Terry and I have been busy the last couple of days with some projects around the motorhome that we really wanted to get out of the way while we’re sitting still for a while.

One project was building a couple of kayak caddies to make moving our hard shell kayaks from the Explorer to the water’s edge easier. We got the idea from our friends Denny and Cindy Henderson, when we watched how easy it was for them to move their kayaks around.

We made the racks out of PVC, two threaded rods for axles, and some tires we bought at Harbor Freight. Putting them together was easy, and the entire project took about two hours over two days. We could have finished it in one step, except it was late in the day when we started on Thursday, and we had to run to Lowes for some nuts.

Here I am using a power tool! Everybody stand back! We have a couple of electric drills, a power saw, a miter saw, and some other neat goodies left over from our bus conversion days, but my Dremel tool is the only power tool Miss Terry lets me near. And there’s a very good reason for that! I’m the world’s biggest klutz.

Here are the caddies, all finished and ready to use. The upright sections go through the scupper holes in our Manta Ray kayaks, and make it easy to to move them around. Believe me, after a few hours of paddling, lugging a 65 pound kayak back to the truck is a lot of work! You can buy a kayak caddy for anywhere from $60 to $150, but these two cost us about $45 to build.

Of course, if it were up to me, we’d sell those heavy things and get Miss Terry a Sea Eagle inflatable kayak too. Don’t be too surprised if she comes around once she test paddles the model Tim from Inflatable Boats 4 Less has picked out for her!

While we were dragging tools out of the storage bays under our motorhome, we decided it would be a good time to get rid of some stuff we’ve been carrying around for way too long. We were ruthless, and by the time we were finished we had made a big dent in our load, and made a lot of free space in our bays.

Check Out Our Holiday Subscription Special Offer!

I put some stuff on eBay, mostly books on converting a bus, and there is a “yard sale” tomorrow morning here in the campground. Maybe I can sell some things there. If not, I’ll be listing more on eBay.

Speaking of selling things, the auxiliary brake I mentioned a couple of days ago has been sold and is on its way to the buyer in Oregon.

Somebody asked me how much the base plate connections show on the Explorer, and if it sticks out very far. Not far at all. Here are a couple of pictures of the front end of the Explorer. The guys at Camping Connection did an excellent job on the installation, and I would recommend them to anybody.

Hopefully, today at the yard sale I can unload some of the things I want to see go away, including a battery charger, a brand new electric buffer, two Malone rooftop kayak racks, and some other stuff. I’d much rather sell them, and carry around some nice folding money, than to have to spend time listing them on eBay.

Thought For The Day – It takes a long time to grow an old friend.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Miss Terry has said that she wants to see if a Sea Eagle inflatable kayak might suit her needs as a replacement for her heavy Manta Ray, but she didn’t want something as big as my PaddleSki 435. Tim Ryerson from Inflatable Boats 4 Less has suggested one of their sporty Fast Track kayaks for her.

As we were driving through the Thousand Trails preserve, I spotted a Sea Eagle 370 kayak in the back of a pickup truck, and stopped to ask the owner what he thought of it. In one of those small world incidents that we keep experiencing, the owner was Bob Timko from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and he and his wife Linda are new subscribers to the Gypsy Journal.

As it turns out, Bob has two Sea Eagles and is an avid fisherman who has used his inflatable boats from Florida to Alaska. In a testament to the quality of the Sea Eagles, he told us that he once ran his other one up onto a stump while using an electric trolling motor and got hung up. Bob said that he had to bounce all over the place while the trolling motor was in reverse, to finally get loose, and that he was afraid that he had done some serious damage to the boat. But Bob said that when he got back to shore and turned the kayak over, he couldn’t see a mark in it! Now that’s quality!

In addition to the two Sea Eagles, Bob has owned everything from canoes to pontoon boats. Linda told us that she is very uncomfortable in any kind of boat, but that she was so impressed with the stability of the Sea Eagles that she now goes out in the inflatable with Bob. In another vote for Tim and Crystal Ryerson’s excellent service after the sale, Bob said that any time he has had a question or concern, Tim has been quick to do whatever it takes to get it handled.  

Check Out Our Holiday Subscription Special Offer!

Quite a few readers have taken advantage of our Holiday Special offer, and if you haven’t already done so, click the link and check it out. We only have a couple of weeks left on this special offer, so don’t delay. Unfortunately, due to higher mailing costs, we cannot extend this offer to Canadian addresses, except for digital subscriptions.

Yesterday, Terry and I had to drive back down to Winter Haven to pick up the title to the Explorer from the dealership where we bought it, and then I dropped off a big load of orders at the post office. Last week I wrote that I try to avoid big stores between Thanksgiving and Christmas to avoid the crowds, but I had forgotten how busy that place is during the holiday season! There was a long line of people waiting to mail Christmas packages. I’ll be using my Stamps.com postage for everything I can in the next few weeks.

We spent two weeks at this Thousand Trails and were gone a week, but the place really filled up in our absence. There are very few empty RV sites in our section, where just a week ago there were quite a few open sites. The snowbirds are definitely flocking south! We have bumped into quite a few people we know already, and we’re looking forward to seeing even more.

Thought For The Day – The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. - Amelia Earhart

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Thank you to everybody who e-mailed get well wishes to us. We’ve come through the worst of it, and I think we’re going to live after all.

Yesterday afternoon we drove into town and dropped off bundles of sample copies of the Gypsy Journal at several RV parks. We stopped at four or five different RV parks, and it didn’t look like any of them were much more than half full. Is it going to be a slow season in Florida, or did everybody wait until after Turkey Day to hit the road?

After we finished with the RV parks, we stopped at WalMart to get some more meds, and a few things Terry needed to restock our larder. I try very hard to avoid going into any store between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but sometimes things get desperate, and a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do. I was out of Pop Tarts and Jello pudding cups.

I was surprised that the store was no more crowded than it normally is. I guess all of the Black Friday shoppers were home sleeping off their ordeal of the day before. Or maybe they’re doing more of their shopping online.

Check Out Our Holiday Subscription Special Offer!

I’m curious. How many of you blog readers shop online for Christmas gifts, or for things you need yourself? We don’t do it a lot, but last night Terry ordered a pair of those comfy Tee Pee Creepers slippers for somebody, and I’m about to order a Kodak Vi8 camcorder from Amazon for a new project I’m working on. I’m also going to contact Tim and Crystal Ryerson from Inflatable Boats 4 Less and have them send me out an electric pump for my Sea Eagle PaddleSki 435 inflatable kayak.

For fulltimers who move around a lot, being in one location long enough to receive packages can be a problem. RV parks differ in their policies about accepting mail and packages. Some will allow you to have anything sent to you, in care of the office address, others will only allow FedEx or UPS packages, and some will not allow anything at all. I much prefer a campground where I can have both packages and my regular mail sent to me, instead of having to trudge down to the post office and stand in a long line to get my mail by General Delivery.  And since the post office won’t accept FedEx or UPS general delivery packages, it can be a hassle when ordering online.

Today we are leaving the Escapees Sumter Oaks campground and are headed back to the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve so we’ll be ready to get the base plate installed in our Ford Explorer next week. We’re taking a different route back than the one we came in on a week ago, one that my friend George Sharrer tells me will shave about 15 miles off the trip. Once again, Terry will follow me in the Explorer. I’ll sure be glad when we have it set up for towing, I miss her when we travel this way. I don’t think I could enjoy being a solo RVer.

I booked us into the Thousand Trails for fourteen days, though I’m not sure we’ll actually stay that long. If we get everything wrapped up, I really want to get down to the Keys and play for a while.

Thought For The Day – Those that judge us don’t matter. Those that matter don’t judge us.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Yesterday we drove 75 miles south to Pinellas Park, located just north of Saint Petersburg, to look at different racks for our hard shell kayaks. I love my Sea Eagle PaddleSki 435 inflatable kayak and won’t give it up, but Miss Terry is happy with her hard shell Manta Ray. We wanted to check out the Thule Hullavator rooftop kayak racks. We knew that they are expensive, but they are supposed to make loading heavy kayaks much easier.

The Tackle Shack in Pinellas Park is a Thule dealer, and we had a very strange experience there. Owner Andy Levine told us that he would be very happy to take our money, but that he didn’t think the Hullavators would serve us well, and that he could show us a way to load the two Manta Ray kayaks on the roof of our Ford Explorer that even we could do, with our short little legs and my bad back.

Putting a cover over the back of the Explorer to protect the paint, Andy showed us how to lay the kayak on the ground behind the SUV, push it up onto its nose, and over onto the rack on the roof of the Explorer. It looked like an intimidating task, and we weren’t too sure we could do it, but once Andy demonstrated the process, Terry and I tried it, and it worked!

Check Out Our Holiday Subscription Special Offer!

Then Andy installed a set of the Hullavator racks on the Explorer, and demonstrated to us that due to the height of the Explorer, we would have to lift a kayak well above waist high to get it onto the rack, and then, due to our short legs, it was still a bit of a chore to get the boat up onto the top of the car. Getting it back down again would also require us to stand on a stool to reach the rack easily. We decided that we’d go with the method Andy showed us, and save a lot of money.

How many small business owners do you know that will talk you out of a $1200 sale, and instead spend almost three hours on a hot parking lot showing you how you can do the job without spending all that money? You can bet that if I need anything related to kayaking, or any other water sports, I’ll be picking up the phone to call Andy at the Tackle Shack!

Terry said yesterday that she’s beginning to think that a Sea Eagle Fast Track inflatable kayak from Inflatable Boats 4 Less might be the answer for her down the road too.  That would sure make life easier!

I was born late in my parents’ lives, and all of my siblings passed away quite a while ago. Over time, I lost contact with most of my family, and it had been over 25 years since I had seen any of my older brother Jack’s children. Earlier this year, while doing genealogy research on Ancestry.com, I was able to make contact with them, and we have exchanged e-mails and touched base on Facebook. When I told them we’d be in Florida this winter, they all invited us to come by for a visit.

My nephew Steve lives in Pinellas Park, just a couple of miles from the Tackle Shack, so once we were done there, we stopped by to get reacquainted. Steve called his brother Harold and sister Cheryl, and they came over and we had a very nice little reunion.

We spent about three hours catching up on our lives in the past quarter century (boy, does that sound like a long time!), and had a wonderful time. All too soon it was time to hit the road, because we had a long drive back to the Escapees campground in Bushnell. But after our trip down to Key West in a couple of weeks, we’re going to get together again with Steve, Harold, and Cheryl, and two more of their brothers, as well as some other family members, for a real family reunion. I’m looking forward to it!

Thought For The Day – It took me so long to find what I was looking for that I forgot why I wanted it in the first place!

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Yesterday we packed up the Explorer with bundles of the Gypsy Journal and loaded our hard shell kayaks on top, loaded our bicycles onto a rack on the back of our Winnebago, and we’re ready to roll!

Several people wanted to know if, and how, we were going to be able to carry everything that we did in the van in the much smaller Explorer. We’re not. For the last couple of days, we have been ruthless about sorting and getting rid of things we don’t need or want to haul around any more.

The first order of business was to load the papers into the Explorer. We bought some rubber mat runner material at Lowes to lay down in the back, to protect the carpeting. Here is the SUV with the back seats laid down and loaded with papers. And yes, we are well within our carrying capacity, even though it doesn’t look like it.

My Sea Eagle PaddleSki 435 inflatable boat sits right behind the driver and passenger sears. I wish our hard shell kayaks took up so little space and were as light!

We had two Malone kayak rack sets mounted on a plywood shelf in the back of the van to carry the kayaks, and Terry mounted them to the roof rack of the Explorer. She was feeling under the weather yesterday, and I offered to do it, but Terry said the combination of me on a ladder, with a tool in my hand, wasn’t a comforting thought, and that she’d rather do the job herself than to have to haul me to the nearest Emergency Room, and then come back and do it anyway.

Here are the racks on top of the Explorer.

Our Native Watercraft Manta Ray kayaks weigh about 65 pounds each, and we knew that we were going to need help to get them up on the roof. At first, I thought if we used our Beanstalk ladder in its stepladder configuration, and put blankets on it and on the back of the Explorer, we might be able to slide them up. One attempt and we knew that this may have been a good idea in theory, but not upon execution.

I called my friend Dave Damon, who is also here at the Orlando Thousand Trails, and he came over to lend a hand. Even with the three of us, it was still a chore. But here they are. all strapped down and ready to go. By the way, this picture shows the true color of the Explorer.

We plan to get a set of Thule Hullavator racks, which will make loading the heavy kayaks a snap. Of course, if I could get Terry to order an inflatable kayak from Tim and Crystal Ryerson at Inflatable Boats 4 Less, life would be much easier.

The next job was to mount our Trek bicycles on the ladder rack on the back of our motorhome. Terry and I are basically munchkin sized, but can do the job with the Beanstalk ladder. However, since Dave Damon was there, he helped, and made the task much easier. Why have a Hulk sized person around if you can’t exploit him, right?

We’ve enjoyed our two weeks here at the Thousand Trails, and we will definitely be back again. But today it’s time to go. It will be a short trip of about 40 miles, to the Escapees Sumpter Oaks campground near Bushnell, Florida. Since we don’t have the base plate on the Explorer yet, we can’t tow it, so Terry will drive it while I drive the motorhome. It will be nice to see some of our Escapee friends again.

Check Out Our Holiday Subscription Special Offer!

Bad Nick avoids hard work at every opportunity, so while we were busy packing, he was busy posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled There Is No Fountain Of Youth. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day -It’s liberating to let people think whatever they want about you. They’re going to do it anyway.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally