Much about Nothing Pt. 2 (thoughts from the cheap seats)

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Much about Nothing Pt. 2 (thoughts from the cheap seats)

Deb on occasion requests that I write a blog. She knows that I choose to stay away from Facebook and Instagripe, but in an effort to keep that lovely smile on her face, I will take another swing at this social media thing. Star Trek had a five year mission to explore strange new worlds. While they only made it three before the show was canceled, they did give you a new episode every week. I will try to remind the Captain of this vessel that we need to get more episodes out there.

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Much About Nothing

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Much About Nothing

For the past month, I have been struggling to find a blog topic. I felt like I didn’t have much to write about. For the most part, we are just hanging out here in Florida, enjoying the weather and not doing much of anything. It is a rainy day today, so I thought it was a good time to go through my pictures to find a topic. I realized that I have quite a few pictures and stories that I haven’t yet shared. Since we spend most of our time at the campground, I will start there.

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Bicycle woes

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Bicycle woes

One thing that you learn fairly quickly when living and traveling in an RV is that things will definitely go wrong at times. If you have been following the blog, you know that we bought some used bicycles last winter when we were in Florida. Mine was fairly cheap, an older folding bike that actually fits easily in the trunk of my car. For Tim, we bought a recumbent trike and although it was used, it wasn’t cheap. We also paid to have it altered so that both the gear shift and the brake control were on the left side for Tim’s use. Tim spent time making a bike rack to carry it on the back of the fifth wheel using a metal tray that we already had. Initially it seemed like it worked well. Unfortunately, our good luck did not last.

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Winter in Florida

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Winter in Florida

On the news the other day, they mentioned that so far this has been the coldest winter in over 10 years in Florida. I guess that is why many here are complaining. To me, the weather in December and January has been perfect. It feels like Fall which is my favorite season. The evenings are cool and we have had a few cold nights where the temperature got down to 32 degrees. Even with those cold nights, for the most part, the days have been sunny and warmed up to the high 60’s or low 70’s. Even with a few cooler, rainy days, we can’t complain. We don’t have to shovel snow or deal with driving in snow or ice, so I am happy!

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Ho, Ho, Ho - Blog, Blog, Blog…

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Ho, Ho, Ho - Blog, Blog, Blog…

It is amazing how fast the Christmas Season is upon us again! It is very true, “The older you get, the faster time flies”. Seems odd to say after the past year when our lives seem to stand still in this age of covid. Living in a smaller world, well our world for sure. We have been keeping our distance, wearing masks and doing what we should during these challenging times. We set out to explore our great country and instead got to know each other a little better.

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Our New Winter Home

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Our New Winter Home

We are back in Florida for the winter and again staying in one place for almost 5 months. One thing that we learned in our first year of full time living is to compromise. I love traveling and visiting new places continuously but Tim prefers longer stays in one place. So traveling part of the year and staying put part of the year is the best of both worlds. This year we decided to try a different place for the winter. We are in Wildwood, FL at Three Flags RV Park which is a Thousand Trails campground.

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Stormy Weather

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Stormy Weather

We didn’t do much touring in our last two weeks at Nature’s Resort in Homosassa. As November arrived, so did cloudy weather with afternoon rain showers so we hung out at the RV park most of the time. Luckily the showers did not last too long but not knowing when and where it would rain discouraged us from going out for hikes. Watching the election results come in filled some of our time, but I could only watch so much of that so we had to find something else to do.

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Visiting Homosassa, FL

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Visiting Homosassa, FL

After leaving Montgomery, we decided to try another Harvest Host location for a night on our drive to our next location. I chose the Tallahassee Automobile Museum for our overnight stop since it was along the route and pretty much right off of I-10. It was definitely a good choice. They directed us to a large grassy area lined with trees in front of the museum to park for the night. It was easy to find a level spot which made it easy to park and put out our slides. The only drawback was that it was a very warm day and even though we were under trees, it was pretty hot. Definitely a drawback when we didn’t have enough power to run the air conditioner.

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Second Pass (Re-exploring Montgomery, AL)

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Second Pass (Re-exploring Montgomery, AL)

Our route south this year brought us back through Montgomery, AL so we decided to spend two weeks in the area this time. Montgomery was one of my favorite stops last year because of its historical significance, especially for the Civil Rights Movement in 1965. Both Tim and I are history buffs so we like touring historical sites and museums. Since we are avoiding indoor activities this year, I knew we would not want to visit the museums again but felt we could still find enough to do outside.

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Visiting Northern Alabama

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Visiting Northern Alabama

Alabama is home to Tim and my favorite stops during our first year on the road. Tim’s favorite was Noccalula Falls in Gadsden, AL and mine was Gulf State Park in Gulf Shores, AL. Since we enjoyed Alabama so much last year, we decided to spend 4 weeks here this year. I picked two different spots so we could visit different parts of the state to see if we liked them as much.

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Checking the Rear View: Lessons Learned in Our First Year of Full Time RV Living

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Checking the Rear View: Lessons Learned in Our First Year of Full Time RV Living

Well it is official! We have been full time RVers for one year. It seems like just yesterday I was still working and going to an office every day. Now we are living the life that we planned and enjoy traveling the country. Tim and I talked about what date we should use as our full time anniversary date. My last official work day was September 20, 2019, and technically I was working from the RV for the last two weeks. Since we stayed in Pittsburgh for some of those two weeks and were still moving some of our stuff from there to the camper, we decided to use my last work day as our official full time anniversary date. We stayed in that campground until October 8, 2019, then we started traveling, so Pennsylvania was the first state that I put on our map.

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Exploring Tupelo, MS and the Natchez Trace Parkway

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Exploring Tupelo, MS and the Natchez Trace Parkway

Planning our RV travel route at times can be challenging especially since there are so many choices of wonderful places to visit. As I planned our route south to Florida for the winter, I set a few goals for the trip. My first goal was to reduce costs by staying at Thousand Trails parks so that we could take full advantage of our membership. This made goal two, to visit new states, more difficult to accomplish since the Thousand Trails campgrounds are clustered on the coasts. After leaving Indiana, I had to plan stops in states we had already visited, like Tennessee and Alabama to be able to stay in a Thousand Trails campground.

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Visiting West Tennessee

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Visiting West Tennessee

For the past two weeks, we have been staying at our second Thousand Trails campground, Cherokee Landing, located in West Tennessee. From the Thousand Trails website, I thought the campground was a bit closer to Memphis than it actually is but that has worked out fine for us. When I initially booked, I was planning a visit to Graceland and a few other Memphis landmarks. Since Covid 19 is still happening and case numbers were up a little in Tennessee, we weren’t sure about visiting a popular tourist site.

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Enjoying Nature in Kentucky and Tennessee

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Enjoying Nature in Kentucky and Tennessee

After the busy campground in Indiana, we wanted some peace and quiet in smaller campgrounds which is exactly what we found as we drove south through Kentucky and Tennessee. Our first stop was for two nights at Cave Country RV Campground in Cave City, KY. I chose this campground because it was close to the interstate and Mammoth Cave National Park. This park was quite a contrast to the last one with only having 50 sites compared to 800. Less than half the sites were occupied which was wonderful It is a very well maintained and quiet park located in town.

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Visiting Indiana and Experiencing Thousand Trails

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Visiting Indiana and Experiencing Thousand Trails

Tim and I decided to join Thousand Trails in January, 2020 mainly for a discount on a seasonal site for January through March, 2021. The annual camping pass membership cost us $499 plus tax and with it we got a $500 discount on our 2021 seasonal reservation. If you aren’t familiar with Thousand Trails, it is a membership organization for campgrounds where you can camp for specific periods of time with your membership with no additional cost. There are levels of memberships with different purchase prices and rules. It is almost like buying into a time share.

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First Time Experiencing Harvest Host

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First Time Experiencing Harvest Host

Last August, Tim and I were making decisions on what organizations to join to help us save on camping fees. One that we chose was Harvest Hosts. This membership program provides a list of wineries, breweries, farms, and museums across the country that allow members to park overnight for free on their property. All they ask is that you support the host’s business with a purchase during your stay. I didn’t think supporting wineries and breweries would be difficult for us.

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Home Sweet Home

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Home Sweet Home

For the past two months, Tim and I have been back home in Pittsburgh and now it is time to pack up the RV to get on the road again. It is hard to believe that this is our last week in the “Burgh”. Where did the time go? These past 2 months have really flown by. We were very busy while we were here, mainly filling our time getting in our annual doctor appointments, dentist, eye doctor, etc. and visiting our family and friends. With this new normal, we weren’t able to go out and enjoy our hometown as much as we would have liked, so we didn’t visit restaurants, bars, theaters, or museums. We had to find other ways to enjoy our favorite city.

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Nostalgia

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Nostalgia

We arrived at Mountaintop Campground near Pittsburgh, PA on June 1st and quickly settled into life back at home. Our goal is to spend two months here visiting family and friends as well as getting in our annual doctor and dentist appointments. With Allegheny County just reopening to the green phase after we got here, we are only visiting a couple people at a time. We are trying to have those visits outside to the extent that we can. If you are familiar with Southwestern Pennsylvania, you know that we have frequent rain and storms, especially in June so outside visits are challenging. Since we still aren’t going out too much, I found myself with time to reminisce our years of camping. Hope you enjoy this post that covers camping over the past 45 years.

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On the road again

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On the road again

We finally left Florida after 5 months on Memorial Day in a downpour. I couldn’t believe our luck. The rain that morning started lightly and turned into heavy blowing rain that just didn’t stop. For 5 months in Florida, we had very little rain and only one all day rain so we did not expect that when we were leaving. Good thing we had packed our outdoor chairs and mat the night before so that stuff didn’t get wet. We still had to be outside to dump the tanks and disconnect our water, electric and sewer; then bring in the slides and hook up. By the time we finished hooking up, we were soaked so we climbed over the bed to the closet to find dry clothes to change before traveling. What a mess! I had planned to get a picture of us pulling out but didn’t bother in the rain.

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