Dang RV

Time to settle down for a few weeks and recover from the cold I got in Big Cypress. I headed for the Wauchula SKP Resort owned by my Escapees camping club. The rates are cheap, amenities great, and people are always very friendly in Escapee parks. I love staying in them. It is also in the heart of Florida’s orange grove country.

The sites are level and provide cement patios as well as full utilities and wide paved roads. The entrance is easy to spot, very wide, and the 2 lane 60 MPH road opens up with a very long left turn lane to make it easy to slow down with a large RV to turn. The pool is heated and well used as is the clubhouse and the bike racks. The laundry room is very clean and inexpensive. WIFI is excellent all  through the park! They have local brochures available.  Super Walmart is nearby as well as plenty of restaurants. It was great to get back to a clubhouse with puzzles again. I have gotten my jollies with several puzzles since arriving.

Since I planned to be staying a while, I had some fun putting out some of my trailer decorations. I even had time to wash the Maine mud off the front and I washed the windows with my new collapsible bucket. The collapsible buckets are great! They do work and store neatly out of the way in their own pouch. Did some other annual maintenance too.

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I got a hankering to see the Adirondack Mountains, Lake George, and Lake Champlain so up to the northern tip of New York I went. Again, despite calling twice to verify my aircard would work near Lake George, it didn’t work though there is a tiny signal there in some spots. Calls to all the nearby campgrounds that purported to have wifi yielded more “yes we have it if you sit by our office” nonsense. The C2C campground, Adirondack Adventure Resort,  was very very nice with wonderful helpful staff but with no Internet I had to leave. Bummer. I was looking forward to seeing Lake George and the Great Escape Six Flags amusement park. It was not to be.

Rather than abandon that leg of the trip, I made some more calls farther north until I located Ausable River Campsites, a Passport America park in Keeseville, very close to Ausable Chasm, Lake Champlain, and Lake Placid. Woohoo! Solid gold strike! While they do have wifi throughout the park, after half an hour on it it turns to crap every time. I swear the 3rd party providers of it are throttling it to discourage any long use. Happily, my Sprint aircard worked there so I was in business. The park has a wonderful heated pool and lots of planned activities. I managed to get on the hayride and grab some ice cream at the social.

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Finally time to bid adieu to Florida and head for the Coast to Coast/Good Sam Club RV Rally in Perry, Georgia. I hit up a Geocache I had already found first to pick up a new travel bug to move and started my “Amuse Me” travel bug on its journey by dropping it into the cache.

The day was beautiful and drive not too bad though I had to stop at a rest area to adjust my sways bars. There is so much traffic on the I75 north that they kept drafting me pretty bad so I had to tighten things up a bit.

Since I had decided rather late in the game to go to the Rally, I could not get reservations for a close campground and I can’t dry boondock at the Rally due to my work. I found a convenient campground about 25 miles away in Cochran, GA with wifi and it is a Passport America park as well. I love paying only $11 a night for full hookups! Finding the Hillside Bluegrass RV Park was pretty easy off a wide open highway outside of town. Their bath house while unheated is still of an excellent design with separate rooms which contain shower, toilet and sink in each. It is on a hillside so level it is not and the dirt road could use some smoothing out. No laundry room. Still, the wifi worked well for me in a space on top of the hill, the owners are very friendly, the location was close enough to see everything I wanted to see. Propane there is high so I filled up at Davis propane in town.

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Had to head farther south to get warm so I went to Bushnell, Florida off I75 to the Sumter Oaks RV Park which is an Escapees owned rv park. Escapees is a camping group I belong to out of Texas for those who don’t know. They own some of their own parks where they offer inexpensive camping and they are partnered with numerous other RV parks to save 15% on their regular nightly camping fees.

First thing you notice here is there are no reservations accepted. You have to go for it and hope there is an open spot when you get here. Smart Escapees call before they head out to see if they have any chance at all of getting in as they are always pretty close to capacity. If they don’t have an opening, not to worry as they do have very cheap overnight dry-camping available and there are bunches of campgrounds in the area including one just down the road.

After signing in, you don’t pay up front like other parks. You pay when you leave or the end of the month, whichever comes first. There is an extra charge for electricity which keeps everyone conservation conscious. Before you leave the office, they may offer a hug. Hugging is an old tradition among Escapees.

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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 to flock south with the other snowbirds for the winter. Michigan was getting cold and rainy not to mention northern campgrounds tend to start closing October 15th.

I spent my first night in a Walmart parking lot in Monroe, MI. The managers were very nice about it. It was easier considering I arrived late due to my work schedule and I needed to pickup my prescriptions there the next morning since they filled them once before. Spending a night with no electric or TV was somewhat boring but I did have a windup radio at least and I could still cook dinner on my stove. Having the slideout in was a little cramped but still useable. Only thing that bothered me was some idiot walking around the parking lot at 2am with a leaf blower like that could really clean it. Aargh!

Next day, headed out through a rain storm to Lancaster, Ohio and Lakeview RV Park for a week. Ohio landscape is flat with lots of farms and cornfields. Saw a sign to watch for horses and buggies. I got to use my Delorme Street Atlas GPS on my laptop to guide me. I love that it talks to me and I can command it with voice commands. I chose a slightly different path at one point and it recalculated immediately. I missed a turn and it got me right back on track. The best thing is it only cost $40 on sale at Best Buy. Came with the GPS device and software. The interface is non-Microsoft and weird but I’m learning it.

Lakeview RV Park was chosen because it is cheaper than the other parks with wifi nearby and close to a major highway. My trailer sits on a spit of land between two small lakes. I have a lovely 360 degree view of them out all my windows. I have a cement patio, lots of grass, a fire ring, electric, water, gray water hookup, and they run a honeywagon around once a week to empty black water tanks. The staff have been so nice and they guided me back into the site like champs right next to the patio.

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Due to issues with Internet access at the Rush No More Campground, I had to move nearby to the No Name City RV Park. The issues are unique to me and my work over the internet so don’t let that put you off Rush No More by any means. They use satellite internet which blocks a port I need for communication. VPN would also not work well with it. Most folks would not have an issue with it and they were very nice and understanding about me needing to leave early. They tried to make it work for me.

I looked all around for Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin at No Name City but couldn’t find them. (Paint Your Wagons movie). Nice park with wireless internet powered by a T1 line. It has a pool and both outdoor and indoor hot tubs. Level sites with all the amenities and great private bathrooms and showers. Cabins are available to rent. It is quite close to the freeway though if that bothers you.

I went to Deadwood Saturday for Wild Bill Hickok Days. The drive there from Sturgis is lovely and easy through the hills. Riding the trolley all around town was fun and worth the buck for the tour. The street music was excellent with a nice mix for everyone. The stores were interesting and I even saw hats to buy for the Flinstones’ Loyal Order of the Water Buffalo. I think the store that catered to movie memorabilia was my favorite.

For dinner, I hit up the Four Aces buffet for prime rib. If you like crab, there was plenty of that too.

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Note: This posting is updated as new ideas and technologies emerge and are tested.

Something that both motels and RV parks must face, is the need for wireless internet access. The internet has become so much a part of modern society that many people work over the Internet for a living while others communicate with employers through it, do some form of online banking even if it is only to check their account balance, pay bills online, lookup driving directions, purchase amusement and concert tickets, etc. Even when camping for a weekend, the Internet can be a great boon and necessity. Many motels and RV parks are currently adding access. I have read an article about the state of California looking into addin it in state parks. Personally, I won’t stay at a motel or park if they don’t provide it either free or paid (at a reasonable price).

Unfortunately with wireless, the coverage is not even. Some spaces will get better signal strength than others while some will not get the signal at all. At RV parks, there is also an issue which I recently faced when a huge motor home came in next to me, parked at the very edge of the front of his space, and completely blocked my signal. I had to hitch up my trailer and move it 4 feet to the very front edge of my own site thus losing the parking space in front. An external antenna would have helped in this situation but I had not yet found one at the time.

I have found several devices to improve signal and make your internet life on the road much easier. Let’s take a look at them below…

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