We were up and busy early yesterday morning getting our motorhome ready to go to our appointment at Camping Connection to get our new door lock installed, and to have our second Norcold refrigerator recall work done.

We left the Thousand Trails campground a little after 8:30 to be at the shop for our 9 a.m. appointment. Camping Connection has been doing a lot of Norcold recalls, and I’m sure this sign helps. Along with the fact that they have such an outstanding reputation for professional RV service work.

This company doesn’t jerk you around like a lot of RV repair shops we dealt with when we had our Fleetwood Pace Arrow Vision, which we called the Motorhome From Hell. I can’t count the number of places where we arrived for an appointment, and then sat around all day, and more times than not they finally strolled out and tell us the parts needed for our repairs weren’t in stock, even though they had weeks to order them.

Not so with Camping Connection! They may be a small shop, but a lot of the big places, even the nationwide powerhouse in the industry, could take a lesson from them! Within five minutes of our arrival, they had pulled our Winnebago back to the service area and a tech was working on our repairs; a new entry door latch installed and the Norcold recall work done. We were finished and on our way by 11:30.

Compare that to the four hours we spent at Camping World in Mesa, Arizona back in May while they replaced two tire valve stems that they had screwed up in the first place! And by the way, one of the two valve stems they replaced failed again, because they crank them down so tight they mash the little O-rings in the stems.

We feel a lot more secure now that we can actually lock our entry door again. The original door latch was white, and this one is black, because Winnebago no longer stocks the white unit. But it looks fine, and more important, it works!

There were two other coaches besides ours at Camping Connection having the same Norcold recall work done. And remember, this is the second recall, because their first fix didn’t work. But, considering the number of RVs that have burned to the ground from refrigerator fires, it has to be done. We have seen RV fires, and trust me, they are an ugly sight!

Actually, we had two fires in our bus conversion, but thanks to Miss Terry’s quick response, and the lessons she learned in Mac McCoy’s RV Fire Safety classes, both were extinguished quickly with little damage.

Norcold was supposed to send customers a $50 gas card as compensation for their time and trouble after the first recall, not that $50 makes up for the hassles of calling around trying to find a shop that can do the work, sitting on your thumb for weeks waiting for Norcold to send the parts, because they won’t send a part out until you make the appointment, and then driving to a shop and sitting around waiting for the work to be done. This time around they are not even offering the $50 compensation. Not that it matters, since we never received the card from the first recall!

I have no idea why Norcold won’t just send their authorized repair shops a batch of the parts needed for the recall, so they could take care of customers as they come in.  Instead they make you wait while they send them out on an individual basis. I mean, they know that there is a potentially hazardous problem that could result in a fire, and even deaths, but they are either too cheap/lazy/stupid/incompetent (you pick an adjective, they all work) to just get the damn parts out there and installed. What a way to run a business!

We have one of Mac McCoy’s refrigerator fire extinguishers installed in our refrigerator compartment, and that makes us feel a lot more secure. Every RV should have one.

But Terry and I are in agreement that if our Norcold breaks, or if they have yet another recall (and I would not be at all surprised if they do), we’ll pull the piece of junk out and install a residential refrigerator. We had a Maytag refrigerator in our bus conversion for over eight years, and it never gave us a bit of trouble.

Thought For The Day – I’d like to help you out. Which way did you come in?

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I wrote in Thursday’s blog post that while the Peace River NACO campground was okay, we really didn’t care for the town of Wauchula very much, and that if we could change our reservation and leave early and go back up to the Orlando Thousand Trails, we’d do it.

That same afternoon, I got a call from the folks at Camping Connection in Kissimmee telling us that both our new entry door latch and the parts for our Norcold refrigerator recall had come in, and they wanted to schedule a time to come in to get them installed. That was all the incentive I needed; I went up to the office, told them we needed to leave early, and they shortened our reservation. So yesterday morning we pulled out and drove the 75 miles  back to the Orlando Thousand Trails.

Traffic was light most of the way, but if you hear anything about a motorhome being involved in a high speed chase with the local police, here’s the story: We were on State Route 60, waiting for oncoming traffic to clear so we could make a left turn onto the ramp to U.S. Highway 27 at Lake Wales. All of a sudden, a police car roared up behind us with his lights and siren on. He tried to climb up onto the island on the left to get past us, but his car couldn’t get over the high curb, and I was stuck waiting for traffic to get out of the way.

The way the road and ramp are configured there, with curving concrete islands and guardrails, there was no place for me to pull over or go to get out of his way, except right onto the ramp, so that’s what we did the minute there was a break in the traffic. I sped down the curved ramp and onto the highway, our kitchen drawers flying open and things rattling around inside the coach, with him right behind us. The minute I was past the guardrail and had room to get over, I did, and he flew past us headed north. Once the excitement wore off, I told Terry I bet anybody seeing that was wondering if that idiot in the motorhome towing the SUV really believed he could outrun the cops!

Once we arrived at the Thousand Trails and got settled into our site, Charles Deutschmann stopped in to say hello. Charles and his wife Nancy were at our last Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in March, and now they are parked in the RV site next to us. It’s a small world, especially in the RV community.

We took a ride around the campground, admiring the way folks decorated their rigs for the holidays. Some opted for simple things like Santa caps on their mirrors, or maybe a wreath or bow on the front end.

A few folks went a little further, and decorated a tree, or put out a lawn ornament or two.

But these folks take the prize. Talk about going all out for Christmas! I wonder if they carry all of that stuff in their motorhome year round, or store it someplace?

Our friends Dave and Jean Damon, who sell 303 products at RV rallies, are here at the campground, so we got together and had our Christmas dinner together at, where else? A Chinese buffet! The food was good and the company was even better. Here is a picture the waitress took of our well fed, happy group.

I’m glad we came up yesterday, because the weather is supposed to get nasty for the next few days, with wind and rain predicted for today. In fact, just before midnight when I wrote this, it was raining off and on, and the wind was really rattling our window awnings and slide toppers!

Today’s high is supposed to be 51 degrees, and overnight lows the next three nights are supposed to be in the 20s! I probably won’t be doing much, except sitting inside reading, watching TV, and oh yes, sniveling. Lots and lots of sniveling. Tell me again, why did I come to Florida for the winter?

Thought For The Day – Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow they may make it illegal.

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Yesterday was a short travel day for us. In fact, one of the shortest we’ve had in a very long time.

We enjoyed our time at The Great Outdoors in Titusville, Florida, and I took a photo of our Winnebago in Peter and Connie Bradish”s lot before I started unhooking our campground utilities in preparation for leaving.

This is a very upscale RV resort, where you can buy your own very nicely groomed lot, and enjoy every amenity you could imagine.

The resort has several small lakes, and I’m told the fishing in them is good, but I never got the opportunity to check that out.

The resort even has its own church! As you can see, most of the homeowners drive their golf carts everywhere, even to church!

We left The Great Outdoors just after 10 a.m., traveled south to the next exit on Interstate 95, and took State Route 407 a short distance until it merged with State Toll Route 528, which took us west around the south side of the Orlando metropolitan area to Interstate 4. We traveled just a mile or two south on Interstate 4, exited onto U.S. Highway 192, then took it west a few miles to U.S. Highway 27, where we turned north a couple of miles to the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve. Peter Bradish had given us the directions, and they were perfect. 

Well, the directions Peter gave us were perfect. The directions we got from our GPS were not so perfect. We had entered the address of the Thousand Trails into our GPS, so we wouldn’t miss the turn into it, because somebody had told me that a condominium complex next door hid the sign until you were right on top of it. According to the GPS, we had over a mile to go, when I noticed the Thousand Trails sign, which was indeed hard to see. By then it was too late to make the turn.

U.S. 27 through here is a wide six lane divided highway, with designated left turn lanes. We drove a couple of miles, looking for a place to turn around, but I wasn’t sure that we could make a U-turn with the van in tow. I finally pulled into a left turn lane, and decided it would be too tight to make the U-turn, and the last thing I wanted to do was be jackknifed across three lanes of busy U.S. highway, even on a Sunday morning. There was a divided driveway leading into a housing subdivision on the far side of the road, and I told Terry I was going to pull into the subdivision instead, and we’d unhook the van from the tow bar and get pointed back in the right direction.

It wasn’t until we had pulled into the driveway that we discovered that it was a gated community. So there we were, with a locked gate in front of us, two cars that had pulled in behind us, and no place to turn around. Can you say “oh crap?”

Fortunately, the fellow in the first car gave us the gate code, we punched it in, and the gates swung open. I pulled in, parked along the curb, we unhooked the van, and got the heck out of there. A GPS is a handy tool, but never trust one completely.

We had never stayed at this Thousand Trails before, but I have to say that we’re impressed. The 255 acre campground has 850 full hookup RV sites, a swimming pool, activity center, and a 60 acre spring fed lake. The property also backs up to Lake Hancock, a large lake that is supposed to be home to some massive trophy bass.

We choose a site on a corner at the end of a road, with some trees on one side of us, a pasture behind us, and the sites next to us and across the street are empty. Gee, no neighbors. Maybe I’ll just run around in my BVDs. No, Miss Terry says maybe I won’t.

A sky writer was posting this message for us when we got into our RV site. Isn’t that nice? I love you too.

Even with the unexpected detour caused by the GPS, we drove exactly 70 miles, and I was in the office at the Thousand Trails registering by noon. That’s a short travel day!

Once we were parked and hooked up, we drove down to the campground’s boat launch at Lake Hancock, to check things out. It was windy and chilly, but the weather is supposed to improve by mid-week, and getting out on the water is a priority for us. Our kayaks haven’t been wet in over a year, and we need to correct that.

I bet some whopper bass live in these lily pads!

The lake isn’t home to just big bass. I don’t think I’ll be dangling my toes in the water!

Terry and I walked out on the floating dock, and we heard a loud thumping sound and a big splash of water in this little lagoon. Then several fish jumped. We didn’t see the gator, but we knew he was there.

We’re looking forward to doing some relaxing here, getting some paddling in, and I may just buy me a fishing rod and a license, and see if I can tempt one of those big bass to bite!

Thought For The Day – A bargain is something you can’t use, at a price you can’t resist.

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We’re leaving The Great Outdoors in Titusville, Florida today and are going to the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve, which is actually in Clermont. We owe a big thank you to our friends Peter and Connie Bradish for hosting us on their lot here for the last few days. We really appreciate your hospitality, dear friends.

We’ve had a nice time during our visit, and look forward to coming back here again one of these days. There is so much to see and do in this area that we could keep busy all winter long fishing, kayaking, touring the local attractions, and sampling the fare at the many area restaurants.

Though we sometimes find ourselves spending as much as two months in one place, especially when we visit our family in Arizona, we usually stay no more than a week or two in one location before we move on. Much longer than that, and I get bored and hitch itch sets in.

One complaint I hear frequently from fulltiming women is that their husbands are always in “go mode” and never want to slow down. I’m guilty of that myself all too often.

Sometimes Miss Terry has the need to settle in for a while, so she can do some serious cooking, get a shopping fix in, and just decompress. I think a lot of RVing couples are like us; the husband wants to be on the go all the time, and the wife needs to slow him down so her needs are met, too. It’s important to recognize each others’ needs, and to be willing to compromise so those needs get met. 

Once, while we were teaching at Life on Wheels, a wife told me that they never spent two nights in the same place. She said they drove over 500 miles, nonstop, to visit her sister in Maine. She said they arrived at 6 p.m., parked in the driveway, had dinner with her sister and her family, and at 7 a.m. the next morning they pulled out, because the husband was ready to go someplace else and see something new.

Another husband once bragged to us that they had been on the road for over a year, and had not spent one night in an RV park. It was always truck stops, WalMart parking lots, and roadside rest areas. He was having a ball and bragging about how much money he was saving. One look at his wife and you could see that she was miserable. Her idea of retirement was not seeing the world through a windshield, and living at Camp WalMart. I haven’t heard from either couple in a long time, but I wonder how long those relationships lasted in the fulltime RV lifestyle?

Of course, the flip side of the coin are the wives that “can’t be away from my grandbabies,” and insist that their travels never be too far away from wherever those young ones are. One fellow told us that he has always wanted to see Arizona, but never will, because his wife insists that they return to Illinois every few weeks, even in the winter, so she can see their grandchildren and keep track of what was happening in their adult daughters’ lives.

We have met more than one fulltiming woman who reluctantly gave in to their husbands’ desire to travel, but were damn sure going to make him pay a price for it. Nether the husband or wife was having a good time, and it was obvious in every case that they probably wouldn’t be on the road very long.

I’ve toyed with the idea of having a panel discussion at one of our rallies on Staying Married (And Happy) In An RV. What do you think?   

Thought For The Day – People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.

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It started raining late Wednesday night, and it rained hard most of the night here in Titusville. By morning the rain was really coming down, and NASA postponed the space shuttle launch again. Now they are aiming for this afternoon.

The many delays may be frustrating for those who are waiting to see the space shuttle blast off, but the local merchants sure appreciate it. The stores and restaurants are all very busy.

I used to do a lot of fishing, but it’s been years since I dipped a line in the water, except for one outing a couple of years ago with our friends Wes and Jan Chilson on their boat in Aransas Pass, Texas. Lately I’ve been wanting to get back into the sport.

With yesterday’s launch canceled, we visited a couple of shops so I could look at fishing equipment. The stuff I had years ago was getting beat up in the bus bays, and never getting used, so I finally gave it to my son-in-law. I’ve been away from fishing so long that I need to reeducate myself on what kind of gear I need.

I’m pretty much a catch and release angler, because I like catching fish a lot more than I like eating fish. I don’t plan on doing any deep sea fishing, so I don’t need super heavy duty stuff, and I don’t want to spend a lot of money, because I’m cheap. I’m leaning toward a Shakespeare Ugly Stick rod and spinning reel combo I saw at WalMart. My friend Al Hesselbart from the RV Hall of Fame Museum in Elkhart is a dedicated angler who’d rather fish than eat, so I called him for his suggestions, and Al thought the Ugly Stick was a good choice for my needs.

After looking at fishing gear at a couple of places, we stopped in at a little used book store in town, because we can never pass up a book store. But, the owner was closing early because she had to get to an appointment, so we only stayed a few minutes. We’ll have to go back on another trip to this area.

It was still raining, and obviously wasn’t going to clear up anytime soon, so we decided to have an early dinner and then head back to the motorhome. Somebody had suggested Valentino’s, an Italian restaurant in the shopping mall on U.S. Highway 1 (Washington Street). The place wasn’t fancy, but Terry and I agreed that it was absolutely the best pizza we have had in more years than we can remember.  The service was fast and friendly, and our total bill for bread knots, a medium pizza, and drinks, was $20. You can’t beat a bargain like that!

The weather is supposed to clear today, and we’re scheduled to have lunch with our friends, and hosts here, Peter and Connie Bradish. If we get done in time, we’ll run back to the riverfront and try to find a parking place among the crowds. NASA says the shuttle launch is back on schedule for 3:03 this afternoon, and I really hope we get to see it this time! It’s one more thing to cross off my bucket list.

Thought For The Day – It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.

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