often gets from readers. One of them had to do with the definitions of “full-timer” and “extended-timer.” As Nick pointed out, there are no official definitions, but common sense (and usage) suggests that full-timers do not have a fixed dwelling to which they can return while extended-timers do, even if they are rarely or ever there. How much time do you have to spend in your RV (land- or water-based) to be an extended-timer? Again, there is no definition, but common sense (and usage) suggests that it is more than 3 – 6 weeks’ vacation usage and less than full time.

Since Linda retired one year ago today we have spent the following time traveling and living in our converted motorcoach:

59 days – (early Jun to early Aug). MI, IN, IL, IA, SD, WY, MT, ND, MN, WI, MI. Two rallies in Gillette, WY (FMCA and SKP) and a 2-week SKP HFH build in Sheridan, WY plus visits to national parks;
6 days – (mid Aug). Clio, MI GLCC/CCO Back to the Bricks rally;
10 days – (mid Sep) MI, IN, MI Twelve Mile, IN and GLAMARAMA13 rally in Goshen, IN;
12 days – (mid Oct). MI, OH, KY, TN, VA, WV, OH, MI. SKP Photographers BOF photo workshop/rally in Townsend, TN. GSMNP and camping with family in VA;
103 days – (Dec 19 – Mar 31). MI, OH, KY, TN, GA, FL. Mostly in north central Florida; our first season as snowbirds.

That’s 190 days; more than half of the last twelve months. We don’t have a numerical target, but our sense of how we want to blend RVing with living in a fixed house is to be in the RV for 6 – 8 months out of any given 12 month window but probably not gone for much longer than four months at a time. It won’t always happen that way, of course, but on average that seems like a comfortable balance to us at this time based on our limited experience and current circumstances.

While going back and forth to the laundry building I stopped and chatted with Jeff for a while. It appears they have developed a problem with the 12VDC house system in their motorhome. They noticed it the previous evening as a diming of their lights and then realized the refrigerator did not want to work, even on propane. I mentioned that we had just had a refrigerator problem and had stored our food in the refrigerator in the Activity Building kitchen while we got it sorted out. I suggested how he might go about isolating the problem but did not jump in to try to solve it as there was another guy there also giving advice. Too many cooks creates more problems than it solves.

We went to Satchel’s for an early dinner; our final opportunity to enjoy their excellent vegan pizza. In addition to John and Ali we were joined by Kevin, Sharon, Ian, and Pat. We had essentially the same pizza as before; hand-tossed thin crust with pesto base topped with mushrooms, onions, and sun-dried tomatoes. Instead of the Daiya non-dairy cheese, however, we had the cashew cheese. Instead of being shredded and evenly spread around the pizza it was in quarter-sized chunks like small mozzarella balls. It resulted in a different pizza, but it was just as good as the other pizzas we have had there. I also had the ginger pop. They make it in house from real, fresh ginger. The last time it was a bit weak, but today it was the best yet. The ginger was so strong that burned slightly. Exquisite.

Work continues at WCRVR on refurbishing the Pullman train cars.

The weather had been perfect all day so after we got back we sat around chatting with John and Ali and were joined by Jack and Silvia who were just finishing their evening walk. We had a small glass of Trader Joe’s Pinot Grigio. This is one of the wines Trader Joe’s sells for $2.99 a bottle. Our assessment was that you get about what you pay for, but in all fairness Pinot Grigio is a wine we normally drink with a meal, not as a before or after dinner drink. We were also having grapes for “dessert” and their sweetness probably made the wine seem dry by comparison. I do not care for dry wines, especially as a before or after dinner drink. We will try the rest of the bottle with a meal and see if our first impression was off base. We would love to find a $3 wine that we really like.

2014/03/31 (M) T Minus 7

Leave a reply

The last day of March marked the beginning of the final week countdown to our departure from Williston Crossings RV Resort. On a drive into the Gainesville Publix supermarket we wondered which was stranger, leaving here after being in one place for just over three months, or returning home after being away for more than four months? Linda was back home for three weeks in late February and early March, so it does not feel quite as strange to her.

I got a callback from AALL*Brite letting me know that would be back at Williston Crossings on Friday to wash our rig and polish our wheels. Having that appointment confirmed allowed us to plan the rest of our week, which will include a visit to Weeki Wachi SP, and getting into the WCRVR swimming pool (finally). We have seen AALL*Brite in the past at rallies in Michigan. They do a nice job on aluminum wheels for a very reasonable price. Their price to wash and spotless rinse the rig is also very reasonable. We are not going to have them wax it, which is much more expensive, as we have never had wax or other such products on the coach since we had it repainted and don’t feel we need them.

We finally have a string of days this week with forecasted highs in the mid-80s; lovely days to be outside reading and crafting on the patio of our well-shaded site. We have also been spending time with our RV resort friends with whom we will shortly no longer be able to visit. While some of them live here year-round, others are winter seasonal residents like us and are also preparing to leave.

Monday is pizza double-punch day and half-price drink day at the Micanopy Blue Highway Pizzeria, so going there for dinner is a routine part of John and Ali’s week. We have gone with them the last few weeks as it is a good opportunity to just sit and talk. This time we were joined by John and Ann who we have seen at the fire pit and said “hello” to while walking, but not really talked with at length.

When we got back to WCRVR we gathered at John and Ali’s rig with our glasses of wine to continue the conversation. We were joined by Charles and Sandy who we have also seen and chatted with at the fire pit. They are currently living at WCRVR while they look for a business to purchase in the area. They had a business in Texas (Houston area) that they sold and have been traveling around the central and eastern U. S. looking for one to buy. They are in their late 40’s and are not ready to be retired. In spite of a high temperature in the 80s, it got very cool after the sun went down and we retreated to the comfort of our coach.

2014/03/29 (S) Walking In The Rain

Leave a reply

“Welcome to Lake Williston.” We had a LOT of rain starting around 7:00 PM last evening. It continued through the night and into today, with an occasional rumble of thunder and periods of heavy downpour. We also had a tornado watch until 5 PM.

The drainage at Williston Crossings RV Resort is generally good, but there are always going to be low spots that collect water. The road in front of our site becomes a shallow river during moderate rain and a lake when the rain is heavy, so we had waterfront property for a while today. 🙂 The rain was like a tropical monsoon at times.

We took care of shopping and outside chores yesterday and did not have to leave the rig today if we did not want to, so we spent the morning inside our small but cozy home away from home. OK, it’s not that small, but it is a lot smaller than a house, and Linda gets cabin fever much more easily than I do. By mid-late morning she needed to go for a walk. There was a lull in the rain so she put on her raincoat and headed out. The rain resumed before she could get back to the coach, but she enjoyed it just the same.

I was so pleased the other day with the Imsanity image resizing plug-in that I decided to test the Image Watermark plug-in today. This plug-in is used to add a custom watermark to images uploaded to a WordPress site, and one of its key features is the ability to watermark images that have already been uploaded to the WP Media Library. I configured the settings for the plug-in and tried to add a watermark image to one of my recently uploaded photos, but it didn’t work.

I went to the support forum at www.dfactory.eu looking for some documentation. The documentation was very thin but it is a fairly simple plug-in to use, at least conceptually, so that was not a complete surprise. I checked the “bugs” forum and found that I was not the first or only person to have this exact problem. The plug-in author provided guidance on how to get this feature to work but following his advice to the letter did not work. The plug-in was recommended to me by Technomadia, who use it successfully on all their website/blog images. Based on the info in the support forum, it apparently works just fine when the watermark is applied as the image is uploaded into WordPress, but not after it is already in the WP Media Library.

By mid-afternoon the clouds broke up, revealing blue skies above and allowing sunshine to penetrate all the way to the ground, so we went for a walk around the RV resort. I guess we were not the only ones who felt cooped up by the weather as there were a lot of people out walking. There is a Carriage owners rally here starting on Monday and participants have been dribbling in since Thursday. They will reportedly have 60 – 70 5th Wheel RVs attending. More arrived today and the bulk of them will arrive tomorrow with last minute arrivals on Monday.

Approximately 35 seasonal residents left on March 1^st. A few others have left during the month and quite a few more are pulling out just ahead of the new arrivals. As a result we are seeing new faces in noticeable numbers for the first time since we got here. We are also seeing an increase in young children in the park. During the winter season this is an “adult” park, although no one seems to object to grand-parents having their grand-children visit. But from approximately April 1 to November 1 it functions more like a normal RV park, allowing families with children and hosting rally groups like most RV parks and campgrounds. Business is business, after all. The carriage rally goes all week and they will have the exclusive use of the clubhouse for their activities. By the time we pull out of here on Monday, April 7, the resort will likely have a very different look and feel.

It wouldn’t be Saturday night at Williston Crossings RV Resort without the fire pit and “Smitty” on guitar and vocals. Jeff brought his guitar too and they played and sang a lot of songs together as well as each ding solo numbers. A much larger group gathered this evening, with over 40 people at one time, and 50 or more total. The group included a number of children and young adults, the first time we have seen that many at the campfire. Winter is definitely turning into spring here.

2014/03/28 (F) Singing In The Rain

Leave a reply

Here’s a synopsis of our day in list form:

Fresh ground Ethiopian Yirgacheffe 1/2 -1/2 coffee from Teeko’s in Howell, MI Read blog posts on Feedly
Breakfast: Homemade granola
Shopping: Winn-Dixie, ACE Hardware, and CVS Counted cross-stitch Dump and flush black water tank Dump grey water tank Fill fresh water tank Mix tank treatment solution and add to waste tanks
Lunch: Chickpea salad
RVillage website and e-mail (SKP BoF – Photographers and SKP BOF – HFH) Visit Lazydays RV display at WCRVR
Dinner: Kale with cannellini beans, macaroni, onions, garlic and hot pepper flakes
A small group gathers at the WCRVR fire pit (Forecasted rain keeps the crowd small) John “Smitty” Smith plays guitar and sings (He does a lot of Peter, Paul, and Mary songs this evening, and we all sing along)
7:00 PM tropical deluge begins; John sings anyway (The small group pulls the rocking chairs in to hear Smitty and avoid the rain)
We stay at the fire pit until almost 11PM.
The Fan-Tastic vent fan in the bedroom ceiling is NOT leaking. Score!
Upload blog post for Mar 26 while Linda reads Sleep to the ever-present sound of rain on the roof of coach.

As the saying goes “just another day in paradise.”

2014/03/26 (W) Coffee And A Bagel

Leave a reply

That can only mean one thing; we went to Panera today. The temperature dropped to 34 degrees F just before sunrise and we slept in longer than normal because we did not have any pressing reason to leave the warmth of our covers (and I had the electric heater pad turned on). We needed to do a little shopping today so once we got up we decided to forego coffee and breakfast at home and head to the shopping district on US-24 (SW Archer Road) in Gainesville. The 3/4 mile stretch of this road from I-75 east to FL-121 (SW 34th St) is all shopping, and most of the stores are recognized national chains. There is a Lowe’s, a Walmart, a Best Buy, JoAnn Fabrics and Michael’s crafts, a Trader Joe’s and two Publix supermarkets in addition to lots of smaller stores. Fuel, of course. And restaurants, lots of restaurants; I’m guessing as many as 50.

Linda at the Lazydays RV display at Williston Crossings RV Resort.

Our first stop? Panera. Good coffee, good bagels, and good WiFi. Over the last couple of days I finally figured out how to subscribe to blog feeds using Feedly and helped Linda set it up on her iPad2. We filled our coffee cups several times while reading and only decided to leave as the restaurant filled up with lunch customers.

Kevin (one of the lead volunteers at the resort) at the Lazydays RV display.

We have been looking for a paper towel holder for the bus galley to get the paper towel roll up off the counter. Kitchen counter space is premium real estate in any RV, and ours is no exception. We wanted one with a brass finish to match all of the other hardware in the coach, but brass finishes are out of style and almost impossible to find at typical stores. Linda could not even find one online. White plastic holders are common, and inexpensive, but not a viable option for our interior. We found a holder we liked at Lowe’s. It has a brushed nickel finish and mounts to a wall, or under a cabinet, from one end only and should be mostly invisible once it is installed and has a roll of paper towels on it. It is also substantial enough that we should not have to replace it every year like the plastic ones; hopefully never.

Fisher & Paykel drawer style dishwasher in one fo the Lazydays RV display motorhomes.

Fisher & Paykel drawer style dishwasher in one of the Lazydays RV display motorhomes.

While we were at Lowe’s we picked up a 2-pack of 5 micron sediment filters for our water softener pre-filter housing. Five microns might be a tad small for operating directly from the water supply, but we always fill our fresh water tank and then use our on board pump to take water from there. The pump provides good flow and this keeps the water in the tank from going stale. As a result we can tolerate a slower flow rate when filling the tank in exchange for finer filtering.

Fireplace electric heater

We also saw some flooring material that looked very interesting for our interior remodeling project. It’s a slightly rubbery material about 1/4 inch thick that comes in 20 inch squares with interlocking tabs on all four sides. It gets installed without adhesive (free floating), so it can be taken up later if need be. It comes in a variety of textures and colors/patterns, including a “white marble” that would look good with our medium walnut woodwork, beige furniture, and beige Corian counters, dining table, and end tables. After living in the bus for two months this past summer and three months this winter the interior remodeling project has moved from “it would be nice someday” status to “we need to do this as soon as possible” status. My immediate focus is still on “systems,” but we may attack the interior remodeling yet this year.

Kathy, Jack, Silvia, and John at Jeff and Kathy’s Bounder.

Linda needed a fabric hoop for doing cross-stitch so we stopped at JoAnn Fabrics. Hoop in hand, we walked next door to Publix and picked up hummus, a variety of chips, and some fresh fruit. We were due at Jeff and Kathy’s rig at 4:00 PM for happy hour followed by a potluck dinner and had volunteered to bring munchies (so that we would have something we could eat).

Linda, Spencer, and Ali at Jeff and Kathy's Bounder.

Kevin, Linda, Spencer, Ali and Jeff at Jeff and Kathy’s Bounder.

We hooked the Epson Stylus Photo R800 printer up to Linda’s computer yesterday. Being an ink jet printer that rarely gets used, it rarely works well when we do try to use it because the cartridge nozzles dry up and clog from lack of use. I wanted to print a test pattern and run the head cleaning utility, but we did not have the right driver/utility software installed to do this or to see which cartridges were low or out. Etc. But we did manage to print the thread number index and the first few pattern sheets for her next counted cross-stitch project which allowed her to get to work wrapping, numbering, and storing all of the different thread colors that are involved. She ordered the threads and a storage/organizer box the other day through our Amazon Prime account and had them two days later.

Spencer, Ali, Jeff, and Sharon at Jeff and Kathy’s Bounder.

While drying out the bedroom ceiling after the heavy rain early last week I noticed that one of the mounting tabs for the Fan-Tastic Vent Fan motor cover was broken. I searched online for the company and got the website for Atwood products. Atwood bought Fan-Tastic and moved all of the operations from Imlay City, Michigan to Elkhart, Indiana about a year or so ago. Fan-Tastic is well-known among RVers for their fabulous warranty and factory support, so the purchase by Atwood was not necessarily welcomed by RVers. I called and got a voice message system: “press 1 for this, 2 for that…” Etc. Ugh. I left a message and was frankly surprised when I got a quick call back from Sharon. I described my problem and she determined the part we needed and processed the order. We had it five days later, no charge for the part or shipping. They are still Fan-Tastic in my book.

We walked over to the Lazydays RV display mid-afternoon and looked at the motorhomes and 5^th wheel trailers they had on display. Six to eight years ago medium cherry wood tones with nickel (or stainless steel) hardware were being used in lots of RV interiors. This combination happens to be a favorite of ours, but now appears to be a bit out of fashion. Most of the units on display were somewhat newer than that and really dark wood tones appeared to be the order of the day. Purpose built motorhomes often do not have skylights and the side windows are much smaller than on our bus. The combination leads to interiors that feel dark and confining to me, even with the slideouts extended. Put out the awnings and it gets even worse. We did not see anything we would trade for.

We headed over to Jeff and Kathy’s at the appointed hour with our chairs, snacks, and Yuengling lager. Jeff is quite the cook with a real talent for bar-b-que, Creole, and other southern foods. He makes his own sauces and devotes a lot of time to preparation and cooking. He made a vegan pasta salad with garlic, olive oil, and some spices so we would have something to eat. It was excellent and we probably ate more than our share of it.

2014/03/25 (T) That Is Imsane

Leave a reply

No; that is not a typo. Today I learned about a WordPress plug-in named “imsanity,” and yes, that is how it is spelled. Imsanity is not a well-kept secret—it has been downloaded over 45,000 times—but I had never heard of it until this morning.

I got an e-mail overnight letting me know that we had reached 80% of our disk storage quota on our QTH.com web-hosting account and asking me to delete files or contact the administrator to request an increase in our quota. I figured I would do both so I started by contacting QTH.com to make the request. I had been thinking for a while that I should go back and resize the photo files I uploaded to the website and blog, so the disk quota issue spurred me to action.

When we started the website/blog last year I was not familiar with digital image manipulation software and did not know how to resize an image for the web. I do now, of course, but I had uploaded some 300 high resolution JPEG files before I learned how. At 3.0+ MB each, our website/blog swelled to almost 1.0 GB of disk storage after only two months. Clearly that was not going to be sustainable, but going back and fixing it was going to be a big job, and deleting them was not an option I was willing to entertain.

I was pondering the prospect of spending several weeks re-sizing images, uploading the image files, inserting them into old blog posts, deleting the original images from the blog posts, and finally deleting the old, large image files, all without making a mistake. My guess is that I would never have accomplished this task, if I ever started. I am, frankly, fairly busy with projects going forward and really had no interest in spending that kind of time fixing archival material.

And then a pair of e-mail replies arrived from Scott at QTH.com; my disk allocation had been bumped up, giving me some breathing room, followed by a recommendation to check out the “imsanity” plug-in for WordPress. Not only do the QTH web-servers run extremely well, their technical support is second to none.

Imsanity is an insanely simple, but incredibly useful plug-in. It can be used to retroactively re-size images in a WordPress site, which is exactly what I needed to do. A few simple parameters establish the maximum horizontal and vertical image size for several categories of image use and the quality of JPEG to be created. A simple search function identifies up to 250 image files that exceed the maximum limits. You can select all of them at once or select individual files to process (as many as you want). Click a button and it works its way through the list. I accomplished in an hour what I thought would never get done, with no visible change in the old blog posts since the displayed size of the images is always smaller than the file size. The only difference is that now when someone clicks on one of the images the largest it will appear is 1024 pixels horizontally or vertically. The resized image files s are less than 1/6^th the size of the originals, a significant savings in the use of disk space. It also means that web pages and blog posts will load more quickly. The other use of imsanity is to resize image files as they are uploaded if they exceed the maximum dimensions set in the plug-in’s parameters. I am now resizing all of our photos before I upload them, so I should have less need of that capability.

Linda made a Swiss Chard with quinoa (instead of couscous). Magnificent. She has entered the recipe into the recipe section of our website.

2014/03/24 (M) Count Down

Leave a reply

As of today we are down to our final two weeks here at Williston Crossings RV Resort. We were very busy going places and doing things in January and February. We have continued to be busy in March, but limited our travels away from the RV resort. That is due to a combination of factors. For one, we have used our Florida State Parks annual pass enough to have gotten our monies worth out of it, so we are not feeling as pressed to get out there and see things. For another, we have gotten busy with the new RVillage social networking website and other projects that are most easily accomplished in or near our coach. A third factor is that the weather has gotten just enough warmer and drier (most of the time) that people are finally out and about here at the RV Resort. That means more opportunity to socialize with our neighbors, who have invited use to happy hour gatherings and pot luck meals.

Bitter sweet. As I have described in blog posts and articles it is always hard to leave friends, even after a 5-day rally or a 2-week HFH build. We have been here for almost three months. Folks are asking if we are coming back next year and we have had to tell them “no.” That deserves an explanation. It’s our first snowbird season and there is a lot of North America that we still need to see. We simply cannot decide to return to the first place we have spent the winter away from Michigan.

We finally met Allen, one of the RV Resort owners, the other day and arranged to demonstrate RVillage for him this morning. I set up an account for him and walked him through the main functions to highlight the purpose behind the website. He seemed excited about it, and tasked someone in the office to arrange a day/time/place for me to demonstrate it to anyone in the park who might be interested. He wanted it publicized on the resort cable system. So far that has not happened, and time is running out, so it may not.

John and Ali like to go to The Blue Highway Pizzeria in Micanopy on Mondays; half-price drinks and double-punch on their free pizza card. Linda and I went with them, split a nice salad, and then split a medium pizza; vegan sauce, no cheese, mushrooms, onions, and sun-dried tomatoes. Lots of sun-dried tomatoes. It was good, although I prefer the pizza at Satchel’s in Gainesville. The restaurant gave them our “punches” since we don’t have a card.

2014/03/23 (N) Once A Teacher…

Leave a reply

Once a teacher…always a teacher. After spending the first part of the day at our coach reading and working on computer-based tasks, like RVillage and our blog, we decided to go for a walk. We had just dropped off a bag of trash and were about to start our stroll through the RV resort in earnest when Jeff came by in his car and stopped to ask us if we could help him with something. Kathy’s grandson, Spencer, was staying with them during spring break and they had just bought him an Android-based tablet but were having difficulty setting it up. Spencer is 9 years old and was eager to download some game apps. We headed to their site, which isn’t far from ours, and arrived about the same time John and Ali did. Kathy had called them for help too.

To use the Play Store on an Android device you have to have an account, and to have an account you have to have an e-mail address. Google generally makes it easy to accomplish both but when we tried creating these for Spencer we could not do it. We decide to restore the factory default settings on his tablet and were then able to set up his Play Store account, including a Gmail e-mail address. I had him send e-mails to his grandma (Kathy) and his mom. He got replies from both and sent replies back, so that verified it was working. We also set up a PIN to unlock his tablet.

I helped him navigate the tablet to learn how it works and then we opened the Play Store and started searching for FREE games he might like. He downloaded several games but seemed intent on getting Minecraft (sp?). We found a lot of Minecraft-related apps in the FREE section, but not the game itself. I am not familiar with game but it appeared that the base app was not free.

We went back to Jeff and Kathy’s rig later for happy hour and a potluck meal. We brought some fresh fruit so we would have something to eat too. Later we went to John and Ali’s and sat around a small campfire late into the evening. Jim joined us for a while.

2014/03/22 (S) WiFi Ants

Leave a reply

No, not WiFi Antennas; WiFi and ants, which I will get to later.

Saturday morning the refrigerator temperature was 40 degrees F. I moved the remote wireless thermometer to the freezer compartment and left it until it settled in around 5 degrees F. The refrigeration system, including the controls, appeared to be working. Linda retrieved most of our frozen food and a few fresh things. We partially restocked the fridge and I set the thermostat a bit lower. Linda made a tofu scramble to use up some of the fresh ingredients, in case the problem returned. Yum.

I checked my e-mail and found several dozen post replies and a few messages from RVillage. We both played with RVillage for a while and I reported another bug. I also had a message from the WiFi Ranger technical support team indicating that they had successfully uploaded a patch to our WFR MobileTi and switched it to a PRO feature set. They wanted me to try logging in to the resort WiFi system and let them know if it worked. I followed their instructions, and it did! Finally, success!!! I got back on their support forum to let them know and thanked them for their persistence in identifying and correcting the problem.

As best I understand it, the problem was not a bug in their firmware but rather a design assumption they made that an RV park WiFi system would never be a class 2 network. Based on that assumption they were doing using IP addresses to connect to other WFR devices (WFR Go) in a way that conflicted with the class 2 network operating in our RV resort. WiFi Ranger thinks the chance of us running into this again is very small (unless we come back here, in which case it’s 100%). This may, in fact, be the only RV park where we will ever encounter this.

I do not understand all of the details, but essentially a class 2 network has 2^16 (65,536) available IP addresses. That’s a LOT of IP addresses and made me wonder if the resort WiFi system is actually part of a much larger network, perhaps for the city of Williston or even for all of Levy County. The “explanation” the network technician gave me some weeks ago was that our WiFi Ranger, being a repeater/router, was simply “not a supported device” as a matter of park policy and he was unable (unwilling) to give me any assistance with it even though he admitted knowing what it was and having set them up before. He could have just told me they were running a class 2 network and that it might have something to do with my problem, but he withheld that information.

The “logic” behind his explanation of the park policy was that we could “hide” data-intensive devices behind our system, such as streaming-video, gaming consoles, or even a web-server. That was nonsense, of course. If the concern was data-transfer, the network could simply monitor and control that at an IP address level. When I indicated that one of the reasons for our router was to put our devices (and data transfers) behind an encrypted hardware firewall, he told me the WiFi system connection to the Internet was encrypted, as if that was somehow equivalent. It’s not. The connection between the resort WiFi system and the WiFi client devices is NOT encrypted, and thus open and viewable to someone intent on doing so. Unless people are using secure applications, such as most banking software, their WiFi connection is vulnerable. This is true of any system that does not require you to enter a WPA or other “key,” including the free WiFi at places like Panera Bread.

We have had good Verizon 4G/LTE service here, so getting online has not been a problem, but if that had not been the case we would have been in a really bad situation. I was anxious to get this resolved while we were still here so they could test possible solutions on a network known to have this problem.

With computer tasks taken care of, we turned our attention to fixing the roof leak. As we were setting up the Little Giant folding step/extension ladder we noticed ants traveling up and down the cable TV wire. Yikes! The cable runs into the bus through a small window by the driver’s seat. We had used Frog Tape to seal up the opening against the weather, but it was not ant proof. We checked inside but did not see any ants where the cable came in. Closer inspection outside revealed them moving up and down along a body seam and horizontally along the floor line just above the bay doors on the driver side of the coach. We quickly disconnected the TV cable (we don’t use it anyway because the analog signal in the park is not very good) and closed the little window. Dealing with the ants, however, would have to wait.

Linda packed all of the tools and supplies I needed for the roof repair into a bag that I carried up with me. The repair was simple enough; use the small caulk gun to apply Dicor self-leveling lap sealant around and up onto all four sides of the Fan-Tastic vent fan base. This Dicor product is universally used in the RV industry for just this purpose. It is not “runny” like water but it does flow, especially when warm, just enough to do what its name suggests, flowing into cracks, crevices, and small holes as it smooths out. It eventually sets up and forms a skin, but remain pliable. Rain is forecast starting late Sunday and running through the coming week, so we will find out then if I have fixed the problem. The real problem, of course, is that the fan base is probably not installed properly. The correct fix would be to remove it and reinstall it, but that was not going to happen sitting here in the RV resort.

Now for the Ants! These were, thankfully, small black ants and not fire ants, which are a widespread and serious problem here in Florida. We hooked up a spray nozzle and tried to flush as many of them away as we could. It’s not that we wanted to harm even these tiny creatures, but we are not willing to share our home on wheels with them. They are tenacious, and hung on tight or hunkered down in the nearest available crack. Linda walked to the Grocery Depot and bought a can of ant spray that I applied to the concrete pad around the bus tires as best I could and on/around the electrical and water shorelines and the waste water drain hose. Later I went to ACE Hardware, bought a couple of boxes of Borax, and used them to establish a defensive perimeter around the coach. This is a treatment for ants that we have come across in numerous different forums. The coming rains will wash it away so it will have to be reapplied.

We had a light/early dinner of hummus and pita chips, went for a walk, and then eventually headed to the fire pit with our customary glasses of wine. John played the guitar and sang for hours, often joined by the group that had gathered. We were they again until quiet time at 10 PM, at which time John stopped playing and we turned off the lights. We still had a small fire and I continued to coax flames out of it for a while longer. Kevin builds the initial fire and lights it, and John was the backup fire tender, but since he is usually playing his guitar I have assumed responsibility for tending the fire.

2014/03/20 (R) The Spring Equinox

Leave a reply

Winter officially yielded to spring today but we did not really notice. Today was another beautiful day here in north central Florida, just like yesterday and just as tomorrow was forecast to be. We hung around the RV resort and did quiet things.

We went to Satchel’s in Gainesville, Florida for dinner with John and Ali. Linda had leftover pizza from there after she returned from Michigan, but this was her first visit to the place. She agreed that it was uniquely charming. The service was excellent once again. We split part of a salad and ate half of a pizza, saving the leftovers for another meal. The pesto base pizza with Daiya vegan cheese, mushrooms, onions, and sun-dried tomatoes was excellent. The crust is the best I’ve had since we quit eating St. Louis style pizza from Imo’s, which is unfortunately not vegan. Their brownies are vegan and we split one for dessert; no leftovers for this item.

We drove separately from John and Ali as we both had shopping to do, but not the same kind. We stopped at Publix on our way back to Williston and stocked up on fresh fruits and greens. We put everything in the refrigerator when we got back and I noticed during the evening that the refrigerator compartment was a bit warmer than normal. Adjusting the thermostat was not having the desired effect.

Here are a few more photos from Satchel’s, all taken on my Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone and post-processed using Faststone Image Viewer software:

Rear parking lot art at Satchel’s in Gainesville, FL.

Ever wondered what to do with old CDs? Now you know.

Remember 3.5 inch floppy disks? Now they are wall art.

Part of the tile work at Satche”s in Gainesville, FL. Linda studying the bulletin board.

Yes, you can be seated here for your meal at Satchel’s in Gainesville, FL. It’s actually a difficult table to get.

Part of the front outdoor seating area at Satchel’s in Gainesville, FL.

2014/03/17 (N) St. Patrick’s Day

Leave a reply

By Sunday we were not so much tired as we were relaxed and enjoying low key days with wonderful weather at the RV resort. The temperature made it into the low 80’s and, even with the windows open and the ceiling vent fans running, it got a bit warmer than that in the coach. No matter; it was a relatively light day for RVillage website interactions and e-mail and we spent much of the day sitting outside reading. We can only sit for so long at a time, however, so we went for a few walks and raked some leaves using a rake we borrowed from John next door.

Between 5:50 PM and 7:05 PM we got six e-mails from our whole house generator. The first three let us know that the utility power had failed and the generator was running and supplying power to the house. The last three let us know that utility power had been restored, that the generator was no longer supplying power to the house, and finally that the generator had shut down in an orderly fashion and was back in stand-by mode. Sweet. With sub-zero winter temperatures giving way to highs in the 40’s and above over the next five weeks we cannot afford to be without heat or a sump pump, both of which depend on electrical power. Ditto for the AT&T Internet gateway that allows us to remotely monitor and control the whole-house generator and WiFi thermostat. Technology really is cool when it works.

Williston Crossings RV Resort had a St. Patrick’s Day dinner (a day early) but we did not go, the menu having little-to-nothing we could eat. The day was feeling a bit summery, so we had veggie burgers with cold green bean kale salad and fresh strawberries for dessert. At dusk John and Ali decided to have a small campfire at their site next door and we joined them along with neighbors Doug and Paulette (from North Bay, ON) and Jim (“Sonny Fox”). Glasses of white wine in hand we had our version of a “cocktail party” here at Williston Crossings. Our bus conversion notwithstanding, we are still “campers” at heart and love to sit around a campfire in the evening.

Rain was forecast for overnight and through the next day, so we closed up the rig before turning in for the night. The radar showed a heavy band of showers training slightly north of east off the Gulf and slowly drifting south over time towards our part of north central Florida. We got the first raindrops sometime after midnight and by 4 AM had a full blown thunderstorm in progress. Awake or asleep we are always aware of, and in close contact with, the weather when we are living in the bus and do not sleep as well as on calmer nights.

St. Patrick’s Day dawned wet and overcast with no discernible sunrise; just a gradual, slight lightening of the sky. The clouds remained thick and dark all day and the rain was almost continuous until mid-afternoon, with torrential downpours at times, so we hunkered down and worked on computer-based tasks and did some reading. By late afternoon the rain stopped but a heavy cloud layer continued to move over us from the southwest and the high temperature only reached 67 degrees F.

Soup (or stew) is always a welcome counterpoint to a cool, dreary day. Linda found a recipe for kale, white bean, and potato stew. The base was onions, carrots, and celery. She used black beans instead of white, russet potatoes instead of Yukon Gold, and substituted balsamic vinegar for red wine vinegar. She cut back on the quantity of water and ended up with a delicious, hearty soup.

We got a short walk in after dinner before the rain resumed around 8:00 PM. PBS has been fund-raising for what seems like weeks now. In recognition of St. Patrick’s Day they aired a concert by Celtic Women, followed by a concert by Judy Collins, all of which provided some entertainment for the evening. Thunderstorms were again forecast for the early morning hours, but Tuesday promised clearer weather.

2014/03/15 (S) The Ides Of March

Leave a reply

On Thursday I spent time on the RVillage website and doing e-mail related to the public launch that occurred on Wednesday. I also did some last minute housekeeping chores in preparation for Linda’s return from the great white frozen north.

The back parking lot at Satchel’s in Gainesville, FL.

At 4 PM John, Ali, and I went to Satchel’s in Gainesville, Florida for dinner. The word “funky” was probably invented to describe this place; it was unique, charming, and very bohemian. The service was excellent and the pizza was the best I have had at a restaurant since we went vegan in 2011. The crust was thin and cooked to a nice crisp. They had a pesto sauce option, a first for me, and a choice of three vegan cheeses! I selected the Daiya cheese because Linda has used it in her cooking and I knew it would melt well and taste good. Mushrooms, onions, and sun-dried tomatoes topped it off. The vegan pizza only came in a “medium” size, and it would have been pricey at $20 if it had not been so large. Two pieces made a meal and I took the other four slices back to the coach.

Satchel’s twin-engine fuselage. Most restaurants do not have one of these.

Satchel’s also makes their soda beverages from scratch. I had their ginger soda and it was outstanding. Made with real ginger, it reminded me very much of a “ginger beer” I had many years ago at an Ethiopian restaurant in Detroit, Michigan. I have wanted a repeat of that experience ever since but never found it until now. They also had a choice of two vegan cookies. I had the oatmeal raisin cookie. It was huge and very tasty. I saved half for Linda to have on the drive back from the airport.

The back entrance to the bar at Satchel’s in Gainesville, FL.

Linda sent a text message at 8:15 PM that they were shutting the doors on her plane and by 8:30 PM I was headed for the Orlando International Airport. The drive took two hours and I had just pulled into the cell phone parking lot when she called to let me know that she had just de-planed (15 minutes ahead of schedule). Ten minutes later she was in the car and we were headed back to Williston. We arrived back at the RV resort just after 12:30 AM (Friday).

The main bar entrance at Satchel’s in Gainesville FL.

We slept in Friday morning and when we finally arose decided to have an easy day and stick around the RV resort. The weather was picture perfect but I did not make any pictures. We went for a couple of walks, something we have both missed these last few weeks. We went to the fire pit that evening, as we usually do if we are here on a Friday or Saturday night. There was a big crowd initially, but it thinned out between 8 and 9 PM leaving us to chat with a core group of friends who tend to stick around.

Ali and John headed for the restraurant entrance at Satchel’s.

Saturday we stayed “local” as well. We did some grocery shopping at the local fruit and veggie stand and then went to the Winn-Dixie. W-D had several things on sale or BOGO, so we finally got our own W-D card. Up until now we have used the card of whoever was in line in front of or behind us. I spent much of the afternoon working on the roster and dues records for our FMCA Freethinkers chapter, of which I am the VP and Secretary. The positions do not take a lot time over the course of a year, but when they need my attention they can take up all or part of a day or two.

Now that Linda is back we are both eating better. She made a green bean quinoa salad and a lemony kale salad; both served cold and very refreshing on a lovely, slightly warm, late-winter evening.

John capturing some information about an upcoming live performance at Satchel’s.

With the change to Daylight Savings Time and the advancing season it does not get dark here until closer to 8 PM. The resort still has the fire pit scheduled from 6:30 – 10:00 PM, however, and there is a full group by 6:45 PM. We prefer our campfires in the dark and delayed going over for a while. We met a very charming couple from Quebec and another very nice couple with whom we shared mutual friends in Ed and Janet Roelle, the GLCC members who recommended Williston Crossings RV Resort to us in the first place.

By 8:00 PM the early arrivals start to leave the fire pit and a smaller group settled in for the duration of the evening. One of the friends we have made here, Meg, is getting ready to leave on Monday and head to Flint, Michigan to visit her grand-daughter who will be home from school on break. Meg stayed longer at the fire pit than usual and she and Ali spent time catching up with Linda. Meg got involved in rescuing dogs from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and taking them back to Canada for veterinary care and adoption. A whole network grew up around her and she was interviewed by CNN. One of the things we like about RVing is that everyone has a story, and some of them are very different from our own, and truly fascinating.

2014/02/14 (F) Valentine’s Day

Leave a reply

“Hallmark Holidays” have never been a big deal for us, and Valentine’s Day is no exception. However, we had no plans to visit state parks today, had been looking for a day to visit the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville, needed to make a visit to Walmart, and wanted to try one of the vegan-friendly restaurants in Gainesville, so Valentine’s Day provided the needed excuse to do all of that in the same trip. Before I go on, I am including a picture of us taken by Marian Hagan on our outing with her and John to the two Crystal River state parks last Sunday.

Us at Crystal River Buffer Preserve State Park. (Photo by Marian Hagan.)

We selected The Jones Eastside which was open all day serving breakfast and lunch, and was staying open for dinner. We can usually find acceptable food for lunch and dinner if we are thoughtful about our choice of restaurant, but breakfast is often limited to dry toast with jam and/or fresh fruit. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but also nothing special about it. At The Jones Eastside, however, we were able to order a tofu scramble with sides of potatoes and fruit and a stack of vegan flax seed pancakes with fresh blueberries and real maple syrup. We split each dish in half and had a really nice breakfast. The Jones Eastside was highly recommended on both HappyCow.com and Yelp.com, and deservedly so. It’s a quaint little place using organic ingredients and providing attentive service; you go for the food, not for an upscale setting.

From The Jones Eastside we drove through the heart of downtown Gainesville to where we thought the Florida Museum of Natural History was located. We enjoyed seeing the non-university part of town, and parts of the UF central campus, but the museum was not where I thought it was. Our Garmin 465T GPS did, however, and we followed its directions into a major traffic jam. We had been to Gainesville several times, but had not seen traffic like this before.

We found the museum, paid $4 to park, and went in. Admission was free except for the Butterfly Rainforest and special exhibits. We spent a couple of hours exploring the free exhibits and plan to return for the Butterflies and a special exhibit titled “Wolf to Woof” on the evolution of the domestic dog. Like most serious museums, you could spend days here depending on the level of detail you wanted to absorb.

By the time we were done at the museum it was 4 PM. Our Valentine’s Day still needed something “sweet” so we headed to Karma Cream for vegan ice cream. We fought our way (slowly) through more terrible traffic, but it was worth it. 🙂

“GPS, find us a Walmart, please.” It showed two in Gainesville so I picked the closer one just up the street. It was closed, the building vacant. 🙁 So I selected the other one on SW Archer (US-24). We routed ourselves over to FL-121 southbound which intersects Archer close to the Walmart. YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE ON THIS ROAD DURING AFTERNOON RUSH HOUR, which is actually “hope you’re not in a rush” hour. Truthfully, you do not want to be in Gainesville during the evening rush hour. Period. End of story. Total gridlock. Fortunately we were not in a rush to be anywhere in particular by any certain time so we only had to deal with our self-imposed frustration at being stuck in traffic. It won’t happen again, at least not in Gainesville.

We eventually got to the Walmart (thank goodness they are open 24/7). We do not go out of way to shop there, but it’s the only place locally where we can find Calgon Bath Beads which we mix with water and Pine Sol and add to our holding tanks. It is also where we bought our microwave popcorn popper and have to get the disposable cardboard heating discs that go in the bottom.

Shopping done, we had no choice but to venture back out into traffic. OK, we had a choice; we could have sat there for a couple of hours until traffic thinned. If we had been the least bit hungry we could have gotten something to eat while we waited, but having just had ice cream our appetites were satisfied. Fortunately we were close to the SW corner of Gainesville by now where FL-121 turns SSW and heads through the country to Williston. We arrived back at the RV resort after 6 PM, but there was no fire going in the fire pit.

WCRVR was having a Valentine’s Day dinner/dance starting at 5 PM so the Friday night fire had not been built by Kevin at its usual time as he and his wife had gone to the dinner/dance. But a short time later I noticed a flickering flame and went to investigate. Next door neighbors John and Ali had not gone to the dinner/dance either and John, being the backup fire guy, was getting one going. We opened our bottle of sparkling pink moscato, bundled up a bit against the cool evening air, and went over. Ali brought John’s guitar, the rocking chairs slowly filled up (~16 people), and we sang along when we knew the words. It was a lovely capstone to a very nice Valentine’s Day (traffic notwithstanding).

2014/02/06 (R) Orange City (FL)

Leave a reply

Our plan for the day was to visit Bill & Karen Gerrie at the Orange City RV Park in Orange City, Florida where they are staying until March 1st along with Mike and Kathy (Bill’s sister). Orange City, Florida is south east of us, north of Orlando and less than 30 miles southwest of Daytona Beach and the Atlantic Ocean. The weather turned out not to be the most agreeable and I did not make any photographic images today.

We took US-27 from Williston to Ocala where we stopped at a Dunkin Donuts for coffee and bagels. We then picked up FL-40 eastbound through the heart of the Ocala National Forest, intersecting US-17 which we took south through De Land to Orange City. The Ocala NF is large, and parts of it are signed as wilderness. There were caution signs for black bears, but we did not see any. FL-40 was an excellent road and we had it to ourselves most of the time. The housing, RV parks, and commerce scattered along the road appeared to be very economically challenged.

We did not take the by-pass around De Land to the west, so we got a good look at the city center. De Land was quite charming and looked liked a great place to shop, dine, or just walk around on a nicer day. Today, however, was cool, overcast, and drizzly, and we had an ETA to honor, so we just admired it from the comfort of our car. De Land is the northern edge of a more densely populated part of Florida running along the I-4 corridor from Daytona Beach through Orlando/ Kissimmee and then Lakeland to the Tampa / St. Petersburg metropolitan area.

We found the Orange City RV Park and followed the directions to the Gerrie’s site. We brought our folding camp chairs but the weather was not supportive of outside conversation so we sat in their bus and talked for over four hours. We did not get out and about to see the area as we might have in nicer weather, but the reason for our visit was to visit, and we had a good one, as we always do.

I mentioned the milky white air tank water to Bill and he thought it was probably oil that leaked from the main engine air compressor and mixed in with water over time; nothing to be concerned about. (I had some e-mail correspondence with fellow bus owner Butch Williams in which he indicated that it could also just be air in the water. He had drained the air tanks in his shop recently and had something similar. Either way, it was nothing to be concerned about.)

By 4:00 PM we were getting hungry and turned our attention to picking a place to have our birthday dinner (mine was Tuesday and Bill’s was today). We settled on the Olive Garden and Linda went with Karen to let Mike and Kathy know. It was a good choice all around and we had an excellent waiter who made sure we got menu items free of animal products.

By the time we finished dinner it was raining lightly. We headed for Williston, reversing the route we had taken this morning, and encountered heavier and more persistent rain most of the way back. Driving at night in the rain is not Linda’s favorite thing to do, so I took the wheel for the return trip. We got back to our coach a little before 9:00 PM; another long but very satisfying day.

2014/02/03-04 (M&T) Happy Birthday

Leave a reply

After our fairly active weekend we wanted to be home bodies for a couple of days. It’s not that we couldn’t go all day every day; it’s that we don’t have to and choose not to. We are not on vacation and we do not have to fill every waking minute with new and exciting adventures to the point of mental and physical exhaustion. Linda needs quiet days to work on her cross-stitch project and I need quiet days to process photos and write. Besides, Tuesday was my birthday and Linda wanted to bake a cake. Oh, and we had to tend to bus issues.

Our male tabby cat Jasper, in his Sphinx position.

A bus issue that had been developing for a while involved our auxiliary air compressor. It was sounding worse by the day when it ran, vibrating excessively and making loud, unpleasant sounds. I checked the mounting of the air compressor and the vibration dampening rubber mounts appeared to still be OK. I noticed that the sight gauge on the side of the air accessories filter housing was showing water at the 80% full level so I decided to try draining the auxiliary air tank.

A hard copper line runs from the auxiliary air tank to a drain valve on the front outside corner of the floor in the bay under the driver’s seat. I had to open it carefully using a pliers, but once it was open it let out what I estimated to be at least a quart of water, including a considerable quantity of milky white liquid similar in appearance to skim milk.

There is a petcock style drain on the bottom of the auxiliary air filter housing so I also opened that. I got some water out, but not much, and the water level in the sight gauge did not drop. I needed to start the main engine to roll the bus forward so a different section of the tires was in contact with the pad to avoid flat spots from being parked for three months. I let the engine fast idle for over 10 minutes and used the higher pressure, very dry air from the main engine air compressor to purge the auxiliary air tank, air lines, and other air accessories. When I was finally getting nothing but dry air from the drain I closed both drains tight and shut the engine off.

I was checking the bay and heard a distinct hiss indicating an air leak. I sprayed soapy water on various fittings and finally got bubbles on the air compressor side of the check valve in the main air line from the auxiliary air compressor to the auxiliary air filter. With the auxiliary air compressor not running this indicated that the check valve itself was leaking, not just the fitting.

I texted and then talked to our mobile mechanic, Joe Cannarozzi, about all of this. Although he is staying at an RV park an hour from here He was tied up with a major bus project and unable to come work on this for us. He was confident, however, that I could replace the check valve myself and that Prevost Jacksonville had them in stock. (He had just spent four days there with the bus he is working on.) He wanted to know when I had last drained the auxiliary tank. I couldn’t recall the last time, but it was probably several years ago. He suggested that I drain it daily.

Since I would have to depressurize the entire air system to replace the check valve I figured I would replace the filter element in the auxiliary air filter at the same time. I looked up the part in the Prevost CatBase system and found the part numbers for the filter element and the O-ring/gasket kit. I called Prevost Parts in Elgin, Illinois to order them. As sometimes happens on an older bus our filter housing, and the service parts for it, were no longer available and had been superseded by a different assembly. The check valve, however, was available and in stock at the Jacksonville service center. I wanted to see the part before I purchased it to make sure it was what I needed, so I decided not to order it and instead drive to Jacksonville on Wednesday to get it. That would be a two hour trip one way, so started looking at what else we could do over there.

Sunset light on thunderstorm cloud to the east. Our car and coach visible lower right.

Linda found a recipe for a vegan vanilla cake and made it for my birthday. We went for a walk while it cooled. Thunderstorms were building in the area as the sun set and we got some nice light on the clouds. It turned out quiet well. She made a sauce from fresh red raspberries to put on top and it was also very good. Life is good.

2014/01/30 (R) Fort Wilderness

Leave a reply

Yesterday was a stay at home day after our 2-day whirlwind trip to the Venice, Florida area to visit with Steve and Karen. We got up a bit earlier this morning than we have been lately and were on the road by 8 AM. Our destination this time was Fort Wilderness at Walt Disney World in Buena Vista, Florida. The purpose of the trip was to visit Pat and Vickie Lintner, friends and fellow Prevost owners from our FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches chapter.

Walt Disney World is just southwest of Orlando and about 100 miles southeast of Williston. We decided to take US and FL highways on the drive down return by way of the Florida Turnpike and I-75. We stopped at a Dunkin Donuts south of Ocala for coffee and bagels and arrived at the overflow/visitor parking area for Fort Wilderness around 11 AM. We had to pass through two gates to get to this parking lot, but each time we simply told them we were visiting campers at FW and they let us through without having to pay. I phoned Pat and a few minutes later he and Vickie picked us up and gave us a driving tour of the campground on the way to their campsite.

Linda had been to Walt Disney World many years ago when our children were very young and stayed at Fort Wilderness in my parents’ motorhome. We were there together in the early 2000’s when Linda had a professional development seminar at the Swan hotel near Epcot. That was my one and only visit to WDW prior to today.

Like everything at WDW, Fort Wilderness is a really nice campground. It’s divided up into sections, each with its own loop road. The roads are narrow and winding, but the campsites are all angled so that even 40 foot motorhomes can back in easily to the paved sites. There is extensive landscaping between the sites which, combined with the twisting roads, affords a lot privacy. But there was only room for one car at each site, which is why Pat had us leave our car in the parking lot. The common areas include playgrounds, bathrooms, shops, and restaurants, all done to be visually consistent with the Fort Wilderness theme.

The weather was light drizzle with temperatures in the mid-40’s and enough breeze to create a wind-chill factor, but we decided to go explore WDW anyway. I did not, however, take my camera. The photos in this post were provided by Vickie Lintner (thanks Vickie!). From FW you can use the WDW transportation system, specifically the boats and monorail, to visit most of the hotels that are spread around the property free of charge. We never entered any of the actual theme parks, which required the payment of an admission fee.

This horse with no name was very interested in us. (Photo by Vickie Lintner.)

When we got to the Polynesian Hotel we decided to have lunch. Pat had checked in advance and been told that any of the restaurants at WDW would make vegan dishes on request even if they were not on the menu. Before being seated, the chef came out to talk with us and made some recommendations for vegan dishes he could prepare. We ended up ordering a Pan Asian Noodle dish with tofu, and some100% Kona coffee, both of which were excellent.

Us on one of the WDW boats bundled up against the weather. (Photo by Vickie Lintner.)

We were a bit chilled by the time we got back to their coach, so Pat turned on the cube heater and we huddled under some throws to warm up. While Vickie began preparing dinner Pat drove us to one of the other campground sections to visit with David and Marie Ross. David and Marie had spent two nights at Williston Crossings visiting with us before going to Fort Wilderness to meet up with Marie’s sister and her husband for a week. We got to meet them too and had a nice, but brief visit, before Pat returned to fetch us for dinner.

Us back at Pat & Vickie’s coach getting warm. (Photo by Vickie Lintner.)

Vickie made a (vegan) butternut squash soup from scratch using her Vita-Mix and it was very good. We learned about the Vita-Mix on our first Holistic Holiday at Sea cruise. They are so powerful that you can make soup in them, not just blending ingredients, but heating them to boiling hot. Following the soup course we had potatoes and mixed vegetables.

After dinner we drove to Downtown Disney, the shopping, eating, entertainment center of WDW. We followed Pat but Vickie road with us to make sure we got there. The weather had moderated a bit and there were a lot of people there, but we enjoyed walking the grounds and window shopping. By 8 PM we were back at our cars. Pat and Vickie led us to the entrance to the toll road, made a U-turn, and headed back to FW as we got on the highway and started for Williston.

2014/01/28 (T) Myakka River SP, FL

Leave a reply

Myakka SP Visitor Center.

We had a leisurely start to the morning, with a light breakfast and coffee, before packing up and heading to Myakka River State Park with Steve and Karen. We took two cars as we planned to head home directly from the park.

L-to-R: Steve, Karen, and Linda study the maps and park info.

Myakka River SP was one of the first Florida State Parks. Although it is not that far from Venice and Sarasota, it encompasses many square miles of marsh, pine flatwoods, Sabal palm forest, and a long stretch of the Myakka River, including two lakes. Like Paynes Prairie, it is a wild place on the doorstep of urbanity and a major sanctuary for a diverse ecosystem including birds, alligators, and other animals. I have placed all of the wildlife photographs in a separate gallery post with today’s date.

Entrance tower to canopy skywalk suspension bridge.

Our friends from St. Petersburg (Michael and Donna) had recommended Myakka River SP to us earlier this month as one of the best places to see lots of very large alligators. They had also said that the best way to see the park was by kayak or canoe, and once we were there we saw why. The roads through the park and good, and there are some excellent trails and viewing areas, including one that takes you to an 85 foot long skywalk (suspension bridge) through the forest canopy 25 feet above the ground with a 75 foot observation tower at the end that gets you well above the treetops. But the park is mostly about water and most of the trails do not go to the water’s edge because it is marsh and there are snakes and alligators.

Linda on the skywalk 25 feet above the ground (she does not like heights or bridges that move, but she did just fine getting across.

Linda on the skywalk. It is 85 feet between the support/access towers.

Steve photographing from the skywalk.

There are two different campground areas, and they appeared to be older but very nice. Older in this case means winding roads and sites that are too small to accommodate an RV the size of our bus. We knew when we bought our bus conversion that one of the tradeoffs we were making was a higher-end travel and living experience at the expense of staying in state and national parks and forests. Even so, we were tent campers for many years and always enjoyed the less refined experience of state/national parks/forests campgrounds and their locations and adjacent activities.

The 75 foot observation tower at the end of the skywalk.

One of the campgrounds is near the entrance off of FL-70 and the other one is at the Myakka Outpost concession area on the south shore of the north lake. There is a café there, a gift shop, and concessions including a tram, an airboat, and bicycle, canoe, and kayak rentals. The boat launch is here and there is a nice picnic area where we stopped to have lunch. As we were parking we noticed people staring up at a tree. We quickly saw what they were watching; a large raptor eating a fish it had just caught. I put the long zoom lens on the camera and spent about 20 minutes photographing this bird from different angles. We eventually determined that it was an Osprey.

Karen and Linda resting at the base of the observation tower.

By mid-afternoon we had done what we felt we could do for the day without renting a canoe or kayak. We had a three hour drive to get home by which time the cats would have been on their own for almost 36 hours, so we said our farewells to Steve and Karen, agreed to meet again while we are both in Florida, and started the drive back to Williston. We made good time, arriving at 6:15 PM even with a rest stop and a fuel stop. The rain that was forecast for tomorrow started about 45 minutes before we got back to our motorcoach and it was obvious when we arrived that it had already rained heavily. We settled in for the evening, checked e-mail, and went to bed early having had two very full and satisfying days of visiting, sight-seeing, and entertainment.

2014/01/27 (M) Venice, FL

Leave a reply

We were up a little earlier this morning to finish packing and get on the road. Our destination was Nokomis, Florida where Steve and Karen Limkemann are renting a unit for part of the winter in Bay Lake Estates mobile home park. Nokomis is south of Sarasota just west of I-75 and borders Venice which is on the Gulf Coast. We passed a lot of mobile home (manufactured housing) parks in this area; our first exposure to this iconic aspect of Florida. The drive down took just over three hours, most of it due south on I-75, and into a different climate zone. We arrived just after 11 AM, unloaded the car, and relaxed for a while before going to lunch at Café Evergreen.

Bay Lake Estates, Nokomis, FL.

Café Evergreen ( http://cafeeergreen.net ) has only been open for about six weeks and was not yet listed on Happy Cow. It is an all-natural, all-organic restaurant and market, with a nice variety of menu choices, some of which are vegetarian and a few of which are vegan. They serve breakfast on weekends and also have a coffee/juice bar. Linda had the Grilled Eggplant Wrap sandwich and I had the Vegetarian Burger with the Napa Cabbage Slaw as a side (both of which were in fact vegan). Both sandwiches were excellent.

Our table at Café Evergreen.

Café Evergreen dining room.

From lunch we drove to Casey Key and parked at North Jetty Park. We walked down the beach to the Jetty and watched people fishing, bird-watching, and sun-bathing as boats came and went. It was warmer and dryer here than we have been experiencing up in Williston and very pleasant. We soaked up some of that sun and took lots of photographs, mostly of Pelicans and Snowy Egrets. We then drove to downtown Venice, parked in a public lot near the Venice Theater, and walked around downtown window shopping and taking photos.

L-to-R: Steve, Karen, and Linda.

Karen and Linda walking back from the beach, North Jetty Park, Casey Key, FL.

We were originally planning on going to a Thai restaurant for dinner as it was the only restaurant in Venice listed on Happy Cow, but decided to return to Café Evergreen instead. Linda had the Kelp Noodles Stir Fry and I had the Vegan Butternut Squash Ravioli. Again, both dishes were excellent, and Linda decided to do a review for Happy Cow went we got back to our bus.

We went back to Steve and Karen’s place to relax and change clothes before going to the Venice Theater to see the 8 PM performance by The Capital Steps. We had seen them several times before at a theater in Canton, Michigan, but they had not been to that theater in the last few years. Laughter really is the best medicine, and The Capital Steps had us laughing hard for almost two hours. We returned to the mobile home, chatted for a while longer, and turned in for the night.

2014/01/25 (S) Bushnell (FL)

Leave a reply

I got a call this morning from our mechanic, Joe, letting me know that he was still in Sarasota working on a bus and would not be available to visit at The Villager RV Park in Wildwood. I contacted Al at Breezy Oaks and adjusted our plans for the day accordingly. A visit with Al at Breezy Oaks was our main objective for the day, but as long as we were out we wanted to stop and see a few other things.

Rather than drive down I-75, which we have already done several times, we drove to Ocala on US-27 to where it joins up with US-301/US-441 heading SSE to Belleview. From there we continued SE on US-441 through the eastern section of The Villages, finally turning west on CR-466. We took CR-466 as far as Buena Vista Blvd and then followed its meandering path south as far County-466a where we turned west toward the town of Wildwood. In Wildwood we continued south on US-301/FL-35, paralleling I-75 to our west, past The Villager RV Park and through the little towns of Coleman and Sumterville before arriving in Bushnell.

The Villages is hard to describe. It’s a planned community of over 50,000 people and is still growing. It is made up of numerous residential compounds, all gated, and office/retail areas that are publicly accessible. There are a half-dozen golf courses, and special roads for the golf carts, which appeared to outnumber the cars. It’s all very new looking, clean and attractive, but with a uniformity whose main purpose appears to be guaranteeing that no one will ever be bothered by the appearance of their neighbor’s house. Medical services appeared to outnumber all of office space uses combined. If you need access to multiple providers of every medical specialty known to man, this is probably where you want to live. If not …

There are several RV parks in the Bushnell area, including Blueberry Hill RV Resort and Paradise Oaks Golf and RV Resort, and the Dade Battlefield Historic State Park. But there were two RV parks in particular that we were interested in visiting. One was the Escapees Sumter Oaks RV Park, which is one of the parks that is owned and operated by the Escapees RV Club. The other was Breezy Oaks RV Park where our friend, Al Hesselbart (historian for t he RV/MH Museum and Hall of Fame in Elkhart, Indiana), is spending the winter. The parks are less than 1/2 mile apart and close to an I-75 exit about four miles south of the actual town of Bushnell.

Al Hesselbart and his 1978 Newell.

We sat in the sun outside Al’s 1978 Newell and had a long, comfortable chat. We had skipped lunch, so by 4 PM we were hungry and Al suggested a Chinese Buffet in Brooksville, which was actually in Spring Hill. It had an incredible variety of food, some of which we could eat, and was in fact quite good. We dropped Al back at his coach and headed for home with a brief stop at the Ocala Publix for a few things.

2014/01/20 (M) Gallery Post

Leave a reply

This is a WordPress Gallery post of photographs from our visit to Cedar Key, Florida today. Click once on each thumbnail to open it in a separate tab full size. The largest dimension for any image is 600 pixels wide or 428 pixels high.

: A bay of the Gulf of Mexico at low tide with expoed oyster beds, part of Cedar Key Museum SP.

: Bald Eagle aerie near the Cedar Key Museum SP (FL). There is an adult eagle visible in the aerie.

: Front of the Whitman house at Cedar Key Museum SP (FL).

: The kitchen of the Whitman house at Cedar Key Museum SP (FL).

: Pelicans and other birds on an old pier off of the Cedar Key marina.

: Part of the Harbormaster Hotel on the Cedar Key waterfront.

: The Island House Hotel in Cedar Key, FL. Very old.

: The entrance sign for Sunset Isle RV Park and Motel.

: Technomadia’s bus nestled into its site at Sunset Isle RV Park in Cedar Key, FL.

: The office & cafe front door at Sunset Isle RV Park.

: Linda and Cherie Ve Ard of Technomadia by the Sunset Isle RV Park Office and Cafe.

: The clubhouse at Sunset Isle RV Park.

: Sunset Isle RV Park bath house.

: Inside Technomadia’s converted bus. Cherie (seated, center) demonstrating a project they are working on.

: The Low Key Hideaway motel.

: The Low Key Institute – gateway to the Low Key Tiki Bar. Note that Detroit is 1049 miles in “that” direction. The owners used to live at Camp Dearborn in Milford, Michigan.

: Back porch area of the Low Key Hideaway motel.

: The 3 RV sites at the Low Key Hideaway.

: Ocean-side view of the Tiki Bar at Low Key Hideaway.

: Interior of the Tiki Bar at Low Key Hideaway.

: The Low Key Hideaway / Tiki Bar patio area.

: Hurricane evacuation instructions – hey, this is serious business in the Gulf.

: Us on the dock at the Low Key Hideaway Tiki Bar. (Photo by Chris Dunphy.)

: Cherie Ve Ard and Chris Dunphy of Technomadia.

: Sunset illuminated sky looking north from Low Key Hideaway towards Sunset Isle RV Park.

: Sunset from Low Key Hideaway.

: Sunset from Low Key Hideaway.

2014/01/20 (M) Cedar Key (FL)

Leave a reply

[Note: I had enough photographs from today that I put them in a separate Gallery Post with today’s date.]

With a forecast of sunny skies and high temperatures in the mid 60’s we decided to head to Cedar Key today. Mid-morning I e-mailed Cherie that we were headed that way and would drop by the Sunset Isle RV Park and Motel mid-afternoon after checking out the town.

From Williston we took US-27 Alt WNW to Bronson and then took FL-24 SW to Cedar Key, a total distance of 45 miles and approximately one hour driving time. FL-24 is the route of the old rail line. Just before getting to Cedar Key we saw a sign for the Suwanee National Wildlife Refuge which is located some miles north of the Cedar Keys area. When we got to Cedar Key we headed to the Cedar Key Museum State Park where our annual park pass covered the $2 entrance fee for each of us.

We had a nice chat with the park volunteer and learned about the vast amount of land, marsh, tidal flats, and water that is reserved, preserved, and protected along the Florida Gulf Coast stretching far to the north and south of Cedar Key. We walked through the small but informative museum and then toured the Whitman house which had been moved to the Park as a well-preserved display of housing and domestic life from a bygone era in that part of Florida. Mr. Whitman was an avid shell collector, and part of his collection was on display the house.

The park was small but had a nice trail that got us down to the shore. The tide was out allowing us to see exposed oyster beds and large animal footprints leading into the water. Probably just someone’s dog, but… We also spotted a mature Bald Eagle soaring overhead. We then met a woman walking a dog who told us that just down the street behind the museum was the Bald Eagle nest (aerie) up in a large pine tree. We walked quietly and slowly in that direction. Bald Eagle aeries are enormous and it was easy to see. To our delight and good fortune there was an adult eagle clearly visible in the nest. I took a few photographs and then we left the way had come.

Although the Bald Eagle has been removed from the endangered species list, it is still highly protected as our national bird. Of more significance to us, however, is that the presence of Bald Eagles is still a marker of wilderness as they require a large area of specific habitat and generally stay away from populated areas. While Cedar Key is certainly a very remote and relatively small community surrounded by a vast area of protected habitat, the fact remains that this aerie, and what we must presume was a nesting pair of Bald Eagles, decided to live in someone’s backyard.

We drove back to the main downtown/waterfront part of Cedar Key, parked the car, and explored on foot. Cedar Key is not a big place, but it is old, and very charming, and even a bit “funky.” We stopped at the only grocery store we had seen, bought some lunch munchies and beverages, and had a quick lunch in the car. We then headed back towards Sunset Isle RV Park which is actually on a small island just before you get to the main island where most of Cedar Key is located.

We parked in front of the motel and walked around back to find Chris and Cherie’s bus. (Chris and Cherie blog and write under the name a Technomadia.) We spotted it right away, but before we got that far we spotted another familiar RV; a beautiful Spartan trailer that belonged to Forrest and Jeri Bone of the Tin Can Tourists. We first met them at the Arcadia Bus Rally when we attended Forrest’s presentation on the TCT’s and later toured their Spartan trailer during the open house. Forrest and Jeri actually hail from Gregory, Michigan not far from where our house is located.

We went on down to the Technomadia bus and Forrest came down shortly thereafter. Chris and Dani then stopped by (they are part of the NuRVers group that converged at Sunset Isle this January) and we had a good visit, Cherie demonstrating a project that she and Chris are working on. Forrest left to help Jeri do the laundry and Chris/Dani headed back to their rig (a Westphalia camper) to work. We eventually wandered over to the Tiki Bar at the Low Key Hideaway three “doors” south and hung out there while the bar filled up and the sun went down. The bar was neat, the people were neat, and the sunset was neat; long and colorful. We bid farewell to our old and new acquaintances and headed back to Williston. A quick stop at the Winn-Dixie supermarket for soy milk and the Sunoco filling station for fuel and we were home in time for dinner and some PBS before bed.

2014/01/12 (N) More Visitors

Leave a reply

Steve and Karen were headed to Deltona to visit relatives of Karen’s and were expected there around noon. With a two hour drive ahead of them they needed to be on the road by10 AM. We were all up before 8 AM, had a leisurely breakfast and set up a tripod to get a few photographs of the four of us before the left.

Linda, Bruce, Karen, and Steve at site 439, Williston Crossing RV Resort (FL).

The more time we spend living in the bus the more normal it seems, but we are still very much aware of the fact that for most of our friends it is an object of considerable curiosity. I think many of them are also fascinated, perhaps even a bit perplexed, by the idea that we live in even part time, and seeing it in person helps them understand just what it is that we are doing.

Last March (2013), while on our second Holistic Holiday at a Sea cruise, we became friends with a retired special education teacher from New York City named Norma. We exchanged e-mail addresses and phone numbers and have stated in touch with her since then. Norma has a daughter who lives in Winter Park, Florida north of Orlando and not that far from where we are staying. Norma has been down visiting, and e-mailed us yesterday indicating that family was headed to a state park for the day and would be close enough to stop in Williston for a visit. A quick phone call this morning confirmed the arrangements; they would come to the RV resort on the way home so everyone could see the motorhome. 🙂

Linda, Norma, Anna (Norma’s daughter) and Anna’s children in our coach.

As of this morning our Dropbox client software was still unable to connect to the Dropbox cloud servers. I was able to log in to our Dropbox account through various web browsers and upload a file, so that was some sort of progress. I was not, however, able to access my settings page, so the Dropbox servers/accounts were not yet fully restored and functional.

Linda made pan-fried firm tofu with grilled onions and Bar-B-Q sauce served on a whole wheat hamburger bun. The tofu has something of the texture of a fried egg, and the sandwich, while simple, is simply delicious. A side of Brussels sprouts and broccoli provided our greens.

I worked on getting the blog up-to-date while we watched Downton Abbey. I then transferred all of the photos for the Arcadia Bus Rally BCM article to a flash drive. I need to put it in the mail to the editor tomorrow.

2014/01/11 (S) Silver River State Park (FL)

Leave a reply

We finally had a day with some sunshine and no rain and Karen suggested that we go to Silver River State Park. Karen had been there many years ago and had fond memories of the place. The park is in Silver Springs, Florida on the eastern edge of Ocala, Florida, about 35 miles from our wintering grounds at the WCRV Resort in Williston, Florida. We left around 10 AM and were there by 10:45 AM. I have posted a photo gallery with today’s date in addition to this blog posting.

Silver River SP is large for an urban location and has two entrances. We went to the west entrance first. This is where the water park, springs, glass bottom boats, concessions, and entertainment facilities are located. There was also a major Ford car club show going on. We could not buy an annual pass at this entrance, however, so we drove to the east entrance. The east part of the park is where the campground, hiking trails, historic Cracker homestead, education facilities, and museum are located. We bought an annual park pass, good for admission of one vehicle with up to eight people at most of the Florida State Parks, went in, and parked at the trailhead area.

Silver Springs SP, Silver Springs, Florida.

Silver River SP, Silver Springs, Florida.

We had a leisurely stroll on the 1.9 mile Swamp Trail. The trail took us through pine Forest and cedar swamp to the south bank of the Silver River. There was a variety of interesting flora along the way (with an occasional explanatory placard) that Steve and I stopped to photograph. When we finished the hike we explored and photographed the Cracker homestead recreation, although none of the buildings were open.

Steve and Karen Limkemann., SRSP (FL).

While we were on the trail Linda got a call from our daughter. She was at our house and said the road was icy and the driveway had not been plowed. We had contracted with someone to take care of this in our absence and apparently they had not been there since the most recent heavy snows and extremely cold temperatures. I called the phone number we have and got a Verizon message indicating that the number had been changed, disconnected, or was no longer in service. Great (not).

Us at SSSP (FL). (Photo by Steve Limkemann.)

Us at SRSP (FL). (Photo by Steve Limkemann.)

We had gotten a referral for this snow removal service from the realtor who helped us by our house so I gave him a call. I made it clear that we understood that this was not his problem and we did not consider him in any way responsible, but if there was any way he could contact this guy and determine if he was still in business we would appreciate it. I thanked him, indicating that we really did not have anyone else we could call and appreciate any assistance he could provide. This is one of the potential downsides to being away from home in the winter, but no reason to spoil a good hike.

The World Famous Glass Bottom Boats, SSSP (FL).

The World Famous Glass Bottom Boats, SRSP (FL).

Our hiking done we returned to the east end of the park. This part of the park was once a private/commercial enterprise but is now a Florida State Park. The water park wasn’t open this time of year, but we were there to ride the famous glass bottom boats. The 30 minute ride gave us a great view of seven of the 20 springs that feed the Silver River. The water was crystal clear, so light penetrated easily to the bottom (as much as 55 feet down in the spring openings) and was teeming with aquatic life. A variety of birds were also there, especially Anhinga. We did not see any alligators, but we did see plenty of warning signs.

Ford car show at SRSP (FL).

The springs have been used for many years to film underwater scenes for movies, including one of the James Bond films. Most famous, however, was the Sea Hunt TV series starring Lloyd Bridges. All of the 120+ episodes were filmed in one particular spring that we were able to see.

Linda and Karen on the Swamp Tail, SSSP (FL).

Linda and Karen on the Swamp Tail, SRSP (FL).

The Ford car show had a lot of vehicles and a lot of people looking at them. One whole area was high performance Shelby Cobras with a Ford GT nearby. We wandered around and took a few pictures. The wind started to come up and when Linda checked the weather there was a storm front moving our way with severe thunderstorm warnings for Williston. We decided to head back as we had a couple of stops to make on the way and wanted to be back at the coach before the storms hit.

Steve photographing palms on the Swamp Trail, SSSP (FL).

Steve photographing palms on the Swamp Trail, SRSP (FL).

Sometime on Friday the Dropbox service developed a major problem as the result of some maintenance they were doing on the system. Our desktop clients were suddenly unable to connect with the Dropbox cloud servers and I was also not able to log in through the web interface. I had planned to upload photos for the BCM Arcadia Rally article and couldn’t. Plan B was to put them on a flash drive and mail them. I found a 16 GB unit for $9.99 at Staples and bought a padded mailing envelope to ship it in. We then stopped at the Publix supermarket on US-27 to pick up some things Linda needed to make risotto. It just started to rain as we got back to the coach, so we quickly got our groceries and ourselves inside. Moments later the thunder, lightning, wind, and rain began in earnest.

Linda, Karen, and Steve at the Cracker Homestead, SSSP (FL).

Linda, Karen, and Steve at the Cracker Homestead, SRSP (FL).

Although Saturday is also fire pit night at WCRV Resort but they do not build a fire when high winds are forecast. We heard voices over by the fire pit later but decided to hunker down for the evening. Linda made a traditional Arborio rice risotto with mushrooms, onions, garlic, Pinot Grigio (which we also drank), and four different greens (kale, Swiss chard, spinach, and arugula). It was truly excellent. We had fresh strawberries and dark chocolate covered almonds for dessert. We four people in the coach for dinner everyone has to hold their plates on their laps, but Steve and Karen were good sports about it.

2014/01/10 (F) Visitors

Leave a reply

Steve and Karen Limkemann e-mailed yesterday that they were in Macon, Georgia and thought they would arrive at Williston Crossings today between 2 and 3 PM. They left S. E. Michigan Wednesday around noon and got as far as northern Kentucky before stopping for the night. We had planned to do weekly chores this morning anyway, but that became necessary once we knew their ETA. My chores included doing the laundry so we would all have clean linens, and dumping the waste tanks and refilling the fresh water tank. Linda’s chores involved interior cleaning (vacuum, mop, dust, glass and mirrors, sinks and toilet, etc.) and de-cluttering.

Steve and Karen arrived on schedule and came in the new/rear entrance off of FL-121. They phoned me and I drove over to lead them to our site which is near the original/front entrance on N. E. 5th St. I had not finished filling the fresh water tank, so I gave Steve a tour of the bays while the tank filled. Eventually the chores were done and we gathered inside to visit.

Being a Friday it was fire pit night at the RV resort, but first we went out to dinner. We decided to try Angelina Mia’s, the Italian restaurant and pizzeria we stopped at the other day on our walk to town. We ended up ordering a thin crust northern Italian veggie pizza, no cheese, and it was OK. Steve had lasagna and Karen had seafood linguine, and they both said it was OK as well. By the time we got back to the RV resort a large group had gathered around the fire pit and the fire was blazing. There were no vacant chairs, and we did want to stand, so we retired to the coach and settled in.

We have had overnight guests in the bus prior to this, but only one person at a time. Steve and Karen were the first couple to stay overnight, and the first guests to use the sleeper sofa pulled out into its two-person configuration. In spite of the noise and vibration from the auxiliary air compressor, the refrigerator, the vent fans, and the water pump, they said they were comfortable and slept well.

2014/01/05 (N) Views of WCRVR

Leave a reply

I’ve been hunkered down writing an article for Bus Conversions Magazine on the recent Arcadia Bus Rally and Linda has been working on her counted stitch needlepoint, but both of those are activities from which we need to take breaks and go for walks. When we do, I usually take my camera along. Here are eight more photos of Williston Crossings RV Resort that capture some of the features of the park and the ways that residents make their sites uniquely their own.

A cactus garden.

The fire pit.

Grass and palm trees.

The old quarry from the back of one of the sites.

This belongs to one of our next door neighbors.

Tiki huts and rock gardens.

Donna & Michael’s Motorhome.

Donna, Michael, and Linda.

2014/01/03 (F) Power Dinner

Leave a reply

Linda went to the Publix grocery store in Gainesville yesterday, so we are well stocked for the next week or so. We also learned last night from Donna and Michael Bartolomeo that there are several vegan restaurants in Gainesville as well as a vegan ice cream parlor / bakery / brewery and a vegan pizzeria. While we don’t plan to eat out very often, having vegan dining options less than 20 miles away is a nice plus. The Happy Cow website confirmed their addresses and menu selections.

The overnight low hit 35 degrees F, but that is not unexpected in this part of Florida in January. We had closed up the rig before we went to bed and did not turn on any of the heaters (other than the refrigerator) so the temperature inside dropped to just under 60 degrees F; a bit nippy, but not uncomfortable. The refrigerator is a compressor driven residential unit that exhausts heat out the bottom front into the kitchen/dining area. In warmer weather (no rain) we usually have the ceiling vent open and the exhaust fan running to pull that warm air out of the coach. But in colder weather the vents are closed and the heat from the fridge helps keep the coach from getting too cold.

We lost power to the coach around 11:15 AM, but only for a few minutes. The inverter kicked in immediately and did what it is supposed to do. The microwave clock did not lose its time and the UPS that powers the NAS kept it double protected. The power was restored before I could go investigate what had happened. When I checked later there was no code set in our Progressive Industries EMS, indicating that we had simply lost power and then had it restored, which clears any previous error codes.

The View From Our Coach on Site 439 at Williston Crossings RV Resort.

After her morning walk Linda worked on her needlepoint while the light was good and I took care of e-mail, finished up the blog post for yesterday, and started working on the Arcadia Rally article for BCM. I had an e-mail from BCM publisher Gary Hall indicating that they planned to bump the rally article to the March 2014 issue, so that gave me a little breathing room in terms of getting it done. Gary also sent me the January 2014 special edition they produced for the FMCA Great Lakes Area Motor Coach Association (GLAMA). This issue has an extensive article that I wrote on the September 2013 GLAMARAMA rally. GLAMA is going to include the entire issue in their next newsletter, which will go out to somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 members.

Tonight was one of the scheduled fire pit nights at the resort. The fire pit is only 100 feet from our site so we checked it out. It‘s under cover and surrounded by large rocking chairs and a couple of benches. We often enjoyed campfires when tent camping, but have not made very many since we started RVing in 2005. We were planning on going when I got a call from Michael Bartolomeo inviting us to their motorhome for dinner.

Michael indicated that it had been a strange night and that’s when we found out that the whole north section of the park had lost power overnight. Apparently the short power outage we experienced this morning was connected with the restoration of power to the north section. We stopped by the office later and inquired as to what had happened. Sometime the night before someone ran into a utility pole (outside the park) and took out power to half the city of Williston including the north section of the RV resort. When utility crews finally repaired the damage and restored power, the transformer that feeds the southern half of the northern section failed. A replacement had to be brought in from some distance away, and residents in that part of the resort were without power for about 18 hours.

Donna and Michael had been without power overnight and when they got it back their furnace decided not to work. Michael was able to locate a loose connection and tighten it this morning which brought the furnace back to life, but they had a chilly night in their rig. They had us over for dinner nonetheless and it was wonderful. We had pistachios (in the shell) for an appetizer, butternut squash soup with fresh apple slices and croutons, and whole bean burritos with guacamole, spicy salsa, and steamed kale. They served dark chocolate covered almonds for dessert and we drank Pinot Grigio to wash it all down as we continued our conversation from the night before. No pictures yet, however, as we have not crossed paths with them during the day when I also had my camera with me.

The Phase Place

Welcome to the next phase (hosted by QTH.com)

Category Archives: Family-Friends-Home

2014/04/10 (R) Dunedin (FL)

2014/04/07 (M) Big Wheels Keep On Turning

2014/04/06 (N) A Vegan Farewell

2014/04/04 (F) Converted

2014/04/01 (T) No April Fool

2014/03/31 (M) T Minus 7

2014/03/29 (S) Walking In The Rain

2014/03/28 (F) Singing In The Rain

2014/03/26 (W) Coffee And A Bagel

2014/03/25 (T) That Is Imsane

2014/03/24 (M) Count Down

2014/03/23 (N) Once A Teacher…

2014/03/22 (S) WiFi Ants

2014/03/20 (R) The Spring Equinox

2014/03/17 (N) St. Patrick’s Day

2014/03/15 (S) The Ides Of March

2014/02/14 (F) Valentine’s Day

2014/02/06 (R) Orange City (FL)

2014/02/03-04 (M&T) Happy Birthday

2014/01/30 (R) Fort Wilderness

2014/01/28 (T) Myakka River SP, FL

2014/01/27 (M) Venice, FL

2014/01/25 (S) Bushnell (FL)

2014/01/20 (M) Gallery Post

2014/01/20 (M) Cedar Key (FL)

2014/01/12 (N) More Visitors

2014/01/11 (S) Silver River State Park (FL)

2014/01/10 (F) Visitors

2014/01/05 (N) Views of WCRVR

2014/01/03 (F) Power Dinner