Tag Archives: campfire

2015/12/31 (R) Arcadia Rally Day 3

Today was the third and final day of the converted bus rally in Arcadia, Florida. Like the last two mornings we walked over to the activities building at the Turner Agri-Civic Center for bagels and coffee. We went over at 7:30 AM so we would have time to eat and visit and still get back to our coach before 8:30 AM. We arranged yesterday for Hotties Detailing to wash our coach and polish the Alcoa aluminum wheels this morning. They expected to be on site around 8:30 AM and were actually a few minutes early.

Not a bus conversion, but certainly a very nice Airstream trailer (Arcadia Bus Rally, Arcadia, FL).

I stayed around the coach to get them started and then wandered off with my camera to take photos of all the rigs in the east row. Most of them were backed in facing east so I wanted to take advantage of the morning light. We had fog again overnight and into the morning but it dissipated by 9 AM. I returned to our coach before Hotties finished to check on the work. They did a nice job at a fair price.

I went to Ronnie and Diann Mewbourn’s coach to interview them for a featured bus article in Bus Conversion Magazine about their 1969 Model 07 Eagle conversion. By the time I was done with the interview it was time for their lunch so I returned to our coach. I went back in the afternoon and photographed the interior and bays of their bus.

The east-facing row looking north from the south end. (Arcadia Bus Rally, Arcadia, FL)

As it was last night, dinner was served at 5 PM. The food for everyone else was different from the night before but included bread and baked potatoes so we were able to have that in addition to our salads.

Starting at 7 PM Master of Ceremonies John Vickery handled the door prizes with help from rally organizers/hosts Bill and Brenda Phelan. The recipient of the third boxed set of Bus Conversion Magazines was Dan and Sandy Cerrato. I was getting their information after the door prizes concluded and they invited me back to see their converted bus, a 1953 GM PD4104 that they have had for 37 years. I got the grand tour and had a long chat with both of them.

The east-facing row looking south from the north end. (Arcadia Bus Rally, Arcadia, FL)

This was Dan and Sandy’s first rally of any kind ever and I got the feeling that they really enjoyed it. They are very proud of their bus, and obviously still very fond of it after all those years. They had started subscribing to BCM in early 2015 and Dan had read all of my 2015 articles. BCM was also where they found out about the Arcadia rally. They live near Ocala, Florida, so it was an easy trip for them. Dan was interested in writing an article for BCM about their bus and their experiences with it, so we talked about that at length and I offered to assist him if he wanted.

Buses in the infield, including some from the later 1940’s. (Arcadia Bus Rally, Arcadia, FL)

The entertainment for New Year’s Eve was Kenny Flint and the Rough Diamond Band. We sat with Paul/Claudine Elbisser and Dan/Kathy Rory and their son James. James is a young man with Down’s Syndrome but he had the time of his life dancing with the ladies. Kenny even let him sing/play with the band for a couple of songs. We had snacks and a little bit to drink, but not much, and stayed until midnight to welcome in the New Year. We did not have champagne this year, the first time I can remember that we skipped that part of the New Year’s celebration. With the playing/singing of Auld Lang Syne at midnight the band wrapped up the entertainment for the evening and the small crowd drifted out and headed back to their rigs.

The west-facing row looking north from the south end. The nose of our coach is just visible, 4th from the right. (Arcadia Bus Rally, Arcadia, FL)

On the way back to our coach we stopped at Dan and Sandy’s bus and sat around a small campfire for a while. Scott Crosby was there and David Evans joined us for a while. Although it was not cool enough to require, or even justify, a campfire everyone enjoyed it. It’s just not camping without a campfire. Both Scott and David have GM Silverside buses from the late 1940’s. Scott does video production and some still photography professionally and owns/operates the BusGreaseMonkey.com website/forum. He mounted his small camera on a tripod and made time exposure “light paintings” of several buses, including ours, which he e-mailed to me.

By 1 AM we were tired, thanked Dan and Sandy for the campfire, and headed home. Linda was to bed and asleep right away but it took me until 1:45 AM to finally turn out the lights and go to sleep.

2015/11/30 (M) Palmer Energy Systems

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I was up at 6:45 AM and wandered over to John’s trailer compound around 7:10. He was outside talking to someone on his cell phone and we finally left at 7:20 for breakfast in Mayo. We went to a small, unassuming diner and waited in the car until Dale showed up. We ordered at the counter, selected ceramic mugs from a basket, and then took a table in the back. I had a version of my usual breakfast out; dry toast with Smucker’s Strawberry Jam and coffee.

We were done by 8:15 and stopped at the NAPA store headed east out of town on US-27. They had a good supply of Group 31 commercial batteries and gave me a good price based on my AITA/NAPA discount card and waved the core charge if I returned the old batteries.

We returned to John’s and I got busy removing the old batteries, which was a bigger project than it sounds. I had to get all four of my tool boxes out plus our Little Giant ladder, nitrile gloves, and paper towels. I also had to disconnect the car from the bus.

The four batteries were lined up, sitting crosswise, in a tray above the passenger side tag axle. Being that far off the ground I found it easier to work from the Little Giant ladder configured as a short step ladder.

My first step was to make a diagram of the physical location of the batteries with the positive and negative terminals marked and lines for the main cables attached to each one. I assigned the numbers 1 through 8 to the terminals and then used green Frog Tape to label each cable with the number of the terminal it was connected to. At Linda’s suggestion I used my iPad to take a photo of the batteries with the labeled cables.

My next step was to remove all of the cables from the batteries, being careful not to allow the exposed lugs on the ends to come in contact with anything they should not touch. Some of the cables were jumpers, which I removed and set aside, while others were captive and had to hang down next to the forward side of the tray. The cables were secured with a lock washer and nut at each terminal which I set aside as I removed them.

With all of the cables removed I proceeded to remove the large nut that secured the retaining bracket that held the batteries and remove it. I started with the battery farthest to the outside as it was the easiest to lift out from atop the ladder. Paul, one of the owners of the Entegra Aspire motorhome parked behind us, had come over to see what I was doing and offered to help. I gladly accepted his assistance and he helped me lift the old batteries out of the tray and get them on the ground. Each one weighs about 80 pounds.

I emptied out part of the driver’s side rear of our Honda Element, loaded the four used batteries in there, and took off for Mayo. The associate at the NAPA store unloaded the old ones for me and loaded the four new ones, which I appreciated. He pulled eight new lock washers for the terminals and a larger one for the hold down bracket, got a 1/8″ brass pipe thread plug, and helped me select at spray lubricant for the tray slides and a grease to coat the connections after they were made to protect them against corrosion.

As best I recall I was back at camp by 9:30 AM and backed the car into position by the passenger side rear of the bus. I used the silicon spray to lubricate the slide tracks. I then moved each battery in turn from the car to the ladder, setting it up one step at a time until I could lift it into the tray and slide it into position. I was careful to use my legs and protect my back muscles.

With the batteries physically in place and oriented correctly I reinstalled the hold down clamp. I then got Linda to help me reattach the cables. I cleaned the ends to remove previous grease and wrapped several of them in electrical tape to ensure they did not short out to the tie down bracket. I put No-Ox electrical connection anti-oxidant on each terminal. We then put the cables back on using the new lock washers and the old nuts. I torqued the nuts tight and we double checked the connections against the diagram. We finished at 12:30 PM, so I felt we had accomplished the battery replacement in a very good amount of time.

I turned on the generator and then turned on the circuit breaker for the maintenance chargers. As I expected the new batteries were not fully charged but the maintenance chargers indicated at least a 75% SOC and we slid the battery tray back in to its compartment. I repacked the tool boxes and Linda loaded them back into the battery bay. We put the ladder back in the front bay and the things I had removed from the car back in there.

This old building seemed to be full of stuff but no longer actively used. Our bus was parked pointing directly at it.

At 1 PM we decided to go for a walk in the woods. I turned off the genset, put on my hiking boots, and got the Sony a99 camera. It was a lovely day for a walk with the air temperature at 80 degrees F but shaded from direct sunlight by the forest. I took a couple of dozen photos along the way. We were back by 2 PM and decided to drive into Mayo to see it and buy some groceries. When we got back we had vegan cold cut sandwiches for lunch and then sat outside for a while. Paul came over to chat followed by Euginia. Doc (the retired veterinarian who owns the property) stopped by and then John drove up to see if we were interested in a campfire. That sounded great so John said he would start one.

Linda sits in a tree swing in one of the areas that John has “improved” on the property.

We took our chairs over to the fire ring and sat for a long time having a nice conversation. Kathleen arrived in a car and joined the group. We never learned who she was but we did learn that she was there to meet up with folks driving down from Atlanta. On the short walk back to our coach we paused to marvel at the night sky. It is very dark here at night and there were no clouds this evening.

For dinner Linda made linguine with mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil. It was very good. She used the induction cooker and we operated off of the batteries/inverter so they got quite a workout. After dinner I used www.antennapoint.com to locate the TV towers around us. I managed to tune in a CBS affiliate so we were able to watch our usual Monday evening TV programs. I worked at my computer off-loading photos from the camera and copying them to the NAS. I e-mailed Butch and texted Chuck regarding the battery replacement.

Our bus boondocked at John Palmer Energy Systems shaded from the late afternoon sun.

John suggested that we operate off of the inverter and batteries and run them down to 24.0 VDC which is approximately a 50% SOC, so I agreed to try it. We had issues with the system during the evening. The power was flickering, causing the APC UPS to switch to batteries briefly and the lights to flicker. The TV even turned off once. This has never happened before and I did not know what was causing it, but suspected that we might be using too little power and/or that the inverter had overheated (although I considered that rather unlikely). I ended up turning off the NAS and the Amped Wireless router, which were plugged in to the UPS, and then shut off and unplugged the UPS. My laptop runs on its own battery, of course, but I had already checked my e-mail, off-loaded photos from the camera, and backed up photo files to the NAS, so I turned it off as well.

I also turned off the Search Watts feature on the inverter, which was set to 5 Watts. My understanding is that this feature turns off the inverter when there is no load and turns it back on when a load of at least 5 Watts tries to draw current. Five Watts on a 120 V AC system is 5/120 = 1/24 Amp or slightly more than 40 mA; not very much. On a 24 V DC battery bank the required draw from the batteries, ignoring inverter inefficiency, would be five times that (120/24 = 5) or 200 mA = 0.2 A. The Magnum remote was showing that we were drawing at least 6 A, so that should not have been a problem, but I did not know what else to do and I certainly was not going to bother John at this late hour.

John also suggested that I equalize the batteries and told me how to activate that function on the Magnum 4024 by holding down the button on the unit for at least 25 seconds. The equalizing charge is a 4 hour cycle and he suggested I run it twice, back-to-back once the batteries were fully recharged and the charger was in float mode showing zero Amps. He told me to run the equalizing charge once every six months. I have always read that you should NOT apply an equalizing charge to AGM batteries but John said that the two guys who own Lifeline Batteries now recommend this.

We went to bed a little after 11 PM. Linda fell asleep almost immediately but I was awake until 1 AM working on this post and listening to the sounds of the coach.

2015/09/19 (S) Rally Wrap Up

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Today was the last full day of the FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches (GLCC) annual Surplus and Salvage Rally. It started with strong storms overnight but they had dissipated by breakfast time. The skies eventually cleared on brisk winds with a chilly northerly component and the high was forecasted to be 67 with some clouds. The clouds turned out to be white, scattered, and fast moving and it turned out to be a lovely late summer day with a hint of fall in the air.

The breakfast provided as part of the rally was pancakes and sausage but Linda and I had our granola and finished up the berries. We decided to stay around the campground and have an easy day. Initially, however, we had some post-breakfast excitement.

Juniper caught another mouse. It was another very small dark gray house mouse, obviously very young but old enough to wander away from a nest in search of food and water. I got it away from her and into the paper cup that we kept for this purpose and put the paper bowl on top. Linda took it back to the woods and set it free.

Even after catching two mice in the last 16 hours the cats continued to show great interest in the base of the bathroom sink cabinet. The front of the toe kick space has one of the many brass colored expanded metal screens for the OTR HVAC ducts and several things were becoming clear to me at this point. 1) We had a nest somewhere in the bus; 2) the nest was likely in the base of this cabinet, or accessible from there, and 3) the baby mice were apparently small enough to get through the expanded metal grate. I also suspected that something had happened to the mother mouse which is why the babies were leaving the nest.

Some of this was confirmed when I got down on the bathroom floor with a flashlight and was looking through the grate when a small mouse came out of the 4″ flexible duct. I tapped on the grate and got it to turn around and go back. I measured the rectangular opening. Linda cut a piece of cardboard about 1″ larger in width and length and I taped it over the opening.

We were away from the coach visiting with Scott Crosby of http://BusGreaseMonkey.com and others before Scott left for home. Scott and Tami Bruner came over too, followed by their friends/neighbors Misty and Gary who brought their GM3751 Silversides to the rally. When we returned to our motorcoach it was immediately obvious that Juniper had caught, or at least cornered, something, probably another mouse. Her posture and vocalizations are distinctive in the presence of prey. What was odd was she was by the front of the new built-in sofa rather than in the bathroom.

I shushed her away and she left the area without much protest. I did not see a mouse and walked to the bathroom to make sure our cardboard cover was still in place. It was, so if there was another mouse it must have gotten into the living area of the bus through some other opening, perhaps the OTR HVAC air return under the sofa. When I returned to the living room the mouse was climbing up onto the top edge of my slippers. I did not see exactly where it came from but it could have been inside one of them to escape the cats. I got the paper cup and bowl and caught it fairly easily.

I put on my Crocs, which we use as easy on/off camp shoes, walked back to the woods at the southern boundary of the campground, and set the mouse free. It scampered under some leaves but its odds of survival were probably as small as it was. The temperature was forecast to drop into the upper 40’s tonight and I heard a Great Horned Owl off in the distance. Still, its survival odds in the bus were probably worse. We had live trapped an adult house mouse under the kitchen sink when the bus was still at home, but that was a couple of weeks ago so there is no way it could have been the mother of these current juvenile mice unless it found its way back into the bus. My assumption was that the mother was not around and the young mice were desperately trying to find food and water. These circumstances made me a bit sad, but we simply cannot have mice getting into the living area and becoming play toys for our cats. Ultimately we need to find a way to keep them out of the bus altogether but so far a solution to that problem has proven to be elusive.

The official rally lunch was leftovers after which folks divided up whatever was left. Linda split the remaining salad lettuce with Vickie and took some bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, and bottled water. I grabbed a mostly full 2 L bottle of diet Coke.

Marty Caverly stopped by to see the bus remodeling and stayed to chat a while. Marty had spent the better part of a day at the Back-to-the-Bricks Rally last month getting Pat and Vickie’s cruise control to finally work reliably. He spent most of this morning getting their air leveling system to work reliably. Marty is an electrician who did a lot of work with electronics in his 40 years with General Motors and is the “go to” guy in our club for most electrical issues.

There was a lull in our social activities and Linda settled in to read while I worked at my computer transferring drafts of blog posts from e-mail to Word. I edited a week’s worth from the third week of July and got them ready to upload but did not post them. I will do that when we get home. I used the MCD day shade while sitting at the desk to cut down the light while still affording me a view. Linda forgot her iPad and was using mine to read one of the latest novels in Nick Russell’s Big Lake series. She went for a walk which gave me an opportunity to work on this post as I write them using the Note app on my iPad.

We saw Pat and Vickie walking towards the office and figured they were making arrangements for next year’s Surplus and Salvage Rally. They stopped at our coach on the way back with the signed contract. The dates are September 21 to 25, 2016 and the nightly camping rate is $35 plus tax for 50A full hookup sites. It’s pricey, but the campground is conveniently located in the heart of the Elkhart area with convenient access to many RV surplus businesses. We also get the exclusive use of a meeting room with a full kitchen, and they always reserve sites for us that are close to the meeting room. It should be a lovely time of year to have the rally, being the first five days of fall. Unfortunately we will probably not be attending as we do not plan to be back from New England by then.

Meals for this rally usually include dinner on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, with Friday also being a business meeting, and breakfast on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The only lunch is the “must goes” on Saturday. Saturday dinner is traditionally out at a restaurant and the choice this year was McCarthy’s on the Riverwalk. The Elkhart River splits as it comes into the city, joins back up with itself and eventually flows into the much larger St. Joseph River at two points. McCarthy’s features some very interesting Irish fare but the ambiance is slightly upscale restaurant rather than an Irish pub feel. Our food choices were very limited, of course, but we knew that before signed up to go.

We rode over with Pat and Vickie and sat with them at one end of the table. I think we had 13 of the 23 attendees at dinner. Linda had a Guinness and I had a lighter beer that had “cider” in the name. We each had a house salad with a very nice balsamic vinegar dressing but no cheese and an order of French fries. The service was OK but not outstanding. I asked for Tabasco sauce and Vickie had to remind the waitress to get it. I was over half done with my fries by the time it arrived. The serving was small but the fries were good and we did not leave hungry.

Most of us went for a walk along the river after dinner. The sun was already below the downtown skyline, however, and it was chilly. None of us brought jackets so it was a shorter walk than it might otherwise have been.

Back at the campground Scott and Tami started a campfire in the fire pit by their rig. Linda and I brought over our chairs, blankets, a bowl of grapes, and our glasses of wine. Vickie brought her chair, popcorn, and a popcorn skillet designed for popping corn over an open fire. Dan brought his chair and joined us. It was a clear, crisp evening but the fire (and blankets) made it comfortable, the popcorn and grapes made it yummy, and company made it worthwhile.

Although relaxing in some ways, rallies are intense in other ways. We have only been here 3-1/2 days but we arrived tired, ran around taking care of things, and when we finally relaxed the tiredness washed over us. We gathered up our things and went back to the coach at 10 PM where we watched an episode of Grantchester on the local PBS affiliate, went to bed, and fell asleep.

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.

2014/03/09 (N) Delayed

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Even though the weather forecast for today was for near perfect conditions with sun, no rain, and a high temperature in the upper 70’s—and as much as I would have liked to have John and Marian return and help me with bus projects—I decided not to work on the bus. Linda was scheduled to fly back to Florida Monday afternoon and I needed to devote some time and energy to housekeeping chores. I have been keeping up with doing the dishes, laundry, and the litter tray, but the bus needed to be vacuumed, and the floors, counters, shower, mirrors, and windows cleaned. I would probably not make a good bachelor, or at least not a really tidy one.

Mid-morning I got a call from Linda letting me know that we had water damaged suspended ceiling tiles in the northwest corner of the basement near the electrical panel. She sent pictures with her smartphone and then we talked and tried to problem solve as best we could. She had not yet checked in for her afternoon flight the next day and we decided she should re-book for later in the week to give her time to figure out what was happening and try to deal with it.

She called our good friend, John Rauch, because that’s what we do when we have house issues. John thought it was most likely an ice dam on the roof causing water to run down the inside of the wall, or at least behind the siding. Linda was able to find a roof rake and calcium chloride pellets at a small, local hardware store. (The big box stores were out and probably busy stocking their shelves with garden supplies even though we are still experiencing single-digit temperatures and have feet of snow on the ground with more likely to fall before winter finally yields to spring in Michigan.) The rake allowed her to safely remove snow from the first few feet of the bottom edge of the roof. The pellets are like hockey pucks and are designed to be tossed onto the roof ice and cause it to melt.

Later in the day Linda joined the rest of our immediate family at our daughter’s house for a slightly belated birthday celebration for our son-in-law, Chris. I finished some, but not all, of my housekeeping chores as I want to do some them just before Linda returns so the bus is as clean as possible. I worked on the Cool Cruiser article until early evening when John and Ali invited me next door for a small campfire. Jim and Janet came down for a while and we all had a nice chat.

2014/01/04 (S) Rally Articles

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Our site at WCRVR with our sign!

Our sign. (Normally reserved for 4 month or longer stays.)

In addition to writing blog posts I have written three articles in the last five months on RV rallies. One was on the GLCC/CCO rally last August in Clio, Michigan and was the cover story for the October issue of Bus Conversion Magazine. I wrote an article on the September 2013 GLAMARAMA rally for the November issue of our GLCC newsletter. I rewrote that article from a different perspective and BCM ran it as the cover story for the January 2014 issue. Although different from writing a personal blog, these articles still retained the perspective of personal experience.

Our patio and picnic table.

Gary Hall, the owner/publisher of BCM, knew we planned to attend the Arcadia Bus Rally in Arcadia, Florida between Christmas and New Year’s and asked if I would cover the event for the magazine, which I agreed to do. That made for a different experience, putting me in the role of a reporter with a publisher and editor expecting an article by a certain deadline. We returned to Williston Crossings RV Resort on the 1st, got settled in on the 2nd, I got to work on the article on the 3rd, and had a complete draft by bedtime today, although I still needed to have Linda proof-read it in morning and then send it off to the rally organizers to fact check. I will spend the next two days selecting and processing photographs. I also heard from Gary and Mike Sullivan, the BCM editor, that the article was back on as the Feb 2014 cover story, putting me on a short timeline to get it to them.

The fire pit at WCRVR.

I can work at this kind of task for long periods of time, but eventually I have to get off my butt, move around, and clear my head. Williston Crossings RV Resort is an excellent place for walking and I went twice today with Linda. (She does her first/power walk in the morning without me.) Resort volunteers build a big fire in the covered fire pit on Friday and Saturday evenings unless there are high winds. The fire pit is surrounded by rocking chairs and benches and is a social event for some of the resort residents, especially those, like us, that hail from more northerly places. We went over after dinner, sat by the fire for 90 minutes, and made some new acquaintances. While most of the residents were hunkered down avoiding the temperatures in the upper 40’s we felt like we were on a fall camp out back in Michigan, complete with a smoky campfire.

New friends around the campfire at WCRVR.

2014/01/03 (F) Power Dinner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2013_10_20 (N) The Blue Ridge Parkway, VA

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The Beginning of the Blue Ridge Parkway headed south.

After breakfast we arranged ourselves in Ron and Mary’s Honda mini-van and around 10 AM headed up I-81 towards Waynesboro, Virginia and the Blue Ridge Parkway. We had beautiful blue skies, with no threat of rain and highs forecast to be in the 60’s. We exited I-81 N at US-250 and headed east through Waynesboro to the northern terminus of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Our merry little band of intrepid hikers.

Our first destination was the Visitor Center at Humpback Rocks. We spent a few minutes there looking at the indoor exhibits and used the “facilities.” We set Marilyn up in a comfy chair with her book. Ron, Mary, Linda, and I then walked through the period farmstead on our way to the Humpback Rocks Trailhead.

Interior of an early 19th century mountain farmstead cabin.

The Humpback Rocks are a rock outcropping near the top of a mountain that requires a 0.8 mile hike with a 900 ft vertical elevation gain. Most of the trial was in excellent shape considering the number of hikers who were using it. It was entirely wooded, with natural rock “stairs” in some places and steps that clearly showed the hand of man, but were very well done. Parts of the trail near the top were wet and the rocks were slippery but passable.

Mary, Ron, and Linda on the Humpback Rocks.

The Humpback Rocks are devoid of trees and provided a panoramic view of the valley to the west and the mountains beyond spanning more than 180 degrees from south to east of north. Unfortunately, we were there around noon to 1 PM and the lighting was not ideal for photographing the valley and mountains. We spent an hour up there enjoying the view anyway before heading down.

Linda, Ron, and Mary on the Humpback Rocks.

The hike down was harder in some ways than the hike up. Uphill hikes are generally about leg muscles, but the pace is naturally slower and it’s not too hard to find good footing. Downhill hikes are about impact on joints, and footing is tricky, especially on the wet/slippery rocks we had to deal with in a few spots along the way. Ron and Mary use adjustable hiking poles, and had an extra one for Linda, which she needed. I should have used one, but didn’t. We have a pair of adjustable poles at home, left over from a previous era of winter camping and cross country ski backpacking, but we added a new pair for each of us to our “next time” list.

We made it back to the Visitor Center around 2 PM and had a picnic lunch that we had packed that morning, rested for a while in the warm sun, and eventually made ready to continue down the Blue Ridge Parkway.

A red berry bush along the Blue Ridge Parkway, VA.

The rest of the afternoon we drove south along the Parkway, stopping at some of the scenic overlooks to overlook the scenery and take photographs. The time of day and angle of the sun were not ideal for photography, but that did not take anything away from the views.

We exited the Parkway at US-60 and headed south through Buena Vista on US-501 to Natural Bridge, where we vectored off on VA-130 over to US-11 N and drove the few miles back to the entrance to the Natural Bridge / Lexington KOA.

Tonight was Linda’s turn to prepared dinner and she opted to make her Farro with mushrooms which is a favorite of mine. She added leafy greens to the leftover salad from the night before, and served the dish with whole grain bread. A little wine helped wash everything down. Ron, Mary, and Marilyn finished the pie from the previous evening and Mary sliced up some fresh strawberries for me and Linda. Ron and I did the dishes, after which we started a campfire and sat around until late in the evening talking and enjoying our last night in camp together.

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2013_10_20 (N) The Blue Ridge Parkway, VA