troubles Archives -

Colorado

March 13, 2015December 20, 2015 Drew

2000 miles, 10 states, 7 full days of driving, and we’ve made it to Colorado! This move has an air of permanence about it. Props to anyone out there who is currently working from the road – we have really struggled to find steady, reliable internet. The campgrounds all advertise free wifi, but it is almost always crap. We have the Verizon Jetpack that gets us 3G or 4G LTE almost anywhere… but it also costs hundreds of dollars each month to get any amount of normal data usage. So, we are still working hard on the business, but are also planning on settling down a bit… and of course, we brought the kitties with us!

We picked up the camper from storage in Crestview, FL, and set out on a Thursday with the intention of getting to Colorado Springs within 2 weeks. The first night was a quick trip down the road. The second night we went another couple hours, and made it into Mississippi. We quickly realized that this constant driving and moving each day was going to get old really fast – so we decided to quicken the pace.

We made it off the crowded I-10, and almost all the way up to Shreveport, LA by day 3. So far, the Jeep has handled the camper pretty well. On the interstate, it cruises nicely with the overdrive off between 60 – 65mph. Anything faster than that, the thing tends to move around back there a little too much for comfort. Anything slower would be a bit of a hazard with fast moving traffic. I have also started to notice a shimmy when I apply the brakes – this happens whether we have the camper in tow or not. I just paid a shop a bunch of money to replace the pads and rotors on the Jeep. Chalk that up to one more time a car place has totally failed to do the job!

Day 4, we entered the massive bit of land known as Texas. The weather app said “a light rain barely enough to wet the pavement.” Of course, the reality was a torrential downpour. The initial plan was to stay on the interstate through Dallas, but when the weather turned nasty we changed our minds. Something about having a 4,500lb box swinging around behind, while semi after semi goes trundling by with blinding water and shifting winds made me a bit nervous. We got off the big road and took local highways north of the city.

We saw a bunch of nice little north Texas towns, and stopped at the Bonham state recreation area the first night. We made it almost to Amarillo the next day, and spent the night at the Old Towne Cotton Gin RV Park – super cute and clean!

Day 6 had us cross into the northeast corner of New Mexico. Turns out they have a pretty sweet extinct volcano up in those parts – cool!

We could definitely feel the gain in elevation, and I think the Jeep was feeling it too. I got back on the interstate at Raton, NM. The road immediately climbed up a mountain. We barely made it up to the top – I kept the pressure on the engine just below the point where it would over-rev. Our speed slowed to about 40mph, but we eventually made it up. There was no relief at the top though, because now we had to make it back down the other side. The grade was steep, I probably should have put it in 2^nd gear, but by then I was going too fast. The road curved and steepened. I started to apply the brakes, but that pesky shimmy started up hard – The steering wheel started shaking violently, the car was not really slowing down at all, the road kept sinking and curving. I’ve driven through a blizzard in Minnesota, a tornado in Iowa, and the worst Chicago traffic has to offer… but I think this was closest I’ve come to dying (well there was that one time the door flew open in little Cessna my dad was flying, and the only thing holding me in the plane was the little strap of seat belt… but mom doesn’t need to know about that). After another couple minutes of white knuckle racing down the mountainside, the road leveled out. We made it down, but honestly are lucky no one was in front of us, and nothing disastrous happened. I will not be taking this thing up any more mountains any time soon!

So after a week of hard driving we made it to the Springs. I parked the car to check in at the RV park, and the poor thing wouldn’t start back up. It knew we had made it out Colorado-way, and it was done. I waited a bit, and finally got it going again, but we’re done with the long trips for a while. Now we can sit back and enjoy these lovely mountain views!

Florida, Road Trip

Coral Castle

December 12, 2014 Drew

We stopped at the Coral Castle, as we continue to head down to the Florida Keys. Overall impression… Meh. We also had a bit of an incident at Walmart!

The Coral Castle is located right off highway 1, and is the first “attraction” we’ve been to in South Florida. At $15 each, the entrance fee to this place is steep – especially given the lack of anything to actually look at besides a few rocks here and there.

Don’t get me wrong, the little Latvian American dude name Ed who built this crazy little place did some good work… but just not $15 dollars good. In fact, he actually knew what his work was worth, and charged people 10¢ to check it out.

I’m no math expert, but everyone knows that 10 cents in the 40’s to $15 today is about a 7.5% annual rate of inflation – sounds like someone got a little greedy over the years!

So after being ripped off at the Coral Castle, we headed over to spend the night at Walmart. Everything looked good when we arrived around 4PM. A couple other rigs were already there, and we settled in nicely.

Bam! All of a sudden something rocked the camper hard. Noelle and I ran out as fast as we could. We were both worried it might be a hit and run situation. Outside, we saw a car wedged up against the spare tire on the back of the camper. The lady inside was kind of leaning over and shaking.

I’m freaking out – Noelle calls 911, I try to knock on the window to see if the lady will wake up. I could see that she was breathing, but she wouldn’t respond. Meanwhile, her car was still running, and was scratching further along the tire.

The police arrived, the lady eventually woke up, and they took her to the hospital. They said she might have had a diabetic seizure. The camper appears undamaged except for a torn tire cover – whew! If she had hit any other part of the camper, there would have been damage – if we hadn’t been there, she might have driven out onto the street or hit somebody.

After all that excitement, we decided to skip the whole Walmart thing and headed to a campground for the night. Another exciting day on the road!

Florida, Road Trip

The Campground Shuffle

December 11, 2014 Drew

We’ve had a pretty easygoing week in Port St. Lucie, and are looking forward to heading down to the Keys soon. We spent another great day at the beach, and enjoyed a few more days of our work/ camp lifestyle.

This post is going to be a bit of a reflection on our experience in finding and staying with the various campgrounds we have come across so far. In short: they are a random mess of prices, amenities, attitudes, and ambiance.

Take the current location; a bona fide “RV Resort.” We found this place via Passport America (they provide a 50% discount at participating campgrounds, many times with seasonal restrictions or a max number of applicable nights). The description read something like “Large Sites, Beautiful grounds, Pool & Clubhouse, WIFI, etc…” The Tripadvisor reviews were decent; most said something like “Great campground.”

This campground has the highest undiscounted rate of any that we have stayed at yet – it has also been one of the worst. The place is well manicured, the RV pads are level concrete, the bathrooms are clean… the sites are also tiny, the RV’s are only a couple feet apart. The “management” has a list of rules and regulations six pages long, and signs posted everywhere reminding guests to flush the toilets and only use the wifi for “1 hour for email.” I don’t even know what that means!

The worst part: the plumbing in the bathhouse barely functions; the toilets don’t flush right, and the water in the shower fluctuates wildly between scalding hot and freezing cold. Keep in mind the full rate at this place is as much as a decent hotel!

But this little parking lot calls itself a “RV Resort”, and has somehow convinced a number of real people to write decent reviews and ratings… WTF! This experience highlights what we have seen so far – price doesn’t indicate quality, and people can be real dumb.

So far the worst site has been the most expensive. On the flipside, the cheapest site was one of the best so far. That little campground had a beautiful setting, best bathhouse, awesome clubhouse, and great people. It felt a little like I was leaving home when we moved on! It looks like finding a good campground involves a mixture of research, trial and error, and a bit of good luck. It’s always an adventure with each new site, and hopefully we get some of that luck in the Keys!

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

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)!