Westward Bound!

We arrived at my brother’s house for what was supposed to be a 4 day stay leaving on 3/12. The weather was great as it warmed up into the 50’s and even mid-60’s. Less than a week before it had been below zero so of course Barb and I took full credit to bringing a 70+ degree temperature change!

Our nice quite spot at the end of Bob's driveway

First course of business was to see what the fluid leaking from the Jeep was. In addition to the fluid, I noticed a strange vibration on the drive over as well. I would feel it between 40-50mph but if I put the clutch in it disappeared. I assumed that this too was probably related to the fluid leak. I lifted the hood and did not see anything, I looked under it and did not see anything. So I crawled under it and sure enough there was fluid leaking from the front differential.  I topped of the fluid and drove it to the garage telling them about the leak, the vibration and asked if they could look at the steering as well as there was a lot of play in the steering wheel.

They called back a few hours later and said I needed a front differential pinion seal (fluid leak), a rear U-Joint (vibration) as well as a new steering gearbox and steering shaft. I told them to go ahead and fix everything as I was leaving town in a couple days. I received a call the next day saying that the pinion seal and U-Joint were done ($105…gotta love small town garages!) But he called everywhere in the Twin Cities and cannot find the steering gear box. He called dealers, junkyards and looked on line. He said he did find a few on EBay but it would take a few days to get them. So I spent the afternoon looking as well and there was none to be found locally. I ended up buying the gearbox and steering shaft on EBay for a little over $1,000 with an arrival date of the 17^th. Looks like we are staying a few extra days!

At least the weather was good and it will give Barb and I a chance to see a few more people than we otherwise would have. We had a get together with my family as well as several good friends.  It is really good to see everyone and is a reminder of the hardest part of being on the road….missing your friends and family. This trip is especially hard as our travel plans do not bring us back here for well over a year.

We also completed our other appointments, doctors, taxes…….remember when Barb hurt her ankle last December in Lake Havasu? Well, it has still been bothering her so she had it looked at while she was at the doctor. No fracture but she did tear some tendons which he said will take a long time to heal. Taxes did not turn out as bad as I thought it would. We got a $3,000 credit from our solar installation which helped immensely. We are actually getting a small refund this year!

We had planned on a leisurely drive out to Moab Utah but with the delay with the Jeep repairs we needed to motor out there as soon as we could. The first day’s drive ~320 miles brought us just east of Omaha. Day two and another 400 miles later we arrived in North Platte Nebraska.  Now, I have been watching/admiring Barb’s rear end for many years but now that we were in two different vehicles, it brought it to an entirely new meaning. Staring at the back of the rig for 23 hours over 4 days…… well…. It sucks. Barb is very adept at driving the rig and the Jeep…it is great from small trips and off-roading but definitely not comfortable during these 6+ hour stinks so I drove the Jeep the entire time while Barb and Daisy rode in comfort. On the up side this should be the only time we take a long road trip like this and our future moves will only be 3-5 hours which is much more bearable. Plus, it is also going to be great to have the Jeep and 4 wheeler with us for off-roading and other exploring!

My view of Barb's rear end!

Day Three (450 miles) took us through Denver and through the mountains on I70. The weather was great and even though it was interstate, the sights and views were spectacular. Even though the Jeep is a 6 cylinder it struggled over the mountain and we were in 2^nd gear, down to 35 mph pulling the trailer up some of the steeper slopes. We summited at 10,600 feet and had over 20 miles downhill to our resting place for the night at the Walmart in Rifle Colorado. Over the past three days we stayed in one rest area and two Walmart’s. Not the nicest accommodations but we pulled in after 5:00 each day and pulled out before 9:00 each morning. Not worth finding a campground, setting up and paying for a few hours a sleep.

Barb and Daisy at the summit

Our little caravan

Tomorrow is just a short 3 hour day to our next destination, the OK RV Campground in Moab Utah where we are going to meet up with some friends we met at the RV boondocking rally in Florida last month!

One Year Anniversary!

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Five plus years of dreaming, planning, saving, researching and minimizing have brought us to this date. The one year anniversary of our life as full-timers! In some ways it still feels surreal, like we will wake up one day and have to go back to work. In other ways it seems like our careers were a lifetime ago and we wake up and wonder where we are!

A combination of circumstances, hard work and luck brought us to this point.

Circumstances……Did we know 29 years ago when we got married that we wanted to retire in our 50’s and hit the open road? No. Did we have this in mind when we were planning our family? Kinda….We knew we wanted kids young so we would be in our 40’s when they became adults. There are many obstacles and obligations that could have stopped us from where we are today. Family is probably the biggest factor that keeps people from taking this step. Our kids moved out west shortly after graduating and unfortunately both of our parents passed away.

Hard work and luck……Money and healthcare are also big factors. We were both fortunate enough to have great careers with pensions, a 401k and an excellent retirement health care plan. Although we did not live as frugally as we could have we did start saving for our retirement at a young age.

What we did not know was that all these factors would roll together to where we are today and a change in any one of them could have stopped us in our tracks.

There are downsides to this lifestyle. Probably the hardest thing for Barb was selling her horse Scout which was born and raised on our property. But she is happy that she sold him to a very nice family that takes good care of him and still gets to watch him compete in videos on the internet.  Both Barb and I miss our friends and family that we do not get to see as often as we would like. Maintaining friendships with some of our friends “back home” is more challenging as you do not see or talk to them every week. Email, texts and phone calls are great substitutes and a lot of our friendships do not require weekly contact, we could see them once or twice a year and pick up right where we last saw them. Half of our friends still think we are nuts…..how can you sell everything and spend that much time with your spouse?

The upsides definitely outweigh the downsides. For us, it is not seeing the sights, it is being able to spend all this time together. Seeing all the sights is really secondary. In addition, we have meet a lot of great people that we would have never had the opportunity to meet. We have absolutely no regrets in trading our stationary lives for this mobile lifestyle.

Learnings……..We really did not keep track of mileage as well as we should have but according to our Travellerspoint site we traveled about 11,500 miles, way too much. Although we spent 4 months in Canada and two months in Utah, we moved way too often in our other locations. I think the most we spent in one location was 4 or 5 days and often had 2 day stays, not nearly enough to fully explore an area. We also spent way over our initial budget. For the year we spent a total of $50,700 or $4,225/month. Within that we had several large one-time expenses ($11,000 on solar and $6,400 on suspension/brakes) that we will hopefully not incur again. Fuel was our largest recurring expense at $7,400 while our campground expenses totaled $1,813 or $5.00/day.

Blue 2014, Green through 3/9 2015

In Year Two we are going to do things a little differently, the biggest change is we took the workamping job described in our last post. We did this for a couple of reasons; 1) it was something that we were really interested in, 2) we will be staying in one area for 2-3 weeks and then move, 3) the money will certainly give us a nice cushion. The next biggest change is that we plan on spending the entire winter in the SW with at least two months in Quartzite Arizona. This will not only allow us to thoroughly explore the area, it will save fuel costs as well.

As I said earlier, we have absolutely no regrets and plan to do this for the foreseeable future. How long? We don’t know, 3 years? 5 years? 10 years or longer? We have no idea. All we know is that we are definitely blessed to have this opportunity and will not take it for granted.

What exotic location are we on this momentous day? Some warm location with our toes in the sand sipping on an umbrella drink? Ah…..no, we are in the exact same spot we started this adventure one year ago, Spring Valley Wisconsin! You see, our good friends, the Anderson’s were nice enough to store our Jeep and Polaris Ranger for the winter. The plan was to pick them up on our way to Canada in May, but as you know, plans change and we needed these items in Utah in mid-April.

As you will recall, we were a might overweight when we were weighed recently. What does one do when they are overweight? Go on a diet? No, you buy larger pants! We had been watching the weather since leaving my sister’s place in Fort Myers for a few good travel days so we could make the run up to Indiana to get our Mor/Ryde suspension installed before heading to Wisconsin. If you have been watching the weather you saw that Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana were getting pounded with snow the past few weeks. After our stay at some friends in Alabama it was time to get up to Indiana. We had planned on splitting the 680 mile trek into two days but a quick check of the weather showed one day of good traveling followed by freezing rain and snow the next day. So we hit the road early Monday morning and drove 13 hours arriving at the Walmart parking lot at 11:00pm. We had stopped along the way and winterized the water system and it was a balmy 25 degrees when we went to bed. When we woke up the rig was getting pelted by freezing rain, although it was a long drive we were happy we made the decision to do it in one day.

Our first stop that morning was at Duncan RV were we got the motor replaced on our rear awning. We had a recall notice recently and made the appointment to coincide for when we were up here. We received a tour of their facility. There was a 5^th wheel that had rolled over and another Class A that had $85,000 in damage from a front tire blow out! The awning motor was replaced in about 20 minutes and we were on our way.

We called Mor/Ryde to let them know we were in a day early and if they could get started today. They said: “Sure bring it in, not a lot of people are bringing their rigs in this time of year” (imagine that…..). So we headed over and pulled the trailer into a service bay which is where we spent the next three nights (one of which was Barb’s birthday!). The overnight temps were in the teens but we were nice and toasty in the shop.  We ended up getting the 8,000# suspension system and upgraded our brakes from drums to disc brakes.  During our stay they gave us a tour of their facility and provided lunch everyday.

They finished our rig about noon on Thursday so we hit the road and started our way to Wisconsin. We had debated two routes, one that brought us through Chicago and one that took us south and bypassed Chicago. Since it was noon when we left we decided on the Chicago route since it would be 2:00 when we passed through we would miss rush hour traffic right? Wrong! I should have remembered that there is no good time to drive through Chicago. The GPS keep trying to take us onto the Express Way where trucks were prohibited. It fooled me the first time but we soon got off and followed the truck route which was adjacent to the Express Lane. You should have seen us driving the rig in the Express Lane with hordes of traffic almost bumper to bumper going by at 70mph. It was almost impossible to change lanes. Once we got onto the truck route the pace was slower……much slower. All this fun and we even got to pay for it, over $40 in tolls between Indiana and Illinois. Oh joy! Note to self NEVER take that route again!

We had it as far as Wisconsin Dells where we spent the night in the Walmart parking lot along with 10-12 semi-trucks. . Would you believe we were the only RV there? The temps were in the single digits and all sane RV’ers were far far away from here. We found a nice little spot in the corner of a lot by a big snow pile and turned on the furnace to a whopping 50 degrees. I figured we would just get the chill out of the air and then turn it up from there. Next order of business, calling Domino’s (less than 2 miles away) to see if they would deliver a pizza. “We are in an RV in the Walmart parking lot” You would have thought we asked them to deliver to the moon. After being on hold for what seemed like forever someone else answered and said; “Where are you?” “We are in an RV in the Walmart parking lot” “Please hold”………holding……..holding……holding…..Finally someone comes back and says “Where in the parking lot are you”  I wanted to say “WE ARE THE ONLY FRICKING RV IN THE PARKING LOT, YOU WILL SEE US!” But instead calmly explained where we are and in 30 minutes we had a pizza. The night was a long one, the furnace never hit that magical 50 degree mark and ran all night long….except for the time around 5:00am when I heard the ignitor clicking which means we ran out of gas. I look over at Barb and all I see is a red nose sticking out through the pile blankets. Daisy? I think she was that snoring lump under there somewhere. So outside I go to switch gas tanks (yup it is still cold out). We went through an entire 30# tank in one night? I don’t know how the people who live in their rigs in colder area do it….or afford it.

Our destination for the day was the Anderson Farm in Spring Valley but first we went to Roberts Wisconsin to drop off the rig at their other place where it had easy in and out access. We had put our Jeep and 4 wheeler in their shed last fall. At that time they asked “When do you need it out?” “Not until May when we go to Canada” I replied. So we buried it in the far back corner when the shed was empty. Well when our plans changed I got a hold of Gloria and asked her what the chances of getting the Jeep and wheeler out in April? “No problem” she says…….she lied. Well, we will tackle that tomorrow.

The red arrow in the back right is where the Jeep and trailer is!

That night we went to dinner with Greg, Gloria and the three girls Renee, Ronda, Rachel as well as her husband Jeff. We drove into Hudson to Azul they had a special on their margaritas, buy three, get one free! I think their scam is they don’t think most people are going to drink the 4^th margarita. Well, we showed them!

The Anderson gang

Getting the Jeep and 4 wheeler out really wasn’t too bad, moved 3 trucks and two cars and they slid right out. They both started right away which was definitely a bonus. You just never know after things have been sitting for several months. I did notice a trail of some kind of oil trailing the Jeep when we pulled it out, going to have to get that look at before we head west.

The next night we met up with our former neighbors from Bone Lake for dinner again in Hudson. We had not seen Brian and Chelle forever and it was really nice to catch up.

The 4 of us at Pier 500 in Hudson

A big thank you to the Anderson's as well as Brian and Chelle for their hospitality and generosity!

From here it is off to my brothers in Taylors Falls for several days of doctors, taxes and other appointments and prepare the Jeep, 4 wheeler and trailer for our journey out west to our new jobs!

Fishing in 'bama

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Leaving Fort Myers we headed north to the Osceola National Forest where we spent a couple of days at Ocean Pond campground. We had hoped to get some kayaking in but the weather did not cooperate as it turned windy and colder. Instead we went for a few walks, did some geocaching and read books. It may be hard to believe but it had been a couple of weeks since we had any "down time" to just sit and read. While we were there we mapped out our trip to Elkhart Indiana where we needed to be on the afternoon of March 3rd. Plenty of time to get there but we wanted to make one 3 day stay in Alabama. In order to do that we needed to shorten up a few other days and lengthen our driving days.

With plan in hand we continued our journey north and spent one night in Eufaula Alabama at Lakepoint State Park. It rained almost all day during our travels and all through the night. I don't know how much rain they got but the entire campground was flooded with 3-6" of water. The next morning when we woke up the rain had stopped but it was still pretty wet when we headed out.

Very wet!

Our next stop was one we had been looking forward to for some time. We have written about Steve and Joan several times in the past, well Joan has a brother (Jim) who lives in Eastaboga Alabama and said he would love it if we stopped by for a few days of fishing and relaxing on the Coosa River. So we were off to Eastaboga to meet someone we have never met before and moochdock on their river property. "Don't worry" Joan said, "you will love Jim and his family".  Several hours later we pulled up in front of their house in Eastaboga. After a short introduction and visit, their son Matt jumped in our truck to show us their place on the river. It was a great spot with 100 feet of frontage on the Coosa River. We pulled in, set up and visited with Matt. Jim arrive with their basset hound Hank. Soon after, Jim's wife Kathleen arrived as did their other son Jacob along with his fiancée Katie. The seven of us went to dinner that night and spent the weekend together fishing, eating and hanging out by the fire.

Check out Jim's awesome fire pit and mobile chair set up!

The weather was not ideal but we did not let that stop us from fishing and having fun. The snow that they had received earlier that week was slowly melting and the fires kept us warm. Saturday Jim fired up the smoker and cooked up some killer ribs and chicken.  The first day of fishing Kathleen, Jim, Barb and I went out. Jim was telling us what a good fisherman Kathleen was and true to form she boated a nice crappie within minutes of dropping the anchor. The next day Jim, Jacob and I were on the water by 7:30 and managed to get some really nice crappies and a couple of striped bass for our efforts. That afternoon, we cleaned the fish and had a fish fry along with cheesy grits, hush puppies and topped off with an awesome blueberry cobbler!

A cool shot Barb took in the area

Barb with a nice slab crappie

Jim and Jacob headed down the river

The entire family was incredibly nice, even though we had just met them, they treated us like long time friends and we had a great time meeting and hanging out with them for the weekend. A huge thank you to Jim, Kathleen, Matt, Jacob and Katie from Barb and I!!!!!!

The whole family, Jacob, Katie, Kathleen, Jim (with Hank) and Matt

Now it is time to continue north into snow country. Although we are not looking forward to the cold and snow, but we are looking forward to seeing our friends and family.

Florida Fever!

We heard it was cold, flu and fever season but we never thought we would catch such an illness down here in Florida. After all, those are illnesses for folks in the northern states where the snow and cold are contributing factors.

So we were confused and bewildered the other day when we found ourselves getting hot and sweaty one minute and having the chills just seconds later. It all started one day while Barb and I were at a patio restaurant baking in the hot sun. We soon found ourselves with a fever-like heat running throughout our bodies. As soon as we took a sip of our icy cold piña coladas we got the chills. A very perplexing situation indeed. Soon, we would find ourselves sweating again and again after a sip of our drinks we got the chills! After numerous repeated episodes with the same effect we came to the startling conclusion that we had FLORIDA FEVER! We quickly looked it up on the internet and found that this specific strain of fever inflicts northerners when they come into the area. Symptoms included hot sweats followed by the chills after sipping an icy drink. Yup, that is exactly what we had! Reading on we discovered there is only known cure for this epidemic……..continue to drink piña coladas while gorging yourself with delicious food followed by a few hours of rest…..so that is exactly what we did.  Eat, drink, rest, eat, drink, and rest. It was a grueling few days but we managed to break the cycle and soon we could drink our piña coladas without getting the chills. Whew!

So that is how we spent our week visiting my sister Judy and her husband Mike. Along with their Balsam Lake friends, Steve and Sherry, Pam and Arnie and Sherry’s dad Bill we had a great time visiting and sampling some of the local restaurants; The Tiki Hut, Gator Bites Tail and Ale, Doc Fords, Bonita Bills, Harpoon Harry’s, Lani Kai, Nemo’s, The Beach Pub, The McGregor Grill, Red’s Seafood…….The seafood in this area is incredible! I don’t know if it is the variety of shrimp or just the “off the boat” freshness but we had some of the best shrimp of our lives. We tried to decide what our favorite meals of the week. Mine was the Crab Crowned Grouper at Red’s and Barb’s Shrimp/Spinach/Gorgonzola Pasta also at Red’s. The shrimp and clam strips from Harpoon Harry’s were a close second.

Mike, Judy and us hanging at The Beach Pub

 

This guy was swimming off of Fort Myers Beach.....Dolphin or Shark????

 

Arnie, Steve, Bill and Mike having a brew at Bonita Bill's

Food aside, the best part of the week was seeing our family and friends. We put the rig in storage for the week and stayed at Judy and Mike’s house. If you can find a site, RV Parks in this area start at about $50/night and $70+/night is not uncommon. The storage facility we used was only $5/night and was within 5 minutes of Judy’s house! More money for going out! We also visited with two other couples who were in the area; Roger and Judy, our neighbors on Bone Lake in Wisconsin were in the area so we caught up with them for lunch one afternoon. We also met up with a former Washington County co-worker of Barb’s. Shirley and her husband Alan have a home in Port Charlotte about an hour away from Fort Myers. We met up with them one afternoon for some great food and shopping.

A couple of fisherman cleaning their catch........

.......and feeding the pelicans scraps

Look what Barb caught!

Shirley and Alan at Harpoon Harry's

We also had a huge change in plans for the summer. We had originally planned on spending the summer in Canada like we did last year but after hearing about an awesome job that our friends Steve and Joan landed we decided to apply for one of the remaining couples positions and got it! Steve described the position so eloquently I decided to steal a paragraph from their blog rather than try and describe it myself.

From Steve’s blog:  “The job being offered would have us working in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and possibly Utah & eastern Oregon this summer. We would work 40 hours/week, drive our personal 4-wheel drive vehicle, utilize a provided tablet and GPS device to map BLM roads throughout the designated areas. Joan and I (and now us!) would be one team in a group of multiple teams that traveled and worked together for the season. The entire group would move to an area and set up in the same campground. Then each individual team would be assigned their own BLM roads to cover. Once an area was completed, the entire group would relocate to the next area to be mapped. The company picks up our campground fees, fuel costs for relocations, fuel costs for personal vehicle use, per diem for each day your personal vehicle is used and a generous hourly pay rate for both Joan & I. We would be in an area for a few weeks before moving on to another”.

Although we are going to miss the fishing, hunting, adventuring and all our friends in Canada, we are really looking forward to this opportunity. And bonus……we get to spend the summer with some great friends!

So…….we rearranged all our plans for the next two months. We need to head up to Wisconsin early (ya in March!) to pick up the Jeep and Ranger then head out west to wherever we start for the year. Not really looking forward to driving in the snow again. We are also going to take advantage of this northern trek to stop by Mor/Ryde in Indiana and get a new suspension system installed. This will fix our overweight issue, beats going on a diet!

The week went really quick and before we knew it, it was time to move on to our next destination. We hit the road, looked at a map and decided to stop in the Osceola National Forest for the night where we will look at the extended forecast and plan our route north.

It's Rally Time!

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After signing up for the RV Dreams Boondocking Rally almost a year ago, the day has finally arrived and we are here in Arcadia Florida.  This is an educational rally and gathering of likeminded RV’ers who have a passion or interest in boondocking (camping without any water, electric or sewer hookups). There are FT’ers, PT’ers and dreamers here for a total of 30+ rigs.

Looking down the line of rigs

Us in line with a few others

The first afternoon consisted of people arriving, getting set up and meeting each other. This was followed by a gathering of everyone in front of our hosts rig, Howard and Linda, for a dinner and an overview of the week. Afterwards we hung around the fire and met some of the attendees before turning in for the night.



Linda making some announcements

Barb cooking some pancakes!

 

Our first session was on water conservation. Howard and Linda thought this was a topic best addressed early in the week rather than later before everyone burned through their water for the week. They went over various ways to conserve water while boondocking,  One of the things was to get to know your rigs capacities. Our rig has just over 70 gallons of fresh water capacity, 70 gallons for gray water (shower and sinks) and 30 gallon black tank (toilet).  Next up is to learn exactly how much water you use in a given day. Our best estimate is that we use approximately 7 gallons a day without trying to conserve too hard. That means we should be able to go 10 days pretty easily without running out.  

Our next session was on battery and solar systems. The batteries are really the heart and soul of the rig when boondocking. Without battery power, you are literally dead as it is the batteries, not the solar, that give life to your rig. The role of the solar is to charge the batteries, the battery charge then runs through an inverter converting the 12 volt DC power to 120 AC power which in turn allows us to run our electrical items in the rig. We are wired up to run almost everything when running on our battery bank; TV’s, microwave, all the outlets. The only things it will not run are they AC units, central vac and fire place. They just draw too much power. We had our solar/battery system installed at AM Solar last year. They had designed our system based on the size of our rig and how we planned to us it. After listening to this session Barb and I were glad we did what we did. We had plenty of batteries and solar panels to do what we needed to do. Good news!

The next day was weighing day. It is very important that you understand your total weights as well as the weights of both your truck and trailer wheel by wheel. Being overweight puts strain on your tires and axles. Being out of balance with too much weight on one side of the rig can affect the wear and ride as well. Here, we did not receive as good of news. Our truck was fine, the weights and tires we installed were well within the capacities of the truck. The trailer was another story. We were significantly out of balance and pushing our limits on the overall weight. The driver’s side of the trailer carried much of the weight; refrigerator, microwave, stove, TV, fireplace. In addition, this side of the trailer is where the majority of the storage is leading to additional weight on that side. To top it off, we have over 400#’s of batteries on the driver’s side as well! As a result, Barb and I spent the afternoon rearranging. We moved as much of the heavy stuff from the driver’s side to the passenger’s side to balance it a little better.

Jami and Shane weighing the truck

 

As far as the overall weight goes, we were told that we have great tires (Goodyear G114) but we are going to look into upgrade our axles from 6,000 # axles to 8,000 axles. This will give us some wiggle room so we won’t have to worry about it in the future.  

Thursday was kayaking day, we had a blast kayaking 9 miles of the Peace River with about 17 other couples. It was in the 70’s and the 3 hour trip was more of a float as the current did all the work. The only thing we had to do was steer and enjoy the scenery.

As we started we were pretty bunched up

Soon we started to spread out



Gator!!!!!!.....well no, actually it is a log

Later we did see this guy along the shore

 



New friends, Lisa and Dino

With all the informational sessions done all we had to do the remainder of the week was relax, sit around the campfire and enjoy the company of the other attendees. We met some unbelievable nice people; full-timers, part-timers, there were a surprising high number of “2014 graduates”, those who started their full-time lifestyle in 2014.  There were quite a few fellow bloggers here, some we had read before while others were new to us. The bloggers included: Bill and Kelly, Trace and Lee, Jami and Shane, Jo and Craig as well as Jim and Peggy.

More new friends!
(l-r) Gator, Trace, Cori and Greg

(l-r) Craig, Jo, Bill and Kelly

Jo, Ben and Lee

Greg and Cori own a solar installation business, if you are ever in need of solar on your rig, check them out at RV Solar Solutions.

 It was a great week and we learned a lot. We were able to make the week without a problem without turning on our generators, emptying our tanks or taking on fresh water. Sunday morning we packed up and said our goodbyes making plans to meet up with several people throughout our travels out west this spring and into next fall. Now it was time to travel south another hour to my sister’s house in Fort Myers. We have not seen her and Mike in several months and we are really looking forward to seeing them!

Don’t Ever Stop by Dunnellon Florida……..Ever!

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The only reason we stopped by this area of Florida is because our friends Dan and Jeanie own a house here and we wanted to see them. During the summer they live on their ranch in north central North Dakota where they run a waterfowl/upland bird hunting operation. We have a link to their place on the right hand banner of our blog page.

Speaking of our blog page, I know many of our readers receive our posts through the “follow by email” section. Although you get all the posts, you don’t see the information on our side banners such as; Our Favorite Blogs, Links to our Favorite Places, or a link to Our YouTube Videos. There is also a comment section at the bottom of each post where readers can comment. We love to hear from those who are reading our blog, sometimes we wonder if anyone is reading it! Here is a link to our actual blog and I will try to remember to add a link on each post.

As I was saying, the only reason we stopped by was to see Dan and Jeanie. They bought a house down here last year to escape the cold North Dakota weather. They absolutely love this area and are afraid if I blog about it everyone will come here and it will become overrun with RV’ers and tourists. So, with that I will start my post on why you should never stop by Dunnellon Florida…..ever!

The Rainbow Springs River is one of the main attractions in the area and we went kayaking on it a couple of times.  We had a horrible time and as you can see from the pictures and the video I made of this trip, the river is filthy, dirty water and you can hardly see into the water. The banks and littered with garbage and there are no fish in the river. Again……no reason to ever go here.

 

Video of our river trips

Mullet

Cool underwater scenery

This guy was sunning itself in the weeds

 

The next day was equally as bad. Barb and Jeanie went to the zoo and did not see any cool animals while Dan and I went fishing and I did not catch Redfish, Sheepshead and Ladyfish, three fish species that I have never caught before. The sheepshead here are not at all like the sheepshead we have up north. These sheepshead are actually a very sought after table fare and have really weird teeth. After fishing, Dan and I returned to the house to find that Barb and Jeanie had stopped by a seafood shop and picked up 5#’s of stone crab claws and a ½ a bushel of Oysters. We shucked about ½ of the oysters flavored them and grilled them. The other ½ we cooked whole on the grill until they opened. The stone crab were boiled and eaten with drawn butter. It was a gluttony of seafood and the meal was horrible. Again, no reason to come here for the fresh seafood markets.

Some of the pictures from the zoo visit

Redfish

Ladyfish

Look how weird the teeth are on Sheepshead

One of the main things we wanted to do here was see the Manatees! Barb had been obsessed with manatees for years ever since we have been planning our fulltime life. She even has a cute little manatee dance that she does when she talks about them. I wanted to videotape it but she would not let me. Manatees are related to the elephant. Adults can weigh as much as 1,800#’s, live 60 year years old and be over 12 feet long! The babies are 3-4 feet long and weigh up to 70#’s at birth.  So how did our manatee adventure go? There are no manatees here at all, you cannot swim with them and we did not see any at all! Below is a short video of us not seeing any manatees at all.  There is certainly no reason to come here to see manatees.

 Video of our trip

This guy was my buddy

 

An Osprey we saw along the way

We got some fishing in on our Manatee adventure too. Jeanie was a little cold!

On our last night here we went out to dinner and a bar with a live band. The food sucked and music sucked making for a horrible evening. We did not have a good time drinking, eating and enjoying the good company. There is no reason to come here for the food and entertainment.

Here's the 4 of us having a horrible time

The Rainbow Springs State Park is very nice and clean. There are a number of nice sites for big rigs. We had site #20 but #'s 7,8,9,10, 18, 19 21 & 22 were also very nice.

On a serious note, last week a reader and frequent commenter said that it looks like we are on our honeymoon. There is no doubt in my mind that this is true. This week Barb and I celebrated our 29^th wedding anniversary and I can honestly say that our love for has continued to grow throughout the years. In some ways I feel like this is the first anniversary of our new life. I can only imagine what the next 29+ years will bring!

Postscript to Dan and Jeanie (no one else should read further)…….True to my word I did not write one positive thing about Dunnellon.  I think I successfully portrayed your area in a manner that no one will want to come there. You live in one of the most beautiful areas we have seen. There is so much to do that we only hit a portion of it.Thanks for the great time and we will definitely be back!