Archive for Uncategorized
November 27, 2006 at 8:36 am · Filed under Uncategorized
The sun rose behind a gray-scudded sky on Sunday morning, but by the time Brett arrived to pick us up at 9 a.m., it was gorgeous and sunny and heading toward the high 70s. We loaded up the snorkel gear and drove about 45 minutes south to one of my favorite places in this area: Ft De Soto Park.
Ft De Soto is a large county park located on an island just south of St Petersburg. There’s a fine campground there, every site located near the water and shaded by palm trees, which we have visited in our 1968 Caravel and the 1977 Argosy known as Vintage Thunder. Nearby is an old mortar emplacement known as Fort De Soto. The park also features two fishing piers, miles of beach, and some nice bicycling trails.
One thing we’ve never done before is take the ferry from the park to nearby Egmont Key, so that was our plan for today. I’d heard the snorkeling is nice, especially over the Fort Dade ruins, which have been reclaimed by the sea.
The ferry is $15 per adult, $7.50 per child, and runs once or twice per day depending on season. This time of year the departure was 11 a.m. and the return was 2:30 p.m. It scoots out only about a mile and then around to the gulf side of Egmont Key to be beached.
The island is virtually deserted now, except for a small collection of wood-framed houses on the bay side, where ship pilots live, waiting for giant tankers to come into Tampa Bay — and a large number of tortoises. The island has no public services at all, not even water, so we brought a full bag of picnic stuff and drinks.
The picnic was a success, but the snorkeling was a bust. From the boat and the shore it was obvious that the water was far too murky to see anything. To make the possibility of snorkeling even less remote, it turns out that the submerged Ft Dade ruins are off a permanently closed section of shoreline, part of a bird sanctuary. You need a boat to get to them, but there was no point on this day. Our ferry captain suggested that visibility was made poorer by a “beach re-nourishment” project (sand pumping) occurring on Egmont Key’s north side. He suggested trying again in spring.
Fort Dade was once a town of about 500 people, complete with fire station, hospital, power plant, numerous houses, and much more. It’s a ghost town now, only foundations and brick streets remaining. Walking the ruins of the town, the last vestiges of the fort, and the beach consumed most of the few hours we had on the island.
November 26, 2006 at 8:20 am · Filed under Uncategorized
We relocated the Airstream yesterday to a different site at Bay Bayou, and then I met up with Brett for some jetskiing on Tarpon Lake. The plan was to test the jet ski that he recently bought and fixed up, before taking it out on Sunday near Ft De Soto Park.
Unloading the jet skis at the boat ramp
This was the first day we’ve been jetskiing together since our adventure on Lake Mead last May.
Things went perfectly … for a while. There we were, zooming along the lake’s surface at speeds up to 46 MPH. The sky was blue, the air was warm, the lake was mostly calm …
And then, about five miles from the boat ramp, Brett’s ski made an expensive noise, and sputtered to a halt.
Fortunately, we were prepared for this possibility. We tied a rope on and slowly towed the dead ski all the way back to the boat ramp. Better to find out about the ski’s defects on a quiet fresh water lake, than out in the Gulf of Mexico.
While we were gone, Emma and Eleanor found a new wetsuit for Emma. That’s for today’s new plan. Instead of jetskiing off Ft De Soto, we’re going snorkeling off Egmont Key, which is near Ft De Soto. We met up with Bert & Janie in the evening when we came over to borrow their microwave to reheat our Thanksgiving leftovers, and they are considering joining us too.
November 25, 2006 at 10:12 am · Filed under Uncategorized
The last thing I want to do on the day after Thanksgiving is go anywhere near a shopping center, but Friday was a day for us to fix things and that meant a trip to the hardware store. I picked up a few screws and washers to finalize the bracket mount for the new TV, and some “Goo-gone” to clean up leftover adhesive.
In this model of trailer there’s a built-in shelf mounted in the forward bedroom, designed to fold out and support a small conventional TV. We never needed this and I have ignored it until recently. When Brett moved the old 15″ TV to the bedroom, he removed the built-in shelf, which left some screw holes and the glue residue. We filled the holes with little tan screw caps recycled from the shelf.
You can just barely see the tan caps. Click for larger.
In the photo above there are still two divots in the wall that we will disguise or cover later. Those were made by the factory installer to accommodate rivet tails that protruded from the back of the shelf unit.
The shocker was the weight of that shelf. It’s made of steel, and felt like about twenty pounds. I should have tossed it a long time ago.
Christmas decorations started appearing a week ago
We have decided to stay in Tampa for another week. There’s too much that we want to do here. But someone has a seasonal rental on our space, so today we need to move to another site in the park. We’ll be parked directly across from Bert & Janie.
More blog readers have purchased a new Airstream. Bill and Larry emailed me this week to say they’ve finally placed the order for their 2007 Airstream Safari 23 Special Edition LS. Congratulations! We’ll see you in the southern California desert this winter!
November 24, 2006 at 9:30 am · Filed under Uncategorized
It was in some ways an unusual Thanksgiving Day. Everyone attending except Brett, who hosted the event, is currently living in their Airstream. Barry came over with a 4×8 sheet of plywood from the house he’s building, which we rested on an ottoman and covered with a giant white tablecloth. That was our table. Emma decorated the tablecloth by drawing pictures all over it with her markers, and then we all sat, cross-legged, on the floor to enjoy an enormous feast.
And it was a spectacular meal, followed up by homemade pies and ice cream. Eleanor’s two days of effort in the kitchen were really appreciated by all.
The leftovers have been distributed to everyone. Bert and Janie managed to snag a lot of the apple pie, so I may be over at their trailer for breakfast. We’ve all got turkey, green bean casserole, onions in cream sauce, two kinds of cranberry sauce, gravy, an incredible stuffing, and pumpkin pie. (Even the plywood became a leftover of sorts: it will end up as part of the subfloor in Barry’s bungalow.)
A few weeks ago we bought a large collection of Kodachromes from an Airstream owner’s estate. These slides were mostly scenic images of national parks, but a few depicted Airstreams at rallies and on a caravan to Mexico in 1958. So for a while before and after dinner, Barry and I sat down with the slide projector to review each slide.
Of 1,300 slides in the collection, we ended up with about 25 good ones. They’re all unique images that have never been published before. We’ll get them scanned and you will see them popping up in future issues of Airstream Life magazine.
November 23, 2006 at 8:58 am · Filed under Uncategorized
A cold snap has descended upon us here in central Florida. Yesterday was the coldest day we’ve seen, barely reaching 60 with gray skies coming and going. The heat pump in the Airstream has been cycling for 16 hours a day for several days.
It was a good day to get some work done, since things are somewhat quiet in the world of US commerce. I did a bit of that, and then in the afternoon Emma and I took a four mile walk along the Upper Tampa Bay Trail with Bert and Janie. This trail follows “Channel A” a 1960s-era flood control project, which was later recognized to be an environmental mistake. It caused as many problems as it solved, so it was later modified to slow the flow of water and have some wetlands buffers as well.
Now it’s a great place to spot birds, as we discovered. “Eagle eye” Emma was the bird-spotting champ, picking out three black Anhingas against dark backgrounds that the rest of us would never have seen. We also spotted a Great Blue Heron, two Little Blue Herons, Turkey Vultures, and several duck-like birds that we haven’t yet identified.
Eleanor spent most of the day at Brett’s apartment, preparing … who knows what … we’ll find out today. All I know is that there seems to be enough food there to choke an elephant. Emma and I will head over later this morning and join Barry, Bert, Janie, Brett and Eleanor.
This is the second Thanksgiving we’ve spent on the road. If you’ve started reading this blog in the past few months, you might be interested in how we spent Thanksgiving last year. Last year we were in Benbow CA, which is along the Redwood Highway (Rt 101) in northern California. I like the variety of having holidays in different places around the country, but it is more fun this year with some good friends to join us.
Thanks for joining us on the blog, too. Happy Thanksgiving to you!
No Thanksgiving for alligators, if you don’t swim. Sign of the week!
November 22, 2006 at 11:15 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Emma and Eleanor are frantically preparing for Thanksgiving. Yesterday Emma helped by scooping out the guts of her Halloween pumpkin (painted, not carved, so it would last until now). Eleanor roasted the pumpkin with maple syrup I think, and when I got home in the evening there were also roasted pumpkin seeds to be had.
I was out in the afternoon because I went with Bert to help him find the local Best Buy, and then we ran into Brett, and that’s when the trouble started. Brett has been egging me on for months to buy a new LCD TV for our trailer. I have not been wild about the one we have been using in the trailer because the 15″ screen (4:3 aspect ratio) is too small for letterboxed movies. As you probably know, we watch movies on DVD almost exclusively, and hardly ever bother with TV, so this was an issue for us.
Well, before I knew it I was buying a new Olevia 23″ LCD panel (16:9 “widescreen” aspect ratio), and a new bracket to mount it up. Wow — what an improvement! We put “Hoodwinked” into the DVD player and the difference was just incredible. No more straining to see the picture.
The new TV bracket doesn’t swivel. It doesn’t need to, because the screen is so wide and viewable from anywhere in the trailer. We still need to make a few final tweaks, such as tying up excess cords, fixing the bracket so the TV can’t wiggle during travel, and installing a small inverter so we can run the TV when boondocking.
The downside of the new TV is increased power consumption. Our Sharp 15″ TV consumed just 36 watts, but this monster needs 110 watts. That means we’ll need to monitor our use a little more carefully when boondocking. But we kept the old TV and mounted it in the bedroom. Eventually it will be hooked up to its own DVD player so we can all pile onto the queen bed and watch it if we want to keep the power use low. I can imagine us cuddled up there with a bowl of popcorn — sounds like fun!
November 21, 2006 at 8:29 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Remember the 1953 Flying Cloud I inspected a few weeks ago in Virginia? Well, I bought it and have been trying to figure out how to get it out of there ever since.
Fortunately, Rob Baker (of The VAP and also the guy who helped scam our scammer) once again stepped up to the plate. Rob is a trailer recovery expert, having successfully located and hauled away probably a dozen or more vintage trailers over the past few years.
Pulling out a vintage trailer is always an interesting challenge. If the trailer has been sitting for years, you have to be ready for anything: frozen wheel bearings, dead tires, rusted hitches, non-operable light and brakes, body parts that will fly off in the breeze, etc. Plus, you never know what “environmental hazards” there might be nearby or even in the trailer. This can include mud holes, swamps, toxic chemicals, and even … as Rob recently discovered … deer entrails.
Last night Rob called me about 15 minutes north of Onancock VA, where the 53 FC was sitting. I realized two bad things during that call. (1) I never sent him the key to the Yale deadbolt on the door. That alone could have doomed the mission, because if he was unable to get inside he wouldn’t be able to secure some of the junk that was loosely stacked inside. (2) Rob hadn’t been fully briefed for his mission. He didn’t know the trailer was on blocks, that there was spare house siding materials stored underneath it, that the hitch jack and coupler were likely frozen with rust, etc.
But Rob is a Marine officer who has been to Iraq and has a “can do” attitude. So he went in and got the job done. I can’t do justice to his story, so let me just point you to his blog entry from November 21 2006, entitled “Vintage Airstream Towing!”
Bert and Janie arrived yesterday afternoon, a day earlier than expected, and with them we got a little “cold” weather: upper 50s and 60s with some clouds. But we forgave them for bringing the weather in and had them and Barry over for dinner. Eleanor made pasta with scallops in a cream sauce. … Mmmmmm….
Emma has made a calendar to count down the days to her visit to Vermont, where she will see her grandparents Didi and Papa.
« Previous entries ·
Next entries »
