In the forest and by the sea

We're back on the road for our working tour. We'll be living in our sweet little camper van for the next 2.5 months, and did we ever start it off right! Both Florida and Georgia have some wonderful state parks and we took advantage.

After packing up the RV we had to leave the house prepared for hurricane season. Brought the kayaks inside and closed the hurricane shutters over all the windows, locked the doors and left about 1 pm. 5 hours on the road, 3 for Jim and 2 for me, would put us right about Flagler Beach and our favorite Florida State Park, Gamble Rogers. Why is it our favorite? Because it's right on the beach. We didn't have reservations, we rarely make reservations, so we knew the odds were poor for scoring one of the sites on the ocean side, but they also have sites on the river across the road from the beach and that would be ok.

Well, we lucked out, the ocean side was full, but we got there at the perfect time to get their "emergency" site. Just in case a camper had an emergency and could not travel, they can free up a reserved site for the next guest. Since there had been no emergency and we only wanted one night, they let us have that site. Cool.

The weather was perfect and we even got up at 6:30am to catch the sunrise. 

𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕣𝕚𝕤𝕖 𝕠𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕓𝕖𝕒𝕔𝕙

After a delightful, relaxed morning in the beach, we had lunch at Snack Jack's. It's just a short walk from the campground and also right on the beach.

We were still in time for the campground's very civilized 1pm checkout time and we continued or travels up I-95 into Georgia. We decided to stay at fort McAllister state Park, just south of Savannah. Now we're in the woods! My soul is singing.

 

Malibu Beach

After the FMCA rally in Pomona, we wanted to take Lynne to some nice campground before she had to fly back to Oregon. We picked Malibu Beach RV park. The short drive turned out to be pretty long thru all that traffic and I was wondering if this had been a bad idea after all. 
Then we got there!

What a view! Looking out our back window over the Pacific Ocean.

A very nice last night together.


We could just walk down the hill to a fresh seafood restaurant. And, just across the street to take a walk on the beach.

Jim even took this quadcopter video (https://youtu.be/f9vFo6-V5-w) at sunset one evening. Pretty, pretty spot. Not cheap though. I don’t think we’ve ever paid $60 before for a campsite! But, it was worth it. This was our reward for all the work of the last few months.

Spontaneity on the Way to FMCA INTO Rally

Although we rarely make reservations anywhere, we still tend to know exactly where we’re going.  Our life on the road has evolved to a kind of “Carney” existence.  We know the rallies where we’ve committed to speak, and therefore we have a schedule of places we need to be at certain times.  But the time in between does give us some flexibility.  Once we passed Chatanooga, I looked at the map and realized we were only about 3 hours from the next rally location in Lebanon, TN.  We planned to arrive on Wednesday, and that was only Tuesday.  So when I saw an intriguing park off to the East of the highway, I suggested we take a look and maybe stay the night.  I had no idea what the park was, I just saw a motorhome parked on a lakeshore with only one or two other RVs in site. 

Jim said OK!

 

Here’s our site.  Pretty nice huh?

 

And, since it was so early in the day, we had time and energy to go for a bike ride.  You can see the highway on the other side of the lake … that’s where we were when I spotted the park.

 

 

I like taking pictures of the view when we open our door!  It’s always different.

A Week of Geeks

This is our life, and it is just too cool.  When we left the Roadtrek rally, we traveled about an hour north to Bushnell, Florida and checked in to the Escapees park there for a week.  During that week, we saw old friends (fellow Escapees) presented one seminar at the Escapees park, another one at a retirement community in Zephyrhills, and then a seminar and a hands-on class at another RV resort.  So, in one week, we had a couple days of pure R&R and 4 ‘gigs.’  Then we were on the road again, headed to Fort Lauderdale for a stretch at ‘home.’  We started late, after our hands-on class, so we just drove till we were tired and pulled in to a Turnpike Rest Area, turned off the key and relaxed with a glass of wine till we went to bed. 

Escapees Park in Bushnell

The park is called Sumter Oaks and we’ve been by here before, but never stayed.  It is by the Escapees RV Club, and we are members of that club.  We knew that the managers this season are Wanda and Wallace who we know well from their work at Escapades and also that Bob and Molly, the directors of the Escapades were also there.  It is a gorgeous park with huge live Oaks and bordered on a beautiful Cypress swamp, the first night I pushed Jim to go for a walk all around just before sunset – set my DSLR camera to auto-bracketing in hopes of getting some nice HDR shots compiled by Google Plus.  If you want to learn more about this technique … here’s the Google+ help page.  Meanwhile, here’s the results:

Our Site:

 

The Azaleas:

 

The Cypress Swamp:

 

I think this is my favorite … a huge Live Oak:

 

Then, just as we were drawing a blank when we asked each other, “What are we going to do for dinner?” Molly came over and invited us to a cookout.  Beautiful setting, good food, good friends.

 

And, as long as we were going to be there for a week, we might as well do a seminar!  Wanda thought that our Smartphone/Tablet overview would be the best received.  We had about 40 people show up – it worked out well.  Here’s Jim getting set up:

Betmar Computer User Group in Zephyrhills

We gave a seminar at this group last year.  They are part of the APCUG (Ass’n of PC User Groups) and we are on the speakers’ bureau.  Zephyrhills is about an hour drive from Bushnell, so this worked out great.  This time they asked us to present our Facebook seminar … how fast things change!  Just a couple years ago, “what is facebook all about” was our most popular topic.  Now we found ourselves talking about how young people are leaving Facebook, and us older folks still use it all the time and are looking for advanced tips and tricks!  We had a nice group – hope they feel they learned something. 

I know I learned – but not in a good way.  I hate when technology makes a liar out of me!  In this case we started to demonstrate what I think is a very important tip: “If you have a friend that posts too much garbage, you can limit the garbage you see from them without UNfriending them.”  Well, the technique that we showed even just one month ago … wasn’t there!  (go to the friend’s profile, click on the button that reads Friend and you should see an option for Settings – there you can specify what you do and don’t want to see) the option for Settings has disappeared.  This has happened before and we use it as a teaching moment to demonstrate using Help.  This time, even help didn’t reveal where these settings have gone.  It appears that we simply don’t have the option anymore to specify “only important” or “only pictures”  or “not shares and comments”.   hmmmm  Has anyone else noticed this?  Found a way? 

 

Florida Grande 

Our last gig was only 20 minutes in the other direction.  We’ve been to Florida Grande a couple of times and found a very appreciative group.  It is an upscale Motorcoach resort in Webster, FL.

This time we spent 3 hours on the first day presenting “Technology for Travelers” and taking questions.  We really enjoy working with this size group … we felt we had enough time to cover any questions they may have, so we told them to write questions on slips of paper and we collected them at the midway break so we could answer them all in the second half.  Then, the second day we charged a fee and told people to bring their smartphones or tablets and we’d show them some of the things they probably didn’t know about using the cameras in these devices.  That was really fun.

 

Jim even made sure they had a subject for the video portion and flew his little remote controlled “skywriter” around the room!

 

We left there about 4:30 and started heading for Fort Lauderdale about 4.5 hrs away.  We don’t like to be on the road too late, so about 8pm we called it a day and pulled into a Turnpike rest area.  I find it hard to believe but I still get a thrill at the idea that we can just stop our vehicle, and we’re home.  Let the Rest of the World Go By!  With some earplugs to ease the truck noises – we slept great and woke up to a foggy morning in Florida ready to get back on the road.

Oregon Coast and the Spruce Goose

After the NW Area rally in Albany, we took advantage of our Thousand Trails membership to stay at a park called Whaler’s Rest on the Oregon Coast.  We always love the natural surroundings of most Thousand Trails parks and this was no exception.  The sites were beautiful and it was a short walk to the beach, BUT, we had no Internet.  That’s a problem for us since we run an Internet business. 

There was good Wi-Fi at the clubhouse, so anything we had to do we schlepped our computers up there.  We only planned to stay a few days, we could make it.  And, look at this great path to the beach!

Lynne came to visit, and we spent a wonderful day together. She came bearing gifts!  She sewed us a windshield cover for our old Honda that we used from 2004 to 2013.  Then we bought a new Honda … it has a much bigger windshield!  So she sewed us a new one!  And, I thought sewing was just for hemming pants!

 

When we left the coast, we made time for a stop in McMinnville at the Evergreen Museum that houses Howard Hughes’ gigantic airplane, the Spruce Goose.

That plane is definitely impressive, but the museum has a lot more to offer.  An Imax theatre, a World War II airplane collection, and a Space museum.  It’s 3 huge buildings.  Jim has always been a big fan of planes and especially space exploration.  I just love any kind of history.  I especially liked the story about Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler – 2 pilots in WWII.  Click the picture below to read the story.

And, check out these missiles.  Can you even see Jim?

Once we left the museum we got back on the road and traveled north thru Portland and the horrible traffic there.  Our destination was the Elks Lodge, just on the north side of the Columbia river.  We’re scheduled to get our slide serviced on Thursday.  Wish us luck.

We didn’t want to leave Clear Creek

This is our perfect park!  Small, picturesque, lots of good walking – either upstream on the path for a good hike, or downstream on the path for a short walk to downtown Golden and lots of good restaurants, breweries, and attractions. Look at this view from our kitchen window!  That river just kept running and running … it never got tired.

Good Wi-Fi, excellent 4G, good over-the-air TV, clean laundry and bathhouses right at the park.  Good friends nearby.  Yoga classes.  And, within an hour of some of the greatest scenery in the world.  Lots of young people around having fun in the outdoors – very inspiring.  Check out this little video we made while sitting outside on Memorial Day.  By the way, I used the iPad for this.  Using the front and the rear facing cameras for the video and the stills, then I edited it all together with iMovie and uploaded it to youtube.  All while sitting there watching people go by!


But, alas!  It was time to move on.  Actually, a little past time.  We still want to visit Rocky Mountain National Park then we have to be in Sturgis, SD for the Fulltimers Rally by this coming Sunday.
So…. Bye Bye Clear Creek.  We will return!

Riverside RV Park, Port Charlotte

We love it when RV parks ask us to visit and present our seminars!  This visit to Riverside was especially successful.  Thanks to John Goodrich, who attended several of our seminars at the Good Sam rally in Daytona, we were invited to stay at Riverside and present our Smartphone seminar to their computer club at the park. 

John introducing us to his computer group

 

He must have done an awesome job at promoting us because they usually have 35-40 people at their meetings and our audience was around 150!

 

We were warmly welcomed around the campfire in the evening

A friendly group and a great fire at Riverside RV campground!

 

And a nice paddle on the Peace River with the kayaking group in the morning.  Whew!  These retired folks wear us out!

Paddling with the Kayakers at Riverside RV Park in Port Charlotte

Back Up to the Bar!

We are in Sarasota because we’re presenting a Cloud Computing seminar to the Sarasota PC User Group tonight.  When I consulted my AllStays Camp & RV app on my Droid smartphone, I noticed an Elks lodge with RV parking just about a mile away from our seminar location!  Cool.  Staying at Elks’ Lodges is fun because you have a restaurant and bar right next to you.  This one is cooler yet in that there is a Tiki Bar – and that’s right where the RV parking spots are!  Unfortunately it’s only open on Fridays and we’ll be leaving on Thursday.

Back up to the Bar! Sarasota Elks Lodge - Tiki Bar

We’re also just a few miles from what is touted as the Best Beach in the Nation.  We got parked about 4:30, so we took a drive to the beach for sunset.  I’m so glad we did!  Happy Birthday Jim! 

Boardwalk to the beach at Siesta Key Sarasota

This sunset is just for you!

Sunset on Siesta Key in Sarasota. Jim's birthday 2013

 

Relax and Enjoy

 

We weren't the only ones enjoying the sunset.

 

Cool spot.  When we got home, we shuffled over to the main bar and had a delicious dinner at the Elks lodge.  Unfortunately, they were out of birthday cake! We had to settle for cheesecake.  We learned that the main kitchen guy just had a baby the day before.  We also met John and Jim, long time Sarasota Elks Lodge members.  It’s always a party when you stay at the Elks.  A couple glasses of wine finished off our celebration, then we just walked around the corner to home.

Our site at the Sarasota Elks Lodge

We’re hoping to have time before we leave on Thursday to visit the Ringling Circus Museum and Mansion too.

At Home in South Carolina

We always feel like we’re home when we’re staying in a Thousand Trails park.  We have a membership with Thousand Trails, and that means all we need to show is our membership card to get thru the gate and find a site – we don’t need to get out any money.  That doesn’t mean it’s free!  It just means we’ve already paid with our $500/yr membership dues. 

Our membership card includes the fact that Carolina Landings is listed as our ‘Home’ park.  Not sure why that is, since we signed up in Orlando many years ago, but that’s what our card says.  And,since there is good 4G Verizon signal here, we just feel so at home that we’ll take it.

We stayed here at the beginning of our summer tour, and now here we are at the end.  We even got the same site:

We’ve been here for 5 nights now – got a lot of computer work done, and even got in a nice exercise walk each day.  You can go for a simple stroll here and call it exercise because it is so hilly.  We’re huffing and puffing along the way.  Our site is on the top of the hills, so we walk down to the lake, and back up.

Since we’ve been here before, we didn’t need to spend time scoping out the good local restaurants, we knew right where to go for some good Carolina BBQ.  And caught a great sunset at the same time.  I especially like the Brunswick Stew here a the Spotted Pig.

We’re packing up today and heading for the shore.  Gonna visit Ally in Charleston, then on to Hilton Head where we have a couple of seminars scheduled at Computer Clubs.