Continuing our winding path back towards Colorado and our soon to be fixed bus, we left Gainesville bound for North Carolina to visit my mom and stepdad in Wilmington.  I know, not the most direct route, but we had not seen them in nine month, and we assessed we had plenty of time before the transmission is back and installed in The Big Kahuna.

Our little Geo Tracker, Loki, has a tiny little 10 gallon tank and gets surprisingly poor gas mileage for such a small vehicle, so we are forced to stop every three hours for gas.  This actually works out great since our decreased tolerance for long drives has led us to a rough three hour cap on any leg before a stop.  So we make it efficient: stop for gas, take care of rest stop needs, pick up food to go, and hit a geocache.  We managed to time the stops so that we had one in each state, allowing us to keep up our streak of finding a geocache in every state but two we have visited this year.

We had a great visit with Mom and Tim in Wilmington, grilling bison on The Green Egg, a dinner out at Le Catalan on the Cape Fear Riverwalk, the consumption of much wine, which lead to a couple of evenings of badly sung classics to Tim’s excellent guitar and banjo work.  We even introduced them to geocaching during Rex and Ginny’s afternoon walk, thoroughly confusing the two labradors with this unnecessary hunting of things that are neither furry nor alive.

Bison steak!

Le Catalan

After three days of gradually worsening weather, we headed generally west towards Asheville, thinking we might get out from under the massive downpours beginning to pound the Carolinas, assuming that the further from Hurricane Joaquin we got the better off we would be.  Alas, Joaquin was merely an indirect element of the worst deluge the Carolinas have seen in decades, and we effectively drove right into some of the worst of it.  Slow careful driving on nearly empty highways allowed us to make Asheville in time for a late afternoon meal with my brother Jason and Jill at Nine Mile, a cool little Jamaican place just off the interstate.

Asheville is one of those great cities associated with art, trendy events, ethnic food, and street entertainment.  You know, hippies and hipsters.  I am hardly the first to compare it to Portland, OR or Austin, TX.  They have even tried to adopt the “Keep Asheville Wierd” slogan originating in Austin and later aggressively adopted in Portland.  For me this simply means lots of good food, craft beer, and entertainment.  Nine Mile delivered on the first two.

We said our goodbyes to Jason and Jill and continued west as far as Knoxville before stopping at a Townplace Suites, on hotel loyalty points of course.  South Florida, Central/North Florida, and North Carolina are it for family and friend visits during this road trip.  From here on to Colorado it is just one big multi-day sprint and the hope that our bus is ready or nearly so when we arrive.

Since returning to the States from London, our plan was to remain in South Florida until a week or two before the estimated completion date of repairs to The Big Kahuna.  The repair process took far longer than we expected, largely due to the delay in finding a transmission shop willing to work on our Allison, and the week involved in shipping it both to and from California for the actual work.  We kept in contact with B & G Equipment, finally making the decision to begin working our way back towards Colorado when they reported that the transmission was ready to ship back from California. Our hope was that we would arrive in Colorado just after the transmission was installed and road tested.

The view from the Geneva Lake House

So with our newly purchased Geo Tracker, Loki, we began our indirect road trip back to Greeley by heading up to Geneva, Florida to visit our family and friends in the Central Florida area.  Uncle Bob and Aunt Terry were kind enough to host us again in one of their spare rooms at their lake house.   We always enjoy our visits there, the hospitality is top notch, and we never get tired of waking up to the ludicrously loud whooping from the groups of Sandhill Cranes each morning.  

During our three day stay we were able to visit with my son Jackson and his new bride Andrea, my Aunt Judy, and Rosemarie’s friends from her youthful years in New York, the Pinera’s.  While in town I discovered a food truck event in Oviedo, and as a rabid fan of this mobile restaurant industry I was able to convince Jackson and Andrea to join there for my birthday.  We brought Jackson a bottle of low production gin from London, which led to a lengthy afternoon of gin tasting from his collection.  Having never had a taste for it, I was surprised how much better a high quality gin matched with a high quality tonic is compared to your basic version.

My birthday at the Oviedo food truck event

We finished our three day stay in Geneva with Uncle Bob packing our cooler with several packages of game meat, bison and venison, so that we would not starve during our next stage of the road trip. Thus prepared we headed north to Gainesville, FL, managing to take a route that avoided most of the traffic from the UF vs Tennessee home game while also affording us a much more enjoyable ride through the Ocala National Forest rather than the traditional I-75 route.

We stopped by daughter Andrea and Nate’s house for the afternoon before parking at Cousin Robb and Colleen’s house, where they opened up the twin’s playroom for us to crash in for a few days.  We spent our time in Gainesville going to thrift shops with Andrea, geo-caching, and dining on Uncle Bob’s grilled venison, Colleen’s home cooked spaghetti squash, and Civilization’s excellent menu.

Icecream and pie after our family meal at Robb and Colleen’s

We headed north after a three day stay, thanking our cousins for their hospitality and apologizing to Colleen for having made Robb drink so much with us.  He has the rest of the Fall to recover before we bring our bad influences back to Gainesville.

One of our continual refrains, particularly in post-visit reviews of national parks, is that we would have enjoyed it more if we had our own local transportation.  And now we do!  During our unexpected month in South Florida visiting friends and family while The Big Kahuna undergoes extensive transmission repairs, we bought a great little used truck, a 1997 Geo Tracker. 

We had several requirements for a Toad (RV speak for a tow behind vehicle, alternatively referred to as a Dinghy), in the following order of priority:

1. It must be affordable, as in cheap.  Our numerous repairs have resulted in us blowing through our motorhome upgrade budget, and we have exceeded our regular budget for most of the months we have been on the road.  Besides, I haven’t bought a new car in 17 years so I was not about to start now.
2. It must be flat towable, i.e., all four wheels on the ground rather than up on a tow dolly or trailer. As many motorhome owners will tell you, it is so much easier to deal with a flat tow because you can disconnect and reconnect it so easily and do not have to worry about manhandling the trailer or dolly around after you park.  This narrows down the options considerably.
3. It must have an Automatic Transmission so that Rosemarie can drive it.  As New York city girl she did not learn to drive as a young person, only developing that skill as an adult once in Miami. So she balked at having to learn an entire new driving skill this far into the game.  If you read up post to requirement number two you will see that the top requirement is a flat towable vehicle, most of which are manual shifters.  Most auto transmissions can’t be flat towed without destroying the transmission, which makes them less fun.  For an automatic tranny to be flat towed, it usually has to be…
4. A true 4×4 with a transfer case.  For reasons I will sum up as “automotive engineering,” a 4×4 with a transfer case can usually be flat towed even if it has an auto tranny, but it must be a true 4×4, not merely All Wheel Drive.
5. Preferably light weight!  We already have enough difficulty getting The Big Kahuna’s nearly 30,000 lbs up hills, so we really wanted to minimize how much additional strain we added to the challenge.
6. Convertible if at all possible.  Rosemarie has not had a hard top in years, and just loves the option of taking down the top in good weather.

So if you start narrowing things down with all those requirements you end up with very few vehicles that meet the bill.  Depending on how strict you define conditions #1 and #5 above, perhaps only the the Geo Tracker or the co-production Suzuki Sidekick, made in the same Ontario plant, can satisfy all six bullets.  The most common 4×4 auto trans ragtop would be a Jeep Wrangler, but they retain their value so well that it was hard to find one in great condition that did not violate condition #1. Besides, they weight at least 500 lbs less than a Wrangler from the same year.  

We knew all this months ago, and had been on the lookout for a Geo Tracker since at least June, checking Craigslist in each state we entered.  Every one was either manual transmission, the hard top version, overpriced, in questionable condition, or had just sold. Finally, we found the ideal one in Loxahatchie, FL.  We paid slightly more than blue book, but the engine and transmission feel rock solid, the body and interior are in great shape, and it had only 87K in original mileage.  For less than $4K we walked away with our new Toad, which Rosemarie has nicknamed Loki.  So far the only problems we have had:

• Poorly functioning A/C due to improper freon top off: fixed for $65.
• The tape cassette player (yes, a cassette player) does not work.
• The rear section of the rag top, where it connects to the tail gate, is missing the retaining brackets.  We can see remnants of the brackets, but will need to get them replaced in order to maintain a proper seal back there.

Loki will be our transportation not only in and around towns and parks, but will also be taking us all the way from South Florida to Colorado to pick up The Big Kahuna.  The Big Kahuna came with boxes of spare parts, and one of the things we found was a near complete tow bar assembly.  It is one of the few spare items we chose to carry around with us in anticipation of buying a toad.  Once back in Colorado we will retrieve it from The Big Kahuna’s stowage and take it with Loki to a place to get the brackets made and installed on the front of the tracker.

We are a bit nervous about adding one more element of complexity to our travels.  So any experience with Toads out there, particularly the Geo Tracker?

While in London we kept track of the progress, or more accurately lack of progress, with our poor broken bus.  The heavy equipment repair shop at which we left him had far more difficulty finding a subcontractor to rebuild the transmission than they anticipated, resulting in additional delays. After nearly ten days they reported that all places in Colorado had declined the job, and they would have to ship it to California to let a shop with extensive old Allison transmission experience do the work.  Obviously this meant the bus would not be ready upon our return to Chicago, so rather purchase follow-on tickets to Denver, instead we bought one way flights  to Fort Lauderdale; we still consider South Florida home.  We were fortunate that despite flying in during peak Atlantic hurricane season, Tropical Storm Erika had already dissipated and no other storm had formed in the region.

ORD Terminal

The View From Our Wing

Thus began a whirlwind sequence of visits with as many of our friends and family as we could corral together during what would stretch into a three week stay.  In Coral Springs Rosemarie’s dad, Xavier, and Joy put us up in one of their spare rooms for the majority of that time, making us feel like we were back home.  While there we hosted a steady stream of visitors, beginning with Uncle Carlos and Auntie Joan, who joined us for a great meal, culminating with Jamaican style spoon bread!  If you ain’t had it, get it.

Our friend Roseanne, one of Rosemarie’s bridesmaids, swung by for an evening, which also helped acquaint her with the area since she will soon close on a house in Coral Springs.  Soon after we began a series of forays north, south, and west to meet up with many others.  To the north, we visited Uncle Dennis and Auntie Ann in Port St Lucie.  While there Dennis treated us to the bounty of his backyard orchard, and introduced us to a fantastic item, sweetsop, or sugar apple, which when chilled tastes shockingly like custard icecream.  Dennis also shared his collection of high end liquor, including a 12 year old single malt Irish whisky of which I had never heard.

Heading south we spent an afternoon with Uncle Mario hanging heads.  By this I mean Xavier and I helped him mount brackets in his South Beach condo for half a dozen framed paintings and three big game African hunting trophies.  As I recall, this included a wildebeest, a gazelle, and some sort of ram-like creature whose name I don’t remember.  After exploiting our highly skilled head hanging labor, Mario treated us all to fantastic gourmet style pizza at Fratelli La Bufala.

Alcapurrias

Bacalaito

Grill-fired pizza

We took a weekend trip to the west to visit Rosemarie’s mom Gloria and her husband Bill in Venice.  While there we feasted on home cooked Puerto Rican cuisine including alcapurrios, pasteles, and bacalaitos, as well as Bill’s outstanding grilled thin crust pizza.  They also treated us to a great meal at The Crow’s Nest, with fantastic, juicy, raw gulf coast oysters.  As a departing gift Gloria packed our car with a brand new Weber Q-1000 grill as an early birthday present.

During our southern excursions we managed to meet up with many friends, beginning with Joyce and Brian, who came up to Doral to have drinks and diner at Dave and Busters in Doral.  We had a great afternoon of drinks and appetizers while watching a nail-biting Miami Dolphins victory over the team from Washington,  D.C.

We managed to combine a visit with Rosemarie’s long-time friend, Heather, with a meal at Steve’s, which may very well be Miami’s best New York style pizzaria as voted on by all the New Yorkers I know.  Mahalo, Heather, and thanks for bringing your sunshine to us during a Miami downpour.  Next time we hope we can see Astara and Alvaro as well.

Slices from Steve’s don’t fit on a single plate

Heading even further south on yet another rain drenched day, we met Rosemarie’s Estonian friend Helen at her beautiful Coconut Grove apartment.  We enjoyed a great afternoon catching up over a meal of sushi, home-cooked soup, and red wine.  Additionally, Helen revealed several of her hand-painted silk scarves, which after seeing them we encouraged her to get moving on an Etsy store or some other means of selling them.

After lunch with Helen we meandered back north, stopping at the office of my last job, US Southern Command in Doral, to get Rosemarie’s dependent military ID updated.  While there we managed to meet with a handful of my former coworkers.  Aside from the paycheck, they are the only thing I miss about working.  I am sure as soon as they win the War On Drugs, probably in the next few months, they will all be able to join Rosemarie and me as vagabonds on the road.

So in closing, here are some pictures of Rosemarie’s favorite fruit, the rambutan, unless the above mentioned sweet-sop takes over that position.

Pinch and twist off the top half of the skin to open

Rosemarie fell in love with these in Hawaii

As usual, we remain way behind on this blog, over two months as of today, but within a couple of days we will be caught up.  Promise!  In the meantime, our facebook page is almost always current.

The Distance: 382 miles, all of it in Colorado, and one of our shortest distance months.  This was obviously due to our breakdown only 10 days into August, just as we were leaving Rocky Mountain National Park.  Before that catastrophic failure we had driven from Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park to Ami’s Acres via Olathe for a county fair, then on to Heaton Bay in the White River National Forest, then to the Boulder County Fairgrounds, before finally heading up to Elk Meadow Resort in Estes Park near RMNP.  Total distance for the year: 11,384 miles.

The Places:  In addition to all those places listed in the above paragraph, we also spent a week as guests of the Sumner family at Sumner Automotive in Milliken.  Leaving The Big Kahuna in Colorado Rosemarie and I headed off to London via Denver and Chicago to spend the rest of August with relatives.  So despite our problems, we made the absolute best of it.  We had full hookups for 7 days, drycamped for 9, stayed in hotels for 3, and with relatives in their home for 12.

The Budget:  It’s hard to stay on a monthly budget when you take a vacation to London, even if you do it cheaply with airline points and get free room and board.  Having to modify the flights at the last minute added to our unexpected costs, but generally or busting of the budget his month was due to denying ourselves little while in England.  We ended up 19% over for the month.

The Drama:  Can we ever have a month without drama?  No, no we can’t.  Obviously our breakdown in the Rockies is the top issue, but I suppose we can count positive drama as well, in that we successfully crossed the Continental Divide headed east during a long and engine heating climb that fortunately resulted in no problems since we learned the limitations of our bus following our our coolant problem in Utah.

The Improvements:  We got a new windshield, finally clearing the “bullet hole” that continually plagued Rosemarie’s front view road pictures.  .

• January Report
• February Report
• March Report
• April Report
• May Report
• June Report
• July Report