Category Archives: Fulltime RVing

Fulltime RVing

Something Old, Something New

14 Comments

Florida to Michigan – April, 2023 – Written by Jim

There is something to be said about an old pair of slippers. From the moment you slide them on your feet, they just feel cozy. Such was our choice of routes north this spring through Alabama, Nashville, western Kentucky and Indiana. It’s a path we have beaten often, as it isn’t quite as busy or mountainous as Interstate 75. Comfortable, no pressure…just head north along I-65/US-31 without too much effort.

With that being said, we are always in search of something new. Rolling along a well-worn path, the sights have a tendancy to look the same. We know all too well that we miss really cool stuff in our everyday lives if we don’t keep our eyes open and look for it. So off we went, searching for change amongst the familiar vistas we knew so well.

One of our first stops was a place we’ve stayed at often: Golden Acres Ranch in Monticello, Florida. This is a Harvest Hosts stop that we hadn’t been to in a few years. Bobbie and Fred Golden have a farm where they raise chickens, guinea fowl and Tennessee fainting goats. They also make mayhaw jelly, which has become a staple in our pantry. With our new rig having solar, we were excited to be off grid for the night to see how it performed.

We’re happy to say that we still had over 13 volts in the batteries when we hooked up in the morning, even after a couple of cycles of the furnace, the fridge running full blast and two cups of coffee run through our drip coffeemaker.

It was a very relaxing place to kick back for the night. Bobbie took us on a farm tour in her golf cart, showing us all they had going on in their little slice of paradise. There is something to be said about a woman well into her 80’s who is planting a slew of new mayhaw trees that won’t be producing for a few years. 🙂

Further up the road, we made a familiar stop in Troy, Alabama at Deer Run RV Park. Troy has always been somewhat of a resupply depot for us, as they have both a Walmart and Publix, along with a Lowe’s store. We did walk Troy University’s campus one time and perused their bookstore, but we’ve never found much more than that in this now familiar place. That’s not to say we won’t in the future, though. I did have a fun interaction at a propane refill station when an elderly gentleman pulled up to refill his tanks. Turns out he boils peanuts at local events, along with making rocking chairs with an odd curve in the upper part of the back. Two of them grace the porch of the dealer. With a sly grin, he said “I used my wife as a model for it.” Take from that what you will.

Another familiar stop for us is Cullman, Alabama. Again, this can be more of a stopover for us, but we made it a two night stay in search of something more. Turns out, it was a good choice. We plugged several interesting places into our GPS and headed out for the day.

Our first stop was the Clarkson covered bridge, just west of Cullman. It’s been there since the 1920’s, and it definitely has some sagging going on.

That didn’t stop us from crossing it though. :). The property also has a millpond and grist mill. It was absolutely beautiful, especially being dressed in spring foliage.

Next up was to a childhood hero’s birthplace and museum: Jesse Owens. I ran track in junior high and I was always fascinated with Jesse’s story of his multiple gold medals at the 1936 Olympics, which made Adolf Hitler very unhappy. My dad took me to the Detroit Auto Show in my early teens, as he knew that Lincoln Mercury had a number of sports stars that would be there. One of them was Jesse Owens. I bypassed Al Kaline, Alex Karras, Geordie Howe and several others to be face-to-face with Jesse. I was laser focused on seeing him. What an honor to meet a living legend!

This time, we had to settle for a cutout of him as he passed away several years ago. I was surprised to find out that he was the director of minority personnel at Ford Motor Company from 1942 to 1945, just a few miles from where I grew up. The museum was interesting, as was the movie in the theater.

They even offered a chance to best Jesse’s 26 foot, 8-1/4 inch world record long jump. I missed it by about 17 feet. 🙂 We also learned that the museum is a Harvest Hosts site, offering a quiet place to spend a night in the Alabama countryside. We’ll remember that for the future.

From there, we went to check out a couple of antique stores. The first was more of a “mall” that had old and new mixed together, We spent a little while there and then headed to a store called Southern Accents Architectural Antiques in downtown Cullman. What a find!

This business deals with unique building supplies out of old buildings throughout the eastern U.S. Everything from doorknobs, to hinges, windows, doors, light fixtures…you name it, they probably have it. They even offer you a soft drink out of an old Coke ice chest to drink while you are browsing.

From that point on, we had to make some adjustments, due to weather. We even passed a brand new warehouse that had been hit by a tornado a few weeks earlier.

Photo, courtesy Yahoo News

Traveling through these areas in the spring and fall definitely require keeping an eye on the forecast. We also passed two multi-billion dollar EV battery plants under construction, and became aware of several more going up throughout the Midwest.

Photo courtesy of Korean Joon Ang Daily

Whether you are a critic or cheerleader of electric vehicles, there’s no denying that they are coming soon…in a big way.

We are now back in Michigan with our new rig fitting nicely into it’s summer home. More on that next time. Until then, safe and happy travels to all!

Florida, Fulltime RVing

Our Spectacular Winter

18 Comments

November 2022 to April 2023 – Melbourne Beach, Florida – Written by Jim

Some of our readers may have noticed that we haven’t posted all winter. One of them even gave me a gentle nudge, complete with exclamation points! So why the long pause in posting? Truth be told, we were chilling out after our push to get the cabin done, followed by our unplanned RV purchase on the way to Florida. It took us several weeks to get ourselves settled into the new RV, and once we did, we kicked back and enjoyed our spectacular winter.

NASA started off our launch season with a bang by sending up the first Artemis rocket.

Night became day when the mammoth ship headed to space! The unmanned craft performed flawlessly as it flew to the moon and back.

On top of that one NASA launch, we had somewhere in the vicinity of 30 SpaceX launches this year. I was able to work on my photography skills with that many opportunities!

One of my favorites was this streak shot of a Falcon Heavy launch, followed by the two side boosters returning to Cape Canaveral. Unlike a traditional photograph, I set my iPhone on a tripod and, using a remote shutter button, I let the image develop over several minutes. I never know for certain how a photo is going to turn out until the shutter is closed. Some are duds, but some are really cool.

Here is an example of when something cool happens. This is a Falcon 9 that flew through a cloud, which created a gap in the streak. Farther up, the stage separation can be seen, and the descending dash of light is the booster performing an entry burn to land on a ship out in the Atlantic. So you might be wondering what that dotted line is. That is an airplane strobe. The pilot was nowhere near the rocket, but from our vantage point, he lined up perfectly in that gap caused by that cloud. I looked on Flight Radar and got the plane’s tail number and was able to look up the pilot. I sent him the photo and his response was “best photobomb ever!” Air traffic control actually suggested he make that maneuver out over the ocean to view the launch. Pretty fun to be able to chronicle that for him.

Last year, I put up a Launch Day flag to alert our park residents of an upcoming launch. Val and Barb suggested a sign to tell the launch time, and it wasn’t long before Barb found an easel at a garage sale. I put a white board on it last summer and put launch times and other information on it this winter. I received a lot of thanks for doing that. Thank you for the easel, Barb!

Another big part of our winter was our weekly shuffleboard tournaments.

Brenda organized each weeks tourney. She and her husband Jimmy also incorporated a couple of cookouts into the mix. She also awarded medals to the winners of each weeks event, which ended up being a lot of fun!

Here is most of our crew. This was the end of the season, so some folks had already left for home.

Another event was a trip to Summer Crush Winery that Diana organized. We were thrilled that over 40 people drove over an hour each way to Fort Pierce!

A good time was definitely had by all.

Several of our friends made the trip on their motorcycles.

Betty jumped onto Park’s bike so she could send a photo to her grandkids. 🙂

On St. Patrick’s Day, Diana and I met her cousin. Jerry in Lakeland for a Detroit Tigers game against the New York Yankees. We went out to dinner afterwards and then shared an Airbnb that night. The Tigers had a huge lead at the beginning, but the Yankees made a game of it, coming to within one run. The Tigers pulled out the win!

All in all, it was a pretty darned good winter in Melbourne Beach. Our mission to chill out was accomplished! Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

Fulltime RVing

Horses and Saddles

24 Comments

Chattahoochee, Florida – November 11, 2022 – written by Jim

If there is one thing that Diana and I are good at, it’s our ability to stay flexible with our plans. Having an RV throughout our married lives has allowed us to move about the country as needed. Our years as full-time RVers has fine tuned that ability. When conditions warrant moving, our wheels have granted us the freedom to do so.

Our original ‘rig’ was actually a three man pup tent that we carried in our diesel Chevette. Our first trip to Maine from Michigan was a two-week jaunt that included a couple meals out and a two-masted schooner ride. Total cost for the trip was a whopping $400, as that car got 51 miles per gallon. There were plenty of PB&J sandwiches out of the cooler on that trip. Nevertheless, we had an amazing time! That laid the foundation for many more trips to Maine, along with other unique destinations through the years. During that time, our lodging has gone from that pup tent, a pop-up, two travel trailers and all the way up to a fifth wheel. We’ve kept that tent the entire time and refer to it as “Plan B”. 😊

We bought our full-timing rig, a used 2007 Colorado, three years before we retired and went on the road. At that time in 2011, we weren’t even sure if that would be our full-time RVing home. When 2014 rolled around, we strapped on the saddle and rode the Colorado off into the sunset.

Along came 2022 and our push to finish our new home in Michigan. Throughout the summer, we lived in that fifth wheel as we worked on the cabin. While we are pretty gentle on our homes, the RV was showing plenty of signs that it was nearing the end of it’s travels. I had plans for new flooring and a few other maintenance issues that had cropped up, so that was put on the back burner for the upcoming summer of 2023. With that in mind, we headed south for our winter base in Melbourne Beach.

Pretty early on in the trip, the rig started resisting. Our converter…the gizmo that keeps our batteries charged…quit. Seeing that our refrigerator ran exclusively off of battery power, that was a big problem! I tried to locate a replacement, to no avail. I knew I could get one from Amazon once we were settled in Florida, so I hooked up a battery charger to the batteries and charged them when we were sitting still for the night. Then, when we pulled into a rest area 30 miles north of Bowling Green, Kentucky, Diana noticed a deep slice in one of our tires on the rig. We limped into our campground in Bowling Green and put on the 9 year old spare. Knowing a new set of Goodyear G614 were going to run us well over a grand, we questioned whether or not we wanted to put a new saddle on our old horse. As luck would have it, Bowling Green, Kentucky is headquarters for Camping World and the Good Sam Club! Off to Camping World we went. Before the sun set on that day, we had an agreement on a new, much more nimble fifth wheel!

Meet our new 2023 Cougar 25RES! Note that I mentioned that it is more nimble. It is 3000 pounds lighter than our old rig and five feet shorter. That’s a welcome change for us, as our previous fifth wheel was a bit tough to get into those cool little roadside attractions we see in our travels. This rig also came with 400 watts of solar on the roof, so that allows us to enjoy some stops away from traditional campgrounds. The challenge for us was related to those fewer 5 feet: we had 5 feet of extra stuff to deal with! Thankfully, my sister let us ship some boxes of clothing to her, plus we donated some things and jettisoned others in the campground dumpsters.

Back to flexibility: We made our way to Melbourne Beach and set up at our winter spot. A few days in, there was an “area of concern” in the Atlantic that was headed our way and was going to bring us some wind and rain. Monday morning, we woke up to find out that disturbance had a name: Nicole! It wasn’t long before Jim Cantore and Mike Seidel from The Weather Channel were spotted in the area and we had a decision to make…stay or go. We decided to retrace our steps and head back to the panhandle for a few days, which is where we are now. Our friends reported that it got pretty wild when Nicole came through, even those who moved inland. By the time the storm got to us in the panhandle, it was just moderate rain and wind. We start heading back tomorrow.

We feel good about our continued flexibility. We are just not ready to hang up the keys on the RVing lifestyle, as there is so much to see and do out there. Our new fifth wheel should give us several years of safe and happy travels, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise. As always, we wish the same for all of you.

Fulltime RVing, Leelanau, Michigan

June Cabin Update

23 Comments

Leelanau County, MI – June 25, 2022 – Written by Jim

What a busy month it has been! When we last wrote, we had just taken a well-deserved day off for Diana’s birthday. We spent that day checking out our favorite Sleeping Bear Dunes spots, followed by a visit to Shady Lane Winery with Lane and Patti!

We followed that up with dinner at Nittolo’s in the town of Lake Leelanau. It was a fun day indeed!

The next day, it was back to work. Diana painted the carsiding that was going around the sides of the island, while I finished the tile.

We are really happy the way it came out! Next up was the top, which we decided to build in place. Our neighbor Jeff helped us bring the L-shaped top in from the barn (thanks Jeff!) and I knew this one was more than we could handle.

Once I cut out and assembled the top pieces, I attached 1/4” x 2” steel to the underside to support the overhang.

I then sandwiched it into the cleating and painted the underside white before Diana and I flipped it over.

Once it was flipped, we screwed it down and spread on the contact adhesive. You can see the laminate all glued up beyond the top.

We then put in the prep sink and we were done!

Time to head outside and work on those two decks! First up was our 12 x 12 deck off the kitchen.

The first project was to spread the gravel under the deck. There is weed block underneath that.

After all the posts were in place, I skirted it with white PVC and put the decking on. I put a single picture frame on this deck on three sides, so as to conceal the edges of the grooved Trex boards. I then stained the posts and built and stained the railing.

A huge thank you to our friends Fred and Bonnie for giving us their leftover railing parts from their deck project last year in New York!

One week after I started, we had a completed deck! Next up was our big 18 x 30 deck on the other side. We are going for the same look, with one difference:

This one is triple picture framed. The reason for that? The boards are running the 18 foot direction, and a 20 foot piece of Trex is over $100 each! A 16 footer is around $40 each. Plus, the picture frame looks kinda cool!

Once I had the main field of 16 foot boards on, I trimmed off the other ends of them, which I left long.

I snapped a chalk line on the path I wanted to cut.

I measured from the edge of the saw to the blade, which was 1-1/4”. I snapped a second chalk line that distance off the other line.

Using one of my aluminum scaffold platforms as a straight edge on that second line, I was able to cut a true line across the entire 30 foot deck.

And just like that, it was done.

Next, I’ll get the posts trimmed to the correct height and stain them. I’ll then put the outer triple picture frame on. After that is the railing and stairs before we can call it complete.

But first we are going to take a few afternoons off, because our friends Jodee and Bill are here for a few days!

We went to Music in the Park in Northport and also to a few spots in Traverse City so far.

No pictures of the four of us yet, but I did manage to get one of Tessa and me!

After the deck gets finished, we concentrate on finishing the inside of the cabin. Stay tuned for that. Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

Florida, Fulltime RVing

Things Go Better With Quincy, Florida!

21 Comments

Quincy, Florida – April 11, 2021 – Written by Jim

Quincy, Florida is like many small towns in America; tidy, tree-lined streets named after our nation’s founding fathers, with homes surrounding a central business district. Quincy is a supplier of goods for the farms in this section of Florida’s Panhandle, as US-90 runs right through the middle of it. Other than the over abundance of grand houses in town, you would be hard-pressed to find anything unusual here. Looks can be deceiving…

During the Great Depression, the local banker made a keen observation that changed the course of Quincy’s fortunes forever.

@floridamemory.com

That banker’s name was Mark Welch (Pat) Munroe. He noticed that people were spending their last nickel to buy an ice-cold Coca-Cola. He knew by that fact that the company most likely had staying power. He also realized that Coke’s stock was undervalued, as they had been experiencing issues with their sugar suppliers. What had started out as a $40 a share stock in 1919, Coca-Cola was selling at $19 in the early 1930’s. The smart investor he was, Mr. Munroe bought stock in Coke. The wise businessman he was, he also told his customers to do the same, offering loans to help them do so. His advice to them was to hold onto the stock and use only the dividends.

It turns out that he was correct. Coca-Cola stock consistantly rose, making Quincy, Florida the wealthiest town (per-capita) in the nation.

The Quincy State Bank also did very well for itself, never closing it’s doors during the Great Depression. Munroe family lore states that when federal agents came to arrest Mr. Munroe for keeping the bank open during a federally-imposed bank holiday, they were unable to find the Pat Munroe that was listed on the arrest warrant. Remember…that was only a nickname. 🙂 The bank is now part of Capital City Bank.

As a result of Mr. Munroe’s observations, Quincy eventually was home to sixty-seven Coca-Cola millionaires. Many of their descendants are still reaping the benefits of his foresight. The town not only weathered the Great Depression, but every recession and crop loss since.

Mark Welch Munroe and his wife lived at this stately home on US-90 in Quincy. It was donated by the family to the City of Quincy and is now called Quincy Garden Center, a local wedding and events center.

We located where he is buried on Find-a-Grave and visited his final resting place. The inscription on his stone is fitting and true. It reads: The influence of his personality was so great and his advice so widely sought, that he seemed an institution in the community. Hardly subject to removal by death. Who could ask for a finer legacy than that?

So next time you buzz by Quincy, Florida on I-10, turn in for a bit and have a Coke. It is the ‘pause that refreshes’, after all. The people of Quincy will thank you.

As you can probably tell, the exploRVistas caravan is on the move! Stay tuned as we uncover more of America’s cool stories. Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

Fulltime RVing

From the Beach to a Barn

39 Comments

June 11, 2020 – Leelanau County, Michigan

Written by Jim

Soooo…did you think we fell off the face of the earth?

When I wrote last, the COVID-19 pandemic was starting to make it’s presence known in a big way. We were at the beach in Florida with a handful of approved building permits for our summer projects in Michigan. As time progressed, it looked like our plans were in danger of drying up, as states began to lock down in earnest. We watched daily to see if we were going to be able to make the trek through the center of the country, and we paid close attention to the situation in Michigan. Our wheels didn’t roll until late April, which put us in Michigan in early May.

Our original plan was to stay at our former work camping spot, Wild Cherry Resort, for a few months while we got things situated on our property. Unfortunately, the county health department put a 14 day quarantine period in place, so we instead opted to go directly to our property and boondock on it without hookups. In the long run, that ended up working in our favor. We weren’t even sure if we could make it up our steep gravel driveway with the rig, so it was all a big gamble. Our friends Lane and Patti had checked things out a few days ahead of time and cleared a few downed limbs for us. Below is their photo:

As we headed up to Leelanau, Diana took a 20 minute lead in the Escape to make sure everything was still ok, which it was. I pulled in and put Hank the Deuce in 4 wheel low and proceeded up the hill. Piece of cake!

We rented a porta-potty (a requirement of our building permit) and settled in with our generator. Both Lane & Patti and Rod & Mary supplied us with water from their wells until we could get our own well installed.

One of the first deliveries was our 30 foot long trusses. Dropped at the road, we had to figure out how to get them up a 60 foot hill and a couple hundred yards to our building site.

Let’s just say, there isn’t much a John Deere, some scrap lumber, a C clamp and a handful of bungee cords can’t do. Bad part was, the delivery driver showed at 6 PM and Diana and I ended up finishing at 11:15.

Our next order of business was for Diana and I to clear a 10 foot wide, by 100 yard long path through the trees for our underground power cable to come in from the pole at the road.

This is a photo of that pathway after the cable was installed.

Following that, our excavator came onsite and got busy. He installed water and sewer lines, our septic system, and provided us with a great upper driveway. He also dug the foundation for the barn.

This is our drain field before it was totally covered up. Our permanent RV site was quite low, so he built it up for us.

That resulted in a fairly steep hill off the backside that we were worried would wash out, so I started gathering rocks from wherever I could find them on the property.

Most of Leelanau County is a glacial moraine, so finding rocks was not an issue. We ended up terracing the hill and planted grass and periwinkle to hold the soil.

We’ve had a few heavy rains since we did this and it is holding extremely well. Every bit of that rock is from our property. There is a lot more where that came from!

The sites passed my inspection, once all was said and done.

Next up was the barn foundation.

Footings, then…

…block walls. Our excavator suggested using a taller rear block wall, as there is a hill that we would be dealing with in the back.

It got pretty crowded up on our little hilltop a few days. One day in particular saw two cement trucks, two well drilling trucks, three power company trucks and a bevy of personal vehicles. It wasn’t long and we had things ready for the framers. They showed up last Thursday.

By Thursday evening, we had three walls! And as of Wednesday…

…the barn is framed in! Not bad for 37 days on the property. 🙂

Has it been all work? Mostly…but we also have taken in the beauty of our little slice of Leelanau.

We had plenty of trillium in our woods, along with several other species of wildflowers.

We also found quite a few morel mushrooms!

Our neighbor’s cherry orchard was gorgeous when it was in bloom. We have several old apple trees on our land, as it was an orchard in a long ago life.

Stay tuned for our next post, as we continue to finish the structure. We will be doing the siding and plumbing, and will hire out the overhead door and the electrical work. We will also dress up the shed to match the barn. We’ll fill you in on our well story, which was a doozy.

Until next time; stay safe out there!

Florida, Fulltime RVing, Michigan

A Snowball in Florida?

19 Comments

February 1, 2020 – Melbourne Beach, Florida

Written by Jim

The metaphor of a tiny snowball rolling down a hill and gaining size was a thought that kept going through my head in early January. With the fact that we were on the coast in Florida…at an elevation of 10 feet above sea level and with us in shorts…it was just that; a metaphor. That thought was rooted in my attempted recovery from the most recent bout of whatever crud was going around. It turns out that it had snowballed into a full-blown case of bronchitis. I ended up coughing so hard that I pulled muscles in my back and aggravated my sciatic issues on my left side. I could barely walk, once I mustered the energy to get out of my chair. I was a mess, to put it mildly. On more than one occasion, I thanked God that I had decided against working for UPS this year.

First order of business was to get over the bronchitis. A trip to Surfside Urgent Care netted me several prescriptions, including an inhaler to stop the out-of-control coughing. If you owned stock in Walgreens over that period of time, you are welcome for the upswing in your portfolio. 🙂 The concoction of drugs, coupled with some great nursing from my lovely caregiver Diana, did the trick. By mid month, the snowball had stopped rolling.

The next thing on the agenda was to address the sciatic issue. My leg pain had subsided, but it was replaced with numbness. I contacted my nephew Dr. Dan, who is a physical therapist in Michigan, asking advice on what direction to go in seeking health care. My primary care doctor is in Michigan, and I really wanted to get a jump on this. Dan provided me with a ton of information (Thank you!) and a recommendation to seek out a good physical therapist down here. Florida has a law that allows a person to get 30 days of PT without a physicians referral, so I connected with one that was highly rated and accepted by our insurance. I’m happy to say that after a week and a half, I am making great progress! The snowball is indeed melting.

In Space Coast news, we’ve had three launches so far this year. January 6 saw the launch of Starlink 2, the second operational flight of SpaceX’s constellation of internet-providing satellites. With it being an evening launch that was flying northeast, we knew our best views would be further north of our winter home. We headed up to Patrick Air Force Base, which sits just south of Cape Canaveral.

What a show! What you are seeing in this photo (left to right) is the trail from the main engines, followed by MECO (main engine cut off). The next dot is the second-stage engine start (SES), followed by that portion of the rocket fading off into orbit. At that point, the rocket is outside of the atmosphere, so the flame disappears. Farther to the right, the first re-entry burn from the first stage can be seen, as it slows down to land on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, located several hundred miles out to sea. The final burn wasn’t visible, as it was over the horizon. I guess Earth isn’t flat, after all. :). For a full list of SpaceX acronyms…some of them hilarious… click HERE. BFR is one of my favorites, as is FTBA. 🙂

The next launch was the much anticipated IFA test. IFA stands for In-Flight Abort. NASA will be launching astronauts on SpaceX rockets, and this test was performed to see if the capsule could escape from an exploding rocket. We decided that Patrick AFB was the best spot to view it from, so away we went!

The weather had other plans, as the rocket disappeared into the clouds. We did hear a tremendous BOOM though (that’s not an acronym), as the rocket experienced RSD (rapid scheduled disassembly). Here’s what it looked like on Doppler radar:

The smaller green dot to the right of the explosion is the capsule flying away from the exploding rocket. The flight was a success and we should expect to see astronauts headed to the space station this spring.

The last launch for January was another SpaceX Starlink launch. Having a PT commitment later that morning, we chose to view it from our park:

It never gets old. 🙂

The other entertainment around here is Bingo and the weekly meat shoot at the local Moose lodge. This version involves a deck of cards instead of guns, but the prizes are still sizable cuts of meat. I won some delicious pork chops and Diana scored the 50/50 a few weeks back. It’s always a good time, as a large group of us from the park shows up. The caller refers to us as the Big Table.

We also had lunch with our friends Rod and Mary, we went to Merritt Island with our friend Paul and his Aunt Joan, and we did a Costco run with our full-time RV friend Kathy. This is the fifth state we’ve connected with her in.

And we’ve gained some ground on our garage project. We have all of our subcontractors lined up now and we’ve secured our land use permit. Once we have the building permit in hand, we can begin!

Actually, there is a fair amount of white stuff up on our hill, so we will wait until it melts before we head up there. We don’t want my snowball metaphor to become a reality. 🙂

Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

Astronomy and Space, Florida, Fulltime RVing

Things Are Looking Up!

15 Comments

November 1 – December 21, 2019 – Florida’s Space Coast

Written by Jim

With all the people along the Space Coast of Florida looking up at the skies recently, it’s a wonder we haven’t all tripped and fallen over each other. Several launches have occurred since we’ve arrived, along with a unique event that had our eyes on the sky. More on that last one in a bit. We will also fill you in on a few things that have been happening with us lately.

Our first goal when we arrived in Florida was to get our first of two rounds of Shigrix shingles vaccines. That had to be put on hold after Diana and I came down with some pretty nasty colds from our trip south. Those carried on for two weeks and kept us home bound except for one trip to the beach on November 11 to watch SpaceX launch another 60 satellites into their Starlink internet constellation.

I did manage to grab this short video of it peeking through the clouds as it soared over the ocean. After it disappeared into the clouds, we followed suit and vanished from sight into out RV to continue our recovery. And SpaceX recovered their booster, after it landed on the barge Of Course I Still Love You 250 miles off the coast.

Once we felt we were over our colds, we made our way to the pharmacy to get those vaccines. We knew the side effects of them was flu-like symptoms for a day or two, so we weren’t looking forward to that. The pharmacist told me “As quickly as the side effects hit you, they will be equally quick to leave.” He wasn’t kidding. I felt as if I was hit by a truck, as every joint in my body ached until 1 PM the following day. By 1:15, it was gone. Fortunately, Diana had just mild symptoms. We have one more round to go in mid January and then we are (hopefully) protected.

The rest of November had us sprucing up our lot.

The sticker grass invades the plantings each summer, so it is up to us to clean it up. The park owners didn’t plant this landscaping (previous residents did), so they require us to maintain it or they will take it out and let the grass take over. We like the look of the plantings and gladly put in the effort to keep them looking nice. It’s only labor, and the sandy soil is easy to work with.

On December 4, we headed up to Port Canaveral with out friends Bob and Pat to view the next SpaceX launch up close. We were actually a bit too close, as we had a hill blocking our view of the pad. It would’ve been great once the rocket came over the hill, but unfortunately the winds were too high to launch. It did launch the next day, and we viewed it from our beach. This particular mission was a resupply trip to the International Space Station.

This is a frame grab from a failed attempt at a video. I made a rookie mistake and left it on autofocus. Still, not too bad considering the rocket is a good 50 miles away at this point.

Once again, SpaceX recovered their booster, landing 250 miles off of Jacksonville on Of Course I Still Love You. These people are good at what they do.

Our next event was a quick day trip to Lakeland to meet up with fellow RV-Dreamers for a picnic.

What a treat to get together with these folks! The big news this year is that several couples…including Howard and Linda (RV-Dreams founders and owners in the center of this photo)…have transitioned from full-time to part-time status. Many of us have bought houses or property and are establishing roots. The two of us are still officially full-timers for another three years or so, until our heads hit the pillows in our cabin.

And on that home front, we have made some progress on our Northern Michigan property. We have our garage plans drawn and are in the middle of securing permits. Most of our subcontractors have been lined up and we are awaiting quotes from a few more. We feel we are on track to have a completed garage and utilities by the time we head back here next fall.

Following that, we headed to Cocoa Beach with Bonnie and Fred for that unique event we mentioned earlier.

Here are the four of us, ready for the show! And what might that show be that had us looking skyward?

Skydiving Santas! Plane load after plane load full of Santas dropped from the sky and attempted to hit giant inflatable targets on the beach.

This Santa even hitched a ride on his buddy’s parachute on the way down! It was a really fun way to spend the day! Unfortunately for me, I was beginning to come down with yet another cold. Spending the day in breezy conditions probably didn’t help matters. I’m still recovering.

Speaking of recoveries, SpaceX managed the quickest turnaround of a launch facility by sending the JSAT communications satellite on its way on December 16 at 7:10 PM. It flew from Pad 40, which had seen the ISS resupply mission depart just 11 days earlier. Feeling as crummy as I did, I wasn’t thrilled about hanging out on the beach in the cool night air, so I opted for an attempt at a ‘streak shot’ over our Christmas decorated RV. It involves using a tripod, an iPhone, and the Slow Shutter app. Added bonus this time around is that my new iPhone 11 has a wide angle lens available, ensuring more field of vision to catch the rocket’s flame trail.

To say I am pleased with the result is an understatement. From left to right is the first stage trail, main engine cutoff, second stage ignition and the trail until it disappeared from sight. The soft white jumbled blob to the right of our lit up palm trees is our illuminated American flag. That’s the result of the camera overlaying successive photos over each previous image to create the effect. Diana pointed out that it looks like a Christmas angel. 🙂

On Thursday afternoon, after an almost three day voyage from 450 miles offshore, the SpaceX first stage made it back to Port Canaveral.

This is the third time this booster has flown, and it will most likely fly again. Again, SpaceX is good at what they do.

On Friday, December 20, another launch took place. This one was the test flight of the Boeing Starliner, one of the two entries into the Commercial Crew program designed to launch astronauts from American soil again…the other being SpaceX.

With the launch occurring at 6:36 AM, we opted to view it from our corner. This is the view looking north as it disappeared into the clouds. It was clear up at the Cape, so early risers to the north ended up with a great show.

Quick note: As of this writing, the Boeing Starliner experienced a problem and will be returning to Earth early. It is an un-crewed test flight, so no lives are in danger. Stay tuned for updates in our next post. Until then, safe and happy travels to all!

Florida, Fulltime RVing, Michigan

Following the Autumn Leaves

29 Comments

October 6 – November 1, 2019 – Michigan to Florida

Written by Jim

In our last post, I mentioned relearning how to drive in the U.S. after spending a month in the U.K. and Ireland. Our delayed flight got us back after dark, so we had to navigate the aggressive freeways of Chicago in an unfamiliar rental car. Talk about wanting to get back on the plane! Once past Gary and into Michigan, the traffic eased and we were able to relax. Jet lag caught up to us soon after, so we grabbed a comfy room at the Hampton Inn in South Haven. After a delicious breakfast at the Phoenix Street Cafe the next morning, we headed back to Grand Rapids to get our vehicles. A huge thank you to Terry and Diane for allowing us to store them at their home!

We moved to our base for the next week, Woodchip Campground. Our spot was just a few sites east of where we spent the winter of 2014-15. This go around, we spent the week taking care of annual physicals, dentist appointments, haircuts and such. We even bopped over to Detroit for one appointment at Henry Ford Hospital. That gave us the opportunity to drop in on Diana’s cousin Debbie on our way home. It was great to see her again. We finished up the week with our annual trip to Kalamazoo for WMU homecoming.

It’s always good to to be with our crew! After watching the Broncos beat Miami of Ohio, we headed back to our old dorm, French Hall, to check it out.

Here’s Diana knocking on the door of her old room. No one was there, unfortunately.

From Kalamazoo, we headed back up to our property in Leelanau County. We wanted to get some measurements and talk to the county building personnel while we were there. Knowing our land is loaded with maples, we were hoping our trees were colorful.

Needless to say, we were not disappointed!

It was very exciting to be able to experience our first autumn on our little slice of heaven! A note of interest: one month after this photo was taken, three feet of snow fell here. The scene is far different, indeed. With the temperatures plummeting, we made the decision to head south.

After stopping to see Diana’s sister and family in New Baltimore, Michigan, we headed towards Wapakoneta, Ohio. This tiny town is home to Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon.

It is also home to the Armstrong Air and Space Museum, which is situated just a few yards from Interstate 75. We’ve driven by this unusually-shaped building many times since it opened in 1972 but have never stopped in. Fifty years and three months to the day of Neil taking that otherworldly step, we finally walked through these doors.

We were amazed at the amount of artifacts in this small museum, which included this space-flown shuttle tire that you could touch. It was far thicker than any tire I had ever handled. The exhibits also detailed the 25 astronauts that are native to Ohio. Some of the most famous are John Glenn (first American to orbit Earth) and Jim Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13.

Ohio is also the birthplace of Judith Resnik, a member of the crew of the ill-fated shuttle, Challenger. The small U.S. and Ohio flags to the right were in her personal bag that was recovered from the Atlantic Ocean floor. She was America’s second woman in space, having flown on the space shuttle Discovery in 1984. Not only was she an astronaut, she had a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, was a biomedical engineer, and an accomplished concert pianist.

And does anyone remember these? I drank many a glass of milk out of one of these as a kid. Libby Glass and Marathon Oil, both Ohio companies, manufactured and distributed these glasses during the Apollo missions. They have them for sale at the museum.

As we made our way through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina, we were surprised that we hadn’t gotten ahead of the autumn leaves changing color. The drive south was much prettier than we anticipated. Our goal was to stop and see Diana’s brother who recently moved to Franklin, NC.

After setting up camp, we took a drive to see Dry Falls. This beautiful set of falls is located along US-62, one of the most twisty and narrow U.S. highways we had ever been on.

They were named for the fact that a person can remain relatively dry when walking behind them.

The next day, we spent the day with Dan, driving into Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Our destination that day was Clingman’s Dome, one of the highest peaks east of the Mississippi River.

Dan had been here in the past, having hiked this portion of the Appalachian Trail with a friend of his.

The colors from the top were outstanding. These mountains were where we drove out of the autumn display, as green leaves and palm trees soon took over as we headed further south.

Before too long, we made our way to Melbourne Beach and our little slice of Florida paradise.

We look forward to a winter filled with friends and rocket launches, so stay tuned for that. Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

Fulltime RVing, South Dakota

A Surprise Along the Missouri

16 Comments

June 13, 2019 – Pierre, SD

Sometimes a trip to Walmart turns into an unexpected adventure.

Once we headed east out of the Badlands, we made a two-day stop at Chamberlain, South Dakota.

P1020227 (3)

Chamberlain is the spot where I-90 crosses the Missouri River.  It has long been a favorite spot of ours, as the rest area at the top of the bluff affords a sweeping view of the prairie interacting with the river as it rolls towards St. Louis.  Both in 1804 and 1806, Lewis and Clark passed through here with their Corps of Discovery.  My cousin George Drouillard made three additional passages through here after his trips with the Corps.

P1020229 (2)

Its not difficult to take the bridges out with your mind and imagine the early nineteenth century expedition gliding past this vista.

P1020217 (2)

A recent addition to the rest area is a statue of a native American woman called Dignity.  This  50-foot tall installation was brought to this site in one piece in 2016.  The work is intended to honor the Lakota people who are native to this area.  Many people think this is Sacajawea, which it isn’t.  She joined and left the Corps of Discovery in North Dakota and was not with them at this point.

Our day off from traveling turned out to be much more than we thought it would.  Needing to make a Walmart run, we decided to backtrack up the Missouri to the state capital, Pierre.  In the process, we discovered we had been pronouncing the town’s name incorrectly all these years.  Maybe it’s my French-Canadian heritage, but I had been saying ‘pee-air’ since studying state capitals in school.  The easiest way to remember how to pronounce it is to drop the ‘re’ off the end and think of a fishing pier.

Our day trip took us along the back roads through the Lakota reservation along the river.  We saw the tribal headquarters, perched high above the Big Bend of the Missouri.

map_bigbend-clark

This huge horseshoe in the river is nearly unchanged from when Drouillard and John Shields explored the neck of land between it in 1804.  Captain William Clark described it in his journal as follows:

We Sent a man to step off the Distance across the gouge. He made it 2000 yds. The distance around is 30 miles.

Before crossing the river into Pierre, we stopped at Fischers Lilly Park in the adjoining town of Fort Pierre.

P1020242 (2)

Here the Bad River flows into the Missouri.  At this spot Lewis and Clark met with the Teton Sioux tribe over a six-day period.  Language barriers led to an armed conflict, but Chief Black Buffalo diffused the situation and allowed the Corps to pass through.  Note that this spot was the first place the U.S. flag flew over South Dakota.

IMG_2931 (2)

From the southern river bank, the unassuming capitol building can be seen above the trees.

P1020248 (2)

The inside of the seat of government in South Dakota is anything but unassuming.  It is absolutely gorgeous.

P1020256 (2)

We spent a fair amount of time walking through the building, peering into the House and Senate chambers, as well as this impressive rotunda.

P1020260 (2)

While we were there, they were setting up to unveil three new statues to add to the Trail of Governors on the city’s streets.  Similar to the statues of U.S. presidents in Rapid City, this installation in Pierre honors the state’s leaders since it was admitted into the Union in the late 1800’s.  I was granted permission to take this photo, as long as I didn’t post it until after the ceremony on June 15.

Speaking of statues, there is a memorial on the capital grounds honoring eight South Dakotans who perished in a plane crash in 1993.

P1020265 (2)

One of them was Governor George Mickelson.  You may recognize his name from the multi-use trail that runs the length of the Black Hills.  The group was on an economic development mission to save the largest agricultural processing employer in South Dakota at that time.

P1020270 (2)

The granite memorial is topped by the sculpture Fighting Stallions, which was originally done in mahogany in 1935 by Korczak Ziolkowski. He is better known for his work on the Crazy Horse monument near Custer.  The original wooden carving is in the museum at Crazy Horse.  Note that the entire sculpture is supported by the one stallions tail.

P1020269 (2)

While we walked around the memorial reading the stories of these eight, this curious bunny kept watch over us but did not seem to be frightened by our presence.  We felt as at ease as this little one in this beautiful place along the Missouri.

P1020271 (2)

The next day, we departed Chamberlain for points east…ultimately ending up in our summer locale at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan.  This wraps up our exploration of the western U.S. for this year…or does it?  To find out more about that, you will have to tune in next Saturday morning.  Until then, safe and happy travels to all!