We always make reservations when we travel

NOT!

Planning is not our strong suit. Winging it is more our style.

We left fort Lauderdale a week ago. Our first stop is Green Cove Springs, near Jacksonville, where our mail forwarding service is located. Jim ordered a new drone and it just got delivered there so we stopped to pick it up. We used our Allstays app and found a Cracker Barrel where we can park overnight. It's great, you get dinner and breakfast.

Then we got on the I-10 Interstate highway which will take us all the way to the west coast of these united States, nearly 3,000 miles. Our reason for this trip is to present our seminars at the FMCA convention in Chandler Arizona, and the Escapee's RV club Escapade in Tucson. In other words, we're going to work. Here's the basic plan, as laid out in Streets and Trips

Driving the interstates is the easiest and most comfortable way to travel when you're in a big rig, towing a car. I-10 across northern Florida is actually quite scenic as well. 

Sometime after lunch, a tuna sandwich that I make while Jim continues driving, I look at a map and determine where we might want to stop for the night. Hmmm, we could make it into Alabama. There's an  Escapees park that we've heard is nice down by gulf shores. We could even stay 2 nights and give him a chance to fly his new drone and drive to gulf shores too. I called for "reservations" saying we would be there in 2 hours. No problem, come on down!

Back on the road, i-10 thru mobile, across the Mississippi at Baton Rouge, thru the Atchafalaya swamp. By now it's starting to get dark, so I look at allstays to find the next Walmart where we can park.

We want to stop in Waco Texas to visit our friend Frank and his family. That is now clearly 2 days away, so we call him to make arrangements. He says Tuesday is better than Wednesday and we can park at his family's ranch. Cool. So, we just need one night in between. 

Texas is the land of Thousands Trails. This is a membership park system that we belong to. We pay about 600/yr whether we use it or not. So we need to use it. I got online using their website and made a reservation for one night at Lake Conroe.

One night at the Frank family ranch was just delightful. I'll write a Separate post on that.

Back on the road and Jim was into driving, so we made it to just after dark again. Pulled off at a rest area, cranked up the generator and made dinner. I used ear plugs to soften the sound of the semis and we slept well.

We don't need no stinkin' reservations!

California Russian River

One of my favorite songs is Red Tail Hawk by Kate Wolf, but I know it by the refrain, “The Golden Rolling Hills of California.” I thought of it a lot during our drive this day.

Whenever there’s a Thousand Trails park anywhere near our route, that’s where we’ll go. We pay about $500 a year to be a member of Thousand Trails, then we stay at their parks without getting any money out of our pockets! So nice. It takes 25 nights’ stay then, to bring the cost to $20/night. Any more than that and we’re getting a really good deal.

We’ve never been to the Russian River TT before so it was a treat. It’s a very hilly park, not easy to drive the rig and get parked, but we did. In fact, the neighbors even applauded Jim’s parking job. He gives me all the credit for guiding him, but I know he could almost do it without me.  I think it’s all in getting the right approach – that’s the hard part. Then I just fine tune the position and tell him when to stop.
The park was old, and not very luxurious, but it was a quick walk down to the pretty riverside.

THE INTERNET WAS GOOD! We looked it up beforehand on our Coverage App, as well as looking at actual Cell Tower locations. Those indicated that it would be pretty good, but we still didn’t believe it. Thousand Trails parks are known for being in out of the way places with no good Internet connections. Check out these actual speedtest results from our site:

This was very important to us because we’d like to stay till Sunday, and Sunday morning is our Internet Show, “What Does This Button Do?” We really need good Internet in order to do that show. And, we did! Here’s the whole show: Episode 9 video on Youtube, if you’re interested in learning about Smartphones and Tablets.

Oh yeah ... we felt the earthquake! This from WikiPedia: The 2014 South Napa earthquake occurred near American Canyon, California on August 24 at 3:20 a.m. local time, measuring at 6.0 on the moment magnitude
It woke us up, but we just rolled over and went back to sleet. An RV is a good home to have in an earthquake, it's very used to shaking!

San Juan Islands, Ferries, and Friends

I didn’t realize quite where we were. Staying at the Thousand Trails park in La Conner, we were right in the middle of everything the Puget Sound/San Juan islands area has to offer. Seattle, Olympic peninsula, Friday Harbor, and Victoria, British Columbia were all within a day trip outing. WE checked out taking the ferry from Anacortes to Victoria, B.C. but you really need your passport, or a specially stamped drivers license. Our passports are out for renewal, and only Jim has that special star on his drivers license.  We’d heard so much about Port Townsend from friends over the years, that we decided to scope that out first. It’s a spectacular ride, including driving over Deception Pass bridge.

Then we put the car on a ferry to go over to Port Townsend.

When we got off the ferry we drove south a ways in hopes of finding our friends Lindy and Mary – they’re long-time dive buddies from Fort Lauderdale who are just beginning their RVing lifestyle. It so surprised us that they’d made it this far already! It took us 11 years to get here! We knew they planned to stay at the Escapees park in Chimacum. They hadn’t arrived yet, but we got to check out the park. It’s very nice except for the fact that we didn’t see any Verizon signal at all – so, we probably couldn’t stay there! Hey, we’re still hoping to meet up with you somewhere down the road Mary and Lindy!

So we drove back up to Port Townsend and wandered around a bit. What a nice city park they have!

And, then we just had to seek out the Potpourri shop that we knew about from our friend Lynn. We met the owner, Jeannie, at the memorial last summer for Lynne’s husband, John. We wanted to say hi! and see the shop we had heard so much about. I felt like I had walked into OZ it was so green and colorful in there! So, here is Jim and Jeannie – saying Hi back to Lynne!

Whenever we’re doing cool stuff like this, we post pictures and notes on Facebook. It’s just so easy with our smartphones – snap a picture, tap the button to share on Facebook, type a few words, and click Send. So many of the friends we’ve made over the last 11 years of RVing are also traveling all over the place. You never know when you might be nearby. When Honey and Bob Shellman saw our Facebook post, they wrote back and said they’re staying at an RV park real close by! So, when we got back from our day tour, they came by and shared some wine! Then we planned an outing for the next day. They know a good restaurant for mussels in Coupeville. Sounds good!

Jim saw a sign for a air museum on the way, so we allowed extra time and stopped at the Oak Harbor PBY Naval Air Museum. PBY’s are Seaplanes used in WWII. Did you know the difference between Seaplanes and Flying Boats? Neither did we! A flying boat can ONLY land in water, it has no landing gear for runways. I think Jim’s primary motivation for the visit was to use the Flight Simulator!

I love mussels, and Toby’s did a great job. The views and the town were a treat. Honey told us that the movie, Practical Magic, was filmed here. We’ll have to watch it again now – we like watching movies filmed in areas where we’re staying.

Pretty spot. I can see why Honey and Bob like it here! In fact, they like it here so much they’re looking at property – we wish you best of luck!

Orlando and Disney

One of our goals in staying at the Thousand Trails Orlando park was to get some more use out of our Disney pass that we bought in the fall. We heard that the Flower and Garden Festival was on so I figured there would be some good photo ops.

 

 

This next picture was taken with Jim’s new Galaxy Note3 phone.  What a cool feature!  Picture in Picture.  It uses both the front and the rear cameras on the phone at the same time!

After visiting a few attractions at Epcot and getting our fill of delicious food at the International food stands around the World Showcase, we decided to take advantage of the park-hopping feature of our passes and head over to Animal Kingdom for the rest of the day.  We really enjoy the Safari ride there.

 

I had my camera on the action setting for these shots and snapped 3 or 4 of each animal.  Later, in looking at all the pictures that had been auto-backed up to my Google+ account, I saw that the “Auto-Awesome” feature had taken some of those animal sequences and turned them into animated .gifs!  How funny.

We ended the day with the roller coaster ride called Everest Expedition.  I’m not much of a roller coaster fan, but this one is fun.

More pictures on our March photo album.

A Forced Break - No Internet

We thought we'd hang around the rally fairgrounds for at least one day as we recuperated and wound down from a very busy week, but it was not to be.  The electricity was turned off around 10am - a sure sign that we were being asked to leave!
We turned on the generator so we could take care of the necessary things, but slowly got ready to hit the road and head back south.  Our next 'gig' is at a computer club in Sarasota, Florida.  It is apparently still winter and Florida is the place we want to be!
So, we headed south, not knowing where we would get to the first night.  I studied the Allstays App for a spot somewhere around the Gainesville area and Ginnie Springs jumped out at me.  Jim and I have been scuba diving in those gin-clear springs and knew it to be a very special forested campground as well.  We've never been able to stay with the RV before because they don't allow pets.  We've been sadly pet-less for about a year now ... there are a few advantages.
Now this is what most people have in mind when they say "campground."

Such a pretty place, and the birds have the most beautiful voices!  Jim got right to work setting up a homey camp, with a table cloth on the picnic table, the awnings out and the grill ready to receive dinner fixin's.  I sat down at the computer and was very disappointed.  Our Verizon phones which normally provide Internet to our computers would bounce back and forth between one bar of 3 or 4G and a 1X signal, or simply NO signal at all.  I tried our iPad with it's AT&T service and found the same lack of connection.  I got out our Wilson "Sleek" 3G booster and it didn't help either.  We walked up to the office where there was supposed to be Wi-Fi and had not much more luck there.
OMG ... what do we do??

It is a beautiful place for a bike ride!  Lots of people were swimming and scuba diving in the springs, but we thought it was still a bit nippy for that.  I finished one book (Coast to Coast with a Cat and a Ghost) and started another (Going Home with a Cat and a Ghost) that I had already downloaded to my phone's Kindle App.  I did the download while we were on the road, just in case we were going somewhere with no Internet.  I really like reading on my Droid phone - it's so easy to hold in one hand, it lights up to read in bed and I can even turn the page using just one hand.

It was actually quite a delightful, peaceful 2-night stay.  But, after 2 nights, we really MUST have Internet!  So, it's off to Orlando and the Thousand Trails park there.  Good Internet, great hot tub, near Disney World where we have season passes, and best of all it's FREE.  Well, "Free" isn't quite the right word ... pre-paid maybe describes it better.  We have a membership in Thousand Trails and we pay roughly $500/year maintenance - then when we pull into a park to stay for a while, we don't pay any more.  It's home!

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