Welcome to Florida

After paying for our site, we left Macon Georgia at 08:50, it was a warm 7 C. (44 F.)  brrr. (Note to Caro et Julie, the manager looks and sounds like Roy from the Shipping War) We stopped at 08:51, I could see in my right mirror that the door of the trailer was swinging open… I was the last person to go in the trailer; I had forgotten to lock the door! Bad Richard, Bad!

Since it was a short 300 km drive for the day, my intention was to drive on secondary roads to see more of the landscape. However, the speed limit was 55 mi.  (88 KM) and pulling the trailer, even though the speed was fine I felt I couldn’t be safe because of all the driveways where cars were coming out of, plus the traffic lights… I had to keep watching every driveway just in case . So we decided to go back on the interstate.

We saw a lot of cotton fields, it remind me of driving with snow bank… I’m running away from that!

Cotton filed in Georgia

 

We had lunch at Pizza Hut. We took the buffet but were disappointed… they were not too quick re-filling the food and never even had pasta available.

We usually stop at the tourist center whenever we enter a new state.  We get the state map and some pamphlets on the attractions that can be found in that state. We had heard that when you arrive in Florida, they  also have free orange juice at the Tourist Center.   Just before Exit 2 in Georgia on I-75, on the Georgia/Florida state line, there are a lot of signs advertising for the Florida Tourist Center, free orange juice and free maps at Exit 2… Don’t stop there it's a trap.  The only thing there was a kiosk selling oranges and I assume orange juice. It was NOT the Florida tourist information center… grrrrr

Got back on the road, and the very next exit –in Florida this time- was the tourist center. We stopped got OJ, a map and all kind of information.

We arrived at the Florida Gateway RV resort around 13:30. It is a PA  (Passport America discount) and they charge $22, but in case you missed it… it’s a RESORT. So there is a lot of resort stuff… There is a hot spa… but it was cold, the water was at 17 C. (63 F.)! They are selling membership, I don’t think so! The owner is a Canadian from Ontario.

 Florida Gateway RV resort, Oct 30 2012 

The campsite is grass so before setting up I checked and saw several red ant’s hill. I got the ant killers ammunition and started a war.  I surrounded their camp (sprayed all around the ant hills). The battle field is now covered with dead bodies… I know they're called fire ants but there was NO smoke column coming from them!

You can rent this site, it comes with a spa, BBQ, sink, chairs, cement pad, shrub, NO ANTS!

My wife caught me spitting in the pond!

3 Palm trees and a princess!

After my shower tonight, we got a new neighbour! It’s a motorhome that arrived around 18:15, we had just looked at the really long shadow our trailer was casting, because of the topography (no mountain). Then the motorhome arrived and we were in their shadow…

Today, Halloween day, we are leaving Jasper (how not appropriate) and driving down another 2 hours to Bushnell. We will be meeting with Jo and André. We will all go to a store where they sell sun screen material.

Distance of the day: 310 KM (185 Mi.)   

Long day and Sandy

Club house at Al Sihah Shrine Park, Macon, Georgia

This morning Georgia was not on my mind, the east coast was! As projected, Sandy has touched land and sent its destructive fingers all over the East coast. As I type this, Millions are without electricity. Water seems to have taken over cities, houses burned down… My heart is with those that are dealing with this storm of the century!

Yesterday morning (Oct 29th) when I got up, it was 10 C. (50 F.), in the trailer. We don’t mind the cold… when we are in the comfort of our bed under our duvet but when we get up, a little warmth is really appreciated. It doesn’t take long to warm up our  140 square foot home, and while I was waiting for the heater to do its magic, I made my coffee.

At 08:15 we had our breakfast, got the trailer ready for the road, filled up the fresh water tank, emptied the grey and black tanks, itched the trailer, and drove away from Baileyton RV park. It was 5 C. (41 F.) outside, brrrr. There was even some snow forecasted for the near future.

While we were driving south/West, we saw a lot of utility vehicles (electricity and tree servicing) going North/East toward Sandy. They will be really busy in the following days/weeks.

Every stop we made, there was a cold wind hitting us, and even in Georgia where the outside temperature was up to 18 C. (64 F.) we needed a warm sweater.

Christiane see double at athe pumps!

We drove through Atlanta… CRAZY! -We were not there during rush hour but let me tell you that it is an experience that I was not looking forward to! At some point there was 7 lanes, cars and trucks passing left and right, merging, de-merging, oh boy, I’m sure my life has been shorten by this.  I am surprised I didn’t dream about this last night!

After 610 KM (366 Mi.), we arrived at “Al Sihah Shrine Park” around 16:00. It was a looooong drive!

Al Sihah Shrine Park, Macon, Georgia
This is what happens when I don't take a shower!

The park was empty. When we arrived, I went to the office but no one was there. I started to go on the campground and saw 2 man working, so I stopped and asked them if they were the manager and I was told no but just to go ahead, setup, someone would be coming later to collect the camping fee.

While setting up, I noticed that the water was cut off, we had plenty of water in our own tank, so we didn’t mind. When we were done, I went back to the office, to pay them but there still was nobody around, I walked back and then one of the employee I saw earlier, drove by and pointed out a person “that man is the person you are looking for!”

When I talked to him, he told me not to worry about the money, that tomorrow before leaving I just had to stop by the office and pay then. He also told me that he turned the water back on for me.

I was anxious to turn the TV on and watch what was happening with Sandy. There is no cable on our site. We have an antenna on the trailer that is good enough to get local channels… so I thought. The only channel we could get was a religious channel…

We have our Verizon gizmo, so at least we could get some news from the Internet.

 

The park is a Passport America, so the cost for a night was a reasonable $14.

Today, we are going further south, the next report should be from Florida. It will be a shorter drive. I’m sick of the highway so I might try to take secondary road.

Latest update: This is Tuesday afternoon, we just made it to Jasper Florida, I’ll talk about this tomorrow.

 

      

First Month

This is a big anniversary… one month ago we parked our employee’s card and drove off to the retiree’s boulevard!

There has been a lot of up and down (I’m talking about the highway in Pennsylvania, of course :-) ). So far, I think that we still haven’t grabbed this lifestyle fully. Somewhere in my mind, I must still be in “vacation” mode, I don’t feel like I’m on vacation but it must be.

I dreamt a couple of times about work, those were NOT nightmares! I enjoyed my work, well… less in the last 6 months because the pace was too slow. I also don’t miss the people; this is mainly because I’m staying in touch with them on Facebook…

The first few weeks were about getting ready to travel in our trailer for the next 6 months. Now we are living in our trailer and we can tell that we brought too much stuff, mainly clothing.  We will be correcting that next year… it’s all acquired experiences!

Being on the road is not much different than living at home. You still need to cook, so you still need to do grocery. You have to do laundry. The bills have to be paid. Maintenance has to be done on the house (trailer).

Since we started our journey south (about 10 days ago), we didn’t eat out too often, we have everything to cook delicious meals. We used our BBQ twice; we also have a small electrical toaster oven that we used several times.  There is a propane oven in the trailer but we don’t like using it (you have to go on your knees to light up the pilot, it warms up the trailer too much and it’s really small). Today, I will probably do a roast, outside in the toaster oven, the biggest challenge I can see will be to keep the neighbours away because the smell of the food will be all over the place!

This morning at 05:00, I went to do the laundry. It was not crowded… as a matter of fact, I had all the machines!  It cost $5 total to do 2 loads of washing and drying.  From now on, I’ll try to use less clothing… I might even go commando hahaha

We are moving Monday, the weather for the weekend was calling for rain and cold, so on Friday we removed our sunscreen… an ounce of prevention!

We don’t know where we are going, we should find out tomorrow night when we see where the trailer is parked!

On the family front, our daughters are in Walt Disney for a whole week…  I am sure glad that Franken Storm is going away from them… they should be getting a lot of sun, and a lot of fun!

“I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.”

 

Doggy Style

My wife and I…   went for a ride…   a bike ride!

Just a short distance later we came by the Baileyton Golf Club. I thought that if I looked in the gutter I might see a lost ball or two… I scored! a nice Titleist 1 ball, now, if I could just find a set of clubs, left handed, and a free pass to the golf club, I would be a happy retiree.

Like a fresh fruit, it was waiting to be picked up

After 2 bumps and 2 curves on the road, my wife decided she really wanted to do some cleanup at the trailer. She told me to go ahead without her… I didn’t have the GPS but decided to carry on.

It was really her loss because right there we were at the top of a hill and I didn’t need to pedal one bit going down, as a matter of fact,  I had the wind in my hair, the farm smell hitting my nostrils and if it were not for the fact that I don’t like the taste of bug, I would have been smiling… life is good!

The road is really busy, narrow, with a lot of hidden curves.  When I saw a nice country road on my left, I decided to take that road.

Would have been a great bike path if it was not the sharing with cars or trucks!

I was going up a bump when I came upon a house surrounded by a huge fence. The house was not a castle, just what I consider a “regular house” but then...  came running the beast, I didn’t stop to take a picture but it must have been bigger than a horse, and barking loudly enough to make sure that my heart was pumping… I was praying that there were no holes in the fence… and lucky for me, there were none but less lucky for the beast that was probably thinking that he would have liked a taste of a French Canadian.

At the next house on the left, which had NO fence, 2 dogs started running and barking, one of them was big and could chew part of the bike to get to me for sure, but I was at the top of a hill and pedalled down before they could catch me… They must have been fed lately because I’m sure that if they had really wanted to they could have out run me (maybe not out smart me but all they needed was to out run me).

Now I’m down (what my wife would call a mountain but I call a hill, a good one at that) and I’m noticing that up that hill there are 2 dogs so I will just bike in a different direction. It’s not because my life is insured that I want my wife to collect!

This was out in the country and there are not that many streets that crosses the road I was on, but I wasvconfident I’ would find a way… plus, there are so many churches around that I could take refuge in one and ask for asylum!

Not even 5 minutes later, near a house on the right, 2 dogs started running and barking, grrrr. What the hell! At this point I realized that I was surrounded, there is NO side road, NO church, NO hope, I’ll have to face one of the set of dogs. On my right, I don’t know what will be coming if I survive the dogs. On my left I am at the bottom of the hill, the dogs only have to wait at the top and pick me up, I’ll already be warm for them!

I went with the known option, but I tried to outsmart them… I pedalled like crazy going up the hill, doing it as silently as I could, I was trying not to puff too loudly too. Maybe with my previous passing (I don’t mean the one that would have made my life insurance company sad) the previous excitement made the dogs sleepy and maybe I had a chance, I was going up toward the light (not THE light but the one from the sun) .

I think the dogs were not expecting me so soon; they only started running when I reached the front of the house… But it was too late for them, I was not about to slow down and let them have a piece of me!  

On this ride, I really missed my wife; she is slower than I am and my buns would not have been so exposed!

Another day in heaven

Wednesday was another sunny and warm day and we were going to Johnson City. I had found on the internet an opened museum with several buildings dated from the Civil war. This was the home of Landon Carter Haynes.

Since our departure from the North, it was the first time that we took the truck without having our house hitched!

We left at around 09:15. On our way I saw a sign for David Crocket’s birthplace park. We just had to go and investigate what this was about.

There was a small museum dedicated to his life. I don’t think that they had anything on display that belonged to him but they had displayed items that were from that époque.

I didn’t know much about him, In my childhood, I only read some cartoons where he was the character. Did you know that he was a congressman at some point. He died in Texas at the Alamo battle.

After this short un-planned side trip, we continued. It was close to noon and before the next visite, we decided that lunch would be our next stop.

I saw a place called Sonic, it is a drive-in, you park the car, choose what you want on the menu and then you press a button to order. I chose a Fried Chicken burger with fries and Christiane got chicken popcorn with taters. It’s great to know what you want but… it is not easy to order with the music blasting out of the speakers while trying to order using the intercom. Because of the southern accent, I couldn’t understand one word that the waitress was telling me, but I ordered any way.  

You have to pay right there and then, so I used my credit card… Oh no, they asked for my zip code! I don’t have a zip code, so I pressed the button again and the same lady/same accent answered asking me if I wanted anything else (I assumed that is what she asked me)…  I explained to her (trying not to cry haha) what my problem was but then I saw on the display “Approved”… I am not sure if it was the waitress' intervention or something else but I told her thank you and waited anxiously for the food to arrive.

I didn’t know if any of what I ordered would arrived as ordered but, miracle… everything showed up!!!

By 13:00 we were at the Tipton-Haynes State Historic Site. What really got me thinking was a small documentary about slave. One of the slaves who was working on this farm was the son of the owner.  –Just as a side note, being Canadian we know about slave in the US, but personally I didn’t know much until I saw the TV series “Root” when I was a young adult. I have no idea how people could deal with knowing that one of the slaves was their own son or daughter… just can’t imagine that. What I learned was tha those slaves were assets, and as such, could be used as collateral against debt!  Can you imagine using your own child as collateral? I am not judging, this was another time and other ways… it just keeps me thinking.

There was also a cave you could visit. I was surprised that we could go explore it by ourselves, they even provide you with a flashlight to go in.

Dangerous, blood hungry, cave man!

At the entrance, you could feel the colder air. The caves were justa couple of chambers but I found it interesting. Because of the camera’s flash, on the pictures, you would not guess it but it was dark even with some “windows”.

Gentle cavemaker (she was not good at it, there was dust on the walls!) 

Sorry have to go...

Total distance: 206 km (123 mi)

 

Thursday was another sunny and warm day (I know I repeat myself but it is just the way it is :-) )

In the morning, we cooked our spaghetti sauce. See it is not all vacation, it’s a lifestyle!

I decided that I had to get rid of several dead bodies… The front end of the trailer was a “crime scene”. I got the ladder out, the soap and proceeded with hiding the evidences! I started with a shirt but it was sooo hot (the weather not the guy haha) that I removed it.

W-o-r-k-i-n-g

I also did a quick cleaning of the bikes, oiled the chains and inflated the tires. Since the bikes were no longer on the bike rack… we had to go and do some exploring in the vicinity. If you asked my wife, we were going up and down the whole time. I think that there was a little hill at one point… all in the eyes of the be-holder folks!

 

 

We didn't see any Walmart nor McDonald's, but I wouldn’t expect to find those in a town of about 500 people. Baileyton is really small, but it has a pizzeria, a post office a school and several churches and gas stations. It is out in the middle of nowhere but it is really serene. We are surround by mountains and we can hear birds singing the day away…

While riding the bikes, everyone we saw driving by, would wave at us… really friendly. I think that back home we get waved at as well but with only one finger up… it doesn’t take much more effort to have all fingers up at the same time, no?

We even got homework... tonight we should be skyping with the girl for 20 minutes :-).

 

After a hard day work, it is important to relax.

Extreme reading!

Total distance - Truck 0 KM (0 mile) - Bike 15 KM (9 miles)

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two days for the price of one!

Monday, Oct 22nd

We left Radford around 9:20. Jo and André had already left and we will not see them until we meet in Naples, Florida.

It was another sunny day but the temperature was only 6 C. (43 F.). After getting back on the road it didn’t take long to get warm again.

We entered Tennessee at around 11:00 and stopped at the visitor center. We took all kind of Tennessee documentation and one of them about camping. We chose a camping that was not too far. We had decided that we wanted a break from the road so we drove to Baileyton RV Park and took a site for the week. Why not? After all we have been on the road for 4 days, travelling over 1565 km (939 Miles) in the process. That is a lot of pavement… but we expected it, our goal was to go where the weather was nice. This is one of the main advantages of the RV lifestyle!

Before getting to the camping, we stopped to buy some groceries. I didn’t want to get to our site and then drive away in search of food (it would have reminded me too much about the cave men and their struggle to survive hahaha).

We arrived at the camping and were all setup by 14:00. I’ll talk more about the camping tomorrow.

For supper we broke out our brand new BBQ. We had bought this awesomeness at Sail in Ottawa.

In the following picture, look at those, v-e-g-e-t-a-b-l-e-s in our plates. See now, beloved daughters, you might have thought that all we do is stop at restaurant and eat un-healthy food but no!  hahaha

The wine is to help get the vegetables down!

Total distance for today: 240 KM (144 Miles)

 

Tuesday, Oct 23th

I must have had hitch-itch because when I woke up, I decided to move…

When we arrived at Baileyton RV Park, we were assigned a pull through site, which means you just need to drive in to set up and drive out when you leave. It requires no backing up.

On our site there is a slab of cement to be used as a patio. It is located closer to the front section of the lot. It’s at the right place for a motorhome, but for our trailer, it is not the best place. When we arrived, I set up the trailer so the truck could be parked in front of the trailer and we could hitch and un-hitch without having to be in the road but that meant we only had a third of the pad under our awning. I decided to move the trailer up so that the whole awning would be over the pad. We didn’t even unhook the services, I just backed the truck and we hitched. This was a 10 minutes move, but it made  for better living space for us. We are learning a little bit more about this lifestyle every day! Now the truck is parked at the back of the trailer.

After moving the trailer, we installed the sun screen. I think that we are all settled now. 

 

The park itself is not what you will call a resort. There is nothing… it’s in the middle of nowhere. It is like living in the country. When I went to the office to get our site, I asked the employee if there was anything to do or see around… She told me No! I smiled and was not disappointed; it is just what I was looking for, for the next week. This lifestyle for us is about times when we live out in the country, some other times where we will be close to well-known places, or we might be enjoying a beach view and have a short walk to plant our feet in the sand or playing with the waves… To me it is a question of freedom!

We are close to the washroom and yesterday, I went and took a shower… yes I do that from time to time! Hahaha. It was really clean and I had plenty of hot water. We have a shower in the trailer, but the water heater is small.  The first one in the shower has to be careful of the hot water usage to be sure that the second person has enough and I'm usually the second one in the shower :-( ).  My wife prefers to use our shower and I don’t mind using the camping's provided it is clean.

We each hit a basket of balls at the driving range, here at the camping. We haven’t done that for a while. I don’t think we will turn pro any time soon :-)

 

 

 

We also went to do a little hiking, it was a really short one, we went up the hill and at the end there is a small pond where you can see some fishes swimming. You can fish but it is catch and release only. I just don’t know why someone would go through all the work of fishing and then release the prized fish hahaha

We pretty much just enjoyed the beautiful day, did some reading, some Internet and watched some TV shows. I would say, it was just a perfect day in heaven!

Total distance for today: 3 Meters (9 foot)

Still going south



Redford Virginia


I woke up around 4:00, it is not an unusual occurrence for me, I'm the early bird, I just don't care about the worm :-). Having nothing to do, I went into the Flying J to see what it was all about. I was surprised to hear messages like: “Your pizza is ready!” and “Shower 12 is ready”. It was 4 am but looking at the activities taking place at the time, it could have been 5 pm, it was just like in an airport, business going on 24 hours a day!

My main goal was to purchase a Next Exit book. This is an awesome reference when you are travelling on US interstates. It gives you what is available at each exit, the distance, the exit number, where the rest areas are, and where you can empty your RV tanks. When we are on the road, my wife keeps it close by.

 

 

My wife being a lazy bum woke up at the outrageous hour of 06:00, joined me at Denny’s for breakfast (this line might not make it through her proof reading of the blog… we’ll see).

After a good breakfast, under a blue sky, we hit the 81 South again.

We had no idea of the surprises that were waiting… We crossed from Pennsylvania to Virginia and let me tell you that it was a spectacular ride… We were following a range of mountain and each hill brought us an awesome view. We also saw some farms where the picket fences went on for miles! We passed some Amish buggies; they were on a road parallel to the interstate (this really helps to boost out truck ego). Sorry no pictures of this, you'll have to take my words...

We knew that Jo and André were to spend the night at Redford in Virginia. So we decided to join them. We made it to their camping at 16:00. The weather was in the twenties Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) and I posted this picture on Facebook to tease people at home.

 

 

The camping itself is not too great, you are right under the I-81 and there is a lot of noise. It used to be $12 with the 50% discount Passport America and that was ok for a one night stop on the way to Florida.  Unfortunately they dropped from that program so now the price (with tax) is $29.96 and in my opinion is too expensive for what turns out to be a parking under a major highway. It’s by a river so if you are a fisherman, it could be ok.

Not too crowdy, but in the shade of the I-81

Total distance today: 515 KM (309 Miles)

      

 

 

Parallel parking

Cortland Camping... Yes it is there!

Here we are!

We left Cortland NY at around 11:30. When we arrived yesterday at the campsite, the office was closed but there was a note to go and setup on any available site, and to return to the office the following day to pay. That’s what we did.

At 09:00 the next day I went to the office, it was still closed. We slowly started to do our preparation to leave, I was expecting someone to come rushing and tell me: “Hey buster, are you trying to get out of here without paying?” But no one came.  When we were done, I drove to the office, my wife got out to pay for our stay. Meanwhile, I drove to the place where you can flush the tanks. If you don’t have a RV and don’t know, there are 2 tanks, the first one is the grey and contains all the water from the kitchen sink and the shower. The black tank contains… all matters from the toilet. Don’t worry, it is not messy, I also wear the same type of gloves a surgeon would wear for such a delicate operation J

My wife walked back to me, there was still no one in the office and she asked people around but no one knew where the personnel were. There is a box beside the office where we can drop payment, but we didn’t have small bills and nobody else did. So with our conscience not as clear as the tanks, we left. We will be staying at the same place in the spring and we will pay them then.

We were driving on the I-81, there is a lot of up and down… it made for an interesting drive. We were in the slow lane, as a matter of fact, we were passed by every cars and trucks, I can’t wait to get to the Amish country, I’m pretty confident I will be the one passing the buggies.

We stopped at the Pennsylvania’s visitor center. After a mere 88 KM (53 Milles), hey we are not in any rush to get to anywhere, why not stop and smell the not-one-to-be-seen-anywhere roses.

Fall is following us!!

 

Retiree R us

Our plan was to go to a camping in Harrisburg PA, which is the capital of Pennsylvania, close to Hershey where we could visit the chocolate factory. We were also thinking about going to see a hockey game, the Hershey Bear were playing the following day.

But when we got to the camping, it was so run down, I couldn’t believe it, and there were a lot of blue tarps and trailers that had suffered from a lack of tender loving care. At one of the first sites, there was a “friendly” sign saying to KEEP OUT. The ground was not kept; I didn’t have a good feeling and was picturing myself finishing as a shish kabob… We left!

It was starting to be a bit late but we had an alternating plan… sleep at a Walmart. For those of you who are not familiar with RV lifestyle, it is well known that Walmart is RV friendly and allows us to spend the night in their parking lot. This is not ideal but it is usually available.  We take the opportunity to do some shopping, including grocery.  Everyone wins.

When we were close to Wally, we saw a Verizon store. We stopped there first to get a 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot. This is a device that allows us to go on the internet almost anywhere in the US. We can have up to 5 devices connected at the same time, so my wife and I don’t need to share the keyboard…  We paid $129 for it, no contract, plus we took a plan that allows us 10 GB of data at $90 per month. The device is fantastic! Yesterday we were Skyping with our daughters while we were driving down on the interstate. My wife was skyping, that is, I was driving, of course!
 

I am sooooo connected!

Finally we stopped at Walmart. My wife went to the store to ask for permission to stay for the night. She was told that we couldn’t stay there for the night; it is a town’s bylaw! We were really disappointed. Well, it is their lost because we were about to spend some money in the walmart.  After we would have had a good night sleep having now acquired the internet capabilities, we would have found a camping close by and stayed several days and spent $$$ on all kind of tourist visits.  Instead, we just when back to the I-81 and drove further south.

We stopped at a Flying J, this is also a truck/RV friendly gas station. They have everything available for trucker: showers, TV rooms, food, gadget, etc. We arrived at around 20:30.  By that time the parking lot where most of the RV spends the night was full. I drove around a couple of time and then in front of my very own eyes, I saw a spot where I could finally stop driving for the day. However, it involved parallel parking… with the trailer… it took me a couple of try but I made it.

Plenty of room... NOT!

If you have never slept at a Flying J, and I assume most of you haven’t, it is far from a perfect place, but it is safe and you have all kind of amenities. But it is mainly designed for truckers, and truckers, they leave their trucks running all night. So it is noisy! Too bad I had already gone to my doctor a couple of weeks ago, to get my ears un-plugged… I now regret not having waited a bit longer as it would have helped me now hahaha!


I am a bit late posting, we are currently park for a week, so I should have time to Ketchup :)

Total mileage for today: 430 KM (258 Miles)