Wendy & Skip's RV Adventures

4-8 March 2015: After bailing out early on the Florida trip due to mechanical issues, we did two things: (1) spent some quality time assessing whether there were any other lessons learned from the experience, and (2) since we had to head home anyway, thinking of ways to make the most of ferrying ACE back to its home base.

As to the former point, one more lesson learned:

Lesson 7: Travel-short or stay-long whenever possible. When moving from one location to another, we tend to use the 3/300 Rule–no more than 300 miles per day and off the road by 3:00 pm. But under that regimen, it’s 4:00 or later before we’re set up, dogs walked, and chores tended to, which means it’s really not practical to see the local sights. So, we’ve learned that if we are traveling to some point because there’s something there we want to do, we either have to travel for a shorter duration (say 100-150 miles per day, arrival NLT 1:00), or stay one or more extra days.

So, applying those lessons, we picked up ACE on Wednesday around noon and drove a mere 40 miles to our next stop, where we resolved to stay for three days. The stop was The Great Outdoors RV Resort. Wow. This place has over 600 RV sites, and the sites that are for sale range in cost from $40,000 for a concrete pad, to over $800,000 for a residence with an RV “garage” that’s nicer than my house! Add to that an onsite golf course, driving range, RV repair and supplies facility, chapel, two restaurants, cart rentals and repair, activities galore, and so on, and it’s hard not to be satisfied. One night we just happened to wander in to a lecture on the resident alligator population, which was as good as anything we’ve seen done by National Park Rangers! Here we are, safely tucked away at our site.

And the next day we headed off to Kennedy Space Center where we picked up some of the things we missed during our breakdown period, including the 2-1/2 hour tour and lunch with astronaut Ed Gibson, who spent 84 days on Skylab. Just before going to KSC, I had read one of Chuck Woodbury’s rvtravel.com columns in which he wondered if prolonged space travel would be a lot like being inside the RV for months on end. So I asked Ed Gibson: “I was reading a column that pointed out that a spacecraft like Skylab is not much bigger than the RVs that many of us travel around in, and I can’t imagine spending 84 days inside my RV. Did you ever just want to be back on earth and just get out, walk around, and breathe fresh air?”

He replied, “Not for a minute. Being there in space, looking at the expanse of earth every day, surrounded by the depth of space, completely overcame any feeling of confinement. Really it was the opposite. Everything seemed so infinite in all directions … It was almost too big.” Well, maybe, but to get there can you imagine sitting on top of a 6.2 million pound launch vehicle, with 5 engines developing 1.5 million pounds of thrust each?

Oh well, I’m too old to make the trip now…

Speaking of being too old, on Friday I became officially a “senior citizen”: that’s right, 65 years old. So, we headed to the local seafood restaurant for a celebratory dinner. Ah … the golden years!

After that, we headed on back, with ACE now working fine, the KSC experience completed, and us ready for the next trip.

8-9 February: Theoretically, there are four kinds of breakdowns one can experience on the road (excluding mental breakdowns, which is pretty much my normal state of affairs):

1. Environmental (floods, storms, plagues),
2. Human (accidents, illnesses),
3. Pet (same categories, but more heartrending), and
4. Mechanical (ranging from routine maintenance to disabling failures)

Although we certainly wouldn’t plan to learn how to deal with such things by deliberately precipitating a breakdown of some sort, we fully expect that learning how to deal with these is an inevitable part of life on the road. So, with that as background, good news: we’re fully immersed in two of the four breakdown categories! Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Pet breakdown: Sally, our little (8 pound) miniature dachshund (AKA Wunderhund), has come down with some awful digestive thing. We called the vet in Atlanta, who thought it might be stress-related, so we put her on incredibly teeny doses of Immodium and hoped for the best. Not to happen. So, on Tuesday, 10 February, it was off to the local vet in Palm Bay (more on why we’re in Palm Bay below). This vet concluded it’s likely a bacterial onslaught in her GI tract, so she’s on broad spectrum antibiotics, special easy-to-digest food, and probiotics. And we took a $600 whack in the process. The good news, though, is that after a day or two, the antibiotics and other measures seemed to have worked and she’s almost back to her normal (albeit pesky) self.

Mechanical breakdown: On the first day of the trip, I noticed a couple drops of pink fluid on the pad at the Georgia Coastal RV Resort. At Anastasia State Park, nothing, although it was a sand pad so it may not have been visible anyway. At Disney, a few more drops. I checked the fluid level (engine running) and it appeared full. En route to Cocoa, Florida, though, we smelled a terrible burning odor, pulled over at a toll booth, and I could see transmission fluid on the exhaust pipe shield. Again, I checked the level and it was down to about 60%. We made the call to limp on to the next stop (Sonrise Palms Christian RV Park) and call for roadside assistance there.

Good Sam dispatched a truck repair truck (in case problem were just a loose line or some such thing fixable on the spot), but nope: a blown transmission seal, causing a leak that the mechanic described as “substantial.” Ugh. So, because the chassis is still under the original warranty, we called Ford. First bit of good news: Ford has great customer service, handling all of the details of finding a dealer that could both handle motorhome repairs and transmission work, arranging for the tow truck, and checking with us periodically to be sure everything was proceeding according to plan. I guess that’s not surprising since Ford was the only auto company that could actually manage to run its business without a federal bailout (see $20.2-Billion-Taxpayer-Fleecing), but a pleasant experience nonetheless.

So, Sunday night, knowing we’d have to have ACE towed the next day, we headed off to Kennedy Space Center to watch the launch of the SpaceX rocket carrying the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR). I had managed to secure tickets to watch the launch from the LC-39 gantry, which is 3.4 miles away (the closest viewing point because, in the event of a worst-case explosion at ignition, the blast radius would be roughly 3 miles) (hmmm).

But then, with roughly 2-1/2 minutes to go, the launch was scrubbed. Something about “down range tracking.” G-r-r-r-r. So, back to the disabled RV we go, ready to deal with that issue the next day.

And the next day, the tow truck showed up…

 

…and towed it to Palm Bay Ford, where we had the great and wondrous opportunity to spend a few days here, holed up in the Holiday Inn Express, waiting for repairs to be concluded, which we understand include not only a new transmission seal (actually, it turned out to be a cracked pump assembly), but a new torque converter, thankfully all under warranty. Well, almost all under warranty. Weird thing: the way motorhomes are built is that the manufacturer buys a bare chassis from, in this case, Ford and then drops the coach down on top of it. Works great, except, as luck would have it, part of the coach blocked access to the bolt on the member supporting the transmission–no removee bolt, no removee tranny. To the credit of Palm Bay Ford, they were able to figure out a workaround, but since it didn’t involve the drive train per se, I’d have to pay a couple hours labor to get it done. Deal.

And, due to the time it took to work all of this out, the Key West leg of the trip turned out to be impossible. Oh well … there’s always next year.

10-12 February: And while all of this is going on, I learned there’s actually a fifth kind of breakdown. Call it a “planning breakdown.” I thought I had been able to delegate a business trip to Washington to another attorney, but for a variety of reasons that delegation broke down. So, in the middle of this circumnavigation of Florida, which had already gotten scrambled due to the pet and mechanical breakdowns, I find the trip now has to be further scrambled to allow me to jump on a plane, fly to DC, spend the night there, attend a meeting, and then fly back.

So I spent several hours cancelling one set of reservations and making another set that would put me close enough to an airport to enable the trip, which was difficult to do, not surprisingly given that we’re trying to find open places in Florida during the peak of snowbird season. So, the Naples and Cedar Key legs of the trip got cancelled, and replaced with Bradenton, with a flight to and from DC out of Tampa.

But here’s the deal: for some reason I’ll have to work out someday, none of this feels bad. Maybe it’s because I’m getting mellow in my old age (not likely), or maybe it’s because, with nowhere to be at any particular time, any breakdown in the process ultimately doesn’t matter. Either way, the trip will resume when it does, and we’ll go wherever we go, and we’re fine with all of that, whatever it is.

I’ve heard several people who take their yachts cruising around the country say something like, “If you can’t deal with bad weather, breakdowns, unpredictability, and an endless list of things to tend to, don’t even think about a cruising lifestyle.” I guess the same is true for “land yachts.”

So, here’s the bottom line on the costs of our unexpected breakdowns:
Pet: $686.83 (vet fees, lab tests, medicine, and special food)
Mechanical:  $1327, consisting of repairs ($239.63), hotel ($837.20) (not entirely accurate since we saved on some campground fees, but less cancellation costs), and meals (about $250) (again, not really accurate since we would have eaten anyway)
Planning: $148, consisting of cancellation fee for already made reservations ($98) and a purchase of a shirt and tie for the trip ($50)

Now … on to Lake Okeechobee!

13 February: But … not to be. We got as far as the Flying J in Ft. Pierce, ready to gas up and head down to Lake Okeechobee, and the transmission was kaput. Again. So, once again we called Ford roadside assistance, and once again had ACE towed to Palm Bay Ford.

 

Mark, the transmission guy, put ACE up on the lift and concluded that he’s got to pull the transmission. He was quite candid that he doesn’t know what the problem is. He road tested the motorhome after the original repair and it was fine … dry as a bone. He can’t tell why it would spring another leak without pulling the transmission again and finding the problem.

Everyone at Palm Bay Ford is appropriately apologetic. Well, mostly. Steve, the service rep, has a tendency to make off-hand remarks that are more aggravating than helpful, but that’s probably just the way some people react to a difficult situation.

But, apologetic or not, there’s nothing we can do to get ACE back on the road until next week. And now there’s little point in pushing on. We’d miss the trip to the Everglades, which is the only worthwhile element of the original plan remaining, and there’s little point in heading to Bradenton so Wendy can sit in the motorhome for two days while I fly to DC, and then return to her only to make a long two-day drive back to where we started.

So, the best thing now is to quit while we’re ahead. It’s a bit of a hassle to drive back to Atlanta now, but not much. We are, after all, the kind of folks for whom the prospect of a 500-mile road trip sounds like fun!

I’m pretty disappointed, but not devastated. We had a great trip (for as far as we got), and having to terminate a trip early is hardly the worst thing on earth. And, besides a great week in Disney World, and besides being way warmer than our brethren in Atlanta, we did accomplish our original purpose: learning the important lessons of life on the road. To which we can add two more:

Lesson 5: To paraphrase the cruising adage, life on the road means that one just can’t get flustered by bad weather, breakdowns, delays, and an endless list of things to tend to.

Lesson 6: It’s better to disengage than to push a bad position.

So, we’re headed back to Atlanta, leaving ACE here, and we’ll figure out how to get down here in two or three weeks to pick it up and get it home. The important thing, though, is that we’re headed back to Atlanta happy.

4-5-6-7 February: Fort Wilderness and the Disney Theme Parks

We started off Wednesday morning with a breakfast with princesses in the Akershus Dining Hall in EPCOT. Well, first Michelle and Rachel had to get suitably attired:

It would be easy to adopt a cynical eye that would see the whole princess thing as nothing more than a brilliant marketing strategy crafted to suck even more money out of an already overspending population of Disney visitors. Even avoiding cynicism, for those of us whose children experienced Disney in the 80’s, it’s easy to ask, “Where did this whole princess phenomenon come from?” I mean, 8:00 in the morning and the EPCOT lines are filled with dozens of little girls in various princess outfits. I heard one mother recounting her daughter’s visit to the Bippity-Boppity-Boutique to get her hair done prior to the princess breakfast. Really?

But then at breakfast it hit me … whatever else one might say, this really is magical. Somehow, this experience creates the purest form of unadulterated, starry-eyed joy in young children, something you can literally see in their eyes. And if someone sits in the middle of this miraculous occurrence and can focus only on the corporate economics of the whole thing, there’s something wrong with that person’s soul.

And then, of course, for the rest of the day, EPCOT is, well, EPCOT. Soarin’ is beautiful, Test Track is a ton of fun (although, near-terrifying to the Little Darlings), and the other attractions (Spaceship Earth, Living with the Land, and I can’t remember what else), are all appealing in different ways. And ending it at the French Chefs restaurant, at Michelle’s insistence, was the perfect way to end. Michelle even insisted on ordering, and trying (!), snails.

Thursday it was off to the Magic Kingdom. More rides, and more insights into why Disney deserves every penny the company makes. The People Mover ride broke down–I don’t know how a ride that is nothing more than little rubber-wheeled trollies that run on a concrete track could break down, but it did. We sat there for 15 or 20 minutes before someone came by and escorted us out of the ride. But as we exited, each of us was given a FastPass+ ticket good for any ride in the park. For those not familiar with the concept (a group that included me just a few days ago), a FastPass+ allows one to pre-reserve a preferential entry at the most popular rides. Some of the FastPass+ available slots sell out immediately when available (which is, I think, 60 days before arrival). There’s a limit a limit of three FastPass+ reservations that one can hold. And the passes can only be replenished once all three are gone and then only one at a time and only if slots for a ride are available. So a FastPass+ for a popular ride is a very valuable commodity, and Disney gave one to each of us just for getting stuck for a couple minutes! Really! This is great!

Oh yeah … and more princesses.

Friday: Hollywood Studios. I’m told that I once visited this park, but if so, the memory of it has disappeared into the crevices of ossified brain tissue. More fun rides and a very clever play area mimicking Honey I Shrunk The Kids.

 

And of course, more princesses. But this one, the Frozen sing-a-long, was magical in a wholly different way. While telling the story of Princess Anna and Queen Elsa with live actors and clips from the movie, the account was interrupted from time to time with bouncing-ball sing-a-long songs from the score, and the auditorium was filled with hundreds of children singing. By the time they got to Let It Go, the voices were accompanied by gestures, all synchronized and perfectly matched to the movie on-screen. Like a ballet performed with the hands … What a sight to see.

Finally, to close out the day and the trip, a return to an old family favorite: the Hoop-Dee-Doo-Revue. It was of course a foot-stompin’ good time, but the Little Darlings liked it most of all, literally laughing out loud and clapping their hands, an experience enabled in large part because we were literally sitting up against the stage.

Saturday — nothing but chores and getting ready for the next leg of the trip. So, we did 6 loads of laundry, cleaned out a week’s worth of accumulated dust, tended to a few items, sat around in the sun, and toured around Fort Wilderness on our bikes. Besides–we had no choice anyway. Our little dog Sally has come down with some terrible digestive affliction and, believe me, you don’t want to know the details. The bottom line, though, is that we definitely do not want to leave her alone in the RV for any extended period of time.

Overall –Due largely to the efforts of my daughter, this trip came together in a way that I never could have done, starting with the idea of doing the time when the girls are at this age. And the selection of attractions (and pre-arranging the correct collection of FastPass+ tickets), and the decision as to when to call it quits each day (“Better 10 minutes too early than 10 minutes too late…”), also made the experience completely perfect.

I once met someone who attended the Disney Institute, a corporate training and development organization that teaches companies the secrets of the Disney model: “We pay extraordinary attention to the details surrounding general business processes. We strategically place emphasis that is both greater than and different from what is typical in corporate best practices.” Other companies out there: go do the Disney thing!

Maybe that’s why I love this place. I really do. I love everything about it. The campground is the best implementation I’ve ever seen. Every aspect of the theme park experience–the attractions, the “cast members,” the layout, the entertainment, everything–reveals attention to excellence. I know I’m repeating myself from the initial post, but it’s worth noting again the truth of what one visitor happened to remark to me: “I guess if you’re not happy here, there aren’t a lot of places where you’ll be happy.” Truer words never uttered.

The Disney Photo Album is located here.

Info for the trip:
Campsite: 7 nights at $82.00; 2 nights at $87.00
Park tickets: Approximately $50/day (based on 5-day rate, although we only used 4 days)
Incidentals, souvenirs, meals: $ (infinity) +/-
Value: Priceless

Several months ago, my daughter called up and said, “Dad, we really ought to make another trip to Disney World while it’s still magical and before it’s just fun…” So, as part of our circumnavigation of Florida, here we are.

2-3 February: Drive down and set-up; Behind-The-Scenes Tour

Normally, a drive down would be nothing to write home about, but this drive did indeed have something worth noting: 20 mph cross-winds. So, with passing trucks, swirling winds around clearings, sideways blasts from overpasses, and so on, it was a pretty tiring exercise. Actually, it sort of reminded me of flying in turbulence: not dangerous, but constant attentiveness and manipulation of the controls. After two hours of that, I was beat. Lesson 4: When driving along the edge of a passing cold front, expect a demanding trip.

But we’re here, and who cares? Since we’ve been here before, and we’re such old hands, we could actually navigate the campground, in the rain, and back in in 27 seconds. Here’s proof:

 

So, after tending to a variety of chores (getting water delivered to Jennifer’s hotel, picking up Hoop-Dee-Doo tickets, and checking on reservations), and after relaxing for a few moments, we went over to Narcoosee’s restaurant at the Grand Floridian for dinner. Wow. Steak, crab’s legs, lobster bisque, and sour dough bread with butters covered in sea salt. Not exactly “on the diet.” Oh well, the step counter will be active tomorrow and maybe it won’t matter.

And I’ll try not to repeat everything about why Disney is such an amazing place (see my original post on the topic), but one moment did crystallize the essence of this place. Just as we were snuggling in to tap out for the night, at 9:45 or so, the most cheesy electronic music started blaring from the lagoon. The “electric light parade of boats.” No kidding. We both started laughing out load. We had this image of parents all over the campground, dealing with kids in that half-zonked/half-wired state of total physical and emotional collapse, just finally getting the Little Darlings settled in and ready fall asleep, and BLAM! electric light parade! What a place.

And then the next day, Tuesday, after a good night’s sleep and dropping off the doggies at the local pet boarding facility, we headed over to the Magic Kingdom for our “Keys to the Kingdom” behind-the-scenes tour.

Our guide, Nicholas, starting the tour on Main Street:

These recurrent observations I’ve had about the invariable excellence of Walt Disney World in everything it does are starting to come together. It turns out that WDW is built on four “keys”: safety, courtesy, show, and efficiency. Each of these operates in different ways that were illustrated to us as we toured the park (including the areas normally closed to the public). For safety, for example, the curbs are always a different color than the sidewalks and roadways, so that even excited guests, not paying attention, can see a curb coming up. The concrete sidewalks have pieces of recycled tire to provide a good grip, even when wet. Each of the floats has an emergency stop button on each corner.

For courtesy, each “cast member” (employee) wears a name badge with his home town on it. Each goes through the same intense training (1-1/2 days), followed by 1-2 weeks of training specific to the task. Every day, each receives a printed update with resort information so that answers to common questions are readily at hand. The physical design of the park reflects the same idea. Somehow, Disney discovered that when a roadway branches off towards two different areas, a disproportionate fraction of people go right; so, the roadway on the right fork is two feet wider than the left.

For “show,” it was explained that all of the Disney “imagineers” came out of the film industry, so the idea is that the theme park experience is essentially a 3-D interactive film experience. Main Street uses “forced perspective,” with the upper floors of the buildings proportionately smaller, and the farther-away buildings smaller, to provide the impression that Cinderella’s castle is off in the distance. Music pervades all areas of the park, but the music in one area gradually fades out as the music in another fades in, leading to a seamless transition. Even where people would never notice, the quality of the show is paramount–in the Hall of Presidents, if the president wore glasses, his replica does too and the prescription in the glasses matches that of the president on the day he was inaugurated. No one could possibly know that, but that kind of attention to detail in what doesn’t show is what makes for excellence in the things that do.

And for efficiency, the park is built around not only efficiency in its own operations, but in the guests experience as well. The hub-and-spoke layout allows guests to transition easily between areas. The underground network of open utility corridors allows maintenance and repairs to be made quickly, without shutting down any area of the park. The park operates on a 24-hour basis, with upkeep and replenishment occurring overnight when the park is closed.

Besides all this, we were treated to 5 full hours of stories, anecdotes, secrets of each ride, all of which culminated with the famous tour of the underground “tunnels” (except that they’re really not tunnels–groundwater doesn’t permit such a thing in Central Florida, so the “utilidors” were built at ground level and the Magic Kingdom built, no kidding, one story up with excavated dirt). We even learned things I wish I didn’t know–like the turkey leg in Frontierland packs a walloping 2400 calories! Mostly, thought, the tour was the story of five people: Walt Disney (the creative force), Roy (his brother, and the businessman), Claude Coats and Marc Davis (two of the original imagineer geniuses behind the implementation of Disney’s creative ideas), and Card Walker (the “justice of the peace” who often mediated the differing visions of Walt and Roy).

I’m aware of some criticisms of the tour that it’s too long on trivia and not enough on meaty facts on operations and processes. Ignore such sentiments–those people are morons. Bringing a grand vision to reality is largely a practice of focusing on smaller things. Excellence doesn’t fall out of the sky fully grown–it evolves through an infinity of details. That’s what the tour shows: there is so much magic in the small things that the collective effect is greater than its parts. A truly magical place on all levels.

Tomorrow, the Little Darlings arrive and Phase II of the adventure begins.

1. LaGrange to Coastal RV Resort, Brunswick, GA
2. Brunswick to Anastasia State Park, St. Augustine, FL
3. St. Augustine to Walt Disney World, Fort Wilderness, FL
4. Walt Disney World to Cape Canaveral, Jetty Park, FL
5. Cape Canaveral to C.B. Smith County Park, Miami (Pembroke Pines), FL
6. Miami to Key West (Summerland Key), FL
7. Key West to Flamingo Campground, Everglades National Park, FL
8. Everglades to Naples RV Resort, Naples, FL
9. Naples to Cedar Key RV Resort, FL
10. Cedar Key to Carrabelle Beach Outdoor Destinations, FL

1 February: Floride, nous sommes arrivés! And, just as we hoped, the temperature hit 77-degrees, with crystal blue skies. What a welcome!

Anastasia State Park is very nice. So nice, in fact, that we decided to bag the trip to St. Augustine and instead just enjoy the warm weather and peaceful surroundings. All set up at Site 65:

(Which confirms something we suspected at the very beginning. I certainly wouldn’t want to try this campground with anything longer than ACE. In fact, we saw lots of small trailers, and a few Class C’s, but no other motorhomes. And I think for good reason … it was a challenge getting in here.)

We went for a walk on a nature trail through the hammock:

 

And down to the dunes:

 

Before preparing a feast and settling down to watch the Super Bowl,

Unfortunately, we could get all of the Jacksonville over-the-air stations except for NBC. Not to worry, though, I logged on to the NBC website and we watched over our broadband connection (sucking data, but heck, it’s the Super Bowl). So we watched through the 3rd Quarter before turning in for the night, confident that Seattle had won. Oops.

Tomorrow, off to Disney World and Fort Wilderness!

Fuel in Brunswick: 38.1 gal @ $1.909 (7.85 mpg–about right when pulling the toad)
Distance traveled: 112 miles
Campsite cost: $28.00

1. LaGrange to Coastal RV Resort, Brunswick, GA
2. Brunswick to Anastasia State Park, St. Augustine, FL
3. St. Augustine to Walt Disney World, Fort Wilderness, FL
4. Walt Disney World to Cape Canaveral, Jetty Park, FL
5. Cape Canaveral to C.B. Smith County Park, Miami (Pembroke Pines), FL
6. Miami to Key West (Summerland Key), FL
7. Key West to Flamingo Campground, Everglades National Park, FL
8. Everglades to Naples RV Resort, Naples, FL
9. Naples to Cedar Key RV Resort, FL
10. Cedar Key to Carrabelle Beach Outdoor Destinations, FL

31 January: We’re off! Today was just a get-out-of-Dodge day, heading to a point where our Florida stops are within reach, but it was exciting to be on the road. As noted above (Prelude), besides seeking out warmer climes, and getting to spend a few days with the Little Darlings at Disney World, a principal purpose of this adventure is to learn how to do long trips. And yesterday was certainly, um, a “learning day.”

First, I had adopted a 3/300 rule that I read about somewhere: travel no more than 300 miles and get off the road by 3:00 pm every day. This trip was actually 320 miles (not too much of an infraction), but we didn’t get off the road until 4:30 pm. Way too long a day! Why? According to my trip-logging GPS, our moving time was 6:07 (51.8 mph), which is exactly what I expected since I travel at 60 +/- mph, but we chose the non-freeway diagonal down to Brunswick, and with lots of 55 mph zones, small towns, traffic lights, and so on, the average would never get much above 50. What I did not work into the equation was 2;30 of “stopped time.” Lunch in Tifton (in a Wal-Mart parking lot) (necessary to do some shopping–see below), dog stops, a long gas stop screwing around with the radio (see below), and so on. Lesson 1: We don’t go as fast as we think we do, and for “making miles” days, stick to the fastest possible route.

Second, given that we have checklists up the wazoo, it’s amazing how many things we didn’t have with us. Nothing major, and mostly the kinds of things that everyone has around the house, but typically aren’t in an RV. Like a big piece of cardboard to block out the doggie window. Hence the stop at the Wal-Mart in Tifton. Our oft-repeated conversation opener became, “You know what we didn’t bring?” Lesson 2: The model for what we need on a long road trip is how we live at home, not how we “camp.”

Third, our newly installed Alpine radio is detestable. The first one didn’t work at all and had to be returned to the factory (a 6-week process), and then the replacement revealed a string of operating quirks that would challenge Bill Gates (like that fact that it hates Apple products), and finally the new one doesn’t seem to work anyway. All of which we discovered sitting at a gas station, trying to get the blasted thing to work. Lesson 3: Learn how to use the on-board “features,” or decide they’re unusable, but either way do so before hitting the road.

But, in the grand scheme of things, we are well-equipped, getting along very well, these are all just nits. We’ve dreamed about being able to tour the country since we were a couple of 20-something hippies, camping in National Parks en route to Connecticut to get married. And now, we’re on the road, we’re excited about and already made of list of things we’ll do at the next stop (St. Augustine), the rest of the trip is before us, and we couldn’t be happier.

Coastal Georgia RV Resort (Brunswick, GA): Site #307. Nice facilities, clean restrooms, easy access to/from I-95 (but with a lot of road noise). Fine for an overnight stop, and maybe longer if part of a club gathering or using this as a base to explore Brunswick or Jekyll Island.
Cost: $37.20/night
Total Miles: 321 / Total Travel Time: 8:37
Fuel cost: None (we didn’t fill up, but we did by gas for $1.87 in LaGrange)

1. LaGrange to Coastal RV Resort, Brunswick, GA
2. Brunswick to Anastasia State Park, St. Augustine, FL
3. St. Augustine to Walt Disney World, Fort Wilderness, FL
4. Walt Disney World to Cape Canaveral, Jetty Park, FL
5. Cape Canaveral to C.B. Smith County Park, Miami (Pembroke Pines), FL
6. Miami to Key West (Summerland Key), FL
7. Key West to Flamingo Campground, Everglades National Park, FL
8. Everglades to Naples RV Resort, Naples, FL
9. Naples to Cedar Key RV Resort, FL
10. Cedar Key to Carrabelle Beach Outdoor Destinations, FL

Winter is upon us, so after properly preparing for our first long trip, it’s time to head to warmer climes. It’s a 10-leg trip, so here are the individual segments (with updates to follow as they occur):

1. LaGrange to Coastal RV Resort, Brunswick, GA
2. Brunswick to Anastasia State Park, St. Augustine, FL
3. St. Augustine to Walt Disney World, Fort Wilderness, FL
4. Walt Disney World to Cape Canaveral, Jetty Park, FL
5. Cape Canaveral to C.B. Smith County Park, Miami (Pembroke Pines), FL
6. Miami to Key West (Summerland Key), FL
7. Key West to Flamingo Campground, Everglades National Park, FL
8. Everglades to Naples RV Resort, Naples, FL
9. Naples to Cedar Key RV Resort, FL
10. Cedar Key to Carrabelle Beach Outdoor Destinations, FL

And finally, after three weeks on the road, back to LaGrange.

Prelude: Gearing Up

It seems we spend a fair amount of time planning out various big trips we hope to make someday: a 2016 Grand Tour of the U.S. (80 days, 9700 miles, 19 National Parks and Monuments); an out-and-back trip to visit Robert at Joint Base Lewis McChord near Tacoma (6600 miles, taking 125 days, mainly because I’ve included a month in Washington, a week at the Rose Parade, and two months in Tucson); and of course our maybe-someday trip through Canada to Alaska and back.

But, truth be told, we’ve never really taken a trip longer than a week. Well, one: the trip we made to the White Mountains in New Hampshire back in the 1980s with the pop-up was two weeks. But basically all of our trips have been in the 3- to 5-day range. Until now.

We’ve mapped out and will soon start a 10-stop, 22-day, 2100-mile circumnavigation of Florida: down to Walt Disney World to meet up with the Little Darlings for 5 days, then down the east coast of Florida, out to the Keys, then the Everglades, then back up the West Coast.

There is much that makes this trip exciting besides the fact that it’s our first L-O-N-G trip, mainly that we’re learning how to make a series of overnight-stops; what it’s like to have to toad along with us at each of those; how to deal with the dogs and various onerous pet policies; how to handle restocking, maintenance, and chores; what a real budget should be for such trips; and how much sightseeing and touristy things we can really manage. We plan on coming back much smarter than we are now. But mainly we plan on being warm for a few weeks and having a great time.

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This is the 13th year for me in doing these annual charity hunts, save just a couple years here and there where I missed the hunt for one reason or another. Son #1 was able to come again, for his fifth consecutive trip! I feel the start of generation-spanning tradition here! Son #2 is stationed at Fort Leavenworth, so he couldn’t make it this year–I’d say maybe next year, but next year he’ll likely be stationed somewhere out west, so this annual event probably isn’t in the cards for then, either.

Last year’s hunt began with the RV stuck in the mud; this year, the camping spots were high and dry, but with 1-1/2 inches of rain headed our way. Good grief–not again. Sure enough, as we were packing up to head out on Saturday, the ground was spongy and menacing–an RV trap waiting to happen. So, how to drive out of a camping spot where the motorhome would sink in the mud as soon as it rolled off the leveling blocks? We went to the nearby hardware store and spent 30 minutes wandering the aisles, hoping for inspiration. At last, it came! Carpet runner! The kind with the finger-punching spikes on the bottom. A piece 24-inches wide and 10-feet long (for a mere $27) would give us grip for the rear tires and could move us forward in five-foot increments. The process was complicated, and not worthy of recounting here, but suffice it to say that, in ground so mushy that a pickup truck needed four-wheel drive to extract itself, we were able to roll out the motorhome, courtesy of our invented system, with no trouble whatsoever.

And the hunting? Actually somewhat slow. The weather was unusually warm, and with a rain event of Biblical proportions, so perhaps that’s not to be unexpected. And Friday was so foggy that a nearby tree, ranged at 138 yards, would frequently disappear from view. Beautiful in a way, but with an eerie silence.

And why is it that one always sees turkey in deer season and deer in turkey season, but never the right species when it’s eligible? I mean, how do they know?

We did return with four deer–enough to keep us supplied with venison for a while.

But there was a luckless ending: Right at last light, on the last day of the hunt, Cliff shot what we expect was a truly MONSTER buck! It bolted into the woods and although we could pick up its trail in the immediate vicinity, it was impossible to follow at night. Returning the next day, the trail disappeared into what must be hundreds of acres of swampy wetland–no way to follow the trail. We even tried a grid search in a 400m-by-200m (20 acre) area. No deer and no trail. Ugh. We’ve signed up for next year, and maybe the weather and the luck will be better then.

So, August in Atlanta is normally a lot like sitting in a sauna, so we have made it our practice over the years to get a few days respite by traveling up to the mountains of North Carolina. For many years, that meant a small dumpy hotel in Cashiers, and lately it means taking Ace to the Mountain Falls RV Resort. As described in a previous post, Mountain Falls is an unbelievably luxurious, upscale “RV resort” (even their website says, “Don’t call us an RV park”) where the lots go for, no kidding, $130,000 (for resales in the “lower” area) to $250,000 for the lots under construction up on “The Ridge.” That works out to $7+ million per acre. Slightly out of our price range. The owners next to us (he’s retired Navy) have a lot at Mountain Falls, where they spend 5 months, and another lot in Deland, FL, where they spend the rest of year.

This year’s trip, we did something new … we headed off to Gorges State Park for a half-day of hiking and waterfall viewing.

Wow. I read that the park should be called “Gorgeous State Park,” and I’ll second the suggestion. Getting over 90 inches of rain per year, with an elevation gain of 2000 feet in only 4 miles, the Horsepasture River presents one waterfall after another, culminating in Rainbow Falls.

It’s impossible to do justice to a waterfall with an amateur still photo, but even in this meager depiction, perhaps one can sense the beauty of this area. Or perhaps this more accurately captures my impression:

The area was fairly crowded, although not unpleasantly so, including a fair contingent of college-age young people. It’s said that for everything that exists: (1) if it moves, someone will figure out a way to race it, and (2) if it doesn’t move, someone will figure out a way to jump off of it. So, not surprisingly, waterfall jumping appears to be an important objective for the younger contingent.

The next day we drove up and toured the Blue Ridge Parkway, including a hike to the top of of Devil’s Courthouse.

Well, 3 of us hiked. Sally the Wonder Dachshund got a ride.

The weather over the entire trip was just as we expected: mid- to upper-70s each day, beautiful Carolina Blue skies with billowy white clouds, and a gentle breeze. We’re already looking forward to next year’s trip.