Yesterday we felt like we were going in two directions at once. We had to drive into Orlando to pick up the pre-printed envelopes from the mail service, and even though it was only 27 miles, it took us well over an hour to get there.

We left the Thousand Trails campground about 11:15 and ran into a lot of traffic on State Route 192 through Kissimmee, which is no surprise, since that road is always busy. When we got onto Intestate 4, it was a parking lot, with long lines of cars in each eastbound lane sitting still.

For the next eight miles, it was stop and go traffic, with a lot more stopping than going. We were close to Disney World and Universal Studios, which are both very busy with holiday travelers, and several roads merge onto the highway there, creating a bottleneck. Which meant that all of the traffic coming onto the highway was trying to push their way in, passing on the shoulder, and doing whatever they could do to get one or two cars ahead of the next guy. And once they got there, they crept along just like the rest of us. It took us over a 45 minutes to go those eight miles, and when we finally reached our exit, there was road construction for several miles, making progress slow on the surface streets too!

We finally got to the mail service, picked up the envelopes, and then had to get right back on Interstate 4 to drive to the UPS freight dock in Tampa to pick up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal. Fortunately, the interstate was only backed up in the eastbound lanes, so even though  traffic was still heavy, we made good time.

It was 77 miles to the UPS facility, and once we were out of the traffic around the Orlando area, we zipped right along. Traffic started to get busy again when we got to Tampa, but it wasn’t close to being as bad as in Orlando.

I have to say that I’m impressed with the UPS freight service. They picked up our load of newspapers from the printer in Allegan, Michigan at 12:36 Monday afternoon, and it arrived in Tampa at 6:35 a.m. Wednesday morning! I couldn’t have driven that far that quickly!

Of course, when we were picking up the load of papers, we discovered that UPS has a freight dock in Ocoee, just 17 miles from the mail service, and 22 miles from the Thousand Trails campground! When we were scheduling the shipment, I was told that the closest facility where we could pick it up was in Tampa. Hey, gasoline is cheap right? And what else do I have to do with my time but drive 140 miles round trip?

We hadn’t eaten all day, and by the time we got back from Tampa, we were famished. We met Dave and Jean Damon at a Chinese restaurant a few miles from the campground, and when I hit that buffet line, it wasn’t a pretty sight!

We had a nice dinner with our friends, and the more time we spend with Dave and Jean, the more we like them. In fact, we’ve gotten so close that I may even take our hard kayaks off the roof of the Explorer and let Dave work them over with some of his 303 products! Yeah, I’m that kind of friend.

Thought For The Day -Time flies when you don’t know what you’re doing.

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Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! I hope you are having a nice holiday, and are spending it with people you love.

We are at the Escapees Sumter Oaks campground in Bushnell, Florida, and they are having a big dinner at the activity center this afternoon, but we’re going to sit it out. Miss Terry had a nasty cold earlier in the week, and while she says she is feeling somewhat better, yesterday it hit me hard. We don’t want to spread this crud to everybody else. I’m hoping we didn’t pass it on to my nephews and niece when we visited the other day. That would be a heck of a gift to bring them after a 25 year absence, wouldn’t it? They’ll probably want me to stay away another 25 years!

We never even stepped outside yesterday. I slept late, and then took part in a Skype video conference call in the mid-afternoon. I had never used Skype before, but it’s pretty cool. With a webcam and microphone, which most laptop computers come with these days, you can have a face to face visit with any other Skype user, and it’s all free! There was some lag in the video, but still, it was a great way to communicate. I need to get my daughter Tiffany to set up a free Skype account, and then I can see those beautiful little girls of hers more often!

Being a guy, I’m much more of a wimp when I don’t feel good than Terry is. While she was the sickest, she helped load the kayaks on the roof of the Explorer, packed the motorhome for traveling, drove the Explorer from the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve to the Escapees campground, and then got our home on wheels opened up and livable again.

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I, on the other hand, am totally worthless when I don’t feel good. Except for the Skype call yesterday, and a brief visit from George and Starr Sharrer, I spent much of the day napping and feeling sorry for myself. Terry didn’t walk up to the couch and kick me in the butt, but who could have blamed her if she did?

My pal Jaimie Hall Bruzenak sent me an e-mail to tell me that she and writing partner Alice Zyetz are offering a $2 discount off any of their e-books. What a great present for RVers or wannabee RVers! To take advantage of the savings, just click the link on the right hand column of this blog for their book Retire to an RV: The Roadmap to Affordable Retirement Living, or go to their RV Lifestyle Experts website and use coupon code 20RVL.

I also got an e-mail from subscriber Trisha Schmidt, asking me to pass on the word that if anyone lost one of their DIRECTV coastal feeds for the major networks, and had that service prior to May 2010, you need to call the DIRECTV telephone number that deals with RV travelers, 800 769-4635. Trisha said she was on hold over 20 minutes before she spoke to an actual person, but then she had both coastal feeds restored within a few minutes.

Apparently there has been quite a lengthy discussion about this on the Yahoo Boomer group site, and Trisha said that even though she called DIRECTV twice to be sure that she was ‘grandfathered’ in, they still disconnected her West Coast feed the other night.

She told me that DIRECTV’s website has a section for RVers having difficulties at http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/content/travelers/rvs, and that she was told that if you lose one of your coastal feeds, you only have until November 28th to remedy the problem, and after that it may not be possible to get both feeds restored.

As I said, we’re having a quiet day at home, and that’s just fine with us. We have a lot to be thankful for – overall good health, a loving marriage, wonderful family and friends, and we get to enjoy the greatest lifestyle there is, in the greatest country in the world. It just doesn’t get any better than that!

How about you? Where are you, how are you spending the day, and what are you especially thankful for this holiday season?

Thought For The Day – To know when to go away and when to come closer is the key to any lasting relationship.

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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!

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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!

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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.

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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.

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We slept in yesterday morning, taking advantage of the calm before the storm of activity this weekend, when Terry’s son Casey marries his lady love, Leslie.  River Dance RV Resort has cinnamon rolls on some mornings, and Rusty and Rebecca, in the office, had insisted we allow them to treat us to a couple, as compensation for the short delay getting into our RV site yesterday. 

We appreciated the gesture, and the cinnamon rolls were huge, but since Miss Terry makes the very best cinnamon rolls in the world, it’s hard for anything else to compare.

It was another hot day here in Colorado, well over 90 degrees, and we are finding that our Norcold refrigerator doesn’t keep things like milk nearly as cold as the residential style refrigerator we had in our bus conversion. Our awnings help shade the sides of the motorhome, which helps a bit, and the air conditioner keeps it nice and comfortable inside, but the refrigerator is definitely working hard just to keep things cold.  

The Eagle River runs right along the edge of the campground, and we walked down to check it out yesterday afternoon. The water was moving along pretty well, and it would have been fun to get our kayaks wet.

At one point there is a wide gravel sandbar just a couple of feet off shore, and Terry rolled up her pants legs and went wading. She said the water was cool and felt wonderful on such a hot day.

The water is very clear, as you can see in this picture. We didn’t spot any, but the folks in the campground office said beaver are seen frequently in the river.

While Terry was out wading, I took some photos of the river and the campground. It sure is located in a scenic spot. The campground stays busy all season long, and because it’s the weekend, it’s even busier. All day long everything from popup trailers to huge motorhomes were pulling in.

I spent much of the afternoon working on the schedule for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering in Elkhart, Indiana the end of August, and I hope to have the preliminary schedule posted on our main website by sometime Monday. I’m still waiting for last minute confirmation on a few seminars.

About 6 p.m., Terry’s son Cody and his wife Jonna came by to visit, and we went out to dinner at a place in Eagle called Moe’s Barbecue. It was pretty good, but not in a league with Hog Wild in Cottonwood, Arizona, or any of the Bandana’s Barbecue or Famous Dave’s we’ve been to at different places in the country. But, it was nice to spend time with Cody and Jonna.

Back at the RV, we chatted for another half hour or so, but since Cody has a lot of responsibilities with his twin’s wedding on Sunday, including the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner today, we soon called it an evening.

We’ll be busy with family activities the rest of the weekend. Terry’s other son, Shawn, and her daughter Kelly, are arriving today, from New Mexico and Nebraska, respectively; and her parents and sister Dani will arrive from Arizona this afternoon. So we’ll have lot of family to spend time with.

Thought For The Day – My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.

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