Big Mill Youtube studio

 Next stop along the way is our friend, Chloe, at her home and business in North Carolina. It's called Big Mill B&B and we've been there a couple of times before. It's always a delight to visit with Chloe. She is such a natural for the hospitality industry! Always ready to take you in and show you around.

And, she understands RVers. Two of her "rooms" are actually vintage Airstream trailers. We parked and hooked up right next to them.

Our stay happened to coincide with our scheduled Youtube show. She graciously let us take over her dining room and turn it into a YouTube studio for the afternoon. Here is  - Episode 218: 

How to Make Movies from Your Photos Quick and Easy Using Google Photos

Thanks Chloe!

Chesapeake and Norton Yachts

 The Chesapeake Bay area is so beautiful, and it's easy to plan our route through there.

My good friend Liz's son owns a marina in the Chesapeake area. It's been on my list to visit but I hadn't remembered it the last couple times we were in the area. This time I remembered! And I even found his phone number! And, he was there! He said, come on down!

The last time we saw Anton was at his wedding in 2009. Here's the blog post from October 2009. 

It was great to catch up with him and it was a great place to park. Jim took some drone video of our parking spot and the surrounding area. Here's the video. 

We spent a nice day exploring the area.

Hurricane Henri

We've been parked at our favorite driveway for a little over a week now. It's Located on LBI. (Long Beach Island) New Jersey. During that week it's been hot, cool, sunny, cloudy, and now it's a hurricane.

Just the outer bands of the tail end of a hurricane, but it's a pretty good storm. I'm lying here awake at 3 in the morning, listening to the rain on the roof of the van and feeling the wind rocking us just like if we were driving down the road. The occasional bolt of lightning lights up thru the Windows and I count the seconds before the thunder - CRACK - that one was instant. It was close!

In all the years we've been coming here in august (nearly 20) we've never had predictable weather. Unless you call a little bit of everything predictable. It can go from suffocating heat without a breath of air at noon, to windy and cool at 2, to perfectly gorgeous for the sunset at 8, to a hurricane at 3am.

I feel close to nature here. Maybe too close.😁

Morning after Henri - The ocean has calmed down but there's good surf!

Our spot

Staying cool

It's been hot this summer. From Texas to Wyoming, Utah to New Jersey, it's been in the 90s. When we camped at 10,000 feet, it cooled off at night but most places-not. It's been a struggle this year to stay cool.

Living in an RV means you can follow the weather; north in the summer, south in the winter. That didn't work this year. It was SO hot on the Jersey shore that we almost left after just a couple of days. Luckily it cooled off a little, and we managed. We ended up staying a couple weeks.

The best way to stay cool is to get wet

How to create a breeze

One of the boondocking tricks we learned early in our RV lifestyle is how to get air to flow thru the RV. First to make sure that all the windows are closed, that's right, Windows closed. Then turn on the vent, called a 'fantastic' fan, that is in the middle of the RV. This acts like an exhaust fan, pulling air from inside the RV and pushing it out. Now you can open just the windows in the bedroom area. Voila! You get a breeze from bedroom thru to the vent. This is normally enough to keep us comfortable at night in warm weather. Not this year. 

Grateful for air conditioning, but...

Our roadtrek is equipped with ac and are we ever grateful for that! But I still have complaints. 

1. It's noisy. Hurricane strength noisy! My Apple Watch tracks my sleep and one of the data points is noise level. Without the ac my normal night time noise level is about 35-40 decibels - a quiet library. With the ac running, it records 70-75 Decibels - a loud vacuum cleaner

2. It draws a lot of electricity. We need to be plugged in to a good source of electricity for it to work well. It will work when we're on generator power, but it doesn't take long before the stress shuts it down. It will work when we're plugged in to a household 20 amp circuit, but if that's the same circuit as the houses ac, we might trip the breaker in the house. There goes not only our ac, but our friends as well. I hate when that happens.

3. The thermostat is flaky. Sometimes the ac stays going until it's so cold I have icicles on my nose. If we adjust the thermostat to a warmer setting, it may not come on at all. And other times it just keeps going on and off, on and off, with all the noise changes keeping us awake.

We'll be home soon and I am looking forward to reliable, quiet, central ac. I just hope the power company is able to handle the regional demand. 

It's really hot in Florida right? This is what people ask us as we travel. We just crossed over the Florida state line and it's the first time in quite a while that our outside thermometer has registered under 100. Florida is one of the cooler places we've been this summer!

Two more stops on the Friendship Tour

 We visited so many friends along the way on this trip, we've dubbed it "The Friendship Tour." So, when we noticed that western Pennsylvania was along the route, we decided to visit with our Toastmasters friend, Aleta. We even worked it out that we were there on Thursday morning so we could appear in our Earlybird Toastmasters meeting. We surprised everyone by showing up at Aleta's

Aleta lives in a very rural area and always has trouble with Internet. It's true - she has satellite that barely works, Verizon was almost non-existent. Our AT&T hotspot was OK. She was happy to have the Geeks' confirm that Internet is a struggle at her location.

Aleta's house in rural western Pennsylvania

Check out this little movie that shows more detail about just how rural she is.

Our prize student, Chuck

Next up, just over the river in New Jersey, was Chuck. He's been a Geeks on Tour member for many years, and he is a Roadtreker. We've met up at many places all over the country and he gives us an open invitation whenever we're near his home.

It's always a treat to visit with him and his 'first wife' :-) Nadine.

And, here's another little movie - what a trip he is getting out on his bicycle to lead the way!