Back Home Again

After finishing up all the details in Florida I (Dennis) headed north late Tuesday morning. We decided that Baltimore would be the best place to meet based on cost and location, so Nancy scheduled a flight to arrive at BWI Thursday evening. By leaving on Tuesday I had some cushion built into the schedule, which turned out to be a good thing as I spent most of the day Wednesday at Central Carolina Truck Sales, the Volvo dealer in Kernersville, NC. My main concern had been to get to a campground on Wednesday evening so I could watch the Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup, which they did.

Tuesday evening the truck began losing throttle response and each time I stopped the problem got worse, eventually I was using the cruise control for acceleration. I decided to take advantage of the light traffic and push on through the night. I arrived at Mayberry Campground in Mt Airy, NC at 5:30 AM Wednesday morning. Located the nearest Volvo dealer and then got down there and joined the service line first thing in the morning. Fortunately they were able to determine the problem and had the parts on hand to repair it.

So Thursday morning I was back on the road with an easy trip into BWI to meet Nancy. Picked her up about 8 PM and we headed on north, it sure was nice to have her with me again! It had been a tough week.

We arrived at St Regis Campground in Potsdam, NY late Friday afternoon after spending the night a a Cracker Barrel in PA. The campground is small, but in a very pretty location with the St. Regis river running right behind our rear window.

Spent the weekend visiting with relatives, had a brief graveside service Monday afternoon and a nice wake with a small group of relatives at Dennis’ cousins house afterwards. On Tuesday we visited the small museum in the village of Russell where Dennis' mom lived when he was born. His grandfather was the doctor in the village, an old fashioned country doctor and the last one in the village since he died in 1947! We gave the museum some pictures of Dr. Teepell and made arraignments to send them some material from both the Teepell family and Dennis' father's WWII experiences.

We headed for home on Wednesday morning. The best route for traveling from far upstate NY to Chicago is through Canada, so we crossed the St Lawrence river at Ogdensburg and headed west on the 401 through Toronto. We spent Wednesday night at Prospect Hill Camping north of London, ON. A good sized campground with a lot of permanent and seasonal campers, but pretty quiet on a week night. Once again a pretty spot by a small stream. The only noise there was the lowing of cows a quarter mile away!

Crossed back into the US at Port Huron, MI, took I-69 west to avoid Detroit, dropped down to I-94 and then around the south side of Chicago. Got home around 5 PM Thursday. It took the entire weekend to get the trailer unloaded! We were living in the Mountain Aire just 9 days short of six months and it worked out very well. We are very pleased with the way the trailer stood up to full time living and in how comfortable it was for the two of us.

Our next trip will be in mid-August to Bristol, TN for the NASCAR race and then the Gypsy Gathering in Elkhart, IN. I’ll post once and a while between now and then as things of interest come up.

Florida Sojourn Comes to an End

Well, our unplanned extended RV living experience is drawing to a close. My (Dennis’) mother passed away Saturday morning (6/5), so after wrapping up loose ends here I will be heading to Northern New York for her burial. We have picked out the St Regis Campground in Potsdam, NY which is fairly close to our family in Canton. Expect to be there by the end of the week and after things settle down there we will finally be heading home! Plans are in flux right now, but I expect that Nancy will meet me in Syracuse, NY on the way north. Seems to make more sense than having her fly back here and then ride along all the way back north since there will not be any funeral service here in FL.

I’ll post a wrap up of our trip in a couple of weeks. We expect to be home in Geneva until mid-August when we will head to Bristol, TN for the NASCAR race and then on the way home we are planning on participating in the Eastern Gypsy Gathering in Elkhart, IN at the end of the month.

A Quick Trip to Geneva & A Shiny Clean Truck

5/15 - 5/30

Wow, it’s Memorial Day already and I am at least a week late in updating our blog. We decided that Nancy needed to spend some time at home as she had a few routine appointments coming up and a few things to take care of there. So we headed north in the Volvo on Thursday the 20th. Pretty uneventful trip, we just took the truck and left the smart and the trailer in FL. Spent one night in a motel in TN and got home late on Friday afternoon. Had take-out dinner from Mike & Miguel’s, our favorite Mexican restaurant.

Everything was in very good shape at home, except for the big freezer in the garage. I had neglected to move it off of the GFI circuit and sure enough the breaker tripped some time over the last five months! What a mess! So Saturday while Nancy did some grocery shopping I put on a filter mask and rubber gloves and tossed all of the thawed and moldy contents of the freezer. Fortunately there was not a lot of meat in there! After dumping everything the inside was thoroughly cleaned with a Clorox and water mixture, no permanent harm done.

It was really nice to have a somewhat normal weekend at home for a change. Sunday evening Dennis headed back south alone. That truck is great for trips like this. When I got sleepy I just hit a rest area or truck stop and took a nap. One fuel stop at the Flying J in Oak Grove, KY and I was back at Sun Lake RV by 1 AM Tuesday morning. 1,230 miles in 26 hours, not bad.

My Mom is about the same, the doctor says she is “stabilized”. I have spent some time just sitting with her this week. I found a great little hand car wash place right near our campground where we have been getting the smart done and they did a fantastic job on washing the truck this week, it looks better than it ever has, particularly the wheels and the aluminum step plates. All for $65 plus tip!

The Blackhawks won the first game of the Stanley Cup finals on Saturday night - yeah Hawks. It was a great game, the series should be exciting. Sunday, in addition to being Memorial Day, is a big race day. Watched the F1 race from Turkey in the early morning, then the Indy 500, and now the NASCAR Coke 600 is on!

Still hotter than Hades here in FL, guess that will be the situation for the next couple of months. The recharged AC in the smart is working great, as is the AC in the trailer. Won't have much to report for the next couple of weeks until Nancy returns. Pretty boring here without her!

Shuttle Launch and a Beachfront Idyll

5/8 - 5/15/10

Nancy came back from her visit home on Tuesday and I was glad to have her back. My Mom is kind of up and down, mostly down and it does not look real good for the future. At this point we are just waiting things out.

We decided to go over to the east coast to watch the shuttle launch on Friday 5/14. This will be the final voyage of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, and there will be only two additional shuttle launches before the program is shut down. After doing some investigating we determined that the best place to watch from was around Titusville. We also found that traffic coming back west after the launch would be pretty bad, so we decided to find a room for Friday night - easier said than done at this late date. We decided to look farther south around Melbourne and found a small beachfront motel in Melbourne beach that had a room for Friday evening only.

The advice we found on the web suggested that we needed to be in place at our viewing spot “three to four hours” before the launch! As it turns out, that was good advice. We left Ruskin about 7:45 AM on Friday, took our usual back road route up through Plant City to I-4, then into Orlando where we headed east on FL 417 to FL 528. So far so good, started to pick up some traffic on 528, including a mile long back-up into the first toll booth. Traffic was heavy, but when we made the turn NE onto FL407 we came to a stop! We crawled along at no more that 10 miles and hour, with lengthy full stops. It took over an hour to go the four miles to I-95! Only bright spot was that this area had clouds of love bugs, but we were not going fast enough to splatter them on the car (we made up for this on Saturday!) Realizing that we were probably in the traffic actually going into the Kennedy Space Center - for which tickets were required - we hopped on I-95 north and easily made it into downtown Titusville. The best viewing was shown as “Space View Park” so we went looking for that, a pretty easy search given the crowds headed that way! We found a very convenient parking spot for $15, good thing we have a tiny car and could fit it into the last space in this particular lot. Walking into the park we found a good spot along the street in the shade of a palm tree to set up our chairs, eventually there were four of us moving along with the shade of this tree as the day wore on!

We were in place about 10:30 AM - for a 2:20 PM launch! There was a pretty sizable crowd already there, any later and we would have been hard pressed to find any shade at all! We spent the next several hours reading, chatting with our neighbors, and people watching. By the time of the launch the crowd was huge and people were even standing waist deep in the water in the bay between the arms of the park.

In the center of this picture there is a gazebo at the end of the pier, just to the left of it is a mound on the far shore, the launch pad is just to the left of that mound. As it turned out we had an excellent viewing spot and could see the launch quite clearly. We were about 15 miles from the launch pad and a little over a minute after ignition we could clearly hear the sound of the launch, just about the time I took this picture:

Afterwards we were able to get our things collected and back to the car pretty quickly. We then headed south on US 1 and of course traffic was horrendous for the first hour. Thank goodness we got the AC fixed in the smart! It performed flawlessly all the way along. It took two hours to get to Melbourne Beach, what should have been about an hour drive, but it was well worth it. The Sea View Motel was exactly as advertised, nice, clean and our king bed room was right on the beach. Here is a picture of Nancy on our patio just after we arrived:

It was a beautiful evening with a nice sea breeze and we took a long walk on the beach before dinner. This motel is on what amounts to a private beach that runs for miles with only a few houses, as well as a nature preserve and a county park, a really pretty spot.

We walked across the street to Cafe Coconut Cove, an excellent German restaurant with good German beer on draft, and had a very nice dinner as we watched the sunset across the Indian River Lagoon.

Saturday morning we were up before dawn so we could watch the sunrise from our patio.

Then we took a nice long walk on the beach and came across tracks where a sea turtle had come ashore during the night to bury her eggs. To get an idea of the scale, those are ATV tracks in the upper right corner of the picture. This was one big turtle, the tracks were about 30” wide, and we could see where she came up and turned, the mound where the eggs are buried, and a second set of tracks (top of picture) where she returned to the water.

After breakfast we sat on our patio and enjoyed the ocean view for a couple of hours before heading back to Ruskin. We drove south on the barrier islands to Vero Beach and then took highway 60 back west through Lake Wales and Bartow before dropping south in Mulberry to FL 674 west. The love bugs were out in force and when we stopped for lunch at Lake Wales Family Restaurant we washed a lot of the bugs off and hosed off the front of the car. When we got to the car wash in Sun City Center later in the afternoon the guy said “Wow, I did not think you could kill that many bugs with a smart car!”, then we told him we had already washed it once today!

Back to our home away from home by mid-afternoon after a really nice interlude on the east coast. We would heartily recommend the Sea View Motel for anyone looking for a nice beachfront location in Florida.

Tomorrow, Sunday, is the Formula One Race from Monaco, and then the Blackhawks play the first game of the Western Conference finals in the afternoon, so we know where Dennis will be!

A Private Bicycle Path (Almost)

4/29 - 5/7/10

We have been trying to find a good place to ride our bicycles around here. The roads are narrow and the traffic moves fast, so it is not real conducive to cycling. We had noted that the north golf course in Sun City Center has been closed for over a year and had though it might be a good place to walk. Friday morning we went over and walked around the front nine. It has become almost a nature preserve, lots of birds and not much else. We saw a few people walking and though it would be a good place for a bicycle ride.

When Dennis set up the bicycle rack for the back of the trailer he also welded a hitch receiver on the headache rack on the truck so we could mount the bicycle rack on the deck. A bit of overkill using a 17,000 lb. truck to carry two bicycles, but hey - it works.

So Saturday morning we took the bikes (which have suffered a bit from being exposed to the elements for four months) over to the course and rode around the entire course, probably about seven miles (Dennis’ odometer seems to have quit working). We did the same on Sunday morning. It was like having our own private bike path. Sunday morning we saw five walkers, two other bikers, and one golf cart the whole time we were there.

Made a quick trip to to the outlet shops in Ellenton and then we took another trip up to Tarpon Springs for lunch at Rusty Bellies and some fresh shrimp from Pelican Point Seafood. Nancy wanted to get one more meal in before the Gulf oil spill ruined the fishing.

On the way up to Tarpon Springs we stopped at Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary. A small place that does a wonderful job of rescuing injured seabirds, handling an incredible number of injured birds in the average year. They are already gearing up to rescue bird involved with the oil spill, signing up volunteers and asking for donations of Dawn dishwashing liquid, which seems to be the best thing for cleaning oil soaked birds.

Nancy headed home for the weekend on Thursday the 6th in order to spend Mothers Day weekend with her Mom. The weather here is miserable, 94 or 95 degrees every day and seriously humid - not where we want to be this time of year! Friday morning the low was 76 degrees!

Still Hanging Out in Florida

Both Friday the 23rd and Tuesday the 27th we went back out to E. G. Simmons Park on Tampa Bay and sat by the water. On Thursday we had watched a manatee with a calf in one of the estuaries here. Friday we found a nice shady spot near the waters edge where we could sit and read. After a while we lost the breeze, which meant the flies started biting and we had to move a bit away from the water into another shady spot where there was a breeze to keep the flies down.

On Tuesday we found a spot with a lovely breeze and a nice view of Tampa Bay - no bugs at all! We sat there for a couple of hours, reading and just enjoying the beautiful weather and the sea breeze. We were able to watch pelicans diving for fish less that 50 feet away from where we were sitting. It was really fascinating to see the pelicans diving into the water and coming up with a fish! We also caught a glimpse of a dolphin a ways out into the bay.

We have been spending a fair amount of time in the evenings watching the Stanley Cup playoffs - Go Hawks! Since we have both a cable connection and our satellite dish we can get Chicago Sports Net on Dish Network and Versus on local cable so we can see most of the games.

It got pretty warm here over the weekend and we finally had to break down and turn on the AC - and it did not work! Flipped it on and nothing happened; switched to fan only and still had nothing; checked all the fuses and everything was OK; checked the control and everything seemed OK. Then, while we were standing around and scratching our heads and wondering where we would find an RV tech to take a look at it, it started operating! This was about a half hour after we first turned it on! Soon it was blowing air at 47 degrees and working just fine. Only thing we can figure is some sort of circuit breaker needed power for a period of time before it would reset. Whatever it was the AC ran for two days solid without a hitch before it cooled of enough Monday evening to open up again. Speaking of AC, the one in the smart is working like a champ now. Guess we were to quick to condemn it as inadequate for four years!

On the subject of weather, Sunday evening we had some pretty substantial thunderstorms in the area. Most of the worst stuff went north of us, but there were a few times during the night that the trailer was rocking in the wind. It is kind of cool to watch the weather radar here since the National Weather Service radar dome is just a half mile down the street from where we are parked. You can see exactly what the weather is doing since we can tell right where we are. The local frogs seem to have liked the rain - they are singing away this evening (Tuesday).

After leaving the park Tuesday morning we stopped at Ybor Grille for lunch. Nancy had the grouper sandwich and Dennis the pork sandwich. Excellent as usual and this time we scarfed everything down with nothing left to take home for dinner! The we stopped at Hydro Harvest Farms, a hydroponic farm in Ruskin. It is a U-pick place and all of the herbs, leaf plants, peppers, and strawberries are grown hydroponically in pot. Pretty interesting and we picked up fixin’s for salads for dinner.

Wednesday the 28th we drove down to Bradenton in search of a natural foods store and lunch. We drove out to Bradenton Beach to check out Rotten Ralph’s 2. Looked OK, but it was still early and we like the original Rotten Ralph’s a lot, so we took a walk on the pier and then drove up to the north of Anna Maria Island. Had a leisurely lunch at the original Rotten Ralphs, and then stopped at Richard’s Whole Foods in Bradenton. Not exactly a scintillating day, but sometimes you take what you can get.

Kayaking and Good Food

4/15 - 4/22

On Thursday the 15th we took another kayak ride down the Little Manatee River from Canoe Outpost. The water in the upper part of the river was considerably lower than on our last trip, which meant more work for us! Instead of just floating along on the current we had to paddle and steer around sandbars. We rubbed bottom a number of time and at one point Dennis had to get out and push!

We started about an hour earlier in the morning, so we went on past the normal lunch point and stopped at the take-out point and had lunch.Then we went a little farther down the river. We had planned on going around the Little Manatee Loop, but the river widens out and there was a fairly stiff breeze blowing downstream. We were concerned about how hard it would be to work our way back upstream against the wind, so we did not go too far, opting instead to to explore a few side channels. That came to an end when Nancy saw a large alligator slip into the water about 20 feet away from us!

We also saw the same small alligator as last trip near the take-out point and a number of turtles, although not as many as last time, maybe because it was earlier in the day and the banks were not yet in the sun. Not a lot of birds this time either. The last trip we saw some Swallow Tail Kites.

On Friday the 16th we took another drive up to Tarpon Springs in celebration of our 18th wedding anniversary and had lunch at Rusty Bellies. We sat on the deck and watched the fishing boats come in to the seafood store dock next door. After stocking up on fresh local shrimp we came back home. Says something about our desperation that we are willing to drive two hours through fairly heavy traffic just for a good place for lunch (and the fresh shrimp!).

On Tuesday the 20th we went to Ybor Grille to celebrate Dennis’ 65 birthday - hello Medicare! As usual it was an excellent dinner.

We tend to visit a grocery store almost every day since the trailer has limited storage, a fairly small refrigerator and a tiny freezer. So we have hit a number of different grocery stores while we are here. Seems the best one for the kinds of foods we like is Publix. There do not seem to be any Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s type stores around here and Nancy is feeling the loss.

The weather is still reasonable, although it is getting hot. So far we have not needed our AC as it is cooling off quite nicely at night and we are parked in the only shady spot in the Sun Lake RV Resort! We are backed up to fairly large trees on the west side that shade us from the sun from mid-day on and it is quite pleasant.

Thursday the 22nd - We went over to E G Simmons Park and took a nice walk along along the beach. There are a couple of areas where you can walk through the mangoes along the shore and out on small fishing piers. On one of these we saw a manatee out in the estuary. It was rolling around and surfacing quite frequently. We stood and watched him for 15 or twenty minutes, really kind of a neat thing to see. Being a weekday there was hardly anyone in the park, so we had the whole place to ourselves, although the boat ramp was fairly busy.

Thursday evening we drove into Tampa and had a delightful dinner at Chefs on the Loose . We stumbled across this outfit on-line, they offer small group dinners with “hands on” participation in preparing the dinner. It is a very nice room, very crisp and minimalist, with adjacent kitchen and work counters with room for all of the attendees to participate. The dinner was presented by Chef Bobby Triplett, who is a guest chef at Chefs on the Loose. He did a really nice job preparing an interesting menu:

“Roasted and Ripened” Bruschetta: (Roasted Red Pepper and vine Ripened tomato)

“Real Deal Cesar Salad with herb roasted Sunday Chicken” A from scratch Cesar salad with roasted chicken and croutons like you have never seen before.

“Green With Envy” A grilled Pork chop marinated in Basil Spinach pesto, topped with the most perfect poached egg. Served with Sweet Potato Chips and creamy BBQ vinaigrette

For Dessert: “Grilled Peaches and Cream” Grilled Peaches served with a Homemade Vanilla Pecan Ice cream, topped with a dark cherry caramel rum sauce.

There were only nine guests there, so everyone got to participate in preparing the food as much as they wanted. Dennis sliced tomatoes for the bruschetta while Nancy learned to slice "ribbons" of basil. Chef Bobby and the rest of the staff at Chefs on the Loose were fun and personable. It was a a lot of fun; we picked up some good tips on food preparation and recipes; the food was wonderful; and the guests and staff made for a very enjoyable evening. Next time you are looking for an interesting evening in the Tampa area you can’t miss with Chefs on the Loose!