Tag Archives: Florida RV Parks

2015/07/08 (W) Custom Desk Design

Linda continued to research Florida RV parks this morning over coffee.  Riverside RV Resort which was fully booked but she found Big Tree RV Resort in Arcadia, Florida.  It is located in a similar part of the state and Arcadia is where the annual Arcadia Bus Rally is held between Christmas and New Year’s.  Big Tree is a Carefree Resort, which means they had a nice, professionally done video on their website.  We checked it out on Google Earth and it looked OK.  Hey, the entrance is right across the street from a Walmart, so the shopping is convenient.

Linda called Big Tree and talked to Pat.  They only had five openings for the 2015/16 winter season so we reserved a spot for January and February 2016 with the understanding that we can probably extend through March if needed.  First, however, we want to see if we can find someplace else to stay in another part of Florida for March and perhaps some of April.  We would like to spend some time in northeast Florida.  Our friends, Pat and Vicki, spend late February and early March at Jetty Park near Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral.  Besides their presence there is a lot to see and do in that area, so that is appealing to us.  However, the spring FMCA national rally will be in Perry, Georgia the third week of March, so we are being pulled in several directions.  Such is the RV life; so many places, so little time.

Breakfast was cinnamon raisin toast and fresh melon.  After breakfast I called Chuck It Junk Removal and left a message that we would like to rent their dumpster trailer for starting on Monday 20 July with pickup on Friday 24 July.  Brad called back and said those dates would work for him.

Linda continued to research RV parks in Florida for December and March.  She called Williston Crossings to ask about space for December but the lady on the phone said someone else would have to call us back.  As much as we liked Williston Crossings the winter before last we wanted to spend the heart of the winter farther south in the state.  A more southerly location would afford us a warmer climate and position us to explore a part of the state we did not see last time.  It would also put us closer to many of our friends who winter in southwest Florida.  We really enjoyed the southwest Arizona climate this past winter and have talked about trying a winter in southern Texas and/or southern New Mexico.  I have no doubt we will visit those areas in future years but this year we wanted to return to Florida.

I typed up a short letter to go with the defective Morgan M-302N coaxial cable lightning arrestor and boxed it up for shipping back to Morgan Manufacturing in Martinsville, Indiana.  Linda got a new 90-day prescription for me when she saw the dermatologist yesterday so we also got that ready to mail.  She then left for the library, post office, and grocery store.

My focus for the rest of the morning was on uploading posts to our personal blog but before I even got started I discovered a mouse at the entrance to the utility area in the basement.  It had not survived its encounter with one of our cats, probably Juniper, so I put it in a small zip lock bag and put it in the trash.  I know that food and shelter are powerful attractions for mice but I am surprised that the presence of two cats in the house is apparently not a deterrent for them.  Other than the one mouse we live trapped in the bathroom the mice are not taking the bait so far.  Indeed, it may be that we are luring them out of hiding and Juniper has figured out where to lie in waiting to ambush them.  From what we have seen she is a very skilled, and determined, mouser.

Linda went for a walk as soon as she got back from running her errands.  By the time she returned and prepared tofu hotdogs for lunch I had uploaded eight blog posts covering June 8 through 15.  After lunch I sent an e-mail to a dozen or so folks letting them know where we would be this winter.  I then got to work on the design for the custom desk.  Except for a dinner break I worked on it until 9 PM when I quit for the day and went upstairs to watch the final episode of The First Peoples on PBS.

Butch and Fonda are at the Crosley Automobile Club national gathering in Wauseon, Ohio this week and will be back home on Sunday.  I would like to have the design for the desk and other custom woodwork done by this Sunday so I can drive it down on Monday or Tuesday next week, give it to Jarel Beatty (the cabinet maker), and visit with Butch and Fonda before heading home.  The desk will take some time to build and I would like to take the bus to Butch and Fonda’s in August before they leave for Arizona so Jarel can bring it to their place and help me install it, assuming, of course, that I have the new floor installed by then.

The desk is proving to be quite challenging to design but after thinking about it for the last couple of weeks I had several “breakthrough” ideas today.  One was to turn the printer 90 degrees so it faces fore and aft rather than side-to-side.  Another was to leave the front of the printer box open and cover it with a swing up work surface.  But the basic difficulty I am having is figuring out how to draw it.  I finally decided to draw a plan view of the base which really helped me see where the Aqua-Hot fan-coil heat exchangers will go and how the coolant lines will run.  I still have a lot of work to do, and I really wish I had AutoCAD (and knew how to use it), but I went to bed feeling like Sunday was a realistic target date for this piece of the project.

 

2015/07/07 (T) Field Day Photos

We did not sleep well last night, were slow to get up this morning, and slower to get going.  A cold front was pushing in from the northwest with the promise of cooler temperatures and sunny, blue skies, but first we were in for a day of overcast conditions and rain, which started around 8:30 AM.  It was a perfect morning to sit quietly in the living room, reading, writing, and drinking our coffee but too warm to turn on the gas fireplace logs.

Yesterday Linda started researching RV parks in southern Florida for this coming winter and we spent some time this morning looking at them online.  There was one in particular, Riverside RV Resort and Campground, which caught our attention.  Located on the Peace River near Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda, it is a short distance southwest of Arcadia where the annual Buss’in rally is held.  We went to the rally two years ago and had a great time so we will go again this year if we decide to winter in Florida, which is our current inclination.

One of the reasons for us to winter in Florida, at least occasionally, is our many contacts there.  Our friends, Steve and Karen, bought a mobile home near Venice; our friends, Chuck and Barbara, bought a lot at Pelican Lake in Naples; our ham radio friends, Bruce and Linda, bought a house on 25 acres near Brooksville; our GLCC fiends, Ed and Janet, bought a place that I think is near Sarasota; our FMCA Freethinker friends, John and Marian, bought a place in Dunnellon; and our other FMCA Freethinker friends, Ed and Betty, bought a place in Bradenton.  In addition to all of those folks quite a few of our RV friends, like Pat and Vicki, spend the winter in Florida, and the state has a lot of things to see and do, including one of the best state park systems in the nation.

Linda left for her appointment with the dermatologist and I got to work at my desk.  I continued to deal with e-mails related to the SLAARC domain transfer and an ongoing conversation with BCM publisher Gary Hatt.  I got a Dropbox link to some Field Day photos from Steve (N8AR) a few days ago and downloaded them.  Last night I got a similar e-mail from Mike (KE8AGY) with a Google Drive link and today I got one from Jim (N8HAM) so I downloaded all of those photos.  I spent most of the rest of the day selecting and processing the photos I took and then processed all of the ones I got from other people.

I took a break to chat with Linda when she got back from her appointment.  I then removed the defective Morgan M-302N VHF/UHF Lightning Arrestor from the cable entry box and boxed it up to ship back to Morgan.  I took another short break for dinner, which was an excellent Farro and kale dish, and then worked until 8:30 PM when we had agreed to watch a movie.  This evening’s choice was The Imitation Game, a film about Alan Touring and the concepts he invented that allowed the British to build a machine that broke the coded messages generated by the German Enigma machine during WWII.  I spent another hour at my desk after the movie before going to bed and finishing this post.  Tomorrow morning I plan to finally upload some blog posts and then get back to work on the design of the custom desk for the bus.