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.  

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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

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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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I have to be honest, even though we have belonged to Thousand Trails for several years, I was in no hurry to come to the preserve here in Clermont, Florida. But we’ve been here a week now, and I think it’s fast becoming one of my favorite Thousand Trails/NACO campgrounds. Our site is great, they have all kinds of nice amenities, and we have run into several people we know since we’ve been here.

John and Sharon Mostollers, Gypsy Journal subscribers from Trout Run, Pennsylvania are parked near us, and yesterday John came by to tell me about a neat little restaurant that he thought we would enjoy, and we had a nice visit. 

A little later on, we had a late lunch at Santa Fe steakhouse with Dave and Jean Damon, fulltiming friends we know from the RV rally vendor circuit. We had a good time visiting, solving most of the problems of the world, and the food was pretty good too!

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My new Sea Eagle tall back kayak seat arrived on Friday from Inflatable Boats 4 Less, and back at the campground, Terry and I decided to end the day with a late afternoon paddle. The campground has a dock and boat launch on Lake Hancock, which is known for excellent largemouth bass fishing. And yes, the 4550 acre lake is also home to alligators, but if you are going to be on any freshwater lake or river in Florida, they are a fact of life. (As opposed to the sharks and barracuda in the salt water.) Here is a Google Earth view of the lake and the Thousand Trails campground.

The new seat is much better! We spent over an hour on the lake, until the sun started to drop behind the trees,  and my back didn’t hurt at all. I need to install a couple of D rings to position it properly for me, but Tim from Inflatable Boats 4 Less sent a kit with some extras with the boat, and they are easy to install.

The PaddleSki gets a lot of attention. A few people were fishing on the dock when we set it up, and they all watched the process, and commented on what a neat idea an inflatable boat is for RVers.

Back at the motorhome, I worked for a while on the seminar schedule for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally. I still have a lot of open time slots to fill, but as of now, seminar titles include Why Use Water Filters?, Gypsy Journal FAQs, Craft & Hobby Show and Tell, Fire Safety, What Insurance Do I Really Need As An RVer?, Insiders Guide To Get The Most From Your RV Service Center, Tips & Tidbits – Why Didn’t I Think Of That?, Accessories For Better Air Card Internet Access, RV Insurance – What Affects Your Rates, Starting A Business On The Road, For Women Only Roundtable, Illness Or Injury While Traveling – What Would You Do?, Transporting Firearms In Your RV, Laugh Your Way Across The USA, Geocaching, Yes You Can Drive That RV (For Ladies Only), The RVing Genealogist, Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems, Getting The Most Out Of Your Digital Camera, Testing Air Brakes, RV Safety Improvements For Him And Her, RVing Alaska, Swedish Weaving, Finding Your Satellite Signal, RV Weight Safety, Pros & Cons Of RV Extended Warranties, RV Quick Shades, RV Driving Tips & Techniques, Windshields – Repair or Replace?, Why Use Water Filters?, RV Tire Safety, Internet Genealogy, Preparing To Drive To Alaska, Boondocking Tips Roundtable, Kayaks & RVs, Care & Operation Of RV Awnings, and Computer Safety And Security For RVers. That’s 35 seminars so far, and we’ll have about 60 by the time we’re through!

My friend Brenda Speidel sent me some information about the Holiday Mail for Heroes campaign yesterday. The American Red Cross and Pitney Bowes have teamed up for the fourth year in a row to help brighten the holidays for our brave men and women in uniform. From now until December 10th, you can send holiday cards to service members, their families, and veterans all over the world. Anyone can send a card, or as many as you would like, to: Holiday Mail for Heroes, PO Box 5456, Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456 and they will be delivered to military members. I still remember my first Christmas away from home, a young soldier in a very bad place, and the Christmas cards I got from an elderly lady in a nursing home, and a little girl from Oklahoma, sent out under a similar program. When you’re a kid far from home, it means a lot.

Speaking of the holidays, quite a few readers have taken advantage of our Holiday Subscription Special Offer. If you subscribe or renew your existing Gypsy Journal subscription for two years, we’ll also send a one year gift subscription ($20 value) to whoever you choose, with a note that it’s a gift from you. This applies to both printed subscriptions to U.S. addresses by Standard Rate mail, and digital subscriptions. Click the link above, and save money today!

Thought For The Day - An argument is like a country road, you never know where it is going to lead.

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Yesterday we had a quiet day at home. Sometimes we need one of those, just to get caught up on paperwork and household chores, to relax and enjoy each other’s company, and just decompress.

I updated the calendars on our RV website, motorcycle travel website, and self-publishing website, and added some events to the Small Town Festivals page on the RV website. Then I spent a couple of hours updating our mailing lists. 

I need to make some changes to Carlyle Lehman’s Focal Wood website, because several of the links are not working. I struggled with the links for over two hours, but whatever the reason, I couldn’t get them to work, no matter what I did. It’s time to call on my pal Greg White. I know it’s probably a simple thing that he can do in his sleep, because Greg’s a simple man.

I also watched one of our neighbors climb up the ladder on the back of her motorhome, wearing a pair of flip flops, and trip when the toe of one caught on the top step. She managed to catch herself, but I was afraid it was going to be time to call 911. I don’t trust RV ladders. We have had a couple of friends seriously injured using them in the past, and one friend who just bought a new high end coach discovered that at least some of the screws holding his  ladder in place were not secure. To climb up on one without proper footwear is just plain foolish!

In the late afternoon, Linda Spindle stopped by our motorhome and visited for a while. We saw Linda and her husband Dave when we were in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and now they are parked just a short distance across from us. Linda told us about a great place to buy fresh seafood in Gloucester, and we’ll definitely be stopping by there!

We spent the evening watching a movie about 1950s singer Buddy Holly, which we found interesting, because we visited the musician’s grave in Lubbock, Texas several years ago, and the site of the airplane crash that took his life a couple of months ago when we were in Iowa. Did you know that his name was actually spelled Holley, but a secretary at Decca records misspelled his name on a recording contract, and it stuck?

Today we don’t have any solid plans. We may do some exploring, taking in the local sights, and we have a couple of orders to mail out. We’re just enjoying a slow pace for a while. It’s a nice change from the hectic schedule we have kept for too long now.

Thought For The Day – Every time I close the door on reality it comes in through the windows.

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