Miss Terry was still feeling pretty yucky yesterday, so we stayed home and didn’t do a whole lot of anything. I wrote a couple of articles for the next issue of the Gypsy Journal, answered a few e-mails, and called a subscriber who also wants to tow a Ford Explorer behind his motorhome, and was having the same problem locating a neutral tow switch. Since his part number is the same as the one for our Explorer, I think he can do the same bypass with an LED light, and make it work.

Sunday, after we got to Bushnell, I noticed that one of the kayak rack mounts we had attached to the roof rack of the Explorer had shifted. So yesterday I tightened all four of them up as much as possible. These racks are not going to be a permanent solution, and we’d like to replace them with Thule Hullavator kayak racks. The Thule racks are pretty spendy, but they will make the job of loading the kayaks much easier.

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The folks who live next to the Escapees campground have several donkeys, and the RVers who stay here like to feed them carrots and apples. Anytime someone walks up to the fence, the critters come running up looking for goodies.

They are friendly animals that seem to love attention. We spent quite a bit of time petting them.

This little guy was a bit shy, and mama kept him from getting up close to the fence.

We also saw this turtle crawling along, and took its picture. The donkeys were curious about this strange animal, but they all seemed to coexist pretty well.

A while back this feral hog wandered onto the property and has settled in with the donkeys. Feral hogs are a growing problem throughout the south, and all the way to south Texas.

The donkeys don’t seem to mind the squatter amid their  presence, and they pretty much ignore him. The hog, on the other hand, must be lonely, because he was looking for love in all the wrong places. Several times while we were standing at the fence, he tried to mount one or another of the donkeys, without much success. I don’t know, maybe he should have found a barnyard with Shetland ponies in it instead. Who knew we could find live piggy porn right here at the Escapees RV park!

At 4 p.m. I went over to Social Hour at the activity center, and said hello to some folks. Terry still wasn’t feeling well, so she stayed home and worked on proofing a new book I want to get in print soon. As I was walking to the activity center, I spotted a converted Prevost bus that looked familiar, so I knocked on the door. Sure enough, it was Ron Walker, a fellow we knew from our bus nut days that we have not seen in several years. That’s one of the neat things about the fulltime RV lifestyle – we never know when or where we are going to run into somebody we met someplace else at another time in our travels!

If Terry is feeling any better today, we may go shopping for different kayak racks. Or, we may just stay put so she can rest up some more.  I’ll know what we decided by this time tomorrow.

Bad Nick took advantage of the day to post a new Bad Nick Blog titled How About Some Common Sense? Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – You cannot be lonely if you like the person you are alone with.

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Yesterday was a long short drive for us.

We pulled out of the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve about 11 a.m., me driving the motorhome and Miss Terry, the Explorer. We drove north 11 miles on U.S. Highway 27 to State Route 50, then took it west through Clermont, Groveland, and Masconte.

Traffic was light, and we moved right along. When I planned our route on Microsoft Streets & Trips, I thought that it said it was going to be a short drive of about 40 miles, but it sure seemed to take a long time!

We very seldom travel in separate vehicles, and I don’t like it very much. But since we don’t have the base plate on the Explorer yet, we didn’t have any choice. I like Miss Terry’s company a lot better than my own!

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I kept wondering when we’d get to Interstate 75, and since the GPS was in the Explorer, I didn’t have any point of reference. But eventually we reached to the interstate, and took it north eight miles, then took County Road 673 east a couple of miles to the Escapees Sumter Oaks campground. I don’t know how I figured the mileage wrong, but it was actually 55 miles from our campsite at the Thousand Trails to our site at Sumter Oaks. That sure was a long short drive!

We got the typical warm Escapees welcome, with hugs. Well, at least I got a hug. Miss Terry is fighting a nasty cold, and kept her distance so she wouldn’t make anybody else sick.  We were assigned site #11, a full hookup 50 amp campsite we’ve been in on previous visits here.

The campground is not full, but there are quite a few RVs here. Most of the sites have full hookups, but they also have a small boondocking area across from our site, where this nice Airstream trailer is dry camping.

Sumter Oaks is a nice campground, with lots of beautiful old live oak trees, draped with Spanish moss. There are usually some sand hill cranes wandering around, but we haven’t seen them so far. Once Terry gets to feeling better, we’ll have a better look around.

We’ll be here a week, then head back to the Orlando Thousand Trails. Under our membership, we can stay at any Thousand Trails preserve for up to fourteen days, and then we have to go to another campground, even another Thousand Trails/NACO preserve, for at least a week before we can return to the same campground.

Usually we don’t go back to the same campground that soon, but the nice folks at Camper Connection, just a couple of miles away, have ordered a Blue Ox base plate for us, and we have an appointment to have it installed December 1st.

Once that’s done, we want to head down to Fort Lauderdale for a visit with Jim and Chris Guld, from Geeks on Tour, and then get down to Key West for a week or so.

I have some nephews and a niece in the Saint Petersburg area that I have not seen in about 25 years that I want to visit with, and that’s only about 70 miles from here. So, depending on how Miss Terry is feeling, we may pop in on them while we’re here, or else we’ll wait until after we come back from Key West. I’m looking forward to reconnecting after such a long time.

Thought For The Day – A friend is the one who comes in when the whole world has gone out.

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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 were in no hurry yesterday, and that was a good thing. It was cold in Gila Bend overnight, and I was too lazy to get up and turn on the furnace, so instead I shivered half the night. Finally, about 7 a.m., I got up for a bathroom trip, and when I came back to bed I snuggled up to Miss Terry and dropped into a deep sleep. So deep that finally somewhere around 10:40 a.m. Terry woke me up and asked if I ever planned to get out of bed. There were several RVs at the Elks lodge overnight, but by the time we opened the curtain over our windshield, there was only one travel trailer parked back at the far edge of the lot, and I think he’s staying there long term.

We puttered around for an hour or so, checking e-mail and returning a couple of phone calls, and finally got on the road about noon. But we only had about 120 miles to go, so there was no pressure.

It was a beautiful day, and the storm from the day before had blown itself out. We cruised west on Interstate 8, stopping only long enough to pull into a rest area for a quick walk around the motorhome and van, making sure everything was still in one piece. It’s always a good idea to stop every hundred miles or so do a walk around and stretch your legs. It gives you an opportunity to check your tires, be sure your tow bar and safety cables are still secure, and look for anything that might need attention. We had friends who once drove 400 miles nonstop, and when they arrived at their destination, they discovered that the side window of their SUV had been shattered. They had no idea when or how that had happened, and it remains a mystery today.

I like comparing how our Winnebago motorhome compares to our MCI bus conversion on steep grades. There is a small mountain range just east of Yuma on Interstate 8, and in the past, if I had a good running start at it, we’d top out in the bus at about 15 to 18 miles per hour. We had stopped at the rest area just before the uphill climb began, so there was no running start, and I had to slow down for a big truck, but in the Winnebago, we still hit the top at about 50 miles per hour. What a difference! However, I still much prefer the Jake brake in the old bus to the exhaust brake on the Winnebago. I just felt more secure with it on steep downgrades.  

After a stop for fuel at the Flying J on the east side of town, we arrived at the fairgrounds and stopped to check in at the office. They have several other events going on between now and our rally, so we found a quiet spot away from the main area, parked next to the stables. We have 20 amp electric and water, which is plenty to sustain us indefinitely.

Once we were settled in, we called our friends Mike and Elaine Loscher and arranged to meet them for dinner at the Golden Corral. Mike and Elaine are sweet people, and very dedicated supporters of our efforts. They have been to every one of our rallies, always volunteering to help. We could never afford to pay them for all that they do, from helping with parking and registration, and a hundred other chores that come up. We feel very honored to have such wonderful friends. 

I noticed in Gila Bend, and again here in Yuma, that our Verizon air card is working much faster than it was in the Apache Junction/Mesa area. Some snowbirds had told me that they were experiencing slow service here in Yuma too, but so far, so good. We’ll be busy getting all of the last minute rally chores done in the next few days. The clock is ticking down!

Thought For The Day – Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.

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We left Bowling Green State University Friday morning, and though I had been worried that we might get stuck in the field where we were parked, we got out just fine. We stopped for fuel, then drove north about ten miles on Interstate 75, skirted the west edge of Toledo on Interstate 475, then picked up U.S. Highway 23 and followed it north into Michigan.

The line at the dump station in Bowling Green was really long, so we decided to stop at the Cabela’s Outfitters in Dundee, Michigan, about 45 miles north of Bowling Green, to use their dump station. Apparently quite a few other folks from the FMCA rally had the same idea, because there were several motorhomes waiting to dump. We also needed to make a bank deposit, so we unhooked the van and Miss Terry ran off to do that errand while I waited in line to dump. She needn’t have hurried, because I was still in line when she got back.

Several rigs ahead of me pulled up, dumped, and quickly went on their way, but you know there always has to be one jerk in every crowd. A guy in a big diesel pusher pulled up to the dump station, got out, didn’t like his position, got back inside his coach and maneuvered around a bit, got back out, still didn’t like where he was, and repeated the process again. Then he puttered around, opened his sewer bay, closed it, went back inside his coach, came back out, opened the sewer bay again, then opened several other bays until he found his rubber gloves and put them on.

Then he took out his sewer hose, hooked it to his tank outlet, realized that it was too short, and went to two other coaches until he could find somebody to loan him an extra length of hose and a connector, which he attached to his hose and finally dumped. That chore done, he rinsed out the hoses, unhooked the loaner hose, unhooked his sewer hose, replaced it in the bay, returned the loaner hose, went back to his rig and opened two bay doors before he decided where he wanted to put his gloves, changed his mind and got them back out and put them in a different bay, and finally got inside his coach. And sat there. And then he sat there some more. People started blowing their horns and the fellow ahead of me was ready to do him bodily harm before the fool finally drove off and the line moved forward, and eventually I was next in line to dump.

That was when an idiot in an SUV pulling an Airstream trailer came the other way through the parking lot and tried to shoehorn himself in behind the rig that was finishing dumping. No way was that going to happen, and Bad Nick went flying out of the bus to explain the facts of life to the guy behind the wheel. Meanwhile, the air was split with blaring horns as people who had waited patiently in line let the offender know that he wasn’t going to get away with that!

He decided to play dumb and said “Oh, are all of you waiting to dump? I’m sorry,” before beating a hasty retreat.

We wasted an hour at the dump station, but eventually got back onto the highway and followed it north until it joined Interstate 75. Traffic was heavy all the way from Toledo to Bay City, with some particularly bad stretches in Ann Arbor and Flint, where nobody seemed to know what a yield sign, a turn signal, or a rearview mirror was for.

By the time we turned west on U.S. Highway 10 at Bay City, I was more than ready to get on a slower paced road. An hour later we joined State Highway 115 and took it to U.S. Highway 131 near Cadillac, and with a couple more zigs and zags down two lane highways we arrived at my cousin Terry Cook’s place just south of Traverse City about 6:30 p.m., having logged just over 300 miles.

We backed into our usual spot in Terry’s driveway, received warm greetings from the entire family, and hooked up to water and electric. We’ll be here for a few days as Miss Terry has her annual visit to her oncologist, and we enjoy some time relaxing with family. After being up early every morning at the FMCA rally, the first order of business will be to turn the telephones off and sleep late every morning!

Thought For The Day – Over prepare, and then go with the flow.

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