In spite of noisy trucks coming and going, we slept soundly at the Georgia Welcome Center, and felt refreshed when we woke up yesterday morning. Before we hit the road, we turned on our Onan Quiet Diesel generator, and while Terry brewed herself a pot of coffee, I had a bowl of cereal, checked e-mail, fixed a typo in the blog, and logged onto Dennis Hill’s and Greg White’s blogs, to see if  either had updated them since the day before. Dennis hadn’t, but Greg did, so I was batting 50% for the day. For me, that’s darned good!

We pulled out of the Welcome Center just after 9 a.m. and traveled south on Interstate 95. The highway crossed over several rivers, some as wide as small lakes, and a lot of marshland. None of the bridges were high, most were the same level as the road, so I didn’t snivel even once!

Last year when we took this route, we traveled through road construction for several miles north of Brunswick, and it doesn’t appear that they have gotten much accomplished, because we again ran into construction in the same stretch of highway.

Traffic was heavier than the day before, and by the time we crossed into Florida, it was getting really busy, and stayed busy all the way to our destination.

We took the I-295 loop around the east side of Jacksonville, and I still didn’t snivel, even when we crossed this bridge over the wide St. Johns River, a major waterway in this part of the world. Maybe the bridge didn’t bother me because it was four lanes wide, and we were in the third lane, and maybe because it wasn’t awfully high except in one place.  The loop adds a few miles to the trip, but it’s a lot easier than dealing with all of the traffic in Jacksonville.

South of Saint Augustine, we pulled into the Flying J to get fuel, and our Rewards card wouldn’t work. This sign on the pump said the problem was due to “technology changes.”

Like the Pilot the day before, the pump would only let me put $75 worth of fuel in before it cut me off, and when we tried to pay for more, the message on the screen said to see the cashier. Terry went inside, and they charged $200 to our credit card. We didn’t need $200 worth, so now they have to charge the difference back to our card. The clerk did give Terry a discount off the pump price. This is getting to be a real pain. I wonder how many forms of ID they would require if I just paid cash?

Now here is an example of the kind of RVer that makes us all look bad. 12:30 in the afternoon at Flying J, and he has his jacks down, awning out, and satellite dish up. And he wasn’t even in one of the designated RV parking spaces! Why do people do that? When it comes to losing the courtesy parking so many companies offer, we are our own worst enemy.

Back on the road, we arrived at The Great Outdoors in Titusville, Florida a little after 2 p.m., and got settled into the lot our friends Peter and Connie Bradish own. Soon after we arrived, Connie came by to make sure that we had arrived safely. Thanks for your hospitality, dear friend.

It was pretty hot, and by the time I had the RV hooked up and Terry had things unpacked inside, we were both tired and hungry. We ran into town and had an early dinner at Sonny’s Barbecue, a regional favorite of ours, and then it was back to the motorhome to veg out the rest of the afternoon and evening. We’ll be here a week or so, and I hope to be able to get some pictures of the space shuttle launch, which has now been delayed until Tuesday.

While I was writing this blog post, I got an e-mail from Dish Network that they have settled their pissing match with Fox, and that our FX and National Geographic channels have been restored. Yay, I can watch Sons of Anarchy again! Of course, then I got a message from a fulltiming friend who uses DirecTV, who said the company told him his monthly fee for distant networks is going up.

Thought For The Day – When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.

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For some reason, neither Terry or I sleep well the night before we hit the road for someplace new. I’m not sure why that is, but Wednesday night we tossed and turned most of the night, and only got four or five hours sleep.

We were up early, and while I answered a bunch of e-mails, Terry made final preparations inside the motorhome for traveling. Then I disconnected the campground utilities, we said goodbye to some folks who came by to see us off, we hooked the van to the Blue Ox tow bar, and pulled out of Raccoon Valley about 9:45.

We took Interstate 75 south to Interstate 640, then followed that east to Interstate 40, making good time all the way, with light traffic around us. We followed Interstate 40 as it turned south into North Carolina, and were treated to some of the prettiest fall colors we could ever remember seeing. Here are some pictures Terry took along the way.

We had never been through this part of North Carolina, but we both said we’ll have to come back some time and do some exploring. It’s absolutely beautiful!

The road had a few 6 and 7 percent downgrades, and a lot of curves. In some places the truck speed was only 50 miles per hour, which usually means that the truckers blow through at 70, but not here.

And what’s a trip without road construction, right? In several places the highway was down to one lane, but even though there was a lot of traffic, we didn’t have any delays.

We even went through two tunnels! I don’t mind tunnels if the road lanes are wide and the traffic is not too heavy. These were no problem.

In Asheville, we picked up Interstate 26 and followed it into South Carolina. We stopped at a Pilot for fuel, and I was reminded that Pilot is my least favorite truck stop. I think the employees must all hate their jobs, because they are always surly and never smile. And what’s with having to pre-pay a selected amount? I don’t know how much fuel I’ll need, but they won’t just turn the pump on, even with Terry standing there with her credit card. We bought $200 worth of diesel, and could have put in another $25 or so, but it wasn’t worth holding up other drivers while Terry stood in line to repeat the process all over again. I wonder how much money they lose every day because other drivers feel the same as I do? I could understand if they were worried about cars driving off without paying, but eighteen wheelers and RVs are not exactly fast  “getaway” vehicles.

We had a delay at Pilot because a trucker who was either very new and/or very dumb, had swung too wide when he pulled up to a pump, and was about to hit the concrete island. So we had to wait with several trucks while he carefully backed up, then tried to pull up to a different fuel island. This time he didn’t swing far enough, and wound up with the front end of his truck wedged kind of sideways in the island, but his trailer at about a 45 degree angle to it, blocking two fuel islands.

Than he just sat there contemplating his navel or wondering why he gave up his glamorous career in the fast food industry, until the trucker in front of us finally got fed up and yelled at him to get his attention, then  guided him as he backed out again. Actually, it took two guides to get him out without tearing up the fuel island. On his third attempt he managed to get into the island straight, but he kept right on going and didn’t stop. I think he feared the wrath of several of his fellow drivers who had to sit there blocking the road while he figured out which pedal was the brake and which was the clutch. Or, maybe he never did figure out which was which and he couldn’t stop. Who knows?

Back on the road, we passed Columbia, where I spent some time at Fort Jackson as a young soldier, and then out into the countryside again. We crossed the state and hooked up with Interstate 95, turned south, and just continued to put miles behind us. It was a nice day, the driving was easy, and before we knew it we were crossing the state line into Georgia.

We pulled into the State Welcome Center about 5:30 p.m., with 414 miles behind us this driving day. We parked overnight here last year when we came through, and I went inside to see if it was still okay. I think the same lady was behind the desk this year, and she told me the same thing as before – camping overnight is not allowed. But “resting” is just fine, and the police who regularly patrol the Welcome Center encourage RVers to “rest” comfortably in their beds until they are refreshed and ready to drive again.  

Yes, it was a lot of miles, and no, I’m not going to change my ways. When we’re in “get there” mode, this is what we do. I like driving my motorhome, and we don’t see any reason to stop early and sit around waiting until we’re tired enough to go to bed, if we’re just going to make a quick overnight stop.

Today we’ll have an easy run of about 275 miles, and we should be in Titusville by mid-afternoon. We’re looking forward to seeing our friends Peter and Connie Bradish, Tim and Ann Moran, and Walter and Amy Cannon, who all live in the area.

Thought For The Day – It’s better to have loved and lost, than to have lived with that sick, twisted psycho one more day!

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With the storms gone, we have sunshine and blue sky, and it’s time to hit the road. We are leaving the Escapees Raccoon Valley campground today and heading for Florida. We’ve enjoyed our time here, but we have a lot we want to do in the Sunshine State, and we’re eager to get there.

We have decided to take Interstate 40 through North Carolina, and then pick up Interstate 26 across South Carolina. This will be a pretty fast trip, so we probably won’t do any sightseeing along the way. We want to be in Titusville by the weekend.

We’ll be bouncing all around Florida, from Titusville to the Thousand Trails in Clermont, and down to Key West. We also want to spend some time at the Escapees RV park in Bushnell, and I have some family members I want to visit in the St. Petersburg area We don’t have to be in Arizona until mid-February, so we’re just playing it by ear for the next couple of months.   

It’s been over a year since we’ve had our kayaks in the water, which is way too long, so we definitely want to get some paddling done. I also really want to try kayak fishing. Two years ago we paddled with fulltime RVers Dennis and Cindy Henderson off of Little Duck Key, at the south end of the Seven Mile Bridge, and watched Dennis catching fish from his kayak, and I was hooked.

Lately I have been seriously thinking about going to an inflatable kayak. We currently have two Native Watercraft Manta Ray 12 foot rotomolds, and we like them a lot. They are very stable, they track well, and they’re comfortable. You can see from the smile on Miss Terry’s face how much she likes her kayak.

However, I have a very bad back, which my doctor says will only continue to deteriorate, over time. We carry the boats inside our van, on a platform built over the wheel wells, and they weigh 64 pounds each. Lifting them up is going to get harder over time. Hence the thoughts about inflatables. I’d be interested in any feedback from those of you who have an inflatable kayak, about your particular boats, the pros and cons.

On a completely different topic, Walter Cannon from the Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF), has set the dates for RVSEF’s 2011 RV Lifestyle, Education & Safety Conference. It will be held May 6-8 in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The RVSEF program, designed to be more like a college course than an RV rally, provides a unique educational opportunity for new and veteran RVers to learn about RVs and the RV lifestyle from expert instructors. For more information, call (321) 453-7673, or visit the RVSEF website at www.rvsafety.com and click on the Conference button at the top of the page.

We all can learn new things, and even an old warhorse like myself can pick up a valuable idea from relative newcomers to the lifestyle every so often. My friend George Stoltz had a post on his George & Sandy’s Great Adventure blog yesterday about how he saved $295 on a quick and easy RV repair. Check it out, and you may be able to save yourself some money too, if you run into the same problem.

I don’t know where we’ll end up tonight, but it will be somewhere in the Carolinas. We’ll drive until we decide to stop, wherever that happens to be.

Thought For The Day – When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.

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As massive storms moved across much of the country yesterday,  we spent the day and evening monitoring the weather. This area of Tennessee was under a tornado watch, and we were braced for whatever Mother Nature decided to throw at us.

We’ve been in some really nasty weather in our 12+ years on the road, and we take it seriously. RVs don’t provide much protection against severe weather, and to ignore warnings is just plain foolish. We knew that the bathroom on the west side of the campground is the designated tornado shelter, and we were prepared to head there on a moment’s notice. We were glad that we weren’t out on the road someplace, or sitting out the weather in a rest area or WalMart parking lot. We’ve done that, too!

I post this blog a little after midnight local time, and we were still under the tornado watch at that time, so if you don’t see a blog post tomorrow, it may be because we were blown away to the Land of Oz. If we do, and if we land on a witch like Dorothy did, I hope it’s one of my ex-mothers-in-law!

We enjoy this area of Tennessee, but we are looking forward to getting down to Florida, so we will probably leave here Thursday or Friday. The most direct route is to take Interstate 75 south, but we’ve been over that route so many times that we could drive it in our sleep. Plus, we really don’t like driving through Atlanta.

So, for a change of scenery, we may take Interstate 40 east from Knoxville to Asheville, North Carolina, and then Interstate 26 across South Carolina to Interstate 95, which will take us south to Titusville.  The mileage is about the same as taking Interstate 75, and we’ll pass through some areas we haven’t been to before.  

During the afternoon, our friends Vince and Judy Douglas pulled in, and parked right across from us. It has been several years since we crossed paths, so when Vince and his little dog Lady came by to visit, it was a nice treat. I don’t like yappy little dogs, but I do like dogs of any size that are well mannered and have a good personality. And Lady has a great personality! I played with her for an hour or so as we chatted with Vince, and that little critter sure has a lot of energy! It was kind of like having my grandkids over; I enjoyed the visit and had fun playing, but I was glad Vince took her with him when he left. I like loaner dogs like Lady rather than having the responsibility of caring for one myself.

Speaking of dogs, I exchanged e-mails yesterday with a lady who got upset with us at our first Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally because we wouldn’t allow her to bring her dog into the seminar buildings, or to morning coffee and donuts. Since then she has contacted us every year wanting to attend our Arizona rally, but insisting that her dog be allowed to accompany her to all of the events, because it suffers from separation anxiety when left alone, and destroys things in her RV. And, just as I have every year, I told her that only service animals are allowed in any of the buildings. It’s our policy at every rally, and our insurance company insists on it.

I guess this time I really ticked her off, because she informed me that she will be in the fairgrounds parking lot with a sign saying “Nick Russell Hates Animals!” Actually, I like some animals much better than I do their inconsiderate owners.

Before I close this blog, I want to tell you about a neat website that my friends Orv and Nancy Hazelton discovered, and shared with me, called Mile By Mile. It lists state and interstate highways in every state, as well as Canada and Mexico, with mile by mile descriptions of what you’ll see along the way. I know I’ll spend a lot of time exploring this one, and I bet you will too!

Bad Nick laughs in the face of bad weather! He spent part of yesterday posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled Cruel And Unusual? Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Go where you are celebrated, not tolerated.

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A few days ago we covered the reasons to consider upgrading your present RV rather than going into debt to buy a new (or newer) motorhome or fifth wheel trailer. But a few people have written to ask when you should consider the other option, of trading in your old rig for something new(er).

Terry and I were faced with that decision last year. For over eight years we lived and traveled in the 1976 MCI bus conversion that we had built ourselves, and we loved that old bus. It was built like a tank, we had unbelievable cargo carrying capacity, and we could carry anything that we could find room to cram into it. We built the bus for extended boondocking, with huge holding tanks, 540 watts of solar power, a large battery bank, and a top of the line pure sine wave inverter.

If we were snowbirds who only went out to Quartzsite to hang out in the winter, or if we were weekend warriors, the bus would have been our home on wheels forever. In fact, we expected it to be.

However, our needs and our traveling style changed over the years, and at the same time, the bus was beginning to need some major upgrades. We have done a lot of boondocking over the years; our longest stint was over seven months without being plugging into electrical power or water. We still don’t mind dry camping for a few days, but we have gotten to the point where we really enjoy being in a campground with full hookups.

We didn’t have slides in the bus, and as our two granddaughters have gotten older, it was getting really cramped when they visited us. We looked into having a living room slide installed, and the cost would have been over $10,000.

The 8V71 Detroit diesel was never a powerhouse, even new, and ours had a million miles on it, and it was getting older and slower every day. Climbing even moderate hills was presenting a real challenge, and the mountains out west were becoming impossible. We found ourselves not going places where we wanted go, because of the limitations of the bus. We were getting to the point where we were not enjoying traveling because we were always worried about a major breakdown.

Another problem was that it was getting harder and harder to find qualified diesel mechanics who knew enough about the old two stroke manually aspirated motors like we had. They are a dying breed. There are plenty of technicians who can plug an analyzer into a data port and tell you everything that is wrong with a modern diesel, but it takes an old school mechanic to understand the quirks of an old Detroit diesel.

We looked into replacing the motor, and the best quote we got for a factory rebuilt 8V92 turbo was $35,000 installed. However, the mechanic, someone who had done a lot of work on the bus for us in the past, and whom we trusted completely, said that our transmission would not hold up to the torque of the newer, more powerful engine. A used transmission would have set us back another $15,000. And then we’d still have cooling issues, so figure another $3,000 to $5,000 for two new radiators and the rest of a cooling system upgrade. Sam told us “You’ll still have a 35 year old bus with a non-electronic engine, that won’t be worth much more than half of what you’ll put into it.”

For us, it was time to step up to a newer coach. We found our 2002 Winnebago Ultimate Advantage, with 33,000 miles on it, for not much more than what we would have invested in upgrading the bus.

If we weren’t fulltimers, and if  I was a diesel mechanic, and if  I had the necessary tools and a place to do the work, I would have kept the bus and done the upgrades myself. But like my dad used to say, if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his butt.

So when is it time to trade your old RV in? For us, it was when the basic design no longer fit our needs, and when the cost of upgrading was 3/4 of what it cost to buy a much newer, more powerful motorhome that had more room and more advantages for us than keeping the old bus did.

Now that we have been in the Winnebago for over a year, and put 10,000+ miles on it, we are convinced that we made the right decision for us. Only you can decide which choice is right for your needs, your lifestyle, and your budget.

Thought For The Day – I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.

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