Our Travel Blog

Finally, a day with no issues. The floor is dry, the water is running (in a controlled fashion) and the gas is heating. The new TV and radio should be here tomorrow, all we need is the weather to warm up!

Today was a definite lazy day (OK lazier than most), mostly reading, computing and modelling. For Christmas I got an Airfix model Lancaster aircraft which is slowly being built.

In continuing witt the lazy theme we graciously turned down an invite to the local Elvis impersonator night!

Tomorrow we are off to a local wild life area to see what lives in this neck of the woods.

One more cold night and we should be back to around 17C during the day and 8C at night, enough of this below 0 stuff.

Just when I thought everything was sorted, the gas went out on us again. Very similar symptoms to earlier in the week. I didn’t think a second changeover unit could have failed in the same way, so it was time to put my fears of gas behind me and troubleshoot again. In a nutshell, I think I have tracked it down to a faulty connector to one of the gas tanks. It looks as though the connector to the gas tank has a small valve in it to prevent gas escaping as the connector is screwed on, and this valve was staying shut, hence no gas. So far it is working OK, but the way things have been going this week, I’m not holding my breath.

This morning was cool at 2c and the day not much better at 10c, tonight is meant to be dropping to -5 with a windchill of -10…. so much for global warming!

Lyn has been socialising, craft group yesterday, some sort of food party today, and by coincidence a stitch and bitch (that’s what the programme says) tomorrow.

So far I am having a job warming to this place, no pun intended, it is probably due to all the problems that we have been having with the trailer…. however tomorrow is another day and hopefully the replacement TV and stereo will arrive so I can play with those as it will be a bit too cold to go out much!!!

My comments yesterday must have upset the trailer trash gods . Our old enemy water returned last night. Around 5:30 AM Lyn heard water dripping and went to investigate. There was water on the kitchen floor that initially looked as though it came from the ceiling. This really didn’t make sense as it wasn’t raining and the A/C was not on. Closer inspection showed that the kitchen sink was at fault, not where the water enters the taps but where the cartridge is. I went outside and turned off the water and back to bed.

When we got up, I checked the tap and put some PTFE tape on the threads on the cartridge housing turned on the water et voila, all was fixed. I kept an eye on the tap for a few hours, used the tap as usual and as there was no sign of a leak I congratulated myself on a job well done.

We went out for a walk, came back about 30 minutes later to a wet kitchen floor! I guess the trailer trash gods waited until we left.

By now there was no way I was going to trust the tap again so I phoned the dealer, explained the issue and “suggested” that the only course of action was for me to go buy a new faucet, install it myself and bill them under warranty; they agreed!

The new faucet is now installed, and hopefully my apology will appease the gods and we can sleep peacefully tonight.

I’ve been trying to avoid this moment, but it seems I failed! We now have a multi-colured rotating windmill thingie planted out front of the trailer 🙁

Today was meant to be wet and thundery, (but it seems that Florida forecasters are no better than Ontario ones, there wasn’t a drop of rain nor a boom of thunder) so it was declared a shopping day. I wanted to get some fitments from Home Depot so that I could connect our portable BBQ to the quick disconnect on the trailer, rather than carry an extra propane container with us. Lyn wanted to go to JoAnn fabrics and HobbyLobby, the latter I thought would be a general type hobby store, unfortunately it was a Michaels on steroids! (for the European readers, Michaels is a large craft store).

During the wanderings around the store Lyn discovered a number of multi coloured wind thingies, and so our intoduction to trailer trash was born!

Having got most of the annoyances of the last couple of days out of the way, it was time to go exploring. We decided to head to the beaches and see what they were like. The nearest beach was about 20 miles away and is on the Gulf of Mexico. We were hoping that there was no sign of oil pollution! We got to the beach via a dead end road about 10 miles long. Although the sand was clean and soft, the beach itself was only about 150yds long. Glad we didn’t take the bikes with us! After the beach we headed to the town of Crystal River. The water in this area is a haven for manatee as the water temperature is a constant 72F year round. We found a small park in Crystal River on the water and Lyn is sure she saw a manatee! Before we move south we hope to take an air boat ride down the rivers an through the marsh lands where we should see a lot more of them and whole lot more of the local wildlife.

Bright and early (9.30) the gas repair man arrived to look at the problem we were having with the switchover unit. Seems my diagnosis was correct, and a new switchover unit was installed. 30 minutes and $100 later he was gone. In reality it wasn’t really $100 it was $99.40 Cdn… the strong $ is great!! I remember when I first started travelling to LA it was 68c.

With the repair guy gone it was time to try the $3 breakfast! It wasn’t bad, some frittata a danish and mimosa. There must have been well over half the campsite there, everyone we meet refers to us as the new guys as it seems most of the people here return year after year and nearly everybody knows everybody.

Apparently the internet problem here is in the process of being fixed, it is an open system and a lot of people have routers in their trailers rather than connecting directly from their computers to the campground wifi (woooops). Any way a move is afoot to issue passwords to everyone which should eliminate 90% of the unwanted routers. Unfortunately we need the router to run our phone system, however where there is a will there is a way 🙂

OK, life returned closer to normality today. The internet here is not as good as the last place making our VOIP phone virtually useless, plus it will die for a few hours at a time! I am hoping that these deaths have nothing to do with my playing around with a couple of routers trying to improve the phone quality!!

Other than the internet the only outstanding issue from yesterday is the gas. The cause is a failed switchover unit, which will be replaced by the local RV guy tomorrow under warranty. I don’t mind working with water or electricity, but gas still scares me!!

Took alook around the local area today, and topped up on the shopping. Lyn “discovered” a quilt and fabric store a few miles away, right next to the grocery store. Evidently the fabric prices are unbelievably low 🙁

Hopefully the gas guy gets the work done quickly tomorrow so we make it to the campgrounds “Champagne Breakfast”, at $3 a head we have to go just to see what is offered.

Anyway, the trailer is off the market (at least for the time being).

Today was one of those days where everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Since picking up the trailer yesterday numerous little things have gone wrong. I feared that I may not have protected the water system enough as there were a couple of days when it went down to -8c while we were away. Hooked up the water and all was fine EXCEPT the kitchen faucet leaked. An hour later it was fixed, turns out the nut that holds the cartridge in place had loosened. Next was the bathroom fan, this operates when the roof vent in the bathroom is opened, trouble is it didn’t work. Problem there was the fact that the nut that held the wire to the switch had also vibrated loose!

That’s the water out of the way, no to the entertainment centre. One speaker started making a loud buzzing noise that drowned out any other sound from the system. Delved into the mass of wires, only to find that the last time the system was “repaired” the guy who did it must have been on drugs. The wires to the 3 front speakers had been cut, and the front speakers splice into the rear speakers!! Long story short, a new stereo is on its way.

Next casualty was the motor that moves the TV up and down, it refused to work. Had to strip it down and in the process one of the springs in the motor popped out never to be seen again. Quick trip to the local hobby store to find a suitable replacement. Got it all back together and finally working.

Meantime Lyn is cooking dinner, and complained that the gas burners weren’t very hot, e.g. water wouldn’t boil. Both tanks seemed to be at least 3/4 full, but were not feeding the system properly. Finally physically swapped the tanks over and got dinner. The problem seems to be in the automatic switchover unit which had been previously repaired by ….. you guessed it, the stereo repair man.

Finally the internet died, so I have the blog written on time but can’t post it.

More on the title later! Left Brunswick GA around 0900 with the trailer in tow, had to get used to having the beast behind me again when driving. A pretty easy drive of just under 200 miles. The fuel consumption was again better than last time we towed with around 12.8 mpg. Got to the campsite and our first thought was “what have we let ourselves in for?” The first trailers we saw were so close together you could hardly get the slide-outs out. Then we realised that were looking at the storage area! We knew that we were spoiled at the last site, this one is full (about 160 sites), and the sites are closer together, but overall it seems pretty good.

Lyn started to unpack and get the place ready while I connected up water, sewer, electric, cable, Internet etc. Finally came the satellite dish, which can be pretty picky as there are three adjustments to make, direction, elevation and skew. This was not made any easier by the strong gusty winds. Went off to the computer to do the calculations, went outside to set up the tripod and dish and pointed it in the rough direction. Switched on the TV to the “tuning” channel and went to look for the compass. No compass, oh well I can see where the sun is setting I’ll go just left of that the see what happens. Of course no signal. When looking for the snazzy tuning meter and figured it would take at least half an hour to get it all sorted when Lyn says “What did you do, the pictures fantastic!” The wind had blown the antenna into perfect alignment! If it’s repeatable at the next site I’ll go for the patent.

The day started off chilly (-3C) and cloudy. A quick visit to MacDonald’s for breakfast rewarded us with an unusual sight, there must have been about 20 people in the restaurant armed with bingo cards and markers! Guess they have a daily / weekly bingo session there.

As we headed south, there was no sign of snow, which was surprising as we had snow in North Carolina on the way north before Christmas. The temperature rose to 13c as we headed into South Carolina. We were a little concerned at the number of motor-homes and trailers heading NORTH, perhaps Florida is full! Conversely, judging by the number of Quebec cars heading south, that province must be empty.

Tomorrow we’ll pick up the trailer then it’s just under 200 miles to destination.