Chattanooga choo choo…..

Destination…..Harrison bay state park Tennessee.

We left Fair Play South Carolina for a 180 mile trip to our next destination. This time we decided to avoid the Interstate and take the “back roads” which we hoped would be more interesting visually. It was a shorter journey but was destined to take us an extra 30 minutes.but hey,we have the time!
All was going well. The views were better, the roads were less boring and I hear “this road is so quiet” says Gill. 10 minutes later we came across something we have not witnessed since leaving the UK……a traffic jam. A jam that we were in for about 40 minutes.
My window was open and I heard someone ask me….“Have you any idea what the problem is”?
Now that question, led to a conversation while in the queue which led to us being invited to their house and having a great meal with a lovely family two days later. (Talk about Southern hospitality, there just seems to be no end to it.)
While in the queue talking to Judy, all of a sudden Wendy the RV decided to throw out a hissy fit and a load of steam from her front end, Why? I thought, I always keep an eye on the temperature, oil and fuel all of the time. I jumped out and looked within the engine compartment to see a leak and green colored liquid spraying everywhere. It was soon deduced that it was the vehicles air conditioning system. No great shakes apart from the fact that we still had an hour and a half to travel in 95° heat. We later heard the delay was due to an accident where a car had hit a lorry head on and 2 people had died. Apparently the driver of the car had been drinking. So having to pay out $1,600 to get the aircon repaired seemed kind of insignificant in the whole scheme of things.
So Tuesday we dropped off Wendy to have her aircon repaired, while we went off for the day, visiting Lookout Mountain, a key point in the American civil war near Chattanooga. Followed by some caves at Racoon mountain. On the way back to pick up the RV we stopped off to do a Geocache and it turned out to be at one of the 131 National cemeteries. As we had to pick up the RV we could not spend too long there, but it was such a moving place we went back the following day, and on both days we were privileged enough to witness ceremonies, complete with a 5 gun salute and the last post being played.


We met Judy On Wednesday evening and had a fantastic meal with her husband John, friend Sue and daughter Lisa and son-in-law Cecil. John cooked some wonderful burgers and Judy cooked an oh so tasty Tomato pie, I’ve never had a tomato pie before, but i hope i get some of this pie again! A first for us, meeting in a traffic jam and a meal at there house two days later! Can you imagine anything like that happening in the UK? A wonderful family, wonderful meal and a privilege to have met them.
Oooo, I have found another store I love too, you all know that I am a very outdoor kinda person and everything associated with the outdoors, well have a look at this, Cabelas….
I just want to buy one of everything they have!!! I was like a little boy with a sweet tooth in a sweetshop!!!!
Something I have always fancied doing is white water rafting, well now I have done it and got the t-shirt to prove it. We did it on the Ocoee river, the same place that the 1996 Olympic kayaking took place. It took an hour and a half and had 20 continuous class III and IV rapids dropping 260 feet from start to finish. We met some people from Florida on our raft who had a go-pro and who will send us his video hopefully.
But it was something like this.
If you remember, (and I cant forget) back at Hilton head where I had my little accident, the site was given free by a guy called Steve, well on Friday we managed to meet up with him and his wife Sharron and bought them dinner and gave them a gift to thank them for their generosity. Its not very often we drive 75 miles for a lunch date, Steve drove for 2 hours to meet us. but here mileage just seems to be no issue.
We would like you to meet some new associates of ours,

they tend to visit anytime from midnight to 3am, they let us know they are here by throwing of the metal dustbin lids that are 10 foot from our RV! Bless them, they are cute though.
Fathers day saw us take a train ride up the Hiawassee Gorge for 4 ½ hours,

the river looked amazing with so many people, kayaking, tubing, rafting and just chilling while floating down.

I have to say Harrison Bay state park was very good, the best wifi we have had in any park we have stayed in, a real good week! With some stunning views nearby.
Next episode…..Nashville.

Sciuris Carolinensis…..Cont.

I don’t want to talk about it, they mean nothing to me, at the end of the day they are just tree rats! That,s the reason there are no pictures of the little *****!
Ok I admit it they won the battle, but the war is not over, I’m just moving the battle field 130 miles north west.
It did not matter what I did, those little grey squirrels got to my nuts, well to the bird feeder nuts anyway. They ruined one holder, and severely injured another one. They emptied the bird feeders quicker than I can fire a catapult at them! Until the next battle……..

We ventured 107 miles west to Atlanta where we took the free tram around downtown (free until Jan 2016), and visited Martin Luther King Jnr. House, grave and memorial site with an eternal flame,

and also went to the 1996 Olympic Park. On the tram route there was an indoor market where they were selling pie and mash. Kathryn had a steak pie which was lovely. ($7.50 lovely!) We went to the Coca Cola exhibition as Atlanta is the birthplace of this soda, but decided for the entry price it was not worth it, and did not interest us that much. After spending the morning in Atlanta we went to Stone Mountain which is 15 miles west of Atlanta and it is a 3,200 acre national park which has the sculpture of the 3 Confederate heroes Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee, and Stonewall Jackson.

It took 49 years to complete and covers about 3 acres of rock face. There is also a cable car to the top of the mountain and a railroad, and other attractions. It cost $126 for the 3 of us and we managed to do the cable car and train before all attractions were closed due to lightening in the area, but luckily they reimbursed part of our money, but it was a long way to go for part of the experience. We must in future remember to do the outside things in the mornings as by 4pm thunderstorms can bubble up on a daily basis. We did find a covered bridge whilst doing a Geocache, which is the first one we have come across so Gill was very happy as she wanted to drive through a bridge like this.

This is the last week of our time at Carolina Landing, near “Fair Play” South Carolina. Its been another week of traveling, seeing the sites and meeting new people. This weekend is going to have temperatures in the low 90’s so any jobs that need doing are done in the morning, then it is time to retire into the RV with the air conditioning on until the evening or go to the pool and swim.

Despite our brave attempts at fishing from the jetty at the bottom of the camp ground, we caught nothing, then one evening I went out in the boat and managed to catch a small catfish. Now if you remember the last ones we caught were back in Florida and Gill would not let us eat them. So when I got back to the landing there were a couple of lads there who I got talking to and knew how to skin it and prep the fish. Young Ayden also wanted to show me the fish he had caught that day………OMG!! He opened up a very large cool box with a 15-20lb striped bass.
He then introduced me to Barry, the man who had took him out. Well to cut a long story short Barry said he would take me out fishing on the Friday. On the Thursday I went down to see Barry to finalize times etc for the following day and he was just coming back in with his daughter Kelly. They were struggling with that old cool box again……Kelly opened it up to reveal her catch…..a 30lb striped bass. That evening they invited us down for a meal of fish…..stunning fish and great company.
Barry said we would go out “early” 6am, now bare in mind the last time I saw anything before that time of the morning was my last early with B&Q back in February…ouch.
Off we went at 6am in his boat on Hartwell lake and got to his site, and set up and watched the sun come up,

20 rods out of this one boat and anything over 2lb for me would beat my PB, well about an hour later, I did with this one;

After that another 3 come in and that finished off a great day spent with another true gent.

We also met Dave, who was Barry’s neighbour, who also had a boat and after talking to him, he said he would take us out on his boat for some fun. Fun? 40-50 mph sat on a rubber ring attached to his boat…..well it was fun for me and Kathryn, despite her asking Dave to try and shake me off…I held on….for dear life! When you see water coming towards you at that speed, what else would you do? It looked like it would hurt real bad if you hit it at that speed. I was holding on…. Hello everybody:

One of the bikes that we bought from Wallmart had to go back this week as it had started falling apart, so off to Anderson we went to sort it out, and I have now got a nice “Giant” hybrid to get out on and start getting fitter again. We also went and saw Jurassic World at the cinema, followed by a meal out at O’Charleys” a nice steak was had and Kathryn as usual had too much!!

One of the giant signs at the side of the road had advertised “moonshine”. Now we have all heard of moonshine but I did not realise that it was now produced legally in SC, just outside Anderson, so Kathryn and I went to have a look and a brief tour. I tried some of it, bought some of it and now have the T-shirt too. However I still have not opened it yet, I’m not sure about the 105 proof!

Talking of B&Q earlier on in this chapter, I have found a new love, a new place to worship and devote my hardware shopping to, so far I have been in about 6-8 of these stores and have only come across 2 that were not up to scratch.
I’m talking about “Ace Hardware ”.

It is like B&Q used to be. The service is great and they seem to have everything for the outdoors and every piece of hardware you would ever need…..love it!

Sciuris Carolinensis

These 3 weeks have been spent in South Carolina at a place called Carolina landing at “Fair Play” right on the border with Georgia.
Atlanta is approx 85 miles to the West of us, the Smokey mountains about 90 miles to the north. Just 170 miles from our previous location but a chance to explore another stretch of the mountains. At the last location we managed to drive the Blue Ridge parkway south as far Ashville, so this time we joined just east of that town and did another stretch south east. As you can see we managed to make it to the highest point of the parkway.

One of the drives that we did was through an area called the Transylvania, which is blessed with some stunning waterfalls.

The weather here at the moment is kinda mixed, morning temperature is around 82 degrees, but the afternoon and evening can throw anything at you. 11pm the other night the wind picked up and I was outside in my boxers and a t-shirt pulling in the awning. As I sit here typing this the lightening is ripping all around us and the rain is just starting to imitate stair-rods! Whilst up on the Blue Ridge yesterday, we came across this:

One of the things on the RV that needed doing was that it had a couple of stickers that had become quite aged, so I needed something to replace or cover them up. I managed to find something for one side that would do the job and add another dimension to recording our journey.

Our little boat has been, shall we say upgraded as we have now found a little outboard for her, as you can see by where we are staying the lake here is huge and having the motor on enables us to go as far as the tank of fuel will take us, fishing, sightseeing geocaching and admiring the stunning properties along the lake. Lake Hartwell covers 56,000 acres with a shoreline of 962 miles (roughly John of Groats to Lands end)

I decided to purchase a bird feeder while here to tempt in the wildlife, I am no twitcher but I do like to see the different birds that are here………..however “I am at war”!!

I am at war with the dreaded grey squirrel. The stand I have is made of a 15mm x 15mm square pole and despite my best efforts so far……the ******** squirrel is winning!
I have sat there with a catapult shooting at them from within the safety of my armoured RV, I have put spikes on the pole…..cut up a coke can to make more spikes, I have even put lithium Grease the full length of the pole. I moved it away from a tree, I removed the pole and hung it from the awning with thin fishing twine, but still the little Sh 1 t’es are getting on there.

Despite the battles between myself and the “Sciuris Carolinensis” (That’s a bit apt seeing as we are in the Carolinas) the following are just some of the feathered birds we have seen;

On Friday the 5th June, we went to Tullulah Gorge in Georgia, which had a series of falls but a few more steps in a 4 mile walk.
We did the north trail then went to the southern trail and to the bottom of the gorge via a few of those steps, then we walked back up them and across the gorge via this; then went back up the northern side of the gorge. Over 1000 steps and did our legs know about it!!

From Tullulah we visited a very “German” themed town called Helen, which had a lazy river for people to go down from one end of the town to the other.

Here we had a go at Gold and mineral panning. We found some gold;

To be cont…..

The Carolinas & Blue Ridge Mountains

So after Hilton Head and the hammered hip, it was time to move on, we were on the verge of outstaying our free welcome because of my injury.
We had booked a state park near Columbia in South Carolina for a weekend, but because of a “faulty ladder” Lol, we had to cancel the initial booking as I had to see the doctor on the Monday (That was a waste of time) the drive to our next stop would have been over 300 miles so we re-booked the state park on the way, it was still a drive of 170 miles, which with my fractured pelvis was a real pain in the ass, and that was literally!!!!!
We stopped off at “Sesquicentennial state park“, in South Carolina, where we had our first real campfire and chilled in pure silence,

while sat there we saw some flashing around us and the woods just lit up with fireflies, an amazing sight that made me grin, almost the same as when I first saw the Northern Lights.
Lenoir in Northern Carolina was our next stay for 10 days @ Green mountain RV park.

The park itself is set in the woods at the foot of the mountains. A very rural setting, but the park is “Tired” and needs some tlc.
It is just 22 miles from the Blue ridge parkway and right at the foothills of the Blue ridge Mountains.

A stunning area with fantastic views in the spring and a place to return to perhaps in the autumn. I am sure this is one of these areas that would take dozens of visits throughout the year to The blue ridge parkway is just shy of 470 miles long and relates to a road that goes through several states and runs along the Appalachian mountains. We joined it at “blowing rock” and headed north on one day, and south on another day, driving the parkway for approx 75 miles admiring the views at many of the lookout points along the way.

We have now been in the states for 8 weeks and it takes a while to get used to the language and pronunciations, and a couple of things that tickle me are the following;

“Niece on” is in fact that well know Japanese car manufacturer “Nissan” then we have the good old
“Hun die”, yep similar to the above, it is in fact the “Hyundai”, . Americans eh! We gave them a perfectly good language and they go and ruin it.
Now we don’t do a lot of TV over here as most of it is adverts of cars and drugs, but talking of drugs…I’m getting scared! Wow, NO, I’m getting petrified!!

Lots of drugs are advertised on TV and they are usually followed by “ if you notice sever bleeding, suffer major allergic reaction, shortness of breath, Suicidal thoughts, Seizures, Trouble swallowing, Urinary tract infections or periods of unconsciousness, stop taking this medication and please talk to your doctor…….Wow, no shit. All of that for a headache tablet, hey I can cope with my headache thanks!
Now just to finish off my minor rant…Greetings, Hello, Good Morning/afternoon/evening, all statements that we use in the UK, since we have been here we get greeted by “how you doing”? A question, yes!
So what would you do? How would you respond? No I’m not 100% sure either as to how to respond, however, when they greet you this way, why the hell do they carry on walking, why ask, if your not interested, don’t ask how are you and then wait for my answer, and for just one minute……I thought they cared!!

One of the highlights of our stay at Lenoir, besides the beauty of the mountains, and the weather, and the Parkway, and of course the……… No seriously, it was a family that we met called the Hayes family, Paul Snr, Debbie, Paul Jnr, Quinten and young Owen (so much like his Mother!) who live around Tallahassee and were staying a couple of units up. Debbie had spent 4 months in the UK previously and was happy talking to us Brits, in fact Debbie was quite happy talking full stop! Kathryn went out horse riding with some of the family and also went to Bo’s, bowling, and laser tagging.
It is amazing as to how different people can be, compared with Brits in general they are so friendly, generous and welcoming. Several times they came back from being out and bought us gifts back, a box of 12 doughnuts, some “real” birthday cake, a 14 inch Papa Jons Pizza, they even went out and bought me a tens machine to help with my pain and recovery. We also had an eat out over a camp fire, hot dogs, and Smores ( cracker, with chocolate on, heat the marshmallow on the fire, place hot Marshmallow on chocolate to melt and put another cracker on top) sweet but tasty. They also took us out to sample “Five guys, burger and fries” very very nice meal. (Although the directions there took us the wrong way down a one way street, thanks Debbie!!I thought we were going to get deported)
Would we see that type of welcome in the UK?
A great family to meet and hopefully we will meet them again.
We also spent an afternoon with Jim and Pam, Jim would go pass our rig daily with their dog Gypsy and would stop and talk. We were invited over and they were able to give us a vast amount of information on where to go and stay and things to see. They have been fulltime RV’ers for 6 years and have traveled most of the states. A nice couple to meet.

A couple of random pictures from the area……

Well that’s it for this post…roll on decent Wifi somewhere!!

Until next time, take care out there (says he:-S)

What goes up……must come down!

What goes up….must come down.

A short update on something that happened yesterday.

We are at Hilton Head Harbour and Rv park, a very stunning place, but expensive.
As in the last blog it was kindly given to us by a random person on one of the forums I use.
Sites here are for sale at anything between $55.000 to $250.000
Well yesterday we started to organise for our next move, pack the bikes away, awning down, etc etc.
The windscreen was dirty so I thought I would clean that before we departed.

Now one of the things that we want to do when we are here is to sample as many aspects of the American culture as we can, but I wasn’t meant to sample having to dial 911 for emergency services!!!
Unfortunately, whilst up the ladder cleaning the screen, the ladder collapsed beneath me, so once I was up and then I was down….with a thud!!
911 was called and I was rushed to hospital, greeted firstly by the medical insurance man…..have you got insurance?…sign here please!!

Then a wait to get x-rayed, then after 3 ½ hours I was sent home, complete with crutches, pain killers and a fractured pelvis!

So, a great deal of pain and discomfort and unable to vacate our site right now. I have a follow up on Monday with a orthopedics doctor and then hopefully we may get back into motion.
Some disadvantage of this, is the pain, inability to do anything or look around, and the 6-8 weeks of recovery time!!
Advantages? Well Gill has had to get use to using a mobile phone, being waited on, and just sitting and admiring the view.

I guess as the saying goes……………..Shit Happens!!!!
But there is also one that says………Life goes on 🙂

Fire in the hold!!

Fire in the hold!!

Sunday saw us pick up Kathryn after she had stayed with Will for two weeks. Having her back in the RV was different as there had been just the two of us for the last two weeks, but it is nice to have her back, even though me and her argue too much, she does make us laugh at times!
For example, over here in the States they have signs along most roads “Adopt a Highway” where groups or clubs agree to keep that stretch of the road clear in exchange for their name on signs along that road.
Kathryn..” Dad? If I adopt a highway, will I get a picture on the highways birthday , and yearly updates, will I get a cuddly highway toy?”
That did tickle me.

Well what does “Fire in the hold” relate to?
It could be from whence we came, Miami, hot? Yes very hot, up in the 90’s which for you in the UK equates to just over 32 ° with a top temperature of 96° (35.5°) and when you add in the humidity we hit 105° (40.5°) So yes that could be the “fire in the hold“!

On Monday 27th April we drove north from Miami up to Titusville, where we stayed at  Manatee Hammock RV park

which sits right opposite Cape Canaveral……which was handy as on Monday evening there was a rocket launch due at 18.27, something that has been on my bucket list for a long time, unfortunately I missed the space shuttle but a launch is a launch………it was delayed but it did go up.
It was small, noisy, but nonetheless it was a rocket launch…..could that have been the “fire in the hold“?

Now most of you know that I like my toys, gadgets and hobbies. One of the things that I wanted to do once we got here was to make sure we had all the toys we needed to enjoy life here, bikes, car, and some kind of watercraft e.g. kayaks! When we stopped in Punta Gorda, we met a German Rver who had something called a Porta Bote. No, its not a toilet it’s actually a boat, a folding boat that you can fold up and put on the roof rack. Tuesday saw us travel nearly 300 miles to purchase and register (nearly everything you buy here in Florida needs to be registered) a 10’ Porta Bote. Now we just need to get a motor to fit on the back and we can enjoy the vast amount of waterways this country has.
But this boat has no hold, so no fire there either!

Whats that on the roof rack…

 

that’s my boat which turns into one of these     

So where does “fire in the hold” come from, well, it’s like this, we packed up in Homestead and traveled up to Titusville. We then set up the RV and decided it was teatime, so Gill did some cooking in the oven and for some reason the smoke alarm went off (it usually does when she cooks 😉 ) we sat down and started to eat, the next minute there was a flame and smoke pouring up the back of the oven……panic, hell yes wouldn’t you? Luckily I had a glass of water nearby and poured it down where the flames seemed to be coming from and the fire was out. It turns out that on our travels north, something had slipped down an exhaust vent which leads from the oven to the hob and caught fire, but it was close!!!

The one thing we hated about this campsite was the trains…not that they came through the site, but approximately 1/4 mile away was a level crossing and about 1/2 mile down the road was another, and at every crossing the trains in the US they have to blow their HORNS very loudly 4 times at each crossing, so you hear them coming, they blast your ears then you hear them going and the trains rumble past for about 5 minutes they are soooo long!! Lovely sound to hear at 3 or 4 in the morning!! Roll on the next site and some sleep!

It was time to leave Titusville, and Florida, which means we had to leave the Chapman family behind too, it has been great seeing them and on Sunday we spent the day on the beach with them. They have been a great help to us and we are going to miss them. We don’t expect to see them again for a couple of years but we will see them again!
So we are on our own, the securities of friends are behind us and now the unknown awaits!

The travel up to our next stop, Hilton Head was 300 miles and a long jaunt, where Georgia crossed our minds ….for about and hour anyway,we then left her behind and entered and onto the park just inside South Carolina however it is a very nice RV park and another free one from Monday to Friday, courtesy of a very kind man on one of the forums we use who said we could have it free for the period.
So we move on Friday to a state park for the weekend, then its off to the the Blue ridge mountains for 3 weeks.
Feel free to comment, interact and give us suggestions.
Take care out there. xx

Everglades and beyond…………..

Down to the Everglades.
It was time to up-sticks as they say and move down South. It was going to be a longish drive as we had to head South, then cut across Florida to Homestead and head back East to the campsite in the Everglades. Homestead is where Will lives. Will is Kathryn’s boyfriend and she is going to spend the next two weeks with him and his family.
We left Punta Gorda at around 10am and started the drive, and we had one stop off on the way to do the oldest cache in Florida, that involved a stop in Collier-Seminole state park to do the “Christmas cache” which involved a 3 mile cycle and a hack into the jungle!
This was done while the two sun shy girls sat in the RV with the air-con on!
The 41 across the Everglades seemed to go on for ages…….in a dead straight line, except ,when the sat nav warned me of a sharp corner approaching a mile ahead…Jesus that was a close call, I mean that corner must have been about 179 degrees!!! PHEW!
We arrived at the Long Pine Key campsite at about 4pm only to be told that the campsite was closing in 2 days time grrrr!

We then said goodbye to Kat and spent the next 2 days enjoying “dry” camping with no plug in water or electricity, and searching for another campsite. Luckily I had joined before I left the UK, so we found a site near Homestead that was $534 for the next 12 days. Passport America cost us $109 for 3 years membership which gets us 50% off at over 1900 campsites, so the site cost us $267…That membership paid for itself in one visit. Kerching!
Now I just need to clarify one point, in an earlier blog I did say that we had a years free camping, however there were none of that particular campsite this far South, so we had to pay this time, and there will be occasions in the future when we will have to do the same again.
Whilst in the Everglades we went to the Royal Palm Visitors Centre where there are 2 trails to walk, the best being the Anhinga trail (named after a bird) where you saw lots of Alligators, birds and fish. We also visited Flamingo which is 37 miles from the main entrance of the Park and we did a boat tour with Captain Steve which was very interesting and fun.
Since being in Homestead we have visited the Speedway and car track here where they hold Nascar racing, and we managed to bag 2 free tickets to car racing being held on the Saturday which was a good day out. We have also spent 2 days traveling down to Key West the southern most point of the Florida Keys, which you can reach by car, where we visited the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum and saw the fabulous finds from the Spanish ship Atocha.These are amazing gold, emerald jewellery and coins and are just a small part of the 47 tons of gold and silver bars found and 70lbs of emeralds….. In the gift shop they have items for sale that came from the Atocha, but boy you need big money !!
$60 for a musket call or $135 for a nail!!! And loads of $$$$$$$$$$ for anything else.
We also visited the Curry Mansion which was owned by William Curry, reported to be Key West’s first millionaire, and it was built from 1855 and took 44 years to complete. We stopped and had a drink in Sloppy Joes the home of the legendary burger, then watched the sunset at Mallory Park which is a nightly tradition, and made are way to Sugarloaf Key where we had booked a room in CC’s house. She was away so we just let ourselves in and had a peaceful night. The next day we continued our journey North back to Homestead and on the way we visited a Bat Tower on Sugarloaf Key which had been built by Richter C Perky in 1929 to attract bats so they would eat the mosquito, but none ever came. Next port of call was Blue Hole, a flooded quarry where wild deer and other animals go to drink. Further on (37 miles from Key West) is Bahia Honda State Park and for $9.00 for 2 people you can spend the day walking trails or on the beach, which we did, and the water was warm and shallow and Terry went out snorkeling and a good day was had. Stopped off at other beaches just to have a look on the way to Key Largo where the boat The African Queen from the movie of the same name with Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart can be found moored, and if you like seafood then make sure you go to The Fish House Restaurant and Seafood market which looks like a shack, but the locals go there, so we went and Terry had the best 3 courses (including Key Lime Pie) he had ever had. It is pricey, but worth it.
Back at Homestead we have visited Biscayne National Park where Summer gave us a very informative tour, and we may go back before we leave the area. We have gone to the Cinema and watched The Gunman with Shaun Penn and Ray Winston and there was us and another couple in the audience so at least we did not have the popcorn crunching, drink slurping crowd!!!
We visited Miami on Saturday the 25th April, lots of art deco hotels and very fit and beautiful people and South beach was wonderful. We also went to the holocaust memorial which was very moving.
At the moment it is very humid with some heavy downpours and temperatures for the weekend are going to be approx 94C!! Americans call drizzle sprinkles which I find cute….
We will be moving North on Monday, back up to Titusville, just outside of Orlando, so I will end this blog here, and wish you all well until next time….

Heading South

Monday 6th April Time to pack up and move! Our first weeks camping was over and it was time to move to a new site, it was time to head south towards the Everglades. The first job was to pack everything up and hitch everything together, which went reasonably well apart from some little uncertainty about whether the tow dolly was on right……. Quite a crucial little point when it’s holding onto our Rav4. Then there was blocked toilet, which just happened to block that morning and despite our best efforts could not clear it, we had to be of the site by 11am and we had to move with it blocked, so we sealed it with cling film and drove off. We were going to stay at a place called Punta Gorda on the west coast of Florida, another free site for the week. 130 miles later and we arrived at the new site and luckily the toilet had cleared itself Now as I am sure your all aware America is full of shops, the Malls are huge and there are loads of different chains of stores. Now, so far the service in these stores has been amazing, I have to admit that my customer service is on a scale of 1 to 10 in comparison with theirs. ?… Mines a 4!! There are 2 stores that I will bring to your attention and they are the two extremes, firstly “Publix” a very tidy grocery store where nothing is to much trouble even carrying your shopping to your car is the norm. Then we have the lowest end of service at “Wallmart” where “go and ask him” or “no we don’t” seems acceptable. Unfortunately, when you can buy a new bicycle for €79, sometimes beggers can’t be choosers when the normal price at other outlets is $350 so Wallmart it had to be. After many visits and much had scratching we finally solved the issue of how we were going to get 3 bikes on the vehicles. I purchased a bolt on towbar for the Rav and a bike rack from Wallmart, plus the bikes. ….. We were away. This week, now the bikes were sorted we have settled in a bit more, so we have done some fishing, a bit of sight seeing and lots of chilling. A lady called Dawn from B&Q suggested we visit Captiva island near Fort Myers, so we did for a day, a beautiful island, some fantastic properties, wonderful food and a great sunset, thankyou Dawn x. Kathryn and I have been fishing for the last couple of nights in one of the many creeks that are here in Florida, and for the last 3 nights Kat had caught a catfish, and I caught 2, however Gill refuses to let us take them back to the rv to eat so they have all been put back, alive. Remember that at night you will be bitten within an inch of your life by mosquitoes which we have been and my legs are just like a dog to dot book! Friday night saw us go to a Baseball game, the Fort Myers Miracles versus the Charlotte Stone Crabs. We all had the obligatory hot dog. This is something that we are trying to do while here, too see all the typical American games, such as baseball, American football, Ice hockey, Nascar, etc etc. If you have any suggestions feel free to comment on the blog and let us know. Saturday we decided to go for a drive and headed north up to Sarasota area and a place called Siesta Key, where the sand was white and like talcum powder.

All in all another very nice week with a few more miles added to the odometers.

Our first weeks camping.

Monday the 30th of March.

This was it, we said goodbye to Rob,Tiina and family and will be forever grateful for their support in leading up to this day. We arrived at LaMesa and we had to wait for a few little jobs to be done that we had picked up during our walk through on the Friday that had not been done.  So we decided to move all our stuff into our new home while they got those jobs done. We also took advantage of the free lunch that they lay on for all their customers. After having yet another free lunch we went back to the rv and I learnt how to set up the tow dolly (trailer for the car we tow behind) ready for the off. I duly hitched up the car,  programmed my new 7″ gps, started the engines and drove this 53′ monster out of the parking lot. “what was that bang?” just the door slamming open!!! LoL

We filled up at the first petrol station we came to and had an uneventful drive down to our first camp site,  a “Thousand trails” campsite which cost us. …….Nothing. Courtesy of LaMesa and their free camping for a year promotion. Free for a year is not strictly true, but as near as free as Damn it is to swearing.

Driving the rig down was fine, we got buffeted by the lorries going past and trying to keep road position was a challenge,  now was the time to pick a camp spot and set her up.

We chose a spot with some shade, unhitched the car and reversed her in. Now we took copious notes when we had the walk through at LaMesa and what really surprised me was that it all just fell into place and we were plugged in, watered up and sewaged down in no time at all.

After a couple of hours at the local Wallmart, the shopping had been done and we were”living”in the rv.

The rest of the week was spent doing some small jobs that needed doing on the rv, a few more bits of shopping, outside carpet, beer, fishing rods, beer, odds and sods, more beer etc etc.

We went for a drive one day and past some utility workers on the side of the road erecting some electric pole,  we came back 20 minutes later to find 3 helicopters hovering, a queue of traffic, and a car where the workers were, we later saw on the news that a 92 year old had hit a 20 year olds woman’s car and she had ploughed into the workers killing 3 and one more was critical. Horrible!

Friday was Kats big day when she met up with Will again, who came to England to see her in November. We drove  up to international drive where we had stayed 11 years ago,  it had changed so much that we struggled to recognise anything. We left Kat there to enjoy her time with Will and his family at Harry Potter world on the Saturday and she was rejoining us at the rv on the Sunday.

This left me and Gill free to chill for the weekend. Saturday saw us drive around the park we were in attending a load of “garage sales”, where we managed to pick up a folding ladder for rig for $20, later seen in camping world for $193. Rob and Tiina joined us later in the day when we went out to a steakhouse. The steak was fantastic and during the meal all the staff stopped and did a line dance down the middle of the restaurant. Only in America!

All in all a great first week.

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Love to you all.

Living the dream.

The initial stressfull 2 weeks!!

Well the rv purchase was pretty straight forward, however hunting for the right car was, well let’s just say It was a damn sight more stressful than I think any of us thought it would be. Firstly we had not made up our mind on what vehicle we wanted, secondly we had to be sure that we were happy to buy off whoever it was who had the right car. We spent the full day on Friday driving up and down Colonial drive in Orlando, but to no avail. We even had a “hi my name is Jim, I don’t care if you buy of me or not, I won’t follow you round, you can even buy my car of me if Ya want, but it needs a new motor on the window” A lot of the sellers were the type you find at our car washes in the Uk manned by the east Europeans, enough said! So on the second day of looking for a car we went to Toyota of Orlando, where they seemed to have a Rav 4 that fitted our requirements. The dealerships over here operate strangely, in that one person shows you around the car, then your taken inside sat down and another person comes over and stays to talk prices. When you agree on a price you then have to see the finance person…… And on and on it goes. You can easily spend a full day if you go the whole way. But we decided on the Rav4 and left with the intentionon of picking it up the following Wednesday. So back to the hotel with the RV purchased and the car, insurance for the RV was already sorted so just the car insurance to sort on Monday. Sunday saw us catch up with Rob, Tiina, Lauri Zak and Anya Chapman. We met them through Geocaching and a travel Bug, 11 years ago. If you have never heard of Geocaching or travel bugs, Google it. It’s a great pastime if you like being outdoors. Anya was new to the family but Lauri and Zak we had met before. Lauri was leaving to join the airforce the following day, so it was nice to get another picture of him and Kathryn together before he left, but it was also a very emotional time for them all. However, they still opened their house to us, shared their time with us, and even invited us to stay with them for as long as we wanted. We had only booked the hotel for a week, what we didn’t realise was that we were in”spring break” so Orlando and all the hotels are really busy and we were unable to extend our stay at the hotel or get another easily, so we took them up on their offer and moved in with them on Monday. Considering what they were dealing with, saying goodbye to their son, they assured us we were doing them a favour and taking their mind off of Lauri leaving. Monday saw me going back to the insurance broker to get the Rav4 insured, considering the RV cost me $905 dollars to insure for we months, I was to say the least somewhat shocked at the $1100 to insure the car for SIX months!!!!! I did try another broker”destination services” recommended by the attorney handling our llc, but they wanted to ensure both the RV and car and wouldn’t do just the car. Despite shopping around, that seemed to be the best I could get, so went with the same one who did the rv. Wednesday saw the return of the hire car, so Rob followed us to the airport and then dropped us back at Toyota to pick up the Rav. We got there and Rob went off to work while we completed the paperwork for the Rav, we had to show we had insurance, so I showed them what we had, “sorry, as you are buying through an LLC in Montana and you have Florida insurance, it’s not valid” Frustrating, annoying and mind blowingly doing my head in, luckily Rob had loaned me a phone and I phoned my insurance people to try and change it to the Montana area…. Who then tell me it’s been miss-sold to me and is invalid and both the rv and car insurance would have to be cancelled. That made life a little easier, so phoned destination services so then insured both vehicles for $300 less. ?…result. She faxed the documents through and we drove the rav away about an hour and 25 signatures later. So, we have spent a great week with the Chapmans, using their pool, dining out with them and eating far too much. Monday the 30th was the big day for us when we picked up the RV, but more about that in the next installment

The first 24 hours in the USA.

Well we traveled up to London and arrived at the Travel Lodge, Gatwick in good time, thank you Jim for taking us up. Jim is Terry’s best friend and now the owner of our dog Jester. I know Terry and Jim will miss each other!

The flight to the USA was 9 hours and filled the time with lots of new movies, and meals and complimentary drinks that were very good.  Thank you BA.

We have found out that we have booked too many days in the US, so have already emailed our travel agents to try and amend the return flights. If anyone is looking for a good agent, i can highly recommend them, they are Zephyr holidays of Exeter, http://www.zephyrholidays.co.uk/

We picked up our hire car from the airport and the lady who let us drive out asked us if we were part of a family? as 4 cars in front of us was another Waddup from the UK, which is really unbelievable!!

Days Inn, Orlando is the hotel we have for 5 days and the room is fine with an actual bed for Kathryn rather than a put you up, fridge, combination oven, hairdryer and iron.

Went out on our first day here today to search for an RV, and after visiting Independence RV and Camping World we headed out to La Mesa RV where we found and actually bought a RV today, it is a Winnebago Brave and is approx half of what we were planning on spending,negotiated and had a drive today, managed to get it down a bit and it will have a full service, full valet inside and out,  whats more it comes with a years free camping at thousand trails campsites….Get in, back of the net!!!

Terry and Kathryn have been out and sorted out the insurance for it, so we just need to buy a car to tow which Terry and Kathryn are looking at as I am updating this blog.  Tomorrow we will go to some of the auto dealers in the area and see what we can find.

Weather is glorious, with it starting in the morning at about 77 centigrade, and went up to 91 centigrade at about 4pm today.

Will update you all further early next week, with some pictures too.

 

 

Semi retired!

Well, that was my last day in work for at least 7 months the 28th February 2015.
If I was not scared before I am now! In just over two weeks time we fly out from Gatwick after having a lift up from Jim.
Jim is now the proud owner of our dog Jester, who we have decided to let him stay with Jim for good as it would not be fair on the dog or Jim and Jill if we took him back again after 6 months in the states. I know I will Miss Jester and Jim, who is my ever present metal detecting partner and good friend, he just needs to get used to Skype now 
So the hardwork really starts now, keeping an eye on the dollar and when to change, making sure we have crossed all the “T’s” and dotted all the “I’s”. I am sure some things will go wrong and that there will be many hurdles to get over. We will go over there and give it our best shot, if it all goes wrong, well we still have our house, I still have my job, if I want it and we just come back and carry on as normal. But…….It is not going to go wrong, there will be challenges, there will be issues, but it’s just how we get over, around or through those issues that matter.
I have spent over 27 years at B&Q and have made a lot of friends, and yesterday was a very strange day, walking out of the building after so long. I wish all of my colleagues and friends all the very best as they continue their working life…Bummer eh!!
It has been a week since I finished work and every since then I have been ill with the dreaded Flu lurgy, now the 10th March and I am still struggling to get over it.
The next update should be when we have landed and purchased……. until next time.Jester on his way to his new home.

It’s real……tickets booked!

October the10th 2014. Today was an eventful day but we will come to that later in this post.In one of my previous posts, I talked about a spanner in the works, which was namely my pension, after some enquires it looks like I will not be affected and it will now probably be resolved by the time I finish with B&Q anyway. I have come up with a great little plan that has come together quite well. What I have done is applied for a “career break” with work, which has been a successful application, this means that I can take a break from work for a period of time from anywhere between 3 months and a year. So as of February 28th 2015 I shall be having a break for a period of 7 months and returning to work for B&Q on the 5th of October 2015. This still gives me continuous service with the company, i’m still an employee of the company, and entitled to continuous pension service as well as death in service benefits for my next of kin should anything nasty happen. What it also means is that I have a job guaranteed to return to on the same pay and position, this saves me having to search for a driving job on our return. So the jobs a good un as they say. That brings me to today, and what a day it’s been as well as spotting and getting into a tussle with a syringe yeilding thieving scumbag in work, followed by the retrieval of a misappropriated fire from some more dishonest buggers I had a nice call from my very friendly and very helpful travel consultant, Karen from Zephyr holidays of Queen street Exeter. Today was the day that we booked out tickets……..YIPEEEEE, it’s real, it’s happening…..GULP!!!! Scary, exciting…. We fly out on March 18th to Orlando, Florida and return to the UK on September 18th, the adventure begins. Feel free to tag along by subscribing to this blog and come along and enjoy the ride with us.

Were coming to America.

Well, after what seemed an age, we have finally had our trip to the USA Embassy in London.
We managed to combine it with a weekend away to try and enjoy the sights and sounds of this vast city. We drove up on the Thursday night after I had finished an early shift at work. The trip itself went quite smooth and we arrived in London after about 2 ½ hours, minus a brief stop. Something that I have started to use a lot when we go away is a website called parkatmyhouse.com, which has changed now to http://www.justpark.com, where the likes of you and I park on someones drive for a small fee (which is usually a lot smaller than normal parking). I have probably used this site about 6 times so far. There is another site called parkonmydrive.com which I have also used, but not so often; I can highly recommend the former one. We arrived at our parking space and had a short walk to the hotel on London grove.
We had a quick meal out and an early night ready to be at the embassy for an 8am appointment the following day, so, a 6 am start. After reading up on what was allowed and what was not, we had read that “no electronic devices” were allowed in. The pre-booked taxi turns up and takes us to the embassy and we get there for approx ¼ past 7 and already there is a queue. Several of the people in the queue have mobiles and are happily surfing the net. There was I smug as hell thinking “you won’t be let in”….it was me with egg on my face as they walked straight in and nothing was said. Grrrr!
Anyway we got in and was called up to the window “Why do you want to come to the US”? “Why not on the visa waiver program”? “Put your fingers on there” “and you” “and you”..now sit back down and you will be called for your interview!
Stage 1 down, now for the interview, in a room the 3 of us with someone grilling us? We had prepared for this, finance & bank account statements were all printed off, job offers on our return printed off, return flight plans printed off…everything was printed off..we were ready!!
“Number 10 to window 24”. Window? Window? I thought we would have a comfy seat for a 45 minute interview oh well……here we go. “Hi” “Fingers on the scanner please, why do you want to come to the US?” “We want to go and travel, buy a RV and spend some time seeing your country; it’s bigger than ours and loads to see” “why not the visa waiver program”? “Well we would like to stay for 3, 4, 5, or 6 months at a time” “OK your visas have been approved and your passports will be returned within 5 days, Thank you, enjoy your trip” 08:50 and we were back on the street to enjoy what London has to offer!!!

WOW!

Spanner in the works?

Spanners, useful some time and sometimes they don’t fit. But what about that old saying “A spanner in the works”?
Well, I could possibly have one in my plans to retire at Xmas.
The company I work for decided to stop our final salary pension scheme a couple of years ago and for a few of us that had been there since the 1980’s it changed quite considerably, so much so that a group of us decided to take the company to the Ombudsman to see what they thought. Well it turns out that they think that we have a case and are willing to pursue it on our behalf.
Now, I can still go when I want to go, and there is nothing stopping me and to be honest, I probably will still be leaving at the end of this year, the only caveat to that is, there may be a pay out to compensate for the “lost” pension amounts. And the amounts we are talking about could be significant figures and sums that I would be willing to amend my date by a few months maximum, so keep an eye on this space. There have been some key dates mentioned, and I will have to see what decisions are made on those dates and that could affect when we start this journey.
But that’s still some way off, since my last post what has happened?
Firstly I suppose I had a big wrench, not the spanner type this time but letting go of my beloved XJR 1300 motorbike, a bitter loss, but an amount of collateral that I could not afford to just leave on the drive whilst we tour the USA. So sold it was! (Might get a cheap one to leave on the drive though 😉 ..)
Now we have the visa visit to look forward to, that’s coming up at the end of this month and that includes a weekend in London, so a nice little break for us there.
And despite the spanner that threatens us we have now reached another milestone…

Getting the Visa’s…..

Well, we have got around to the next stage of the trip….applying for the visas.

It was quite an in depth process online with lots of questions and paperwork and $160 each to apply and an online appointment  for our interviews at the US Embassy in Mayfair London in June. The pictures are done, the hotel is booked nearby and parkatmyhouse.com used to locate the car not too far away outside of the congestion zone. The only issue I came across as we were booking is that I happened to choose the same week as the Wimbledon Tennis, so the hotels were more expensive and few and far between.We’ve also decided to make a weekend of it in London so are staying up there the Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

May have to have a sneaky look at Wimbledon tickets the next time i happen to be on the old internet.

It turned out that it’s cheaper to drive and park than to use the railway from Devon, so much for inviting us to be green and use public transport!!!

Wish us luck for the 27th June.

First route stage decided…

Ok, so with less than 300 days to go before I retire planning has continued (what would we do without the internet?) Bank accounts have been opened, travel agents are on the case for flights, more unwanted items have been sold off, and the council informed of our intentions in regards to council tax.
We are watching the exchange rate daily and also share the prices.
More importantly, the first stage of our trip has been pretty much decided, clearly there has to be some flexibility in there so the rough route only so far.
But we are starting to look at likely campsite and places to visit.

Getting Organised

As you can see we are starting to get organised and ready, still soooo much to do!

What are we doing?

Well the idea is, to travel to the USA in 500 days and buy one of these wicked little (35’+ ) things and go traveling for a few years. We were going to do it when i reached 55, but do know what….why wait!