All of the States We've Visited in our RV

Here's a map of all of the states that we've visited so far in our RV. This is the same exact picture that I had created in 2006! Even after our travels in 2007, we weren't able to "add" any more states. Oh, that doesn't mean that we didn't have a great trip, but we do like to add those state "stickers" on to our maps. And this year we will! We plan on adding, at the very least: South Carolina and North Carolina. We are pretty sure we'll get the RV into the state of Virginia, too, considering our destination in Tennessee is under 6 miles from the Virginia state line (as the crow flies).

So, where are we heading? I'll post more on our upcoming Workamper experience later - Glenn is here! Gotta go play tourist now...

St Augustine, FL

We chose St Augustine as our second stop in order for us to see another friend, Glenn, who lives on the south side of Jacksonville. Jacksonville is limited on campgrounds, so you either have to stay north of the city or down here in St Augustine. We haven't toured St Augustine in a number of years, so we chose this area to see him on this visit.

Yesterday we drove directly to Camping World even before checking into the campground. Andy is like a kid in a candy store when he goes to Camping World. I just see dollar signs ringing up! But our baby needs some new supplies to keep on rolling and looking good, so it was a must. Our biggest upcoming expense is going to be replacing the awnings. They've gotten dried-out with age. The patio awning is primarily dried-out at the top where it is exposed to sun when rolled up. The newer RV models came out with a vinyl or metal shield that protects that part of the awning now. The slide-out awnings are also cracking - especially where a camper's fly-ball (in 2007) landed on our already-dry awning and caused it to spider web. We just have to figure out where and when to replace all of the awnings.

I'll write more about St Augustine in another post. We're going to spend the day as tourists with Glenn.

Titusville, FL

Our first true stop on our Trek was Titusville. I have an old girlfriend that lives in this area, and although it's "just" 3 hours away it seems very difficult for us to see eachother. Starting out our trip by visiting friends seemed to be the right way to travel.

We got to see Laura and Bob for dinner on Thursday night. We went to Murdocks in Cocoa Village. Cool little place with good food and an entertaining waiter. I like walking around Cocoa Village. Someday when we visit, though, I'll visit before 6pm so I can actually go into some of these little shops. Like most small towns, it shuts down early leaving only the restaurant and bars open. The shopping district is a block off the Indian River/Intercoastal Waterway which gives it a nice backdrop.

We continued to organize ourselves, the car, and the RV to try and make it more liveable. I'm afraid I've overpacked for this trip! Yikes. Andy is already talking about the need to go to the scales and get weighed. We've brought all our toys on this trip: 2 road bikes, 2 mountain bikes, and the 2 kayaks. We haven't carried all of them since our 2004 trip. But we believe we can use them all in Tennessee, which is where we are heading.

First Stop - Easterlin Park

Our first stop shouldn't be called a "stop" since we actually never slept there. We used Easterlin Park in Fort Lauderdale as our set-up station. This allowed us to turn on the fridge and wait the 8 hours for it to cool before starting to bring the food to the RV. We were also able to open the slides, unpack and organize clothes and supplies, and to do some light cleaning like vacuuming at this stage. All in preparation for Our New Trek! Departing this year seems more challenging to us because we are trying to rent out the condo as well. So instead of being able to leave belongings in the condo "as-is", we've had to pack up the house and make it presentable (furnished) to potential renters. Believe me, it was more work than we were anticipating.

Our original goal was to leave on April 1st, but that proved too difficult to reach. Then on the 31st when we went to the storage yard to deliver a load, we realized we had a flat tire. Andy filled it up, but immediately heard the air come pouring out again. The rubber valve stem had torn. Although we purchased new tires in January, Andy thinks this was caused because the 180 valve stem extender got caught behind the tire rim putting undue pressure on the valve stem. Good thing for emergency road service. They arrived in about 40 minutes, and another 40 minutes later he had us fixed. He put on a metal valve stem this time. We thought he was going to put on the spare and then we'd have to spend hours in Ford the next day getting this fixed. What a relief that he was able to fix it himself.

Easterlin Park is a very pretty park. Beautiful, natural Florida plant life with tall pines and cypress trees and the understory makes it a peaceful setting. Until you realize that (although you can't see it), the train tracks are right behind some of the those trees. Warnings in the park office and in the campground state that the trains run all day long, and all night long. They also blow their horns all day long, and all night long. Good thing we weren't planning on sleeping here. We did think about it until the first train blew past us.

test - remove after publishing

testing new folder on new hosting site

Re-Living 2004

I wanted to learn how to use WordPress's Blog. And, I've wanted to elaborate more on my original 2004 blog from our first year traveling. So, for the last few months I've slowly recreated 2004 - using WordPress. A labour of love.

The "new" blog - Diandy's RV Travels from 2004 - has more pictures and more stories. This will allow us to reminisce more easily and be a better tool for us as we continue traveling. We hope you will also find it more enjoyable to read and help you when making any travel plans. It was actually quite fun re-living that trip and re-reading my hand-written journals...but it took a lot longer than I had anticipated!

I liked using WordPress, but like everything in life there are pros and cons. Here were some of the benefits of WordPress blogging:
* it was easy to get started - lots of templates to choose from
* it was easy to add text or captions to photos
* it was easy to set up links to "open in a new window" (because I love including links for all of the places we visit or resources we use, but then you might get lost and not remember to finish reading our blog posts)
* for business purposes, you can build the blog into a website so it doesn't have a url address like 'blogspot' or 'wordpress'. I didn't set mine up, though, because my website hosting package charges extra for that feature.

What I still like about Blogger, though is:
* it's easy to upload photos with larger sizes that are just a click away
* I like the appearance of the "tags" in Blogger vs WordPress
* Picasa's new feature of watermarking photos is wonderful and flows with Blogger

Currently what I'm still fussing with in WordPress is uploading of the photos. I found that the easiest way to upload photos (in my opinion) was limiting on the size of the photo and inability to watermark. I played with many ways of uploading photos as you'll see: some can be enlarged, some lead to WebAlbums, some are in a Gallery format, and the earliest posts are static one-sized. Linking to the WebAlbums was time-consuming compared to the uploading buttons. If they could just allow a water-mark feature to the upload, I'd be happy.

Hope you check out my new old blog and enjoy it.

Post-Race Celebration

It started out innocently enough. We thought we'd tour Bobby around town on the Water Taxi for a few hours, and then go kayaking in the afternoon.

With a $13/pp all-day pass, you can hop off and on the Water Taxi as much as you like. Our first stop was the 15th Street Fisheries. We figured we'd grab a 'beer with a view' before lunch:

From feb

Here's a picture of the 15th Street Fisheries again when we were leaving our last stop of the day (the Pelican Bar), which was on the opposite side of the Intercoastal Waterway:

From feb

Hhhhmmmm...do you think we made it kayaking that afternoon? Nope, we sure didn't. We had a wonderful day just hopping off and on the Taxi or walking along the beach stopping at different establishments along the way. For some reason, I had decided to take a picture at each place we went...so you can see more of our day by clicking on either photo and going to the WebAlbum.

Andy and I rarely get to play tourist like that. It was such a relaxing day that we almost forgot to feel guilty about playing hooky! I'd like to blame Bobby for that, but how can you "blame" someone when you had so much fun?