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Been There Doing That

Our RV Adventures

Jan 12

8

Getting to Missouri

By Gayla & Robert
Filed Under Full-timing  | | No Comments»

The time finally came to travel to Missouri for the month of January.  We had been planning this trip for three or four months and we were anxious to get on the road for a change of scenery.  Although we had sold a ton of stuff at our garage sale back in September when we moved out of our rental house, we still had some stuff that we wanted to hang onto, so we placed it in storage.  Since our plan is to live in our RV for several years, we did not want to rent storage space long-term.  Our solution was to purchase a storage building to place our family country property in Missouri.  So, this trip to Missouri was to not only be a family visit, but also move our storage items.

Robert’s Dad and brother traveled down to Florida to help us drive the UHaul and RV.  It was nice to have them so we could take turns driving.  First thing Wednesday morning, we packed the UHaul and by the afternoon, we were on the road.

View Missouri Trip in a larger map
 

Our travels were pretty uneventful, up until we were only about 180 miles from our destination.  We decided to sleep for a while in Hayti, MO so that we didn’t arrive in Springfield in the middle of the night.  We were at a truck stop resting and woke up about 2 a.m. to get back on the road.  We topped off the fuel tank and took off.  After being on the road a bit, something seemed wrong with the RV.  It wouldn’t accelerate properly and was extremely sluggish.  By the time we arrived in Poplar Bluff, we decided it would be best to pull over.  We saw a 24 hour self-serve diesel station and a Freightliner sign next door.  We thought that would be the best place to pull off and get off the road.  Robert thought the turbo quit working.  He and his dad got out and checked the water separator in the fuel filter.  There was some water that he drained, but then the engine died.  It seemed that we got air in the fuel line.  We had no idea how to prime the system.  We got out our manuals and took to the net.  We really were at a loss as to what to do.  We called our roadside assistance.  It was only 6 a.m. and the service technicians arrived at 7 a.m.  We slept and called them back in an hour.

The roadside assistance technician was helpful in steps to try to prime system by turning the ignition on for two minutes then cranking for a couple of minutes.  It didn’t work, so we decided to have him call a local technician to take a look.  Luckily, the technicians were just walking distance away in the Freightliner service center.  They came out and got all the air out of the line and suggested a new fuel filter.  Since they didn’t have one in stock, instead of waiting until the afternoon for one to arrive, we decided to risk it and be on our way.  We would replace it during our stay in Springfield.

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Even though the RV wasn’t acting completely normal, at least it had more power to get up the hills.  We finally made it to Springfield and pulled in my parent’s driveway (our new home for the month) at about noon on Friday. 

We wanted to turn in the UHaul as soon as possible, so first thing Saturday morning, we were off to unload our stuff in our new storage building in Stockton at our family’s country property.  What a beautiful day, sunny and cool to accomplish our task. 

It has been a very busy past few days and today has been so relaxing.  Although we’ll miss our Florida friends, it is so good to be back on our old stomping ground and look forward to seeing our friends and spending more time with family.

Dec 11

29

Beautiful Sunrise

By Gayla & Robert
Filed Under Around Home  | Tagged With: , , , , | | No Comments»

 

This morning we woke up to see a beautiful sunrise, too bad the city is in the way.  Decided to take a couple of shots because in a blink the colors were gone.

We can’t wait to be somewhere to see the sunrises unobstructed by city.  Soon…

Dec 11

22

Christmas Light Display

By Gayla & Robert
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Gayla and Robert

Wow…St. Pete has a house that could outshine the Griswalds.  Our friend Pug Baker told Robert about the house, so we decided to visit it last night.  The homeowners started a modest light display in 1977 and boy has it grown!  Three electric meters are needed to handle the power of over 500,000 lights. 

When you get to the street, you are greeted by some nice people directing traffic.  They give you a little card talking about the display and direct you to where you can park.  They encourage you to park and walk through the display to see all the details, as it’s not only lights, but numerous displays and scenes set up by the homeowners. 

We walked through their 1/2 acre property and saw numerous inflatables, a stuffed animal zoo, a singing snowman, a fiber-optic forest, and model train cities…just to name a few.  They seem to get a lot of visitors each night and their display runs to January 3rd.  If you are in the area, it’s worth a look.  At least visit their website http://www.christmasdisplay.org/.

Hope you enjoy as much as we did.  Merry Christmas!!

Dec 11

18

Indian Rocks Beach Boat Parade

By Gayla & Robert
Filed Under Around Home, Florida  | Tagged With: , , , , , , , | | No Comments»

Rob Havey's photo of Dave & Helen's boat

Even though it’s warm down here in Florida, the holiday spirit is in the air.  Our good friends Hippie and Blondy (aka Dave & Helen) invited us on their boat as they participated in the Indian Rocks Beach Boat Parade Saturday night.  Ann, Scott and Andy joined us on this three hour tour…yes at least a three hour tour.

It was a beautiful night for a lighted boat ride.  We went in every little finger around Indian Rocks beach where everyone in the town could view the parade from their back yards.  We took several pictures and many of them weren’t too bad considering the low light conditions and we were on a moving boat.  The only picture we didn’t capture was Hippie and Blondy’s boat.  Thank goodness for others on shore that took some great shots and posted on Facebook.

We blasted Brian Setzer’s Christmas album.  We kept repeating it over and over as that was the peppiest album we had on hand.  The song of the night seemed to be Jingle Bells…”He’s Dashing!!!”  We all had a great time.  Even though Andy doesn’t want to admit it, we know he had fun too.

Congrats to Hippie and Blondy as they won 2nd place for their boat.  Also thanks to them for including us as they get us out and about to experience new and exciting things!! 

Dec 11

17

Insulating the Water Lines

By Gayla & Robert
Filed Under Around Home, Full-timing, Tips  | Tagged With: , , , , , | | 1 Comment»

I’m sure our Florida neighbors think we are crazy, but we are preparing for winter.  With weather in the mid to upper 70s during the day and upper 50s at night, why on earth think about insulating the water lines?  While most RVers go to warmer climate during the winter, we are going north.  We will be in Missouri for the month of January visiting family and we want to prepare as much as possible.  After all, winter in Missouri could be freezing or could be 60 degrees.  We don’t want our trip to be dampened by being caught off guard and it ends up being zero and have frozen and busted water lines.

We picked up some self-sealing pipe foam insulation and foil back pipe wrap insulation to go around as many water lines as we can get to.  The exposed lines are under our slide out in the storage bay.  First, we cut the self-sealing pipe foam insulation to fit around the exposed water lines.  Then we cut strips of the foil back pipe wrap insulation for a second layer.  We wrapped it in such a way to have about ¼ inch overlap.  We secured it with foil tape.  Last, we secured the insulated lines with zip ties.

 

 

 

Dec 11

15

RV Bath

By Gayla & Robert
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Having a white vehicle is a pain.  It seems to get grimy quickly.  The last time Robert gave the RV a good bath was when we were still living at our rental house.  We are parked under a couple of live oak trees and those tiny leaves get everywhere.  He has swept  the roof several times since we’ve parked here, but the grime streaks were really beginning to bothering us.

Robert wanted a hose that he could use just for the purpose of washing vehicles, so off to Lowe’s we went to pick out a simple 50′ light duty garden hose and Simple Green detergent.  I can’t be for certain, but it seemed as though Robert was excited about cleaning the RV.  To me, it seems like a overwhelming task, but to him, I think he was going to have fun because he seemed gitty.

Yesterday, while I was working in my home office all day, Robert was outside scrubbing.  We took some before photos, but the photograph really doesn’t do it justice on how dirty it really was.  I know some folks wait longer to wash than we did and you think their white vehicle is really brown, but we want to make sure that we don’t have too much build up of the sap from the trees. 

It took Robert practically all day, but he completed his project.  It looks wonderful.  He got in all the nooks and crannies.  He plans to do a quick touch up cleaning right before we leave for Missouri in a couple of weeks.  I can see why some people would pay to get this service done.  It is certainly a lot of hard work.

Dec 11

4

Indian Rocks Beach Parade

By Gayla & Robert
Filed Under Around Home, Florida, Full-timing  | Tagged With: , , , , | | 1 Comment»

Christmas Bikes for IRB Parade

Today was Indian Rocks Beach’s Parade.  We don’t even live in Indian Rocks Beach, but we participated and had a wonderful time.  Our close friends Dave, Helen, and Nikki live in IRB and asked us to join them in the parade as the homeowner’s association participated with a posse of decorated bikes. 

We took time earlier in the week and decked out our bikes.  We were the talk of the RV park.  Anyone that walked by would ask us what we were up to.  We also got several comments when we would ride around the park decorated all in tinsel.  It was fun.

This morning we loaded up our bikes and made our way to IRB.  We watched Helen and Nikki decorate their bikes, then we all met up with the rest of the IRB Homeowners Association gang.  What a time we had.  The parade route went through all the little side streets of town.  It was the first parade we’ve ever participated in where not only candy was thrown out, but dog biskets.  There were more dogs with thier owners along the route than kids with their parents.

The ride in all was a little over 12 miles and by the end we were famished.  We peddled our way to the Red Lion for drinks and dinner.  After stuffing ourselves, sunset was calling us, so we walked across the street to relax on the beach.  The day was hot and sunny, and beach was relaxing and peaceful, as the sun fell slowly from the sky.  A perfect ending to a fun day with the wonderful people of IRB.

 

Nov 11

13

Wandering Wieners — Cedar Key, FL

By Gayla & Robert
Filed Under Day Trips, Florida, Wiener Tales  | Tagged With: , , , , , | | No Comments»

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Today we got to go on a car ride with Mommy and Daddy.  We all hopped in the Jeep and were ready to go.  Lucy, Oscar and I decided to relax and take a nap because the last time we went on a road trip, we ended up walking about five miles.  Today, who knows where we’d go, so we decided to save up our energy.

We ended up in Cedar Key.  We stopped by the city park, then to the State Museum to stretch our legs a bit.  Daddy saw a cool boardwalk that we got to race on.

Cenetery Point Park, Cedar Key

 
We walked to the end of the path so Daddy could take some pictures.  Then on our way back, he got the crazy idea that we wiener dogs would want to race.  Daddy walked up a ways, while Mommy held onto our leashes.  After he got down the path pretty far, Mommy let go and we were off.  I wasn’t paying attention so Lucy and Oscar got a head start, that’s the only reason they beat me. 
 

See how far they had us run!!!  We must have enjoyed it because we ran back to Mommy, then back to Daddy at least two or three times.  Oscar got tired and watched Lucy and I go back and forth.  It was worth it because when we got back to the Jeep we all had some very yummy treats. 

What a nice little outing.  We slept all the way back home in the Jeep.

—Tucker

Oct 11

30

Sunday Drive — Ocala National Forest

By Gayla & Robert
Filed Under Day Trips, Florida  | Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , | | No Comments»

Do you like to just get up and drive just to see what you can see?  Robert and I do.  Sometimes we start driving and we don’t know where we’ll end up.  Today we decided that we needed to get out of the hustle and bustle of Pinellas County, so we headed north-east toward Ocala.  We wanted to check out the Ocala National Forest. 

We set the GPS to avoid highways as we had no interest being on the interstate.  Besides our adventure today was all about the journey and not about the destination.  We loaded up the three wieners, hopped in the Jeep and we were off.

We started the drive from our place in Largo and went north on the Bayside Bridge on Hwy 611 toward Trinity.  We went east on Hwy 54 toward Land o’ Lakes, where we then got onto Hwy 41 north.  We drove through Brooksville, the birth place of our wiener dogs.  They didn’t seem to recognize anything; of course, they were lounging in the back of the Jeep and not really paying attention.  Once we got to Inverness, we took Hwy 44 east toward Wildwood.  Then we went north on Hwy 301.

We came up on Silver Springs State Park, so we decided to pull in for a pit stop.  We drove around the park a bit and stopped at the museum and trail head area.  We thought we’d take one of the trails to get the dogs and us some exercise, but we barely got started and we were attacked by mosquitos.  It seemed like they were swarming us.  We decided that we would rather just turn back and continue down the road to our original destination of Ocala National Forest.  Before we left the park, however, we did do a drive by of their campsites.  They were very nice.  They were nicely spaced apart and had wonderful pull through sites.  We need to go back and stay and explore more…next time BUG SPRAY!!  (As a side-note, the ranger station did have a sign posted saying that due to recent weather conditions, the mosquitos were thick.  Believe the ranger station signs.)

 

From Silver Springs, we went east on Hwy 40.  The drive was beautiful.  We saw a sign for Big Scrub public campground and decided to take the road.  I believe the road was marked for national forest road 588 going south.  The road soon turned into paved to dirt.  It was a wonderful country drive, our favorite part of the trip.  There are a lot of ATV and Jeep trails, but we didn’t have a map, so we kept on the main dirt road.  Then at the corner of NF roads 588 & 573, we pulled into the campground.  It was empty, since it was Sunday late afternoon and all the ATVers went home.  We got out and walked around to give the dogs a pit stop.  We met up with the campground host and had a nice conversation.  Turns out last year he and his wife were campground hosts in Stockton, MO, our old stomping grounds.  That is certainly a place where we’d like to return and do a day or two camping.  There are no hookups, but the campsites are in full sun so we should be able to use our solar just fine.

 

We got back on the road traveling east on NF road 573 until we got to Hwy 19.  It was time to head back home as the sun was setting soon.  We made our way south on Hwy 19 and went through Eustis and Tavares.  We then went through the most unusual named town – Howey in the Hills – where we went west on Hwy 48.  We went through Okahumpka and Center City.  Since it was now dark and couldn’t see the nice countryside, we decided to get on I75 south to make our way back home the quick route.

We had such a wonderful, relaxing Sunday drive.  We anticipated doing more hiking than we did to tire out the dogs, but the mosquitos scared us off.  That’s OK, we were glad they were with us as they did a wonderful job traveling today.

 

Oct 11

24

Washer Woes — Part 2

By Gayla & Robert
Filed Under Around Home, Full-timing  | Tagged With: , , , , | | No Comments»

It didn’t take long for our $52 part to come.  I happened to be out running errands for work when the delivery arrived.  Robert was so anxious to get in installed, it was done before I came home.  What a wonderful surprise, but I was hoping that he would have taken pictures of the repair to post.  Oh well, it is amazing to have our washer working again.

It’s amazing how much easier the installation is with instructions.  I’m glad that we pretty much were able to open and remove the door without damaging anything before the instructions arrived.  The main thing that we should have done that we didn’t was UNPLUG the power cord from the outlet.  Probably good advice for anyone, and we just happened to not be thinking at the time.

Robert did figure out how to open the door by wedging a flat head screwdriver into the gap between the broken handle and the door hook.  He was able to push on the screwdriver to loosen the door while I held the door and pulled it open.  Then he removed the door by removing the screws in the hinge.  We did this all the night of my unfortunate accident.

When the new door handle came in, all he had to do was remove the door pin out of the handle by rocking needle nose pliers back and forth.  Then he assembled the new handle by placing the latch in the handle and rest the spring on the latch.  Then he lowered the door ring onto the new handle.  He aligned the ring, the spring, and the latch, then drove the pin through the latch.  He then used a small screwdriver to align the latch, spring and ring on the other side and drove the pin the rest of the way through.  He then reattached the door ring to the rest of the door assembly and reattached the door to the machine.

We’d have to say, we had a good experience with the Splendide company and are very pleased that we could do the repair ourselves.  I’d be curious to know about any of your experiences with do-it-yourself repair on your washer.  Did you have good luck with the company?  How was their customer service?

Now every time I use the washer, Robert reminds me about the sticker he put on the washer (came with the repair kit) that reads: “IMPORTANT  This door locks DURING ALL CYCLES and STAYS LOCKED up to 2 minutes after the cycle ends.  DO NOT attempt to open this door until the Status/Door Lock lamp blinks SLOWLY.”

I think I’ve learned my lesson, but I guess I still have several weeks of teasing from Robert left.

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