Dang RV

I finally found a national park that has a campground with electricity. I have been shut out of all the national parks since this trip began because I have to have electric hookup for my work and our national parks are rather behind the times in this respect. State parks, however, have upgraded many of their parks. Unfortunately, state parks do not honor the 50% discount or free park entry  provided by Golden Eagle Senior passes or National Access passes for the handicapped unless you are a resident of that state.

So, here I am at Midway Campground in the Big Cypress National Preserve for only $10/night with my pass. No water or sewer hookups and no showers but they do provide a potable water station to fill up when you come in and a dump site on the way out. The pads are paved and level. They have nice picnic tables and covered tables nearby for tenters. The sites are in a circle around a small pond. There are no trees on the sites but that guarantees your satellite TV dish will work. It is very pretty and peaceful. You may have to walk over to the main road for cell phone reception. My aircard on its own does not work with the low signal here. However, once I hooked up the external antenna I picked up off Ebay while in Massachussettes, I managed to get 1 bar of Sprint EVDO which is enough to work with.

Warnings concerning camping in a wildlife preserve:

1. Don’t go out at night or if you must, carry a good flashlight and look around before stepping out. There was an animal under my trailer tonight.
2. Stay away from the water’s edge. Alligators are everywhere here.
3. Bring lots of bug repellant. The mosquitos are HUGE here. They do bite right through light clothes. (Very few out right now though)
4. Watch your driving speed. Limits are strictly enforced and you never know when a deer, panther, alligator, turtle, etc will decide to cross the road in front of you.
5. Don’t leave any trash outside or anything shiny. The birds are very large and very aggressive. What the crows don’t go after, the buzzards will. Today new campers made that mistake and provided a nice picnic all day for the crows. It could just as easily have attracted a bear or panther.

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Waited a long time for this one. I’ve always heard it was quite a great seaside community and playground. It IS! If you ever get the chance to vacation here, take it. You will not be disappointed. There is plenty to do and see for both adults and the wee ones with watersports such as parasailing and wave runner rentals, boat tours, the beach, bunches of dinner shows and other shows, Broadway on the Beach, plenty of camping, miniature golf places on every block, beachwear and souvenir stores, great places to dine, 2 state parks, etc.

Camping here can be pretty expensive especially with an accomodation tax on all camp sites and hotel rooms which is very high. I stayed at the Myrtle Beach State Park which was the cheapest at $28/night total. It is a forest on the beach. Great combination! I went without reservations but I highly recommend not doing as I do, call first or book online. At least one of the restrooms was still the old state park community shower type which I detest but others were more modern and they do have a laundromat. No wifi there but my Sprint aircard worked perfectly even among all the trees. There are some sites where a satellite TV dish will work. Don’t ask them. They don’t know which. I got it to work on the back row of sites. Watch your stuff in the park. Someone stole my yellow wheel chalks when I was moving from one site to another.

If you are only going for a weekend, then you might also consider the other area RV parks which have indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a lazy river at Pirateland, ponds, golf cart rentals, etc. I believe there is a golf cart rental service that will deliver to the state park as well. Another great choice, if you can get an open date, is the Coast to Coast park there for only $10/night if you are a member of C2C.

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As I posted recently, I finally bought myself a GPS device for my car and I have gotten into the sport of Geocaching. Geocaching is a great sport for RVers at home and on the road. It is a world-wide treasure hunt; a chance to sneak around, share secrets, see cool places near you that you may not have noticed, spend time with family or a friend, get some exercise, and maybe be rewarded with a trophy at the end. So far, I have been able to use my Garmin C330 car GPS to find about 17 caches. It has taken me awhile to learn how to best use it for that since geocaching is certainly not it’s main focus but it is working very well for city caches.

Maybe I can save someone else some time by noting what I learned here.

1. Garmin devices are designed for download of the cache locations from http://geocaching.com directly or through your free account at their site at http://garmin.com .
2. If you download from those sites directly into the device, the names it uses for Favorites is the GCxxxx cache identifier which I personally find unhelpful. I downloaded GSAK and run most through there as .loc or .gpx (premier members) so I can choose to use the cache given names instead which are easier for me to remember such as “Wiley’s Tank”, etc. You can also edit them in the GPS device if you have the time.
3. When going to a cache via GPS, be extremely careful as one time it ran me 8 miles around in a circle and then I ended up on a freeway bridge overlooking the road it was on when it said I had arrived. LOL. Did something similar another time when the item was just on the other side of a fence by the freeway. Keep plenty of gas on board and a sense of humor. Use your brain. Read the rest of this entry »
   

Got some great tips I thought I would pass on.

1. Use the sides of the overhead microwave and the overhead stove vent if available to hang things like measuring spoons on stick-on hooks. The little plastic sticky hooks by 3M and others work very well on those, the items will be within easy reach when needed, and will generally stay in place while traveling.

2. Anyone who has cooked in a small RV propane oven knows how the food tends to burn on the bottom. Buy 4 six-inch unglazed ceramic tiles and put them on the solid metal shelf just above the burner to evenly distribute the heat throughout the oven. They must be unglazed and be able to handle high temps so you likely won’t find them at Home Depot type stores. Look for tile dealers.

3. If your rear RV bumper has rusted or does not have enough room for all your sewer hoses, you can buy plastic hose containers from Camping World or you can make your own! I bought one 10 foot white plastic sewer pipe at Lowes hardware store along with additional caps, etc. and made 2 of these for less than the price of one pre-fabbed. Mine don’t have mounting feet but I can still strap them under my trailer, on the rear bumper, or in my case, to the rear ladder. They were very easy to make with just a regular saw needed to cut the pipe and a knife to trim the burrs.

If you have the room in one of your storage bays, coiling sewer hoses and cords up in Tupperware was also suggested to me

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Time for a station break to report more of what I have learned as a full-time RVer.

First, the dang cat is upset about being ignored  and upstaged by George so here she is in all her glory again.

Cat mollified.

More of what I have learned:
1. Just because a campground says they have wifi, does not mean it reaches the whole park or is particularly strong.
2. Wifi may mean satellite provided which is slower but useable or may mean DSL or better which is faster. If you work over the Internet, it matters and you must ask, though RV park personnel rarely know what you are talking about or what they have.
3. During the cooler months you can go a long time between tank dumps. Really hot weather though makes it real stinky real fast so you need to dump once a week.
4. Disconnect your towing chains before pulling the car out from under the hitch. Don’t ask…
5. Keep lots of fuses for the power hitch jack on board.
6. If you have South Dakota plates on your car and RV, everyone knows you are a full-timer.
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I took a drive over to Madison, to see my mail service there, MyDakotaAddress.com. Since that is listed as my “home” and my vehicles are registered there, I thought I ought to see it and be able to answer friendly questions about it.

Madison is a very nice, decent size town with several large lakes nearby, state parks, a university nearby, and a great mail service. MyDakotaAddress.com receives and ships my mail anywhere, when I tell them to by email or phone, and they email me every day that they receive new email so I know what is there and can tell when mail needs to be sent or when it can wait. They also registered my vehicles for me by mail. I really enjoyed meeting the ladies, Terri and Beth. They were nice enough to let my buddy George hang out in our “home” for a bit as you can see.

Talk about picking a great location! Their office is right across from the Post Office and one block from the courthouse and library. Very smart ladies!

I have had this travel trailer for over a year now and have never actually seen the awning that came with it until the other day when I asked a couple of nice guys next door to come see what they could do with it. I wasn’t sure if I was doing something wrong to pull it out or if it was stuck. It turned out to be the latter. We hit it with some WD40 and they yanked on it until it finally succuumbed to our will. Woohoo! It is beautiful and quite large, about 20-22 feet long. It is in great condition with no tears or visible holes. I am one happy camper now.

Yep. Time for a new tow vehicle. I started out with a GMC Sierra Z71 K1500 truck which I truly love riding in and it towed my trailer very nicely on flat land. However, mountains were a bit too challenging for it with my trailer attached. After checking around the RV park and getting lots of helpful advice from other RVers, I decided my truck was fine for smaller, lighter weekend camping trailers but was not for my 26 foot full-timing trailer. I need at least a 250/2500 vehicle that can tow up to 9200 pounds which would be around 20% above the max GVRW of my trailer for safety. 

A regular truck is the norm and can tow both trailers and 5th wheels. I might want a 5th wheel someday but discovered I am really very happy with my current trailer and not in any hurry to change. I also have a cat with me who has to ride in a small cage in my truck which is not very comfortable for her on long hauls.

So, I opted to purchase a GMC Yukon XL K2500 instead with an 8.1L engine and 4.10 gear ratio. It can tow up to 12,000+ lbs. Overkill I know. A 6.0L with 4.10 gears would also have worked or and 8.1L with 3.73 gears. I have been looking for several months and this is the one that finally came along at the right price with everything else I wanted. Who knows, maybe I will want to get a bigger trailer eventually and this new truck can certainly handle it. Gas was not an issue because I work over the Internet rather than commuting.

 The new truck has heated seats, heated mirrors with remote adjust, rear window defroster, ac all through it, cruise control, CD, sunroof, 4×4, tow haul mode, Onstar, leather seats, compass/temp in the rear view mirror, adjustable lumbar support,  bucket seats, remote door locks, passenger radio controls and headphone links, etc. Kitty will be happy with the space once I put up a divider for her.