Given there isn't much new that isn't already covered by Jeffrey's letter, I'll instead share a bit more about the good and bad "living in an RV" side of things. Happily, 99% of this lifestyle is AWESOME. We have categorized the other 1% as mostly annoyance and sometimes "Oh CRAP, what just happened!".
As I write this, we are enjoying the 99% part -- living for the month in a KOA near Lion Country Safari in Loxahatchee where we hear the gibbons and lions every day from our campsite (very cool). We scored a Groupon to visit the park (which is right next door to the RV park) and spent a day doing the safari drive and the walking part too. Very well done, lots of animals in big spaces, and of course I got to feed the giraffe and some neat birds too :-) The KOA is a new RV park for us, but we have some great RV friends staying here too that we have known for years and always meet new people as we travel around too, so we never feel alone or lacking in social opportunities.
Our trip from Texas over to Florida this year fell into some of the 1%. First we had our motorized entry steps stick "out" as we were leaving the Texas RV park. They had stuck "in" a few months earlier but then started magically working so we really weren't too surprised they acted up again. This incident was especially poor timing -- you can drive with them stuck "in", but certainly not "out". An hour and a bunch of tools and cursing later, Jeffrey had removed them entirely, so we stopped at a Camping World near Houston to pick up a folding step we could deploy at campgrounds until we could figure out the problem (the height from Max's door to the ground is about 2 feet). On the bright side, I took the opportunity to give the entire step assembly a good cleaning to get rid of some minor surface rust and then applied a fresh coat of paint -- much easier to do while they were off of Max!
Our next "Crap" moment happened on i10 as we were driving in Louisiana. A semi-truck passed by in the left lane and kicked some construction debris in front of us -- most notably a 6x6" block of concrete. We heard a loud bang and lamented what damage the thing had done under Max and then possibly to the car we tow. The RV gauges were all reading normal conditions, so we waited until we got to a rest area to assess the damage. Lucky for us, the block went under the front fiberglass cap (so no damage on it), bounced off a steel support beam (also undamaged), and flew out the gap to the side where the motorized steps would have been installed (if we hadn't removed them). Hooray for us! Well, until we noticed that it then apparently bounced on the road once more and hit an exterior basement door, leaving a small dent and bad mark in the paint. Darn it. But not even worth claiming on our insurance -- we'll instead get it fixed up where Winnebago is located in Iowa the next time we visit. Unfortunately the dash-cam was "confused" and didn't capture the incident so we could go after the trucking company.
After seeing RV friends in Pensacola and catching a Gator football game with them at the local Gator Club (we lost to the husband's alma mater), we proceeded to Lazydays in Tampa for our annual "needs fixing" list of RV items. No surprise this included the motorized steps! It also included replacing a leaking valve behind the water heater, re-gluing a slide seal, replacing one of our 7-yr old roof A/Cs, replacing a misbehaving water pump, and replacing one of our leveling jacks. Our extended warranty picked up all of these items at a cost (to them) of over $4000. Our out of pocket cost was only the $100 deductible. That warranty expired shortly after our service appointment and Jeffrey convinced me to let him buy another one. The first one paid for itself 3 times over, so it seems like a wise investment. That said, these warranties are never cheap so purchasing one is a big decision but, like any insurance product, if it helps you sleep better at night it can be worth it!
Lastly, here is an idea of the U.S. states and Canadian provinces we have visited since we started RVing over 6 years ago. If we don't at least explore a little, we don't count it. Clearly we need to consider going west!
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HOLIDAY LETTER FROM JEFFREY
Maren and I had our biggest year yet in the RV we call home. 10,000 miles! This fall we are starting year 7 on the road and are convinced that we might be on to something here.
Our big RV destination this year was the Canadian Atlantic maritime provinces. Because this trip would involve remote and distant roads and RV parks, we joined up with a professional RV tour group so that they, with their years of expertise, would organize a trip with the questions already answered for questions we haven't even come up with. Because this trip was so involved, we can't begin to describe the adventure here. The entire tale of our Canadian adventure can be found in our previous blog posts, along with pictures. Hints: fabulous trip with new friends and looking for puffins/moose, Vikings, seeing icebergs, whales, ferries, getting “screeched-in”!
This year we celebrated my dad's 90th birthday. All of my brothers and families gathered a little early, taking advantage of the fact that he goes to Ormond Beach every year to watch a handball tournament over the Memorial Day weekend. That gave us a long weekend in Daytona Beach to celebrate with him and enjoy the beach. Too bad the weather didn't cooperate as it was pretty rainy.
Along our RV travels we found a few more presidential sites including Adams (x2), Kennedy, Coolidge and G.H.W. Bush. By plane, we got close to some California presidential properties, but decided that family time was better than hours of driving in California traffic. Next time...
Maren's love of giraffes was satisfied by visiting the famous April (and Oliver and Tajiri) at Animal Adventure near Harpursville, New York where we also saw Tim Tebow play some baseball for the Binghamton Rumble Ponies minor league baseball team. We then met the near-famous 'Alf ' in Tennessee, and other un-famous towers of giraffe in Santa Barbara and Lion Country Safari near West Palm Beach. We also toured the American Eagle Foundation in Pigeon Forge, TN and found a 'top ten' rated aquarium in Gatlinburg. Who knew, so far from the coast, in the mountains!
We got several visits in with Maren's parents, Rick and Sheila. We met up in Feb, Aug, and Dec in Burlington, WA and in Mexico in March. They joined us in Daytona Beach in May for my dad's 90th. In October we met them in the cute Danish-themed town of Solvang, California for fudge, food, wine (and Micheal the giraffe). Thankfully our experience was a little different than the same places (roads, restaurants, vineyards, ostriches) that you'll see in the movie Sideways. Maren even joined her father in Washington, DC for his veteran's 'Honor Flight'. Because our “house” keeps moving we flew out of 6 (7 for Maren) different airports this year. Maybe we should have gotten a plane instead of an RV! Surprisingly there were also 4 visits in 3 different states with Maren's cousin Sarah. Her travels and ours kept happily intersecting!
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| Sarah, Dad, Sheila, me and Jeffrey -- enjoying a winery near Solvang |
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