Road Trip Archives - Page 3 of 4 -

Walmart

December 2, 2014 Drew

We can officially cross “sleeping in a Walmart parking lot” off that big bucket full of lists we are carrying around with us – Success! We also ate a decent BBQ lunch at the Daytona Pig Stand – Yumm!

We’re headed further south into Florida, and in an attempt to keep the costs down a little, I’m trying out a strategy of dry camping (read: sleeping like a hobo) between campsite stays. Today, we headed for a Love’s truckstop down the road a bit, but found that it truly was a truckstop with overnight parking meant only for truckers or people who can’t hear very well. The noise of an entire parking lot of idling trucks was deafening, so we made the decision to head a little further down the road to Walmart.

It is fairly well known that Walmart has an unwritten rule that allows RV’rs to park overnight. Actually they had a written rule on the sign right outside the spot we picked that said in big letters “No Overnight Parking”. But screw that noise, we’re staying! A few more rigs joined us by the end of the evening – they parked right next to us too which was weird given the massive expanse of empty parking lot they had to work with.

When we first arrived, we naturally went in to do some shopping. There’s just… so many deals! We might have bought another boogie board, and some chips, and maybe even a deadbolt kit that I want to eventually install on the door… We went back an hour or so later. Noelle may have tried on some clothes including a t-shirt with wolves howling at a moon with Santa and his reindeer silhouetted like ET… We may have bought some Subway, and then returned a few hours later to buy some bread and some paper towels…

All in all, this “free” night at Wally World has cost us more than a night at a hotel! “It’s simple economics son; I don’t understand it at all, but… God I love it!”

Florida, Road Trip

Happy Thanksgiving!

November 28, 2014 Drew

Happy Thanksgiving! This is our first holiday away from both sets of families. While they know we love them, I can’t say we haven’t had a great Thanksgiving in Florida!

Earlier in the week, a big cold front came through, and the weather gods decided it would be a good idea to test my feeble waterproofing attempts. It rained hard for over 24 hours. A few hours in, I checked the weather – it said weather advisory – yep, it said flood watch – yep, it said lots of rain – yep, it said “Heaviest accumulations north of the I-4 corridor – yep, I looked outside – yep, we were in for a monsoon! My silicon-caulking job held at first, but eventually water started seeping in around the side window and the top of the front windows. The only other leak we detected was from part of the roof vent. Noelle rigged a nice little water catcher for that – she’s so smart!

I got bored and decided to fix the oven vent fan. It would vibrate, and make a real racket when running. I pulled the fan part off, tightened the support bolts, cleaned everything, and reassembled. Now we have a whisper quiet oven vent fan – sweet! I wish all projects were like that.

After the rain died down, the weather turned nice and pleasant. We’ve been able to get a decent amount of work time in. We also hit up this awesome used bookstore. An entire room full of romance novels kept Noelle pretty busy – and they had the good vintage stuff, none of this new age “everyone loves each other” junk!

We missed our families for the holiday, but we are still having way too much fun in the sun to go back now!

Florida, Road Trip

Daytona Beach

November 24, 2014 Drew

We made it to the beach! Honestly, there is a part of me that thinks this whole plan to quit my job and travel around was just a big elaborate excuse to go to the beach – well today we have officially achieved that goal – success!

The weather is finally warming up a bit (although they say it will cool down again in a couple days). To get the most out of the fleeting warm temps, we spent two great days hanging out at Daytona Beach and Ormond Beach.

The beaches were really pretty nice – not to crowded, nice and sandy, decent surf. We spent the $5 and drove out onto the beach at Daytona to park. At Ormond Beach, we decided to park for free at the Andy Romano beachfront park – they had a decent food stand there too.

Noelle and I both love the water – I want to eventually try surfing, she wants to eventually try scuba diving. Well we started with buying this sweet boogie board. I’m obviously writing this post after the fact, but we had a great time attempting to ride the waves with that thing – granted it is also already broken into two pieces, but hey it still works!

We hit up Joe’s Crab Shack for a really nice (and really expensive) seafood lunch – yumm!!!

One of the guys caught a huge fish right after I took this pic – his wife brought it up in a net, and he just smiled and walked the length of the jetty like a boss before putting it in his cooler – the other fisherpeople were so jealous.

At one point in the day, Noelle and I just looked at each other and said something like “Yep… this is what we are supposed to be doing.” We had a nice couple of days!

Florida, Road Trip

Flying J

November 22, 2014 Drew

We’ve spent the last few days at a great little RV campground outside Savannah, but it is still getting way to cold. We decided to make a long haul further south into Florida – this included our first dry camping stay at a Flying J – it actually worked out pretty well!

Before we hit the road again, we stopped at the historic Wormsloe Plantation estate. This place has been around since the earliest colonial period in Georgia around 1730, but all that remains of the original homestead is a little bit of decaying fort walls. Honestly, with a $10 entrance fee this place was not really worth it – especially compared to the really cool personalized tours we got for like $5 at the Carl Sandberg Home and Carson House earlier.

The trees were cool though! We drove the rest of the day, making it down the road to a Flying J outside of St. Augustine. Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first time we’ve slept at a truck stop, but it is the first time with the camper. The place was pretty full, but we found a spot in between two bigger rigs.

I’m a big newb at all of this, but even I know that truck stop etiquette says you don’t deploy your RV slideouts, and you definitely don’t run your generator for more than a few minutes at night. The lovely old couple next to us missed that memo. By midnight, we couldn’t take the rumbling noise and noxious gas fumes so we moved over to a different spot.

Unfortunately 5 minutes later a truck cab pulled up right next to us – which wouldn’t be a big deal except that they never shut that thing down. It just kept rumbling away at idle… for hours… Everything in the camper was vibrating from the cabinets to the light fixtures – I felt like my eyeballs were bouncing out of my head! Ok that’s a little dramatic, but it turns out there is this whole RV’er vs. trucker battle out on the internets. On the RV’ers’ side, peace and quiet; on the truckers’ side, comfort and lower maintenance costs. I’m an RV’er so screw those trucker bastards!

We moved to a third location at about 2 in the morning, nestled between a big boxy 80’s motorhome and a 70’s VW bus. The camper must have felt right at home there, and we got a decent night’s sleep. Overall, we were pretty happy with the Flying J experience. The restrooms were clean, the attached Subway provided dinner, they have donuts in the morning – and you can’t get cheaper than free! We will definitely be adding truck stops to our camping repertoire from now on.

So after a long day of driving and a long night of Flying J’ing, we’ve officially arrived in Florida! Let the sunny good times begin (hopefully)!

Road Trip

Water Troubles!

November 19, 2014 Drew

We are continuing our journey south, and have booked a few nights at a “RV resort” outside Savannah. Last night was the coldest night yet – it was also the night the hot water heater decided to spill its guts!

Coming from Chicagoland, Noelle and I are definitely not afraid of a little freezing temperatures every now and again – remember when the bus fell apart in the below zero temps last year?! Tonight they said it was going to get really cold – a whole 25F, brrrrr. I wasn’t too worried about the pipes bursting or anything, but those thoughts were lingering in the back of my mind as we went to sleep.

I woke up sometime in the night to the sound of gushing water – “Oh shit!!” I hopped up and ran to the back of the camper – ice-cold standing water, the carpet runner is soaked through, the sound of a massive amount of water gushing from behind the wall. I scramble to find my pants. You can never find your pants when you really need them, amiright!

I ditch the search for the pants, run outside and shut off the water. At this point I’m thinking either the pipes froze and burst, or the water pressure was too much – either way, we got’s ourselves a problem! But it’s 4 in the morning, I’m going back to bed.

The harsh light of day reveals a bigger problem – the water was actually gushing from behind the control panel of the water heater. The metal had corroded away over time, and the o-ring had failed. The flowing water shorted out the electrical, tripping the GFCI outlet that powers the heater and the fridge – good thing that was there!

We headed 30 minutes down the road to the closest big-box hardware store for a replacement. I gave us a 60% chance of needing to return to Lowes a second time for this project – Noelle just shook her head and said “Nope 100%.” We get back to the campsite, pull the new unit out of the box only to discover that the plastic housing is completely cracked and falling apart – she was right!

So two trips to Lowes, a few hundred bucks, and about four hours later, I have the new water heater hooked up and pumping out luxurious amounts of piping hot water – Success! I also made the fittings out of flexible faucet pipes that can be easily disconnected 10 years down the road when this happens again.

While it’s never fun to wake up in disaster mode like that, I’m really glad we’ve got this rat-tastic 60’s camper. Pretty much everything can be fixed with a wrench, or a screwdriver, and none of it is rocket science – ‘cause I can’t be thinkin too much for them rockets and such!

We celebrated the return of hot water by setting up our new $8 mini air hockey table from the Cracker Barrel. Noelle won… both games… so fun!