November 12, 2006 at 8:08 am · Filed under Uncategorized
November and March are super months to be in Florida. The weather is great and the beaches are uncrowded. So we decided to skip the crowds at “Ribfest” and go for a daytrip down to Bradenton, or more specifically, Anna Maria Island, which is about an hour drive from our parking spot in Tampa. There’s a nice stretch of beach on the south end of the island called Coquina Beach. The water is shallow and warm (70s this time of year), and you can walk for miles along the powdery soft, pure white sand.
While we were at the beach, we heard from Bobby and Danine. They were driving back from Michigan to their home in Virginia. You might remember we courtesy parked with them a few weeks ago. Well, they are now the proud owners of a new Airstream Safari 30 bunk, like ours. Congratulations! Bobby, Danine, and Elise are now one step closer to their great full-timing adventure next year. We are very much looking forward to seeing them on the road.
No photos today, sorry. It was a vacation day. (But here’s our Google Earth location that day.) We just chilled out all afternoon, walking, splashing in the water, and having a picnic lunch. We stayed until sunset. Hardly anyone was there all day, which continues to amaze me. We could have brought the Airstream after all — the parking lots were mostly empty. Florida in November is a great deal for beach lovers.
November 11, 2006 at 9:39 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Last April we stopped in on our friends Renee and Fred in Charleston SC for a couple of days, and they introduced us to a local specialty, “Shrimp and Grits”. Ever since then, Eleanor has been wanting to try making it, and I’ve been wanting to eat it again.
Since the local Sweet Bay grocery has great giant prawns, and Barry and Susan were coming over for dinner, last night became the night. It was a bit of work, but the results were terrific. (Barry and I grilled the prawns outside.) Eleanor actually combined several recipes she found online into a custom recipe of her own. We all had seconds, and even though she made a huge pot, there were no leftovers.
Earlier on Friday we headed into Tampa to do an errand and go see Rich C, who is parked up at Bay Bayou. We’ll be relocating up there (about 30 minutes northwest through Tampa traffic) to be closer to Brett’s, on the 18th. That will make it easier to coordinate projects and Thanksgiving preparations.
Catching up with Rich C
Speaking of Thanksgiving, we are planning an all-Airstream event. It turns out that everyone who will be attending our dinner is currently living in an Airstream — except Brett, who is supplying the apartment. That includes us, Barry, and hopefully Bert & Janie, if they can get down here soon enough. Last I heard they were exploring American history at Harper’s Ferry.
November 10, 2006 at 11:17 am · Filed under Uncategorized
We wrapped up the day by running out to the local grocery for some shrimp (actually giant prawns) to grill on Barry’s barbecue grill. The sun is setting early now, even here in Florida, so we ended up grilling in the dark at 7 pm, but at least the evenings are still pleasantly warm for things like this.
Shrimp, sausage, and scallions on a skewer
This weekend there’s a “Ribfest” going on in St Petersburg that might be fun. We may go tomorrow. Otherwise, it looks like a weekend of beach-hopping. It has been an intense week of work on the Spring magazine and on various business issues, so I’m ready to check out for a while. We’ll pack our snorkel gear and beach toys, and see where we end up.
An Airstream is a great resource to take to the beach, but the 30-footer is too much to haul around crowded barrier islands. When we had our 17-foot Caravel, we routinely hauled it to beach parking lots and used it as a cabana. This time we’ll leave the Airstream parked at Barry’s and just load up the Armada with our stuff.
We’ve got a few projects planned for next week. I’ve ordered a 12v dimmer switch from American Technology Components and we’ll wire it into the main ceiling light circuit. This should give us more lighting flexibility and better ability to control our power use when boondocking. ATC is the supplier to Airstream, so the dimmer is an exact match to the original equipment.
We’re also considering a range of other upgrades. We won’t do all these things, but on the list for consideration are: install a larger LCD TV for movies; install a deeper kitchen sink; re-caulk the kitchen countertop and stove; install a Thin-Lite fluorescent for boondocking; install a catalytic heater; remove the subwoofer under the dinette seat and convert that space to storage; increase the height of the kitchen backsplash; replace the bedroom carpet with a different floor covering. Brett will be helping if we do any of these projects.
November 9, 2006 at 12:25 pm · Filed under FAQs
Once in a while, you’re going to get ants. It seems to happen to us once or twice a year. One day you’ll see a line of little brown “sugar” ants marching along and then they’ll be appearing everywhere in the trailer.
We picked up a batch of them in Haines City. I saw the ant hills in the driveway, and within hours they were climbing our water hose and ransacking the trailer for snacks. Fortunately, these little brown ants don’t sting like Fire Ants.
The best way to deal with ants is not to get them in the first place, but that’s pretty tough to do. We could have taken precautions by spraying around the trailer with something that would discourage them, but not on the fresh water line. We use a woven roll-up water hose and I would expect pesticides to leach through and contaminate our water, so that’s out. Bill Reilly suggested soapy water, but by the time we spotted the ants climbing the hose it was already too late.
Getting them is not the end of the world. We buy little ant traps, which probably do nothing but they make us feel better while we wait for the ants to go away on their own. Baiting outside the trailer isn’t usually helpful since we move regularly. A change of season or location seems to help more.
These jars are available at many home goods & kitchen ware stores
We also are sure to keep all attractive edibles in tightly sealed containers. This means foods that are opened and then stored outside the refrigerator, like cereals and cookies, get transferred from their original boxes to zip-locked bags or airtight containers. During ant season, we clean around the stove, counters, and floors extra carefully. This morning we pulled out all the previously-opened containers in the pantry to wipe them down, to eliminate crumbs and drips.
One thing we won’t do is spray anything toxic inside the trailer. It’s too confined a space. The ants we’ve gotten seem to be either self-limited (having a short season) or discouraged by our frequent movement, so drastic measures haven’t been necessary. They’re always gone in a week or two. But now we are in Florida and not moving as much, so we may put an outdoor perimeter spray in place later this week, just to ensure we don’t pick up more of the little buggers.
By the way, you may notice we’ve added a little thing called a “captcha” on our Comments form. It’s one of those little codes you have to type in before your comment will go through. I apologize for having to do this. The blog has been getting relentlessly spammed lately by robots, and this should help reduce the problem.
This Sign of the Week depicts the daily behavior of a lion, but I suppose you could replace lion with an average RV’er and the breakdown of time would be about the same!
November 8, 2006 at 8:22 pm · Filed under The scam
Sad news. I’m afraid Aunt Abel has scared off our scammer with her snippy demand for payment. The promised second check that was sent via UPS was apparently lost, and the scammer has gone silent on us. Last email from our scammer,
a.k.a. Richard Williams
a.k.a. Dr Lilian Williams
a.k.a. Velecia Farmer
a.k.a. Johnson Cole
a.k.a. John Kinsey
a.k.a. Calvary Shipping Kompany
a.k.a. COSCO Shipping
a.k.a Alvaro Mendoza
… was November 3, five days ago.
Farewell, scammer. We’ll miss you. But I’m sure you’ll still be out there, somewhere, trying to fleece people of their money.
November 8, 2006 at 8:52 am · Filed under Uncategorized
We arrived in Tampa in the midst of an enormous rainstorm, to find our courtesy parking spot at Barry’s flooded several inches deep. The rain was so heavy that merely cracking a window on the Nissan resulted in a complete soaking of the interior door.
But we were blocking the street, so Eleanor bravely put on her rain jacket and sloshed out through ankle-deep water to try to back us in somewhere on Barry’s property. This was one of the tougher backing jobs we’ve had, since visibility was poor and I had to dodge two large trees and a dumpster with the trailer.
Barry’s house is an older bungalow that he’s completely rehabbing, so for now he lives in …. you got it … his Airstream! He has a 1972 Overlander which he rehabbed a couple of years ago. We finally managed to get our Airstream tucked in next to his, and in about 10 minutes the rain ended and the small rainponds disappeared into the sandy soil of Tampa. I managed to avoid scraping trees, Eleanor changed into dry clothing, and we got on with the business of settling in.
We may be here a while. Tampa is a convenient base of operations. We have several friends here, including Barry, Brett, and Rich C (located only about 30 minutes north of here at present), I have work to do, we’re close to fun places like Ft Desoto and Sarasota, and the camping is free. We’re anticipating being here for Thanksgiving, although we may move out for a while to explore before then.
November 7, 2006 at 9:43 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Haines City does not have an exciting downtown today, but Wendimere and Bill are betting it will have a renaissance. The “historic downtown” features a half dozen hair salons, a few professional offices, a handful of dejected-looking real estate offices, and many empty storefronts. As a result, nobody goes there and parking is usually plentiful.
But they may be getting in on the ground floor. This town is right off a major highway (Route 27), and adjacent to major real estate development along Rt 27 and in nearby Davenport. It could be the next Mt Dora. Someone else thinks so, because most of the downtown real estate has been bought up and is being renovated right now.
Our trailer parked in front of their trailer
We discussed the future of Haines City and many other things over dinner last night at Manny’s Chop House (not to be confused with the similarly named restaurant in Longwood). Manny’s is a great spot for dinner, but the locals know about it and so the wait can be long. They don’t take reservations. Still, it’s worth it.
We also talked about our plans to do some traveling as a group next year. We’re thinking about a possible caravan down to the Yucatan Peninsula, and other ideas. Last summer’s group trip with Susan & Adam, Carol, and Rich C from Oregon to Wyoming was a lot of fun. Also, in our travels we’ve run into a lot of people who want loosely-structured caravans with few rules and obligations, and many of them have looked to us to organize something. So far I’ve resisted that temptation, because we like traveling without obligations ourselves (and leading a trip would limit our freedom), but perhaps in 2007 we’ll take the plunge and lead a small trip.
Last night we broke out some classic games that Wendimere and Bill own, and spent the evening with Scrabble and Clue. Emma needs help with Scrabble, but I see how it helps her learn the spelling of new words, so maybe we’ll get this game for ourselves, too. In any case, it was great fun.
Group pose in the Herb Shoppe
Maintenance item: In the past few weeks we’ve noted the bottom of the shower door leaking onto the bathroom floor. (We have the roll-up “Shub” door commonly found in late-model Safaris.) This water leak will cause floor rot if not fixed, so on Sunday I removed all the ugly old caulk along the bottom and cleaned the surface thoroughly. There was some trapped water under the door jamb, so I let it dry out overnight.
Yesterday I laid down blue masking tape and put in a fresh bead of GE Silicone II caulk, which is the only product I will use for this job. I’ve had poor results from the DAP stuff. This morning — 24 hours later — it should be fully cured. I’ll test the new caulk before we hitch up and head to Tampa.
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