Halt in our blogging because of Hurricane Irma

While we were on the coast of Oregon Hurricane Irma was Bering down on Florida. We did talk to friends that rode the storm out. We did find out we had some damage to our home. So we started a 3000 mile trip back home. After seven days of travel we met up with friends in Branson MO. They live in the same park as we do. We needed a few days rest. So we made a plan traveling together to go back to Florida.
     Therefore we will not be blogging for awhile. Hopefully damage is not to bad. Hopefully we will get back out west to see some of the things we missed. Till later.
     Bob and Linda

Happy New Year

    Well here we are at the end of another year. We keep saying where did the time go? We keep hearing this from all our friends.  It’s true time seems to be speeding by. It seems like just yesterday we were putting up a 2015 calendar, now it’s time for a new 2016 calendar. Already we have many dates filled in with events, doctor appointments, RV rallies, and planned RV trips. Events planned all the way to September.  

    We had a few bumps in the start of the year, and throughout 2015, but things are smoothing out. As we close the book on 2015 we can look back and say wow, we did all that. Hopefully 2016 will be a lot smoother. We are very optimistic; the cup is half full, not half empty. And so we start 2016 with many planes. And so we are wishing you all a

               Happy New Year and may all your planes be fulfilled

November Blog, a month late, long, but mostly photos.

Well here I am procrastinating again. We are near the end of December and I am just trying to update November. November was a busy month for us, This is a long blog, but mostly pictures.  Starting with our Carriage Club Rally the first week of the month. It was a busy week with a tour of Kennedy Space Center, a Eco river tour and a day at Port Canaveral with a tour of the Explorer Tower, plus several dinners and pot lucks. It was a very busy week.  

This is the explorer Tower

View from the observation deck 

 

Cruise ship, one of two that were in port the day we were there

 Can you see the rainbow?

This guy was one of many osprey we saw on the boat tour

 

Next was the christening of my new boat 

See that spot in the water, that's a gator, he or she came to check out the boat.

If you can measure the distance from their eyes to the tip of their nose, every inch equals a foot. So this guy is pretty long.

 

 

The Bass Pro shop in Palm Bay. I really enjoy the décor of their stores. This is some swap buggy. Take your time looking at the buggy and check out the details. So many things on it. Sorry we couldn't get it closer.

 

A big Harley Davison store near Daytona Beach. When our son Mark was here visiting he just had to stop on our way to ST Augustine.  This is only about one forth of the store. There is also a second floor.

 

This is more my style.

 

In the parking lot was this neat truck.

 

 

We have a  strange flower. See how big it is, but it smells like garbage. Its been blooming for over a month.

 

His eyes were bigger than his month. We watch him for about ten minutes and he could not swallow the fish

 

Linda was watching "The Chew" and  saw this "popcorn cake". Well she had to try it. It wasn't bad.

The cake was made of popcorn

 

 

Another stop while our son Mark and his wife Tracey were here was a trip to Downtown Disney, Now Disney Springs. I especially enjoyed the boats, at the boat house restaurant and bar.

A lot of construction being done. It is expected to be done by spring.

Do you remember these?  You can go for a ride, with a driver. I believe the price was $75 for an adult, not sure about chidren.

Just one of the many boats. See some of the other boats in the background.

 

 

I guess that's enough boats.

There is a lot more to Disney Springs then boats, like this Lego dinosaur

 

Mark and Tracey

 

 

 

And finally the cabinets above the drivers compartment in our RV are finished, well almost.
Before

After, still needs several finish coats of  clear, and a few door nobs installed. The cabinets were build by a master cabinets maker. They match the rest of the cabinets in the RV

 

 

I’m sure I forgot something. We did post about Thanksgiving in an earlier blog.
Here we are near the end of another year. Time is running  by spinning out of control. At our age we must make the most out of every day.  So everybody out there embrace every day, because before you know it, you will be saying, “where did the year go”

Thanks for following along.

Wishing you a early Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Back home in Florida, blogging and face book

    Hi all, sorry for the delay in posting. Thank you for all the kind post. We are back in Florida without any problems. At least I 95 was open for the trip home. This was a trip just to get from point A to B without any touring stops. It was cold in PA, with a low one night of 34. We are not use to that cold weather.  Linda just wanted to get home, and with pending doctor appointments we just wanted to get there.  

     We are just getting ready for a RV Rally. The RV Park is about a mile from our home so we will just be going over each day in our car. I’m sure that will make us miss that lifestyle and grease our feet to start traveling soon. The RV is sitting and ready to go. We do keep it in hurricane mood. We can hop in and be ready to hit the road in a hour if we have to. Just need to empty one refrig to the other. Gas, propane and water full, waste tanks empty.

    We are making some far off planes to do some traveling, just a few small trips not far from home to meet up with friends that winter (snow birds) in our area. We do remember being snow birds, but now call Florida home. Boy that is hard to get use to. Hopefully we will become summer birds (is that what people from the south escaping the hot weather are called).

     Another topic- Face book. Several friends asked us why we don’t use face book instead of a blog. Well, we started with a blog to let family and friends know where we were and follow along with our journey.  Then it became a little bigger than we expected. We are around 600 post with 120, 000 hits and don’t want to stop posting and let those followers down. But with limited travel we are kinda letting our blog slow down.  Also how do we transfer all those blog post to face book along with the photos. Blogging does take a lot of time, but when we were traveling full time I enjoyed writing and posting photos, as it was the journal of our life, and we do look back at it. This is important; we still do want to travel. There are things we want to see and things we want to revisit. It’s no different than folks going on vacation ever year to the same place, be a cabin in the woods or a place at the beach, except our front and back yard change with each move. There is so much in this beautiful country of ours to see, we need a couple of lifetimes to see it all, and then will probably miss something as we may have been there at the wrong time of the year or the wrong season. So you see, we have the disease called wonderlust, only cured by more travel.  It is not only the travel, but also planning of the journey, although we do wonder off our planned path quite a bit.  We don’t want to spend too much time in one place. That is why we traded our 5^th wheel into something smaller, like the class c we purchased.  Big enough for the two of us and easier to get around in and pick up and go.  We also enjoy   being in the same vehicle, not like Linda following me driving our HHR. Speaking of the HHR, here is something you won’t see to often.

 

     A few seconds earlier it was 77 degrees making it 7 7’s, but it changed to 78 before I could find a spot to pull off the road  and take a photo, darn it!  We waited  hoping it would go back to 77 degrees, but it went to 78, then 79, what luck.

     We were just commenting on how many full time friends like us have either bought a home base or gave up traveling altogether. Must be the age bracket. We do have some tentative planes for 2016.  We miss making new friendships and finding new things to eat.

This scared the heck out of me, it happened while I was pulling around the gas pump, though I hit something.  The rear wheels are off the ground.

 

 

  THANK YOU TO ALL WHO HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING ALONG.  

On the road again

On the road again. Well almost. Finally good news. After many false starts we received good news from Linda's doctors. We could go on a road trip for 4 weeks. We tried for 5, but no just 4. We will be on the road for the 4th of July, not the most ideal day to start our trip back to Pennsylvania. Almost said home, after all  we were PA residents for almost 70 years( I should have said a very long time).

     What a difference it is to pack the RV compared to living in one when everything we owned was with us at all times. Its like taking the kids on vacation and asking a 100 questions if they remembered to pack some important item.  Well Linda and I have been doing that for the passed couple of days. Basically the RV is packed except for some clothing, food, medications and us. It is hurricane ready to leave on short notice.. Our escape mode of transportation if we are here in Florida and see a hurricane heading for FL But with the excitement of being ready since February when we planned a six month trip out west we  were acting like it was our first trip ever. We will leave on the 4th hoping most folks are were they want to be by then. After 350 miles or so we will pull into a RV park till Monday then continue our trip back to PA. Hopefully this will work out ok. We do have reservation all the way back to PA. . We are braking that rule of ours, never never travel over a holiday, but that's just the way the cards fell. We don't like traveling with reservation, but there are exceptions. The hardest thing for us was finding a house sitter for a month in a gated 55+ community on short notice. But we did have someone lined up.  We are just happy that Linda is well enough to travel. Not sure how much we will be blogging about since we will mostly just be visiting with family.

Travel

    Getting caught up on all the blogs I follow was invigorating. That is almost caught up, still a lot to go. Yesterday after bringing our RV back from some minor maintenance I just sat in the drivers seat and started remembering all(that is some) of  the places we have been, and all the super people we have met. And thanks to all the blogs I follow I'm getting revved up to get on the road, and getting out of the rut I have been in. I had just saw a blog about Fort Niagara, one of the places we visited 50 years ago this passed May on our honeymoon.  Thanks to all you bloggers out there, you have revitalized me.  Our future trips may be limited to a week or month at time, but we will enjoy every moment.   We had enjoyed almost 10 years of full time  RV travel and many years of RV adventure before that.  We have many memories. So all you RV travelers keep up the blogs, and be sure to include pictures, and sometimes we can say I remember that place. Safe travels to all, hope to see you on the blogger road.


Official Florida residence. Previously we lived in Pennsylvania.

Over 1000,000 hits on our blog

      As we reach the threshold of 100,000 hits on our blog, we keep pinching ourselves thinking that how did we get that many hits.  I know this is not a lot of hits by some of the other blogs I follow, but for us it is a big number considering we started this blog for our family and some friends. Up to date we have published  581 blog post . There are a number of blog post with several 100 plus hits, then some with just a few hits. Some blogs have close to 500 hits. I feel we have gotten a little better at blogging since our first post.
       We are hoping that in a month or so we can get on the road for an extended trip. We plan to keep on rving and traveling until it is time to hang up the keys. We have had a wonderful time traveling for ten years as full time rvers. We had a great times seeing this wonderful, beautiful, fabulous  country we call the United States of America.  We had also made some wonderful friends in that time. Some for years and some for only a week. Other rvers will understand about our "week only best  friends". We had stopped along the way "to smell the roses".  An when it becomes time to hang up the keys we have many, many  great memories to fall back on, and share with those interested in listing. Funny our home base is on a street called Rosewood, maybe there are more roses to be smelled. But for now there are places we haven't seen or wish to revisit and we hope to do that soon.

WOW WE WENT OVER 100,000 HITS WHILE WRITING THIS BLOG.

 

 

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What happened here

     Hi, hope all is well. Check out the attached photo. Lucky nothing is broken. The most injured thing was pride. Happened on Saturday at Daytona  Speedway.Just before I went down I felt a hand on my back. The only one behind me was Linda, just saying. Then while I was sleeping in the recliner she dropped a book with a very very loud resounding boom that almost gave me a heart attack. I had a full glass of wine, for medicinal purposes, and it went flying over our new recliners. Luckily it blotted up without staining anything. In the near future we are going on a cruise and if you hear man over board and I turn up missing these are strange coincident, just so you know. But all joking aside I fell in the bleachers. Went down so fast I don't know what happened. I fell on my left side. I bruised my face and hit on my shoulder I am having rehab on. I badly bruise my shin bone and twisted my ankle. Had x-rays and cat scans to make sure I didn't brake anything. Cat scan to make sure I didn't have any brain bleed since I am on blood thinner. Just sore today 

 

Look for upcoming blog. Been to busy to write, but an getting caught up.

Traveling with a second vehicle

     We sure do like driving the HHR. On the highways she averages 38-40 mpg. In town we are averaging 28-32 mpg. It is also a whole lot easier getting around in town with it, then with the big truck. Also the ride is a lot smoother. Although this truck is a lot smoother then our old truck. The truck does ride a lot smoother with the 5th wheel in tow. We find we are spending more time in one area then we did in the passed. We are doing a lot more touring with the car, traveling greater distances to tour an area.  If need be the car does offer use a little more storage. We are in contact with each other with walkie-talkies. We also both have cell phones should we get separated and out of walkie- talkie range. Linda is usually following. Many times she has helped me with lane changes in busy areas. She has also helped by going ahead and finding something we  have been looking for, like an RV park. Also when we get to an RV park we sometimes use the car to look for a site rather then drive around with the RV in tow. Another big thing is the 50,000 + miles on the car are not on the truck. Of course some of that is following the truck and RV to get to our destination. We also have the high clearance 4 wheel drive truck should we want to do some off road exploring.

    Our biggest dislike is not traveling together in the same vehicle. Linda especially dislikes this ever since we lost Blazer. She would tell him all the things I was doing wrong, now she tells me. So we may have to get her another traveling companion to talk to while traveling. But along these lines we are trying to travel shorter distances between stops. Another disadvantage is the extra cost shown in our last post.  Only once did we have to pay for an extra vehicle in an RV Park. Sometimes it is difficult to park both vehicles at our site in an RV park. But like I said above, everything is a trade off. In the passed we did own a class A motor home and towed a Jeep. But we like the livability of our 5th wheel more them the motor home we had. This is a topic that can be discussed longer then some of the debates in congress. One of the big decisions for us owing a 5th wheel is when we can't travel anymore, it is a better unit to leave on a permanent site somewhere to live in.. This is just our opinion, and there are as many opinions as there are RV's.


    Thanks for following along.

Chevy HHR 54,000 miles +, time for some maintenance

                          PA temp low 20*w/35 mph winds, gust to 45 mph.

We try to maintain all equipment on schedule set by the manufactures. So it is  time for some maintenance on our HHR. We have a little over 54,000 miles on the odometer.  #1 Time to flush the transmission and replace the fluid. #2  Time to replace 4 tires. #3  Time for an alignment  #4 time for and oil change. An unexpected item was new brakes and rotors and two filters. Wow that's a lot of maintenance all at once, but I believe in preventive maintenance.  Sure puts a big dent in our budget. The total  cost was over $1100. We have to weigh the expense of traveling with a second vehicle. Everything is a trade off. Does it pay us to travel with an extra vehicle?  We have been asked that question many times.  We will continue this topic in another post.

                     Tonight lows in the teens with 20-25 mph winds

9-10-11-12-13 What do these number mean

    What were you doing at 9-hour,10- minute, 11-mouth, 12-day, 13-year.  So what were you doing at 10 after 9 on the 12th of November 2013, hence 9-10-11-12-13. It was a time to celebrate. Not sure if all the planets aligned at this  time but many folks thought it was a good time to get married. Well for us it was a special time, we sheared a kiss, because we won't be around for the next 9-10-11-12-13.

    That's all folks.

Super Super Video of God's creatures

Below is a super, super, super link. It is a video, about 4 minutes long. I hope I copied the link properly so it works. It was posted on another bloggers blog. That blog was   Travels with Emma   We had followed her blog for a number of years. And this summer we had the privilege of meeting her. She is Judy and Emma is her dog.


http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=BUOQ_yPW_0s

Linda got a new Nook HD

      Linda wanted a new Nook HD. So we went to Barnes and Noble and checked them out. Very impressed with the Nook HD. So we priced them and the cover for it. We then decided to buy one. The total price was about $220. So we went home and ordered Barnes and Noble discounted gift cards for $225.  See yesterdays blog.  We order $225. in discount cards with a 12% discount. The cost was $198., a $27 discount. The cards arrived in 3 days. The following  day we went to Barnes and Noble and purchased a Nook with a cover. Linda is very happy with her Nook and has already subscribe to some magazines. She has also been sending some emails and getting use to using it. It is an amazing little device. All her books were transfer to her new Nook. Now she has to decide what to do with her old Nook. I'm for selling it, but someone else may have other thoughts. But the full timers policy is something in something out. So something has to go and I hope its nothing of mine.
     She can connect to the internet through our Jetpac/mifi or wherever we have Wifi.   Our Jetpac can handle up to 10 devices. O boy! we can now be like a modern family and both be on the internet at the same time. We can even email each other and not have to talk to one another.  I know there may be times when she doesn't want to speak to me, but can these devices give that "look". You know what I mean. The look is a lot more intimidating then the silence.
     Boy o boy are we becoming high tech or what. Last month new smart phones, and texting became a new word in are vocabulary. Now a new Nook HD which is a lot more then an electronic reader. , what's next. I see outer space as a possibility, but can we get there in our RV.

A new way to shop -- discounted Gift Cards

   Thanks to our daughter in law Dawn we have discovered discount gift cards. We heard of these cards but never paid any attention about them. These are cards sold to a discount gift card buying site at a discount from folks who do not want them for various reasons. The number one reason is they receive them as a gift and do not want them. They sell them at a lesser discount then they are resold  to buyers like us.Then the discount site resells them at a discount price. The discounts range from 1 to 15%.  The site I like best is cardpool . There are many more sites.
     We signed up and purchased several different cards so far. We have purchased a Darden Restaurants card (Red Lobster - Olive Garden + several others) at a 12% discount. So upon using the card we saved 12% on the total bill. Plus we used a credit card when we purchased the discounted card, were we received a 1% rebate, so our total savings was 13%  . We also purchased and used a Wal-Mart card, 2% discount, Barnes and Noble card, 12% discount,  Lowe's, 10%, plus several others. So now we are hooked.
     The only disadvantage to these cards is you have to buy them in advance. So you need to plan ahead. But if you know sometime in the future you are going to eat at Red lobster or shop at Kohl's you have to buy  the card ahead of time. Some cards you can get electronically, so you can use them instantly. The cards change daily or quicker. The discounts vary. Not every store or restaurant is available. But by buying the cards that we use, we hope we can safe 3 to 5% overall on our spending for the year. That doesn't sound like much, but figure how much you spend in a year and discount it by 3-5% all see how much you can save. That's 2 or 3 times the interest you receive on bank CD's.
   A PS, if you sign up with cardpool give them our email address and we will receive a $5.  credit on our account the first time you order something from them.
   Thanks for following along. I know I used the word discount so many times that this blog may be a little confusing.

Beautiful View out our window in Lancaster county

We are in beautiful Lancaster county PA. This is the view out our dinning room window.

The last time we were here these sites were full.  Many RVer's move on to warner climates.

How would you like to live in this farm?  Enlarge from the photo below, its in the center of the  picture behind those trees.

From our dinning room window.

Thanks for following along. Last night it was 28* here, A little to cold for us, but we hope to move to a warner climate sooooon.

How to plan were to go and were to stay

     A couple of question we are often ask as full time RVer's are, "how do you plan were to travel' and "how do you plan on were to stay". Also how do you find some of the neat places and events in your travels. These questions are usually from part time RVer's, but many times from none RVer's.  Well the short answers are, travel to a warn climate in winter and a cool climate in summer. We try to stay in membership parks along our travel route and at our destination. But and that's a large but there is a lot of planning on our part to make those simple answers work.
    For example in the summer we choose a place were we plan on spending the winter. Take last winter, we planned on being in Florida for our winter destination. We had a rally schedule in Myrtle Beach SC. So we planned our time to arrive there a week before the rally started. On the way we stopped at a Passport America membership park. Then before the rally started we stayed at a Coast To Coast membership park for a week in North Myrtle Beach. After the rally we wanted to visit the cities of Charleston and Savannah. We choose two Passport America membership parks by each city and stayed a week in each.  Then we went to Florida and stayed at two other membership parks. In between we stopped at a few non membership parks. The reason we try to stay at membership parks is because of a reduced rate.
   The routes we usually travel on have become more interstates highway then in the pass.  In the passed we usually choose secondary routes, to see more small towns and interesting things.  But since we have purchased our larger RV we are traveling larger roads.  Also since we now travel with a car, we use the car to do a lot more touring of the areas we are traveling through. Another note about our route. If we have no firm schedule we seek out other interesting things along the way, even if it is a slight detour. We also try to travel without reservations. This is difficult in the summertime. We like the shoulder seasons, Spring and Fall, but even these seasons are getting crowed. One spring season we found out a new word in our travel vocabulary, "spring break". In Texas we found all schools from elementary school to college have spring break. We had to scramble to get a site at a Corp of Engineers Park.
      Another note about were we stay. We have pretty much gave up a lot of boondocking. For our none RVing friends, that is RVing without hookups to water, electric and sewage. These locations are usually in super areas in National parks or forests etc. Then there is "blacktop camping". These are places like Wal-Mart's or Home depots that allow overnight stays. We don't do Wal-Mart's or other similar stores unless in an emergency. We will do Casino's, as they do have good security overall. Many casino's also have RV parking area's or RV parks. This is especially true of Indian Casino's in the Midwest and West. Boondocking is roughing it.  For us anymore, roughing it is 30 amp electric without sewer hook ups. Our RVing friends will know what I'm talking about.
    This sure got a lot longer then I thought. But if you were here I could sit down with you and go over all this in more detail.  If anyone has any question about how we get from point A to point B just email us and we will try to give you our answers to your question. Many RVer's have many different way to travel. We also welcome their comments.
   On another blog, and I can't find the blog again, I guess you should put things like this in your favorites, there was information about a mosquitoes alert site.  The site is found on the Weather Channel web site. You can put in the date and area your are traveling through and get the mosquito forecast. Now if they only had something like that for "stink bugs".
   

Our New Verizon Smart Phones

      Sometime this week we hope to have a class on our new "smart phones".  There are so many features on these phones we can do other then make a call.  We have to go to school to learn some of them. Friends Dianna and Jerry from our Carriage club also purchased new smart phones and mentioned how useful the class was for  them. No longer is it a phone. It is a mini computer, it is so smart. This is my second smart phone, but this one went to college. When Linda turned in her flip phone the girls helping us just laughed. I think the old flip phone was older then one of the girls.
   There is a new word in our vocabulary, "texting". Wow, now you don't have to talk to your family and friends, just "text" them. We are a little old fashion on some things and it may take a while to get use to texting. I know there are some cases when you would rather not to talk to someone and texting may be an option.
    Well after two cancellations for a "class" on our new cell phones we finally had our day of learning. We did learn a lot about the phone itself. There is still a lot to learn. We can make a call, take a photo, download the photo's to our computer, or is that a upload, check our plan usage, etc., etc., etc.. our heads are spinning.  But little by little we are getting use to our new phones.
     Linda already blinged her phone, making it her own. Now be patient with us if we don't get back to you in a timely fashion if you text us.


Thanks for following along.

Security in blogging

    I received an email from a  friend that asked me why I don't usually use the last names of people in our blogs. I do this as a security measure. Not everybody I blog about wants the world to know where they are. Anything posted online is open to everybody, and they are not always good people. I also try to talk about things that happened in the passed, not today or where we or someone is going to be traveling to.
    Let me give you a good example and a lesson to me. We were in Alaska sitting in the lounge of a boat when a stranger approached and ask if we were Bob and Linda. What a shock. Who was this guy and how did he know our names. Turns out he was following our blog. Dummy me blog about what we were going to do that day. The boat had only about 15 other people on at the time. Of course our picture was on our blog so he had no problem identifying us. Turns our he was a fellow RVer,  but was staying at a different RV park then we were. But I learned a lesson, don't be to specific on things you are doing today or tomorrow.

       Note Again several albums and photo's have disappeared from our blog. Don't know why or how to find them and restore them to my blog.

     Thanks for following along.

Dish network Outdoor Channel featured 3 places we visited.

        Really neat to see on TV some place you had visited. This has happened before, but not three shows in a row that have places we visited. Especially one this year and one last year.
   I was watching the Outdoor channel on a Dish TV the other day and they featured several places we visited. What a shock to see the town of  Regent and  the scrap metal art that we featured in our blog in September. We really enjoyed visiting the town and the sculptures. The story was featured on a program called "Flush". It was about flushing pheasants out of cover using some great hunting dogs. Here are a few of the sculptures. You can see more pictures under our label North Dakota. July 2013.

The game they were hunting, was the pheasant,  as North Dakota is one of the best states to hunt pheasants.

A family revisited.

      The very next program featured The Savannah National Wildlife Refuge we visited in early autumn last year while visiting Savannah. The refuge is part of the very important Atlantic flyway.

It was in our blog titled Savannah part 2  September 2012. Here are the photos from that blog.

 

 The very next story on the same channel was about hunting some of the exotic game in Junction Texas. An area we spent about 4 months at in 2007. We drove the area looking through their high fences. We did spot some exotic game several times. There is a very large game ranch there of 100,000 plus acres.  I believe it is called San Benito range. Can't remember for sure. I'll try to find some photo's.