Our Travel Blog

After a lazy morning waiting for the temperature to rise, we had an early lunch and headed out to Kissimmee State park about 20 miles away. On the way there we passed a large orange juice plant, at a rough guess there were upwards of 300 18 wheelers, full of oranges, in the place waiting to be unloaded with more arriving every few minutes…. that’s a lot of oranges!

The main reason for going to the park was to see the Cow Camp. This is a re-creation of an 1870’s camp that was set up all around south – central Florida. These camps would be about 15 miles apart (the distance that they could drive cows in one day). There was an old cow-hand there who loved to talk and gave a good description of life as a cowboy. In some ways I found the talk to be a little disconcerting as the guy had settled himself well into the 1870’s and no mention was made of present day (his future).

After the cow camp we went and drove around the state park camp ground. The sites there were way better than the last couple we stayed as they are in the woods, not in an open field. The only down-side for us, if we stayed more than a week, is the fact that there is no sewer hook up. They have electric and water, we have Satellite and internet, so that’s ok, but to dump the waste tanks we’d have to pack up the trailer, drive to the campsite entrance dump the tanks and return to the site, probably a four hour exercise.

Really not very impressed with the Sunshine State …… another grey day.

The repair guy came and fixed the hot water heater today, I was pleased to see that my diagnosis was spot on, despite the professionals telling me the gas valve never fails!

We decided some time ago to make a small change in the bathroom. The back-splash has a paper border running across it that does not stand up well to water, so we went out and bought some vinyl floor tiles to put up on the wall, at 36c each it wasn’t going to break the bank to buy 10 of them! A few hours work later, and the job was done. At least it passed the time on a dull day.

The only job left in the bath room now is to find out why the hot water tap squeaks when you turn it on and off, the only odd thing is it only does this when there is hot water running through it! If there is cold water in the line, it is as quiet and as smooth as can be!

So much for the sunshine state, I’m thinking of hiring one of the multitude of lawyers down here to take the state legislature to court for false advertising. Every  license plate proclaims Florida to be the Sunshine State, but in the immortal words of Bill Withers, “There Ain’t no Sunshine”

Yet again another cloudy, wet but warm day. Thursday is shopping day, so off we went… not a single craft or fabric store was visited! When we got back I had to go and get the propane tank refilled at the local RV store and pick up yet another replacement part under warranty.

This was one of the not so pleasant repair jobs that required a pair of rubber gloves. The way the toilet works is a little different from the home variety. A foot pedal serves to turn on the water and open a flap at the base of the toilet that allows the contents to drop into the holding tank below. This flap operates against a rubber gasket that forms an air/water tight seal so that after flushing the smells don’t rise up into the bathroom, and a small amount of water remains in the bowl. Well the seal didn’t … the water leaked out, luckily the odour stayed below, so armed with rubber gloves the old seal had to be removed and replaced with the new one. I’ll spare you the gory details, but trailer life is not all fun and sun; today it was neither.

My third stereo is on its way (my last warranty claim as we have had the trailer for a year now), hopefully this one will work!

This morning it was back to our usual wake up time, early breakfast once a week is enough! After breakfast I went and joined the Brit couple we had met earlier to learn the finer points of lawn bowling. Only problem was, there are no lawns around here smooth enough to play, however there is a large expanse of flat(ish) green carpet in the recreation room. Having played once before in Portugal it was interesting to try the game again. Two hours later I was still playing, so it wasn’t too strenuous for me!

After lunch we decided to explore the delights of historical Lake Wales. Unlike Brunswick, this was a much cleaner and inviting area, there were many interesting designs of buildings, and many had amazing murals painted on the sides.

After the Historical area we headed off to spook hill. This is one of those hills that go the wrong way, like magnetic hill. The illusion was pretty good, it looked as you were facing down hill, but in fact the truck rolled backwards.

We rounded off the afternoon with a(nother) trip to the fabric store, followed by a trip to Lowes for some tiles to put around the bathroom sink. On the way to Lowes we stopped off at the Lake of Lake Wales where there the usual beware of the ‘gators warning in the middle of the lawn.

Well, we managed to get up at the unearthly hour of 7:40 AM to go to the weekly campsite breakfast. Not only was it early, it was cold! We got to the clubhouse and it was already busy, even before the “official” start time. For $3 we got an ample serving of scrambled eggs, French toast, bacon, sausage and coffee… an excellently healthy start to the day.

Lyn had recently bought a whole load of quilting fabric, so she commandeered 2 washing machines and a clothes line to wash them all. On the clothes line it looked as though she was drying a number of brightly coloured sheets with frayed edges… hope the neighbours didn’t see them.

While Lyn was doing the washing, I was finishing off the setup of the new toy, We now have a reasonably good Internet connection, and a good phone connection.

Heard today that the gas valve on the water heater will be replaced under warranty, so we can switch back to gas heating again once that is fitted.

Finally got the bikes off the back of the trailer and got our daily exercise by cycling around the campsite a few times (it’s not really that big!)

Another grey,but warm day. I had been expecting a parcel and it arrived today, so off to the office I went to pick it up. When I got there, the couple we met the other day were there, so we got talking again. Turns out I must have met the lady before as we both had week-end jobs at the same chemist shop at the same time! It then transpired that she went onto work full time at the same place Dad worked at!!

Once the nattering was over, we came back to the trailer, and I started to play with the new toy! Simply put it is a WiFi router that can “seek out” WiFI signals at a campground and rebroadcast them within the trailer, plus it will allow connections to be made via Ethernet cable. The last part is what we needed to allow us to plug the phone system in. The other neat trick that the box does is to allow the 3G stick to be plugged in to it, and distribute its internet connection via WiFi. So far it’s partly working!!

This afternoon we headed off to the Florida Aviation Museum, about 30 miles away in Lakeland. On the way there we passed a school that proudly boasted it was 100% drug free….. I should bl**dy well hope so, it was an ELEMENTARY school.

Further along the road we saw the products of a non drug free school. Florida has this great idea of putting its prisoners to work, this group was clearing garbage from the road side. What was really neat, all the prisoners were wearing the old prison uniform, grey overalls with black rings on them, just like in cartoons!!

The museum, with a couple of notable exceptions was oriented towards light aircraft, many of them home built single seaters that you strapped on! There were also many replicas of the old wire and canvas planes from the early 1900’s that people had built just for the fun of it.

We left the museum and headed, where else, to the fabric store and then back to the trailer just in time for a cold front to go through, and dump a couple of inches of water on us.

Tomorrow we’ll be up exceedingly early as the campground has it’s weekly breakfast.

Less than usual happening today! It was cool (14C) this morning, in fact cool enough to cause me to change out of shorts to jeans. Other tan an extended walk around the campground very little else was achieved. It seemed to be quiet here today, maybe due to the Super Bowl (whatever that is;-))

First order of business was to check out the gas water heater, after a few prods with the voltmeter it was obvious that the gas valve had failed, so off to the local dealer to make a warranty claim. Talking to other owners, I’ve been assured that the first two years of ownership are the worst! At least this problem isn’t too serious as we can fall back on the electric water heater.

We planned to go to the town of Lake Wales to visit the monthly antique fair; on the way out of the campground we dropped into the office to print out a discount coupon for…….. where else could it be….. a fabric store. While there we started talking to the owner who introduced us to another Canadian couple originally from the UK. They currently live in Arnprior, but the husband lived in Staines, a few miles from where I grew up and the wife grew up in Cranford, as did I. In fact she lived about two streets away from me!!!

Back to the  antique fair, I think it could be better described as a street based flea market, however it got us to the old “historical” part of Lake Wales, which will be worth another visit. We headed north from Lake Wales towards Winterhaven for the fabric store, stopping on the way for lunch. Fabric shopping done, we headed home towards darkening skies. By the time we got to the trailer there were a few drops of rain, and it has been raining on and off all evening

Lyn went off to the craft meeting this morning at the clubhouse, unfortunately it wasn’t too well attended; Lyn + 2 other women and a hanger-on husband.

After lunch we decided to head south for a bit and tour the local area. Yesterday we bought a new Florida map book which gives a fair bit of detail. The GPS is great for getting from A to B but not too good for planning scenic tours. There was a large lake just south of us and we decided we would drive around it. It looked like a very populated area according to the map, lots of small roads full of green monopoly style houses. Something didn’t seem right with this interpretation, so when all else failed we read the instructions. The little green houses were actually orchards!

We left the main highway after about 15 miles (and a stop at Wal Mart), having seen a few sand hill cranes and wood storks along the side of the r0ad, and joined the back roads. The little green dots emerged; there were orange groves everywhere, even in the middle of the small towns. They went on as far as the eye could see.

There are also a lot of orange processing plants around, and you can often see semi-trailers full of oranges on the high ways.

Once back at the trailer site another gremlin had hit us, the hot water heater didn’t heat. At least we can switch from gas to electric if need be, but it is worrying that so many things keep going wrong, especially as the one year warranty expires next week!

The world got a little larger today as the trailer next door moved out. If no one goes in there we will have quite a bit of room. Coincidentally since he moved out the campground WiFi has become more accessible, or is that because I bought the USB device?

This morning was the weekly trek to do the shopping, we took the back roads and my legendary navigation skills came back to haunt me. For some reason at this place I can’t get my built in compass to work, hard to explain but my navigation is worse than usual, so out came the GPS.

This area is covered in orange groves, all up the back roads to the stores were orange trees, we’ll have to stop one day and borrow(?) some of the fruit.

After the shopping was done, it was back for lunch and then Ln went off to explore the laundrette taking a basket full of clothes to keep her company; she must have had a good time as she was gone for over an hour 🙂

The laptop started playing up a couple of days ago, kept crashing…. normally when using Firefox, decided I had to re-install windows. Now all I have to do is track down all the passwords that my browser had so kindly memorised for me.

It appears we are the “talk” of the RV park at the moment. Apparently we have one of the largest trailers on site, and  evidently there was quite an audience when I was parking it. Even two days later we’ll be sitting inside and people will go by talking about the size of the trailer.

Time to go find those missing passwords