Category: Florida

Unfortunately, returned home from our Palm Island/Don Pedro Island 20th Anniversary Trip to an air conditioner that was no longer cooling the house. We called the air conditioning company that sold it to us since it’s still under the 10 year parts & labor warranty and they came out that afternoon to determine that our compressor had failed. They didn’t have any in stock and had to order one. The temperatures were fairly cool (at least at night) Friday and Saturday. We brought the RV home Sunday and slept in it overnight. When we heard that he wouldn’t be back until Wednesday to install the new compressor we moved to Little Manatee River State Park in order to avoid the wrath of the Home Owner’s Association.

After saying our good byes to Dick (who is heading West to visit his daughter Julie in Tuscon, AZ) we departed from Topsail Hill Preserve State Park at 10:50 AM CST. We stopped at the TA Truck Stop in Marianna, FL and successfully made our second fuel purchase on the  TSD Logistics diesel fuel discount program. We saved $0.58/gal on 60 gallons of fuel and once again were in and out fairly quickly.

We arrived at A Stone’s Throw RV Park (just East of Tallahassee) at 3:30 PM EST. We stayed here last July on our way West to see the kids. In July we were in Site #17 which faces due West so we decided to try Site #18 which faces due East (not that we needed protection from the sun today). We will avoid this site in the future. The entry to the site was steep uphill and we had to jack the rear of the RV up quite a bit (using blocks) to get level. Our data access to Beth’s Visible phone was the best we’ve experienced on this trip (15 to 20 Mbps download speeds).

We will arrive home tomorrow.

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We departed from The Old Pavilion RV Park near Perry, FL at about 09:00 EST and went across country (Beach Rd to US-98 to SR-267 to SR-20 to US-331 back to US-98) to Topsail Hill Preserve State Park. These were all good roads with interesting old Florida scenery. We wanted to get there as early as possible in order to get setup to watch the Tampa Bay Bucs Win the Superbowl and arrived at 12:30PM CST (2.5 hours prior to check-in). Our site wasn’t ready, so we had to hangout in the parking lot for about 30 minutes. We used that time to unhook the Tahoe and go purchase firewood at the park store.

This was our second time at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park. This time we were in site #57 which had a clear view of southwestern sky. Our roof top satellite dish worked fine the first night (although it couldn’t seem to get all 3 Western Arc satellites, so we operated in Hybrid mode). The second day we couldn’t seem to get 3 satellites in either configuration, so we broke out R2D2 and used it all week until Saturday at which point it couldn’t seem to get all 3 Western Arc satellites, so we switched back to the roof which worked just fine (go figure).

We had good access to the Verizon Wireless cell phone towers, but Beth’s Visible phone seemed to get de-prioritized regularly during busy hours. It was barely acceptable for surfing, but would not have worked for streaming. We ran into similar issues at the previous campground.

We were close to the laundry facility and it had 8 washers, 8 dryers, and a bill changer. The washers and dryers were $1.50/load each.

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Beth’s brother Dick joined us at our site on Monday evening and stayed with us for the week. We parked our Tahoe in a parking area behind our site and he parked his converted Ford Transit Van in our driveway and slept in it. He has been doing the van conversion himself and was using this trip to shakeout any issues and help determine what direction to head in with the remainder of the conversion. We definitely enjoyed his company.

The weather wasn’t much to write home about (we rarely saw any sun), but it was generally kind enough to stop raining early in the morning and not start up again until around supper time. We managed to walk to the beach several days (2 miles round trip) and cook several dinners over the fire. Dick took his new drone to the beach several times and got some great video.

Wednesday afternoon we went to  Harry T’s in Destin to confirm that their food was still as good as it was when we ate there during our 2018 visit. It was still delicious! Beth and I had the Grouper Strip Platter while Dick had the Blackened Redfish Entree. Everything was delicious.

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Thursday evening we cooked a Filet Mignon, Porterhouse, and Ribeye steaks over the campfire along with twice baked potatoes. Another excellent meal (thank goodness the beach is a 2 mile round trip walk).

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Late afternoon and evening on Friday was very rainy so we had to cook supper inside. Beth was cooking chicken and vegetables in an electric skillet and then fired up the microwave to heat some water and our power went out. After some diagnosis it looks like the inverter/charger went out. It still appears to charge the batteries, but all of our outlets on inverter are dead. Unfortunately, that includes the refrigerator, so we had to run an extension cord from the utility post to the outside access panel for the refrigerator to get it running again. For the rest of the evening we had to live like our forefathers by reading books and talking to each other. I downloaded the electrical schematics from Winnebago and discovered that we have one electrical outlet in the bathroom (intended for a washer/dryer hookup) that is not connected to the inverter, so we ran extension cords from it up to the entertainment center so we could watch TV on our satellite dish (we were “glamping” once again). I also determined that I could move the refrigerator connection in the breaker panel back to it’s original position (before we upgraded it to a residential A/C compressor) which is not connected to the inverter. We will investigate replacing the inverter when we get back to Tampa.

We spent the weekend at The Old Pavilion RV Park near Perry, FL on our way to a full week stay at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park. We left home at 10:45 AM EST and headed up I-75. We stopped for lunch at the Webster, FL Rest Area and ate the second halves of the Publix Subs we had purchased the day before while packing for the trip.

After bottoming out the tail end of RV while trying to enter a Walmart gas station on the way home from our previous camping trip, we decided it was time to stop trying to save a fortune on diesel fuel and start using Truck Stop fuel pumps as much as possible. Once we made that decision we decided to try out the TSD Logistics diesel fuel discount program. After setting up our account we downloaded their cell phone application which shows their discount fuel prices at nearby Truck Stops. The have agreements with a number of Truck Stop chains, but currently their best deal is with TA-Petro (Travel Centers of America-Petro). The best deal on our route was at the TA Truck Stop in Wildwood, FL. This worked out well. It was the fastest we have ever fueled (usually at Truck Stops we have to go inside and leave a credit card to enable the pump and then go back in an pay after fueling). Our fuel card eliminated the trip inside and Truck Stop pumps are faster than our RV can handle (you have to hold the pump trigger just right). We were in and out in minutes and saved $0.55/gal on 40 gallons of fuel.

After fueling we took US-27 North out of Ocala and then Alt US-27 out of Williston, FL. In Chiefland, FL Alt US-27 joined US-98. We picked up Hwy 358 near Steinhatchee, FL. In Steinhatchee we took SR-51 to cross the Steinhatchee River and then took Beach Rd the rest of the way to Keaton Beach near our campground. The Beach Rd portion of the trip was very interesting. We drove over 15 miles without seeing another vehicle (or human). When we got closer to Keaton Beach we passed some large fish camps.

The Old Pavilion RV Park is directly on the Gulf of Mexico and there are quite a few sites right on the beach, but our site is in the interior. As with most beach campgrounds, the sites are packed fairly close together, but there’s plenty of room to maneuver. The Wi-Fi signal here is strong, but like most RV Parks, there’s no bandwidth (0.32 Mbps download). This gave us a chance to test using Beth’s Visible cellular service. We were originally getting 15 Mbps download speeds, but that dropped down to less than 1 Mbps in the evening (there are no caps, but we get prioritized below regular Verizon subscribers if the cell site is busy). By 10PM the speeds were good enough again to watch television on our Spectrum TV application on ROKU. By the next day, I gave up and turned our Dish Satellite service back on. On a positive note, our Visible service works fine for our normal (non-streaming) internet activities.

Friday night was our maiden voyage in our king size bed. Previously we had an RV Queen (which is shorter than a normal Queen) and always felt like we needed more room. This winter we ripped out the night stand on Beth’s side of the bed and our good friend Raul built a frame that allowed us to place a king size mattress in the bedroom. We both slept great and now have plenty of room for everyone (including 3 very cold cats).

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It was cold and rainy all day Saturday (our second day), so we just hunkered down and watched college basketball. Beth re-heated spaghetti she had made and frozen for days like these.

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We spent the weekend before Thanksgiving camping with our friends Mick & Heidi and their girls Haley & Lola at Chassahowitzka River Campground in Homosassa, FL. If you ever want to see old school Florida, this is it. The campground is nice with full hookups and lots of foliage. The foliage was thick enough that we had no luck with our DISH satellite and the campground is far enough away from civilization that we couldn’t pickup any TV channels on antenna. No loss there because we were spending time with friends and there really wasn’t any time for watching TV. The campground Wi-Fi signal was strong, but unfortunately there wasn’t enough bandwidth to make it usable. We did get good Verizon coverage on our cell phones for both voice and data.

Beth kayaked on the Chassahowitzka River by herself one of the days and with Heidi and her friend Nell the next day. The springs were beautiful, but she did not encounter any manatees. Now that Haley works for a bicycle shop we hired her to tune up Beth’s bike. She did a great job and Beth’s bike is now pedaling like new.

We managed to cook over a fire every night except the first night. One of those night’s we cooked Pork Burgers purchased at Mishler’s Packing back home in Indiana. They were delicious.

Unfortunately, on our way home we had a little incident pulling into the Gibsonton, FL Walmart to purchase diesel fuel. The entrance was at such a steep angle that the tail of our RV dragged on the ground. Apparently, the bearing in our radiator fan had gone out and was literally hanging by a thread. The sudden impact from the tail of the RV hitting the ground finally caused the fan assembly to fall out of alignment. We were afraid to drive it at that point so we parked it and waited patiently on a tow truck for six hours. While we waited, Beth made two trips home in the Tahoe with everything we could think to unload from the RV. Meanwhile, the long wait provided the opportunity to observe all the “interesting” activity occurring in that particular Walmart parking lot (a murder resulting from a drug deal gone bad occurred there the following week). The tow truck eventually arrived and took the RV two miles across the interstate to the local CAT dealer.

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