maiden voyage completed

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I wrote the following thoughts back in early March. It is now early April, and we came home on March 30. Since then we’ve had a wonderful visit with Deborah and her kids and dog, have raked and raked in our yard during an unusual spell of warm sunny weather, and John has labored to put the RV in shape. I’ll tag a few additional reflections at the end of this.


March 3
We have a relatively calm period here in Florida, and continue to be thoroughly grateful to be here. Some observations:

1. RV folks almost pounce on us to be helpful and friendly. The prime example occurred when we pulled into an RV park, went inside to register, came back out to restart the RV - and it would not start. Within about five minutes, at least six men were clustered, brainstorming what the problem might be, fiddling with knobs, crawling underneath, etc. We ended up sleeping right there by the office that night, with electricity provided by several cords hooked up by the guys. In the morning, Charley started right up and we moved to our site. However, one of the guys visited us at least twice more, with new brainstorms, and he did make some adjustments, and so far we have not had the refusal-to-start problem again.

2. We have stayed in a few places where we did not get TV, and it has been quite fine without it. Except that we have the laptop, it harks us back to tent camping. Linda has been having a feast reading, and has quite a few titles to recommend. Re TV, though, we were glad to get to watch the Olympic ice hockey final game, in a sports bar with about equal numbers of Canadians and Americans. Lots of excitement, no brawls.

3. People mumble and grumble about the unusually cool and often wet weather this winter in Florida, and threaten to head West next winter. We do not complain.

4. We continue to search out and enjoy smaller, old-time Florida towns. Dunedin, on the Gulf Coast, has captured Linda's fancy. The large condo communities have in many cases gone into the doldrums, with new building halted, strip malls with significant numbers of available spaces. But we still find restaurants full any night we visit them.

5. Maybe we are just lazy... We had planned to drive up to Appalachicola, on the Panhandle, for oysters. But 260 miles each way quelled our enthusiasm, as did the simple comfort of hanging out in the same park for several days. We found oysters on the Gulf Coast, and John was relatively satisfied with them.

April 9
1. A few weeks ago, we started planning when we will make our major Western trip. At this point, we want to leave Durham in late summer and travel along the northern tier of the continent. We would like to park the RV somewhere on the Pacific coast in November and fly home for the holidays, then fly back in January and proceed along the southern tier. We would appreciate input on “spots too good to miss.”

2. The above is a clear indication that we LOVE being in our RV!!!

3. In fact, it seems as if life in our RV is more about “being” than “doing.” As we scurry around our house (aka the large storage container) and yard (with its abundant raking, mowing, chain sawing, and shoveling opportunities), we have a refreshed outlook on what is really important and what is not.

4. Charley cooperated pretty well recently. One problem: the indicator for fluid in the hydraulic jacks started beeping in North Carolina and continued until we arrived home. John crawled under Charley and attempted to replenish the fluid, and he also contorted himself trying to disconnect the fuse for the beeper, but both attempts failed.

5. Old favorites we visited:
St. Augustine, and we especially enjoyed dinner at Harry’s
Jekyll Island - we love the campground there, and having mid-morning
coffee and sweet at the fabulous Jekyll Island Club
Brookgreen Gardens south of Myrtle Beach SC which has the most
delightful whimsical sculpture

6. “New favorites”:
Beaufort SC - waterfront park, history (especially African-American),
architecture
Very nice KOA campgrounds in Wilmington NC and south of DC
7. Unusual places we overnighted:
(We already mentioned the sloped driveway in Sarasota)
A quite busy street in Baltimore, outside brother Bill’s house, both
southbound and northbound
At the RV lot at my aunt and uncle’s retirement community, water and
electric hookups were provided. (Have any of you fellow RVers
encountered such consideration elsewhere?)
We didn’t get to stay at a Walmart, and we had really looked forward to
that experience.

Overall, the only serious flaw with the whole trip was that Linda’s ankle continued to hurt, and we were not nearly as physically active as we had hoped. The ankle now does feel better, especially after a reassuring visit to her doctor, and let’s hope we’ll be “whole” on our next adventures.

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