Category Archives: RV-Travel

Posts related to our active involvement in RVing.

2014/04/12 (S) More Hudson

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We stayed at Suncoast Designers until Sunday Morning as planned.  Bill and Nancy, in the Newmar Essex next to us, decided on Friday to also have the large window in their entrance door repaired.  Suncoast was willing to do the work but it would not be completed until sometime next week.  We decided to keep them company while we figured out where we were going next and made the arrangements.  We had struck up a fast friendship with them and enjoyed just sitting and talking.  They are from Ottawa, Ontario but have had a mobile home in Ocala, Florida for 25 years.  They have a customized 1938 Chevy and are active in the National Street Rod Association (NSRA).  They have been RVing in various rigs for a long time, so we had lots to talk about.

Bill and Nancy went out for breakfast to a place nearby that Joe recommended.  Breakfast has become our least favorite meal to eat out, unless we can find a Panera, as our menu choices are typically very limited.  Linda had researched places to stay in the Florida panhandle and identified several possibilities.  None of them were Florida State Parks, as the system was fully booked statewide, and none of them were right on the Gulf, as they were all dreadfully expensive.  We selected Live Oak Landing near Freeport, Florida, an RVC Outdoor Destination park.  Live Oak Landing was 15 miles south of I-10, which would give us access to everything between Tallahassee and Pensacola.  It was 10 miles north of from US-98 which would give us ready access to a stretch of the Gulf Coast from Panama City to the east to Destin to the west.  The website said they had openings but Linda called to confirm that and made the reservation.

I worked most of the day at my computer while Linda worked on her counted cross-stitch project.  I took a break for a couple of hours mid-day to run some errands.  The most important errand was to find the Tires Plus shop in Spring Hill, verify that they could/would fill our bus tires at 9:00 AM Sunday morning, and scope out any access issues.  It’s a good thing I did.

Yes, they would be open at 9, and yes they would be glad to put air in our tires at no charge.  Getting the bus into their parking lot would not be a problem, but getting out might be.  The manager asked me to pull up alongside the end of the building so they could reach the tires with their air pressure hose.  From that position I could then back around behind their service bays and pull out of the lot the way I came in; easy enough as long as the car was not in tow.  The obvious solution was to have Linda drive the car separately and hook it up after the bus was backed around behind the building.

I stopped at the Publix across the street and the dollar store next door where I found a small bottle of Goo-Gone.  Linda called as I was driving back with a short list of items for me to pick up at … Publix.  I continued on and stopped at Walmart instead.

The tape that Suncoast Designers used to secure the openings after the windows were removed left a residual glue line on the body and adjacent windows.  The Suncoast employees were pushing to get customers taken care of so I decided to just take care of this myself.  Linda helped and it gave us something to do in the afternoon.  The windows were easy to clean up with a safety razor blade, but getting the glue off of the paint required a solvent, and Goo-Gone is what they recommended.  It contains petroleum distillates and citrus extracts, so after it removes the glue it has to be cleaned off the paint with soapy water which in turn has to be rinsed off and dried.

I had sent a TXT MSG to Chuck that resulted in a call back.  In the course of the conversation I mentioned that the engine ran a bit warmer than usual on the drive down from Williston.  I thought I recalled him telling me that he had his radiator removed and cleaned or re-cored but that was not the case.  What he had done was wash it with a garden hose from inside the engine bay.  The radiator fan draws (relatively) cool air in from outside, so he figured it made sense to clean it with water sprayed in the opposite direction.  He said that cleaning radiator had helped the engine run cooler.

His logic made sense to me, and Suncoast had very conveniently left a hose with a spray nozzle on a reel behind our coach.  I sprayed the radiator as best I could from inside the bay and then sprayed it through the lovers from the outside.  We would find out tomorrow whether it made any difference.

Early Saturday evening we circled up our chairs again with Bill and Nancy grabbed a cold beverage, and enjoyed a nice chat.  Steve and Kathy stopped by for a while and another couple who had just arrived also stopped to chat.  They were from eastern Ontario and were native French speakers, but their English was excellent.

 

2014/04/11 (F) Suncoast Designers Photos

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Here are the photos from the repair of four of the eight awning-style thermopane windows in our motorcoach.  The work was performed at Suncoast Designers, Inc. in Hudson, Florida.  Great people to work with and they have a correct process for doing this work.

2014/04/11 (F) Primitive Camping

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[Photos related to this post and the one from Apr 9 will appear in a separate gallery post.]

Definition of “primitive camping”:  not being parked on a level concrete pad with 50A full hookups.  It’s all relative, of course, and that certainly is not our definition.  We are parked on gravel, which some RVers like better than concrete or asphalt, and we have 50A RV electrical service and fresh water at out “site.”  There is a dump station here and we are only minutes from more places to shop than we could visit in a lifetime, with more things to buy than we could possibly ever need or want.  So, no, this is not primitive camping.  The rigs are parked fairly close together, closer than we typically experience at RV rallies, but this is an RV repair facility after all, not a campground.  There is enough space for adjacent rigs to put out their slides and still be able to walk between them, and the “canyon (Venturi) effect” causes refreshing breezes to flow between the units.  To me, primitive means more (or less) than just not having hookups.  When I think of primitive camping, it conjures up an image of remoteness and wilderness.  In spite of having a background in mathematics, statistics, and research methodology, I guess I’m just a romantic at heart.

Joe finished cleaning and caulking our four windows this morning.  Kevin uncovered the openings and helped Joe reinstall the finished assemblies with assistance from Matt (on the outside) and me (on the inside).  When all of the windows were reinstalled Matt cleaned them inside and out.  Linda took photographs to document the work for the article I am writing for Bus Conversion Magazine.  We left the four repaired windows latched shut but were once again able to open the other four.  It will be nice to finally have windows open in the bedroom again.  Joe (who is a very funny guy and a delight to work with) had us sign off on the work, after which Linda went to office and paid our bill.  She also bought three cans of the Ardex Labs spray glass cleaner for $5 each.  We found it online; $15.99 / can plus shipping.  So much for Internet bargains.

We were pleasantly surprised to see that the cost for the repairs was only 57% of what we had been quoted.  We did not ask why, but we suspect it was because they were able to remove and reinstall the awning frames from the body with the thermopane glass sandwiches in them, and do so fairly quickly.  This allowed them to do most of the work inside.  Another factor may have been the size of the windows; the glass in our awning windows is only about 28″ wide by 17″ tall.  They told us when we made the appointment to expect 3 – 5 days for the work and it took 3.5 days.

The work on our coach was wrapped up by noon and we were free to go but being mid-day Friday we decided to stay.  We have made friends with Bill and Nancy from Ottawa, Ontario Canada, in the Newmar Essex motorhome next to us (Bill is the guy who helped us back in when we arrived.)  They decided yesterday to have the upper window in their door repaired and were going to have to stay until early next week for the work to be finished.  We decided to stick around and keep them company as we have enjoyed talking with them.  Besides, not knowing when the work would be done, we had not made a reservation yet for Sunday in the panhandle and will need to do that early on Saturday.

Our driver-side steer tire was reading about 5 PSI lower than the passenger-side tire when we left Williston on Monday afternoon, but both readings were above the minimum I like to run, so I chose not to deal with it there and then.  Of course, it was 87 degrees F when I checked them.  It’s been noticeably cooler here, especially first thing in the morning, and the driver-side steer tire looks like it could use a little extra air.  One of the nice things about filling the tires in Michigan in Mid-December and then driving to Florida for the winter was that even with a very slow leak the cold pressure goes up along with the morning low temperature.  But now that we are about to start our northward journey I would like to have all of the tire pressures reset enough above my normal cold pressure that they will still be OK when we get home.

I asked Joe if Suncoast had a shop compressor.  He said they did but he did not think it was set to a high enough pressure to inflate our front tires, which normally carry 110 – 115 PSI cold.  I was hoping we might find a mobile tire service like Carter Tire in Elkhart, Indiana but a Google search did not reveal anything promising.  I asked Joe if he could recommend someplace nearby, preferably heading north from here, and he suggested Tires Plus in Spring Hill.  His friend Dave works there and Joe thought it had plenty of room for us to get in and out and high enough air pressure to fill our front tires.  It is also about 10 miles north on our intended route on the northbound side of the road, and is open on Sunday at 9:00 AM.  I plan to drive up there tomorrow to verify the facts, but it sounds like exactly what we need.  If we are there at 9 AM and get our tire pressures taken care of we can make it to the western panhandle by late afternoon.

I had a long list of things I wanted to get done at the computer today, but it was another lovely day and we ended up sitting in shade between our rig and Bill/Nancy’s rig all afternoon enjoying the breeze, and shooting it.  We skipped lunch and were finally driven inside by hunger and the arrival of small, persistent, flying black bugs.

Because we skipped lunch we had an earlier dinner than usual.  Linda improvised a dish made with ingredients she had on hand: quinoa, black beans, tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, onions, and olive oil.  The hot peppers were really hot so she used them sparingly, but the dish still had a serious kick.  She has developed a good feel for how to combine these kinds of ingredients without a recipe.  It was delicious and I asked her to capture the recipe on our website/blog.

The coach had warmed up a bit during the day so we set two of our chairs out in front after dinner to enjoy the cooler evening air.  Bill and Nancy brought their chairs over and we enjoyed small glasses of the Barefoot Moscato while they enjoyed a couple of beers.  We talked until it got dark and chilly and decided to call it a night around 8:30 PM.  Sometime later we heard a very strange and loud sound, like an ATV, drive past the front of our coach.  I heard it returning from the back parking lot and managed to get a glimpse as it went by.  It was a pick-up truck with a fogger in the bed.  Presumably they were spraying something for insect control.  I have not seen anyone do that in quite some time.

 

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

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Here are the photos from our visit to Dunedin, Florida and Honeymoon  Island State Park.  Click to view entire photo.

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

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[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.

 

2014/04/09 (W) The Work Begins

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

In contrast to yesterday, we had a beautiful day today weatherwise and otherwise.  Jim, Kevin, and Joe removed our four fogged awning windows with some minor assistance from me.  It turned out that the window frames hang from an open hinge and are attached to the lift mechanism arms on each end by pins with grooves that accept retaining clips.  Once the clips were removed the pins were slid out, releasing the lift arms.  The window frame was then free to swing high enough for the hinge to come free from the mating piece (attached to the bus).  Not only was this relatively easy to do, it will make it much easier for Suncoast Designer’s to remove the thermopane glass sandwich from the frame and reinstall it once it is repaired.  It also means that once the windows are reinstalled in the coach we can leave without further waiting as the adhesive will have already cured.  Kevin covered the openings with pieces of cardboard and plastic secured with what appeared to be green Frog tape.

I went to the office around 11AM to see if/when I could meet with Jeff, the general manager.  While I was there I picked up their informational brochure and discovered that they do a plant tour at 1 PM every day.  Customers are curious about the process and equipment used to repair the windows.  The daily tour allows Suncoast to schedule this into their workday and take care of everyone at once, minimizing disruption to the work in progress.  Fritz was our tour guide and did a good job of explaining the steps in their process and the equipment, tools, and techniques used at each step.  Linda took notes while I took photographs for a possible future article.

As soon as the tour was over I started working on the article draft.  At 3 PM I returned to the office and met with Suncoast general manager Jeff Heyen to get some additional info about the company and the process they have developed for repairing thermopane RV windows.  Jeff also confirmed that they were not going to install the windows back into the coach until Friday.  That allowed us to firm up plans to get together with Michael and Donna tomorrow in Dunedin for lunch at the Serendipity Cafe and a visit to Honeymoon Island State Park.

I finished the article draft before dinner time and had Linda proofread it.  After dinner I offloaded the photos from the camera and spent the rest of the evening selecting and post-processing images for the article.

As I was wrapping up for the night I noticed that I had received a server maintenance notification from Scott at QTH.com.  They had installed patches to fix the Heartbleed bug discovered two days ago in OpenSSL and would be rebooting all of their servers to make sure the patches were applied.  I also received notifications from the recently installed Wordfence plug-in regarding this issue and its possible effect on WordPress sites while assuring their customers that the Wordfence cloud servers had not been compromised.  I shut everything down and went to bed.

 

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

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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

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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.

 

2014/04/04 (F) Converted

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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.

 

2014/04/04 (F) Flashback

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When we went to Weeki Wachee Springs State Park with John and Marian Hagan on Wednesday we got a CD with photos Marian took of me and John working on the bus back on March 8th.  Rather than edit a 3-week old post, I’ve put them in a WP Gallery.

2014/04/03 (R) Electrifying

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Two days ago Jeff and Kathy’s Fleetwood Bounder developed a problem with its 12 VDC house electrical system.  From the symptoms Jeff described it appeared that the AC-to-DC converter may have developed a problem.  Several people stopped by to help so I backed out of the situation.  Too many cooks, etc.

We were gone all day yesterday so I did not have a chance to check with Jeff to see if anything got resolved.  He stopped by our coach this morning to see if I could come down and have a look, so that answered my unasked question.  There is a RV technician who services many of the rigs in the park.  He stopped by briefly yesterday and said he would be back, but had not made it back yet.

The Bounder is equipped with conventional RV appliances for heating, air-conditioning, and refrigeration as well as low voltage DC lighting.  Some appliances operate on propane, some on 120 VAC, and some on both (selectable).  What they have in common is that they all require 12 VDC to operate their control circuits.  If the DC house voltage is not high enough none of these appliances will work.

Failing house batteries would be one possible cause of a DC house voltage problem.  A failed AC-to-DC converter would be another.  A main function of the converter is to maintain the charge on the house batteries which act like a large capacitor in the system and can supply 12 VDC power (for a while) when then rig is not plugged in to shore power and the auxiliary powerplant is not running.  Without the charger function the energy stored in the battery bank will be used by the various appliances.  As the state of charge drops so does the voltage.  Eventually the voltage drops low enough that the appliances will not work.

Jeff had already disconnected the ground cable from the chassis/starting battery, removing it as a load on the converter output.  We turned off the shore power and then disconnected the ground cable from the house battery bank, which consists of two 6 VDC deep cycle batteries in series.  I checked the voltage of both the chassis battery and the house battery bank; both measured 11.5 VDC.  A fully charged “12V” battery with no load and no surface charge measures 12.6 VDC.

I had Jeff turn the shore power back on and measured the voltage across the two house batter cables (with the ground cable still disconnected).  It measured 4.5 volts.  That was obviously not going to charge the battery bank or operate the appliances, but it was odd and not what I expected.  I thought it would be zero, indicating a total failure of the converter.

We left the ground cables off of both the chassis battery and house battery bank.  We connected Jeff’s small battery charger (6 A) to the engine battery and borrowed John’s 20 A charger to charge the house battery bank.  After a couple of hours the house battery bank was up to 12.4 VDC; not fully charged but apparently accepting charge.  Ditto for the chassis battery.  The refrigerator, however, had lost most of its cold and we needed to get it turned back in.

We decided to leave the shore power to the rig turned off so the converter would not be energized, plug the refrigerator AC power cords directly in to the shore power pedestal, and reconnect the house battery bank ground cable to supply 12 VDC to the refrigerator control module.  This allowed the refrigerator to run on 120 VAC and the 20 A battery charger to act like a converter and continue to charge the house battery bank while we figured out what to do next.

This makeshift arrangement worked but was intended to be temporary.  What I really wanted to do was get the converter disconnected so we could restore 120 VAC shore power to the motorhome and not have a faulty converter causing problems.  Up to this point, however, we had not been able to physically locate the converter.  The AC breaker panel did not even have a circuit breaker labeled for the power supply to the converter.

I examined the point of entry for the shore power cord and decided the converter had to be somewhere in the driver side rear of the rig.  The bedroom is located in the rear of the motorhome and that corner of the interior is the shower.  Just forward of the shower is a built in dresser.  The toe kick had a grill that I originally took to be a heat register for the furnace.  It seemed likely, however, that the converter might be under there as this area is directly above the bay where the auxiliary power plant is installed and both the DC and AC distribution panels are close by.

We figured out how to remove the two large lower drawers and there it was, along with the AC power transfer switch.  The converter was a WFCO-8865 rated at 65 A. It was plugged into an AC outlet box on the floor of the cabinet and had two large DC output cables and a chassis ground wire.

I unplugged it, disconnected the DC output ground cable, and taped the exposed conductor to prevent a short circuit.  Jeff restored the shore power and we figured out which circuit the outlet box was on; a 20 A circuit breaker marked “small appliance.”  I plugged it back in and measured the voltage at the converter DC output terminals.  13.5 VDC.  Again, not what I expected to see.  It turns out that I think the reason I was seeing 13.5 VDC may have been that I was looking at the battery voltage.  The case of the converter is bonded to the chassis and so is the  negative terminal of the house battery bank.  Apparently the DC negative connection on the converter is also bonded to the case.

While I was disconnecting the DC negative cable from the converter I discovered that the end of the red (DC positive) cable was not secured properly at the converter and could easily be pulled out.  Yikes!  That could account for the 4.5 VDC we saw earlier at the battery end of the cables.

In order to make their rig as usable as possible I unplugged the converter, plugged the refrigerator 120 VAC cords back in to their outlets, and left the 20 A charger connected to the house battery bank to act as a temporary converter.  With any luck  they were able to use any of their AC or DC devices through the evening and overnight hours.

 

20140402-w-weeki-wachee-photos

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Here are some of our photos from Weeki Wachee Springs State Park.  If you are ever near the Suncoast of Florida, north of Tampa / St. Petersburg, be sure to put this place on your list of things to see and do.

2014/04/02 (W) Weeki Wachee

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Today was probably our last visit to a Florida State Park in this part of Florida.  In this case “this part of” refers to north central and southwest to the Suncoast.  Our destination was Weeki Wachee Springs SP.  WWSSP is another one of those FSP gems where the state park system took over a former “old Florida” roadside attraction.  We were glad they did because otherwise this iconic old Florida attraction would no longer exist.  The New York Times ran an excellent article on Weeki Wachee about a year ago.  Most of the photos from today are in a separate gallery post.

Peakcock with tail fanned.

Peakcock with tail fanned.

We left WCRVR around 9 AM and headed towards Dunnellon to pick up John and Marian Hagan.  We arrived around 9:40 having been delayed a few minutes by road construction that had traffic down to one lane on US-41.  We got everyone on board and were on our way quickly.  The park is located on US-19 just west of where FL-50 (Cortez Blvd) ends and it took an hour to get there.  We arrived at WWSSP a little before 11 AM, but not in time to see the 11 AM Mermaid show.  Mermaids?  Oh yes; mermaids are the reason to go to Weeki Wachee Springs SP.

Linda, Marian, & John at the entrance to WWSSP.

Linda, Marian, & John at the entrance to WWSSP.

Weeki Wachee Spring is a Class 1 spring issuing over 100,000,000 gallons of fresh water every 24 hours to create the Weeki Wachee River that meanders a mere 12 miles to the Gulf of Mexico.  The water is 99.8% pure, and technically it safe to scoop it up out of the river (near the source, anyway) and drink it without any treatment.

Weeki Wachee is a large, deep spring; amazingly clear with beautiful shades of green and blue in the bright sunshine.  The name cones from earlier Native American words meaning “large spring.”  Go figure.  In the 1940’s a former Navy frogman bought the property and created the underwater viewing theater on the west side of the spring.  He also invented the air hose underwater breathing technique that has allowed young women (and some men) to perform the underwater mermaid shows ever since.  On our visit they were doing two different shows: Fish Tales (a historical retrospective), and The Little Mermaid (adaptation of the Hans Christian Anderson tale).  Campy?  Of course.  Delightful?  Absolutely.

Weeki Wachee SP is small at only 528 acres, but we managed to make a nice, relaxing day of it.  Admission is $13 for adults and our FSP Annual Pass was only good for admitting two people.  The other major attraction is the Buccaneer Bay water park.  It was open but the water slides were not operating.  This time of year the slides are only open on weekends.  They are open every day during the summer season.  We were surprised by how many people were here on a Wednesday in early April, swimming, sunning, walking the grounds, and enjoying the shows.

We went to the animal show at noon.  The young man who did the show was very entertaining but also provided important information about the snakes, turtles, and small alligator he showed us.  He kept the 18″ long alligator out after the show for people to touch and photograph.  The park also has a resident population of pea fowl that roam the grounds freely.  We encountered them numerous times and I took quite a few photographs.  Several of the peacocks were fanning the tails and they were very impressive.

The park service operates a pair of pontoon boats that take visitors on a 25 minute round trip on the upper part of the river.  There is almost no development on this stretch of the River and we saw turtles, an Anhinga drying its wings, and a Bald Eagle nest with an immature eagle in it.

The park operates several concession stands and we patronized one for a light lunch.  They also have a gift shop.  The park is open from 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM.  We left at 5 PM feeling that we had gotten value for our entrance fee.

From the park we headed east on FL-50 / Cortez Blvd to Buffet City.  We had been to this Chinese buffet once before with Al Hesselbart and thought the variety and quality of food was sufficient to make the $11 per person cost reasonable for us.  All four of us got our monies worth.

We headed back to Dunnellon by way of the northbound Suncoast Parkway (FL-589 Tollroad).  The Parkway ends at US-19 south of Homosassa.  From there we reversed our route from the morning, taking US-19 back to Crystal River and then taking the road that runs northeast back to US-41 in Dunnellon.  We stopped at the Hagan’s house for some coffee and conversation.  Marian had taken a few photos of us at the park and John transferred them to a DVD.

We arrived back at our coach around 9:30 PM and were greeted by our two cats who demanded our undivided attention for a while.  A small serving of coconut milk “ice cream” put the finishing touch on a long but very satisfying day.

 

2014/04/01 (T) No April Fool

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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!

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.

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.

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

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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

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“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 1st.  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

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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.”

 

2014/03/27 (R) Cover Up

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With the return of high temperatures in the low 80’s and lows in the upper 50’s Williston Crossings’ maintenance crews have been busy pruning trees and bushes, clearing undergrowth, cutting grass, and painting the white light poles at all of the sites in the older/south section of the resort.  Many long-term residents have also been busy tending to the landscaping improvements they have made to their sites, including shrubs, flowers, herbs, and grass.  With an overnight low of 34 degrees F two nights ago, many residents were also bringing plants inside or trying to cover them up.  Even in north central Florida this winter seems determined to extend its influence well into spring.

Paper towel holder installed above kitchen sink behind fluorescent light fixture.

Paper towel holder installed above kitchen sink behind fluorescent light fixture.

Single-end mounting of paper towel holder.

Single-end mounting of paper towel holder.

This morning dawned heavily overcast and the forecast was for rain.  No matter; we had our morning coffee, read, worked on e-mails and websites, and finally had breakfast.  We had a couple of projects to tend to so we did those next.  First we installed the new paper towel holder in the kitchen.  We mounted it to the underside of the cabinet over the sink, behind the small fluorescent light fixture.  It is convenient to reach, even with wet hands, and definitely off the counter and out if the way.

 

 

 

 

Very little of the paper towel holder is visible.

Very little of the paper towel holder is visible.

Next up was the cover for the Fan-Tastic Vent motor.  The manual operation knob slides over a splined shaft on the motor and is retained by a small machine screw.  The knob has to be removed to allow the old cover to come off and the new one to go on.  It did not come off easily, but I coaxed it off without breaking anything.  When the two mounting screws that hold the cover were removed the whole motor assembly just fell out and dangled from the two power wires.  The drive shaft is also a splined connection that slips over the lift mechanism shaft and the power wires are attached with insulated spade connectors.  This design makes it easy to replace the motor if it fails.

The new motor cover for the Fan-Tastic ven fan in the bedroom. We left the knob off.

The new motor cover for the Fan-Tastic ven fan in the bedroom. We left the knob off.

The biggest challenge in this little project, besides standing on a dual chamber air mattress to do the work, was simultaneously getting the drive shafts re-engaged, the cover plate holes lined up, and the mounting screws re-installed.  All of this alignment is done ‘blind’ as the mating parts are inside the unit where they cannot be seen.  But we got it back together without too much swearing.  The other difficulty was the walnut trim that surrounds the opening.  The way it is constructed it actually interferes with the knob.  We decided not to re-install the knob so I put the retaining screw back in the shaft and we stored the knob in one of the small bedroom storage cubbies.

Workers enclosing the rusted iron on the Pullman cars with wood.

Workers enclosing the rusted iron on the Pullman cars with wood.

The Lazydays RV dealership in Seffner, Florida (just east of Tampa /St. Pete) has been staging units in the new/north section of Williston Crossings RV Resort for the last couple of days.  The rain never materialized today and the clouds thinned as the day progressed.  We walked over to see any new units they had brought in since we were there yesterday.  On the way over I grabbed a couple of photos of the work being done on the old train cars that will eventually be rental cabins.  As you can see in these photos, they are reinforcing (encasing) all of the old structural iron, which is heavily rusted, with wood.

A wider view of the restoration work on the Pullman cars.

A wider view of the restoration work on the Pullman cars.

Lazydays had their entrance structure erected, a tent to shade the sales associates, and tables with chairs where folks could sit and relax.  All of the motorhomes were Class A’s and most of them had hitch-mounted telescoping flag poles flying Lazydays flags.  There were at least six additional motorhomes and another 5th Wheel trailer.  We looked at all of them and I photographed a few “features” that I thought were interesting.

The LazyDays RV display at Williston Crossings RV Resort.

The LazyDays RV display at Williston Crossings RV Resort.

Door latch for side-by-side residential refrigerator doors.

Door latch for side-by-side residential refrigerator doors.

One unit had a residential refrigerator with upper side-by-side doors and a bottom pull out freezer drawer.  There was nothing unusual about that; what caught my eye were the aftermarket latches Tiffin had installed to lock the upper doors together and lock the freezer drawer to the surrounding cabinet.  Very cool.  By evening we heard that both of the 2014 Tiffin Allegro Open Road motorhomes had been sold.  I suspect that made the whole “mini-show” worthwhile for Lazydays.

 

 

 

 

 

Same latch design used to lock freezer drawer.

Same latch design used to lock freezer drawer.

The other thing we finally did today was register for the 2014 Escapade, which is back at the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds May 12 – 17.  Our first Escapade was there in September 2010 and we were back there for GLAMARAMA13 in September 2013.  As I have written in this blog previously, it is an excellent facility for rallies of 500 – 1,000 rigs.  We will be back there again in June for GLAMARAMA14.

 

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

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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 5th 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.

 

2014/03/24 (M) Count Down

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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…

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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

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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.

 

2014/03/21(F) Roofs And Reefers

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It had rained hard on Monday and we had a small leak around the bedroom fan.  After drawing the water out of the headliner with towels, we aimed a fan at the area to dry it out.  It wasn’t a huge leak compared to the torrential rainfall we had, but any leak is too much.  We only had one tube of Dicor Self-Leveling Lap Sealant with us so this morning we decided to drive to the Ocala Camping World store to get some more.  Before we left we noticed that the store was not in Ocala but rather in Summerfield, which is somewhat south of Ocala on US-441 and is the northern gateway to The Villages.  Part of the drive was on I-75 where we noticed a LOT of RV’s on the road.  They were headed in both directions with the majority headed north.

After we got back Linda went for a walk while I fiddled with the refrigerator thermostat and discovered that it apparently had quit working.  I could hear the contacts “click” but the compressor was not coming on.  Not good, especially with a freshly stocked refrigerator.  The best/only short-term course of action was to get the food out of the refrigerator and someplace cold before it spoiled.  When Linda got back from her walk she checked to see if our neighbor, Sharon, had a cooler we could borrow.  She did not, but she had Linda phone Bob, the resort manager, and he offered the use of the refrigerator in the Activities Building.  We accepted, bagged up our food, and Linda took it over and stored it.  I don’t think very many RV parks would do that for a customer even if they could.

I called Butch, who was a commercial HVAC & refrigeration guy at one time, because that’s what I do when we encounter an unexpected problem.  I had to call him back later, but in between calls I found the model number for our refrigerator, searched for it online, and found several websites where I could order parts.  RepairClinic.com had helpful videos as well, so by the time I talked to Butch again I had a rough idea of how the refrigerator worked and what the problem might be and several possible causes.

The freezer was holding 5 to 8 degrees F, so the refrigeration system was working.  The condenser fan was working as I could feel cool air being drawn in the bottom left and air exhausted out the bottom right.  The evaporator air-circulation fan also appeared to be working.  The damper between the freezer and refrigerator compartments was also working correctly and not blocked.  It is a simple manual mechanical device, so not a lot can go wrong there.  The thermostat was clicking, but that did not guarantee it was passing power.

The leading hypothesis was that the evaporator coils had frosted over, reducing cooling effectiveness of the refrigeration unit.  The most likely cause of that condition was a failure of the auto-defrost controller and/or the defrost heaters.  Butch explained that the auto-defrost controller prevents the compressor from running while the defrost heater is working, which could explain why the compressor would not turn on.  It is possible that this controller and/or the heater itself is intermittent or defective, which could lead to frost build up on the coils.  It has been warmer and a bit more humid here the past week which could also have contributed to the coils freezing up.  Once we had the food out and safely stored I shut off the power to the refrigerator and we left it to defrost.

We had our leftover salad and pizza for lunch.  We were not very hungry at dinner time, but joined a small group of residents at John and Ali’s 5th wheel.  Linda had kept peanut butter in the rig and used some dinner rolls that had been in the freezer to make peanut butter sandwiches.  Later we took our pretzels and wine and went to the fire pit for the evening.  John played, as usual, and Jeff joined him for a while.  A nice crowd gathered for a while, but by 10 PM there were only a few of us left.  As much as we like meeting and talking to people, this is our favorite time around the campfire.

Before we went to bed I checked the drip tray on the refrigerator.  There was some water in it, but not an excessive amount.   We loaded containers with water, placed them in the freezer and refrigerator, set the controls, closed up the appliance and applied power.  It came on and we let it run all night to see what it would do.

 

2014/03/20 (R) The Spring Equinox

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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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

2014/03/17 (N) St. Patrick’s Day

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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

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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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

2014/03/12 (W) Welcome To RVillage

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Today was a big day.  The new RVillage social networking website was publicly unveiled and I am now free to talk about it online; encouraged to, actually.  We have been privately beta-testing the website for some weeks now and think it is going to be a “must have” tool for RVers looking to connect with old and new friends while on the road.  RVillage is not about making virtual “friends”; it is about creating real community with real people with whom you share real interests.

Cherie Ve Ard and Chris Dunphy of Technomadia have been coordinating the private beta-testing and are playing a key role in the public launch.  They posted a very comprehensive description of RVillage today and I recommend it as the best starting point.  There is a link to the website at the end for their post, or you can go directly to the website at RVillage.

My whole day was not taken up with the RVillage launch.  The RV Resort held a golf cart rodeo starting at noon.  A 2-person team had to navigate a course around traffic cones, including backing between two cones.  Easy?  Not if the driver is blind-folded!  I photographed the event for a while and then returned to the coach, photographing some of the first blooms of the impending spring.

I took advantage of afternoon high temperatures in the mid-70s, partly sunny skies, and a nice breeze to clean the outside of all the bus windows, no small task.  There is a lot of glass on this bus and most of the windows are between 6 and 12 feet above the ground so this required many trips up and down our 7 foot Little Giant folding/telescoping step/extension ladder.  Although it takes up valuable space in our front cargo bay this ladder is an essential tool in our traveling RV toolkit, and the only way we can get on the roof.

Here are some pictures from today:

Our bus on site 439, at WC RV Resort.

Our bus on site 439, at WC RV Resort.

Golf Cart Rodeo spectators and waiting contestants.

Golf Cart Rodeo spectators and waiting contestants.

Golf cart rodeo spectators at WC RV Resort.

Golf cart rodeo spectators at WC RV Resort.

Sharon (driving blind-folded) and Kevin navigating the course.

Sharon (driving blind-folded) and Kevin navigating the course.

Kevn & Sharon coming in to the finish line of the golf cart rodeo course.

Kevn & Sharon coming in to the finish line of the golf cart rodeo course.

Sharon being congratulated by Allen, one of the WCRVR owners.

Sharon being congratulated by Allen, one of the WCRVR owners.

Bob and Allen getting ready to try the course.

Bob and Allen getting ready to try the course.

Some of the first blooms in the RV park.

Some of the first blooms in the RV park.

 

2014/03/11 (T) End Of Palm?

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I was up early for no particular reason.  I worked on blog posts for a while and then decided to search for a User’s Manual for our Sharp Carousel II Convection Microwave oven.  We had looked before and not found one.  It is not available from Sharp’s website.  This time I searched by model number, R-1820, and bingo!, there it was.  Someone had scanned it and made it into a PDF, but it was all there and all completely legible.  Today was starting to feel like a lucky day.

I do not use my Palm Tungsten T3 much anymore since the Passwords Plus application got corrupted, and as a result I have gotten less attentive about keeping it charged.  At home I keep it in a docking cradle so it is always charged, but I have not done this in the bus. I still use the Palm Desktop software for my calendar and name/address/phone records, but mostly because I have not found an easy way to move them to MS Outlook and have not wanted to take the time to do it manually.  Besides, I like my Palm.  I’ve had it a long time and it has served me well, providing a convenient and portable place to back up my information.  I even replaced the battery a couple of years ago—which was no easy feat—to extend its life and uptime.

I checked it today and it was dead so I plugged it in to charge it up as I have done many times before.  This time, however, it asked me to install the Palm software from the CD and then configure the device.  I checked my calendar and my appointments were all gone.  Ditto for the N/A/P records.  The Passwords Plus app had also disappeared.  It was a new day with a clean device.  I pondered whether to set the Hotsync Manager to “desktop overwrites handheld” for all functions and see if it would restore the information to the handheld and decided to defer this project until later.

The dishwasher water leak at home was unexpected, but a conversation with Linda gave me confidence that the source of the problem had been identified and the situation was under control.  At the bus I had dumped our waste tanks on Sunday as the gray water tank was indicating full.  I had also topped off our fresh water tank.  Later I noticed a wet spot on the concrete pad under the center of the water bay.  Further investigation revealed a drip.  Ugh.

We have two water valves on our coach where the fresh water hose gets connected.  Our valves leak around the stems when the fresh water system is pressurized.  When the first valve is opened it allows water to flow into the on board fresh water tank.  The second valve connects an air hose fitting to the fresh water plumbing.  This allows the use of compressed air to “blow out” the water pipes when winterizing the coach.  These are the same kind of multi-turn gate valves used for shutoff valves on sinks and toilets.  They have a packing nut that tightens around the valve stem and compresses a packing material around the stem to keep water from leaking out.  They always need to be re-packed at some point.  Ours have needed to be re-packed for a while, and seem to be getting worse of late, so I decided to play plumber today.

I bought some Teflon packing material at ACE Hardware.  It is like a long piece of angel hair pasta.  ACE also had the more traditional graphite rope, but the guy who helped me recommended the stuff I bought.

The handles have a center hole that is fluted to match corresponding flutes on the valve stem.  The handle slips onto the stem and is retained by a small center screw.  To remove the packing nut you must first remove handle.  Easy in concept; impossible in fact.  They probably have not been removed since the bus was converted in 1990/91, and they were not interested in coming off today.  I think there is a special tool for pulling these handles, and I think I have one back at the house, but I don’t think it is going to help in this case.  When working on a bus conversion away from its home base follow the physician’s credo, “First, do no harm.”  This was a repair that did not have to be made at this time, and should not be made in this place, so I put my tools away and found something else to do.

We also have a 1.5″ knife valve on our fresh water tank to drain it rapidly.  These valves, in various sizes, are normally used to drain RV waste tanks.  They eventually develop leaks and need to be serviced or replaced, and that is the case with ours.  With a mostly full fresh water tank, however, that was also not a task for this time and place.

John knocked on the door around 4 PM to let me know that folks were gathering at Jack and Shirley’s rig for happy hour followed by a pot luck dinner.  There were 10 people there and we had a nice conversation.  Jeff had prepared his highly acclaimed pork ribs and they were very popular with everyone (but me, of course).  I had a chopped vegetable salad that Ali made the other day and set aside a portion for me.  It was quite good, and very refreshing on a slightly warm, sunny afternoon.

When I returned to the coach I dealt with some e-mail and then uploaded my featured bus article on Frank and Phyfi Morrison’s Cool Cruiser to Bus Conversions Magazine.  I put on PBS and watched a special fund-raiser concert featuring Steve Martin playing the banjo with the Steve Canyon bluegrass group.  My Palm Tungsten T3 was fully charged, so I set the Hotsync Manager to have the Desktop Overwrite The Handheld.  It took quite a while but it restored all of my applications and databases except for the old version of Passwords Plus.  That was an acceptable outcome as we migrated our passwords some weeks ago to a newer application that automatically syncs multiple devices via the “cloud.”  My anti-virus program notified me that my operating system was not up to date so I ran Microsoft Update.  Even though support for Windows XP ends on April 8th there were a half dozen updates just released.

 

2014/03/10 (M) And All Of That

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Overnight from Saturday into Sunday we switched to Daylight Savings Time, so my personal biological clock is off by an hour but slowly resetting.  One of the nice things about retirement, however, is that it really doesn’t matter what time is on the clock when the sun rises and sets.  The sun rose this morning through clear skies and flooded our passenger side bedroom window with lovely warm light.  That’s how I knew it was time to get up.

There is comfort in my morning routine: feed the cats, refresh their water, and clean their litter tray.  (They insist that these things be taken care of before I do anything else.)  Grind the coffee beans and start the brewing process.  Some orange/grapefruit juice to wash down an allergy pill and a multi-vitamin, and then a decision about what to have for breakfast.  It is usually granola, but not always.  Turn on the Verizon MiFi, start the computer, get connected and check my e-mail accounts.  No one from the African sub-continent wants to give me millions of dollars for helping them launder billions in stolen U.S. Foreign aid, and we have not won a free cruise, so it looks like I will have a fairly normal day and get to do whatever it was I planned to do, if I feel like it.

I had not yet written blog posts for Saturday and Sunday, so I did that first.  I find the Notepad app on my iPad2 particularly convenient for this purpose.  I can sit anywhere and work, including outside or away from the bus.  This morning our female cat, Juniper, was feeling a bit needy (she is more bonded to Linda than me and really misses her) so I sat on the couch writing blog posts with her on my lap.  A pair of cardinals was busy in the trees around our rig gathering pieces of Spanish moss for what I could only presume was the building of a nest somewhere nearby.  Juniper has a very strong hunting instinct, so this really got her attention, and provided here with kitty entertainment for quite some time.

A group had planned to go to Satchel’s in Gainesville for pizza around 3 PM.  It turned out that they were not open on Mondays, so we went to the Micanopy Blue Highway instead.  We went early because some of the group had to be back before 6 PM to work or play bingo.  I knew it would be an early dinner and just had a piece of fruit for lunch.  The first time Linda and I went to the Blue Highway we had them veganize one of their standard roasted vegetable pizzas.  It was OK.  I have been back twice while Linda has been away and had salad both times.  Most pizzas are not very good without the cheese.

Linda called while we were driving to the restaurant to update me on the leak.  Our son (Brendan) had come over to lend a hand.  When he inspected the area under the dishwasher he found the fresh water supply line dripping at the connector and shut off the water to the dishwasher.  Assuming that was the only source of the leak it was actually relatively good news. An ice dam on roof would have meant water running down the inside of the wall.  Linda is flying back to Florida late Thursday, so she will have a few days to make sure this was the only problem.  The fact that I will have to repair this leak when we get home just added insult to injury.  I installed the new dishwasher last year and had trouble getting that very connection to not leak.  Instead of Teflon thread tape I will be using PTFE pipe thread compound next time.

John and Ali decided to have another campfire at their site this evening.  I made some popcorn to take over, the first time I’ve made any since Linda flew back to Michigan.  Meg joined us for a while.  It was another quiet evening at the RV resort.  As the sun set the air temperature dropped back into the low 60’s, just cool enough to make the fire an enjoyable necessity without feeling chilled.