Happy Thanksgiving

Ah... the pressures of writing a blog.    While we were on the road, we had something relatively new to report almost everyday.    Now we are settled in at the "mobile home" and there is work to be done everyday.   We've had an interesting week.

We've been taping, cleaning, and getting the mobile ready to paint up through Saturday.

Saturday night was the first quartet "sing" at the Lake Gibson Church of the Nazarene featuring the Kingsmen Quartet.    Sheryl and I took a break from the work and went with Paul and Judy Purdy.  The Kingsmen are sorta like the Oak Ridge Boys, except they sing music with an emphasis on Jesus and how He works in our lives.   That might be the essence of quartet music.   The Kingsmen have been a quartet since the 1950's.

Monday we were back at it - ready to paint the mobile - the major job to be completed this fall before the renters come in January.

We taped and papered..  papered and taped AND removed various things we didn't want painted.  The weather man had predicted low winds for Monday of this week - a must for our park because the units are quite close together.   I got the Graco paint sprayer system all ready to be flushed out with water and I had a leak.   I tried to get help at Lowe's..  no way.   I finally called Graco.... and they offered to send me a new gun, no charge, overnight.  So the painting was put on hold until Tuesday.   My heartfelt thanks to Graco.

Now it seemed like a good time to grab the camera, the golf clubs and go have some fun.  But first, a stop at the alligator pond.

Yup.. that's right here in the park.  And not too far from the goat pen too. 

Tuesday morning 10:05 a.m.   The new paint gun arrived via UPS and 15 minutes later I was ready to spray paint.  Two hours later I had 3/4 of the mobile done but I was a gallon of paint SHORT!   So off to Lowe's I went.   I guess I finished up finally about 3 p.m. and Phil and I (Phil is my son) had the whole place cleaned up and the tape removed by dark.  

New carpet is coming on Monday.   It's going to look nice in the living room, all we seem to be doing most of the time is working.  We're going to have to get back on the road to get a break from all this work.   All in good time, all in good time.

We wish everyone a great Thanksgiving.   We are thankful for how God has provided for us and the life He allows us to live.

It's been an interesting week.

I decided when I started this blog that I wasn't going to write something every day if I didn't have something to say.   I'm still not sure I have something to say today, but here goes anyway.   I also just realized that I don't have any pictures.

We started the week with the little 1400 psi electric power washer on the back side of the mobile.   We knew we had to wash the crud off the trailer before we could paint it.   Our next door neighbor Larry came around back asking if I had any fresh gasoline, which I did.  I got the gas can and wandered over to Larry's to discover that his friend Doug had just bought a brand new pressure washer from Home Depot.  They were about to test it.   I asked them if they'd like to test it on a "real test."   They said yes.   The short of it?   I got to finish the mobile with the new pressure washer.   Boy, was it great!   So the trailer is now clean and ready to paint.

We've been on the camp golf course a few times.   We haven't really played through nine holes yet.  We've always had something come up that cut the game short.  We started on the fifth hole tonight and played through nine, at which time it was cold and really getting dark.

We've been to the Lakeland Regional Hospital a couple of times.   A good friend of ours in there - He had surgery Tuesday and he is hoping to come home tomorrow.   Sickness doesn't take a vacation.

If I get some really exciting pictures of the hawk that watches over the golf course, or the turkeys that run across the golf course, or the golf balls that I hit that wind up at the wrong hole, I'll post them..  For now....

The Park and the Air Show

I know it's been "a bit" since I updated this blog so here goes.   We've been at the park a little under a week and we are enjoying the "retired life."

We unhooked the trailer and parked it in RV storage on the east side of the golf course.

Florida is "blessed" with wild pigs and they destroy the golf course at night.   The park has someone that traps them, but these are new "holes" so I guess the trapper hasn't gotten all of the pigs yet.

Here's the layout of the course.   It's the only golf course that Sheryl and I will ever play on.  Membership is $20 for the two of us for a year.   We can go out and play a couple of holes and then go do something else, if we want to.  We don't keep score 'cause we don't want to count that high.   We go out and whap the golf balls just for fun.

Here's some of the wildlife.   

 This could be an Ibis

And these are three of the pet goats.  The goats are "park pets."   No jokes about old goats please! 

Saturday November 5 was a free air show at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, featuring the Air Force Thunderbirds.   We arrived there around 1:30 p.m. for the 2:30 show.  After walking about one half a mile from the parking lot, we arrived at the flight line.   There were over 50,000 people at the show.

 The flight-line featuring the Thunderbirds

The flight line with the Thunderbirds.

Guess who is standing in the hatch of a C-117?   That's me and and Phil, our son who lives in Lakeland.  Sheryl is taking the picture.

 Another shot of some of the crowd.

The traffic was horrendous but the show was worth it.

The pilots who fly these F-16's are amazing.

The C-117 you see here can land and take off from a 3500 un-paved airstrip.   That's pretty good performance.


We went to church at Light and Life Park Church this morning and then hit the Smokey Bones Restaurant for lunch - Sheryl's sister Judi had a special coupon for us.   Even though there was a little rain this afternoon, I'm sitting under the carport, outside, writing this and it's very nice.  I think we've found warmth.

Next week I'll start planning how I'm going to paint the outside of the mobile.  The shutters have to be removed and the whole trailer has to be washed.   Then we'll have to mask off the places we don't want the paint (like the windows) and then set up the sprayer and go to it.  But for now, for today, I'm going to post this and finish my coffee.

Made it to Light and Life Park in Lakeland, Florida

We said "goodbye" to the Big Bass Campground in the Ocala National Forest this morning.  You would never guess that less than .5 miles off of a county road down this dirt forest service road that you would find a nice little campground.   There weren't any signs on the county road about the campgrounds.  I'm glad we had extra help from the computer and the mapping programs I was using, along with the paper atlas we picked up in Maine.

But before we left we took some pictures of some "things" we wanted to remember.

That my friends is a track of a black bear.   The trail in which the track was made was less than 50 yards from where we were camped.

You can tell from the size of Sheryl's hand the size of the track.  The average black bear in Ocala weighs around 400 pounds.   The biggest recorded was over 600.    That is a lot of bear.

We never did find out what these berries were called.

They are quite small and colorful.

We took back roads to get from Big Bass Campground to the Light and Life Park, through Eustis and and Taveres southeast of Ocala.   Nice communities and it seemed like a lot going on.  We saw once of the largest tree farms in the country on Rt 33 on our way to the Park.  It was a real nice drive.

Once at the Park, we said hello to our son Phil, and then drove out to the camper storage area and unhooked.   We picked up some things from the trailer and headed over to our mobile.  We have truly found warmth.

Tomorrow it will be time to get to work.   The mobile needs painting on the outside and there are some other things we'd like to do before the end of the year.   But we'll relax too.   Until the next blog....

Still enjoying the Ocala NF

We woke up to the sun smiling it's way through the trees and scrub.  What a beautiful day in Florida.   The temps were on the rise, going to the mid 70's.   I think we've found warmth.

Breakfast was inside the travel trailer today as there was still a chill in the air.   After breakfast, coffee, and some Bible reading, we took off for a walk around the park.   During our walk, we got side tracked on a trail not too far from our campsite.   We found large tracks, way too big to be dog tracks.  We figured that they must be black bear, because they are plentiful around these parts.   We just haven't seen one yet.

When we walk off the road or foraging for wood,

We found it best to keep our eyes peeled for this:

He or she is about 3 inches in diameter and they grow larger.   We think it's a banana spider and they love to spin huge webs (3-5 feet wide) at just about face level.   You can be walking along and if it you aren't looking ahead for a web, you might just have a close encounter with one of these Florida delights.  But, since I just learned that they eat cockroaches, they are OKAY in my book because I think the cockroach is the Florida state mascot - or should be.    We spend enough money keeping them at bay in Lakeland at the mobile. 

We got our work done up around 2 pm this afternoon and sat down outside in the sun to read.   How sweet it is.   It's supposed to hit 80 degrees tomorrow.   We finished off the day with Sheryl's homemade pizza and a campfire. 

Tomorrow's another day and another adventure.

Coming to you from Ocala National Forest

We are in the Big Bass National Forest Campground.   Great little place.   More about that later.

In the last blog, I told you we had stayed overnight in Clayton, NC.   Prior to that we travelled from West Chester, PA through Washington, DC on I-95.   Washington was grey, rainy, full of traffic and cold.

It was nice to get going south to Virginia and North Carolina where it was supposedly warmer..

At one of our MANY fuel stops.   We are getting 7.7 mpg.

 

When we reached Savannah, GA we decided to drive downtown - to relive an experience from many years ago.  It didn't disappoint.  The streets were narrow but we got to see the waterfront.

We even decided to cross the Rte 17/25 bridge north over the Savannah River.  It was the steepest climb that we have had in the whole trip so far.   Maybe we can climb mountains because going up that bridge felt like we were mountain climbing.

After the bridge, we headed south again on I-95 looking for warmth.  We found it as we crossed the Georgia-Florida State line.   We wheeled into the Florida Welcome Station and sure enough, they had free orange or grapefruit juice.   Sheryl went for the OJ while I took the grapefruit juice.   Oh my, we were almost to warmth.

I liked the clock entitled Florida Time.  Notice the hands, the lack thereof.

We left the Florida Welcome Center happy and loaded up with pamphlets.   We were in warmth and headed for more.  We traveled on I-95 until we got to Daytona Beach and then turned the truck west in search of the Big Bass Campground in the Ocala National Forest.   Traveling west out of Altoona, FL, and following the directions from Fred and Suzi Dow's website and watching my DeLorme Topo 9.0 map running on the laptop, we eventually arrived at this little National Forest Campground.   There are 18 really nice sites.  There is a dump site and there are water spigots throughout the campground.   We found a site that had a huge paved area for the travel trailer.   It was even paved under the picnic table and had a grill.   How sweet it is.

 

We got set up just as the daylight was fading.   I quickly gathered some downed wood and in no time, we had a campfire for roasting marshmellows.

 

 

A perfect ending to a great day.   We had finally found warmth.   We woke up the next morning to rain around 4:30 a.m. I guess it was about 9:30 a.m. that we decided to make breakfast - OUTSIDE under the awning in spite of the rain..   

After breakfast, we sat outside under the awning, drank our coffee and read our Bibles.  What a nice day.   Then the sun came out around 1 p.m. and we got out the charcoal and proceeded to cook all kinds of grill-able meat.. some for lunch and some to put in the refrigerator to be warmed later.

We might watch a movie later.   We can have the generator on until 10 p.m., but we try to keep it quiet.  There are only 3 other units camping here.   And, there is a campground host for added security.  It's a great place to camp.   And did I mention the price:  $5 per night with our Senior Pass.  We might stay a couple more nights or a couple more weeks.   Who knows.   We are here in warmth.

It's getting warmer

We parked last night at Sheryl's brother's place in Clayton, NC.   Everything worked out great getting the rig into Jim's driveway and it was a nice overnight in the front yard.   Very quiet neighborhood.   Got to visit with our grown up nieces and nephew - Nathan,  Ambyr and her son Aiden, and Angela, her husband Nathan, and their two kids, Landon and Kenzie.   We had a great time getting caught up after not seeing them for a long time.  Jim lives in Pontiac and just retired from GM.   He bought the house in Clayton and Ambyr and Aiden live there.   Ambyr is studying to be a veterinarian technician.   Angela home schools.   Nathan is busy working a variety of jobs.

After a peaceful night's rest, we spent the morning fixing breakfast and getting hooked up.   I should have taken pictures, but I was pretty busy.   The strangest thing was a bush on one side of the driveway that I was afraid might scratch the trailer when I pulled out.   I got a couple of ratchet straps out and tied them around the bush.   Problem solved.   We pulled out without any difficulty and then I released the bush back to it's natural habitat.

We made a quick stop in town for a couple of things and had an interesting discovery:   Not all Murphy Gas Stations are connected with Walmart.   It has to say Murphy USA on the sign in order to use the Walmart gift card and get the $.10 per gallon discount.  But we catch on quick.   Now when we call for permission to park overnight at a Walmart, we also ask if they have Murphy gas. 

We are in Pooler, Ga at a Walmart tonight, along with a number of other rigs, all headed south.  It's a 24-hour store so it might be a little noisy, but so far, so good and it's supposed to get down to 40 degrees tonight.  Today got up to 60 degrees and tomorrow it's supposed to be nicer and we are headed farther south so it's got to get warmer, right?

Visiting Relatives

We left the Boston/Cape Cod KOA yesterday around 11 a.m. with a stop at an RV parts place for a new electric brake controller.   The electric brake controller activates the electric brakes on the travel trailer - a wonderful thing 'cause the truck has difficulty stopping itself and the trailer without the trailer brakes.   I found a Walmart parking lot and installed it in place of the old controller.   I thought it was going to solve the "issues" I was having.  Not completely.   The trailer braking issue isn't resolved yet but lets just say I'm not tailgating in the least.

We drove all the way from the KOA to a Walmart near Trenton, NJ and stayed overnight.   I'm glad that part of the trip is over because New York and northern New Jersey tend to be very congested.   The traffic is a bear and too many people can't wait to cut in front of you so they can get 10' further ahead - and then they hit their brakes.   They have no clue to the struggles I'm having with the brakes.  Oh well!

We met up with my niece Lori.  She and her husband Cliff live in the Trenton area so we got to meet her for coffee this morning.  It was nice visiting.   Then it was off to West Chester, PA just west of Philadelphia to visit with my sister Belva and her husband Clayton.    Clayton and Belva "mentored" me while I was growing up through junior and senior high school.  They took me to church and youth group.  Belva was a sounding board for me when I thought my parents didn't understand me.  They lived on my paper route and I was always "raiding" their refrigerator while I was delivering papers.   I learned to play the organ while I was baby sitting her kids.   Clayton got me interested in amateur radio, even loaning me a receiver to get me started.  They are doing okay but it's hard watching people you love getting older.   Belva especially had a good day and we enjoyed our visit.   But it was time to press on.   We're tired of cold nights and not so warm days.   Like the blog says:  "The Trip to Warmth."   We're not there yet, but we soon hope to be.

We walked the Freedom Trail in Boston

Sheryl and I caught the 9:44 a.m. train to Boston from the Middleboro/Lakeville station - only 7 minutes from our KOA where we are parked.  We didn't know what to expect.   When we got there, we paid $5 to park and got on the train when it arrived.   

We started into Boston and it wasn't long until a conductor showed up to collect our fare (cash only).  $15 round-trip for two.   A bargain.   We just sat and enjoyed the hour-long ride to the South End Terminal.

And that began our walking experience.  Walking the Freedom Trail.  Rather, we walked some of it..  it was a LOT of walking.   

We passed the waterfront first.

From there, we headed to Paul Revere's house, and then the Old North Church (one if by land and two if by sea).   

The British were going to send out troops to put down the upcoming rebellion.  The colonists needed to be warned of their coming.   They needed to know if the British were coming by land or sea.   Two lanterns were hung in the steeple of the Old North Church to warn Paul Revere that the British were coming by sea.    

Then Paul warned the colonists that "the British were coming" and coming very soon.  And the first battles of the revolutionary war began in Lexington and Concord.

The inside of the Old North Church is interesting.  The gentleman speaking to a tour group is speaking from a lectern.  The pulpit is high about is head (notice the thin microphone).   And yes, the church is still active today.

Notice that the people are sitting in little cubicles.   Those were rented out to the parishioners.  The best cubes were in the front and center.   In today's dollars, they would have leased for about $25, 000 per year.   But for that, you could decorate your "cube" however you wanted.   You might want to have a little iron box at your feet in which you would place hot rocks during the winter and maybe some pillows and chairs from home.

The Old North Church is not contemporary in worship.   The organ is in a loft in the back where it has been since the revolution AND it's used every Sunday for worship services.

After the Old North Church, we visited Copp's Hill Cemetary that dated back before the revolutionary war.   According to the gravestones, people died at a lot younger age back then.

We went to Boston expecting that each historical site would be surrounded by green space and "stand out."   It just isn't so.   Almost every historical site is crowded out by buildings around them, just like the picture of the Old North Church Church.

The "Old Meeting Place" was where the Sons of Liberty met to plot and plan. Sorry, no picture.

We saw Boston Common, walked along the waterfront AND did you know that some of the historical sites are located in the north part of Boston which is home to a lot of Italian Americans.  Here are some images.

About 2 p.m., we decided to take a break, get a coffee and figure out the rest of the day.  It sure tasted good and it got us out of the wind and cold.

We met some very nice people on the train this morning from Denmark who were travelling via a rented motor home around the northeast.   We found out they were staying in the same KOA we were in.   They had been in Boston for three days so they were able to give us some tips.

People were friendly as we walked around.   Some even offered to help as they saw us standing on a street corner looking dazed and unsure of which way to go.   It was a positive experience.

By 3:30 p.m., we were tired of walking.  We had just seen Boston Common so we headed east, back to the train station, got inside and waited until the 4:40 train back to Middleboro was ready to board.

Everybody is watching the "big tote board" to see what trains are in, ready to board, and on what track.  But after taking the train once, I'd say it's pretty easy, now that we are "veterans."   While we were watching the tote board ourselves, Sheryl said she was going to check out the McDonald's menu.  A few minutes later, she came back with a styrofoam box - I knew couldn't be from McDonald's.  Inside was Chinese sweet and sour pork with noodles.. Yum, yum, yum.   We finished that off just as they announced that our train was boarding.

Tomorrow we leave the KOA and head out.   Along the way, I'm hoping to find an RV store to get a proportional braking unit for the trailer.   The one we have isn't "cutting it" at all. 

Until later....