One of the minor surprises we experienced at Everglades National Park was that, unlike at the Florida State Parks, the entry fee was not included in the campground fee.  Sure it was only $10 and good for six days, but it was unexpected and could change the cost equation when comparing options down the road.  I suspect part of the thought process is to provide an incentive for Rvers to buy an annual pass, which we probably will at our next National Park stay.

The National Park’s unexpected fee pales in comparison to the Texas State Park fee system, though.  As we discovered at Galveston Island State Park, in addition to the campground fee you also have to pay a $5 entry fee, per person, not per vehicle, and it must be paid for each day.  Our three night stay would cost, in addition to the $60 camping fee ($20 per night), an additional $30 in entry fees.  Thus our stay would average out to $30 a night; not horrible sure, and at least there are not taxes added, but not what we expected.  So of course they offer an annual pass: For $70 you get free entry for you and everyone in your vehicle, and four coupons for a 50% discount on the second night of this and future stays.  Thus they have created a two-part incentive: buy the park pass and go to another Texas State Park during the year.

We did the math and figured that as long as we have one more stay of at least two nights then it will have “paid for itself,” but our nightly average cost in Texas will turn out to be somewhat higher than we expected.  If we do a two-day stay at Seminole Canyon State Park for $20 a night, then without the annual pass we would have spent a total of $150 between Galveston Island and there ($100 camping fees, $50 entry fees).  With the purchase of the annual pass, and using the discount coupons for the second nights, we break even ($80 in camping fees, no entry fee, $70 for the pass), and we will have the ability to go in to any state park in Texas for a day visit for free.

Bottom line: if we had done our research better and recognized this fee structure, we might have opted to stay in private parks rather than state parks on Galveston Island and during our stopping point in route to Big Bend National Park.  Now that we have the pass, we will almost certainly use it at least one more time for a two night stay, and will seek to take advantage of it for day use at other state parks along the way.

Ok, admittedly not the most romantic location, but it was not intended to be a V-Day stay, it just worked out that way.  We needed a half way stopping point in between New Orleans and Galveston, TX, and Lake Charles fit the bill.   As experienced RVers can attest, casinos usually provide free overnight dry camping, and some have affordable partial or full hook up sites as well.  Isle of Capri offers a very tight spot with electricity (no water or sewage for $20 + tax.  At that price I would normally take a pass and go with the free parking lot, but they through in access to the hotel amenities, gym, sauna, showers (and pool during most of the year), so it seemed a reasonable deal.

Casino parking spot, I-10 bridge overhead and neighboring RVs cozy close.

Not so much.  We knew going in that there would be a lot of noise through the night from the I-10 bridge over our heads, the active train tracks nearby, and the employee entrance right next door.  No problem, we have ear plugs.  We also didn’t mind the tight spots so much; it wasn’t that hard to get in our out, and we don’t have slide outs anyway.  But the hotel amenities were rather disappointing; small and a bit unkempt, a dearth of towels and no bath products beyond the liquid hand soap at the sink.

As for the casino, it was your typical slot dominated electronic hell with a cloud of cigarette smoke hanging over the facility, and our hopes for a solid and affordable casino meal were dashed when we saw the lines at the two decent restaurants.

Only slightly daunted, we made the best of it!  They offered complimentary beer, wine and well drinks in the casino bar and had an ample no smoking slot section.  With some maneuvering we even managed to avoid the two hour waiting line at the higher end of the two restaurants through vulture like hovering near the bar.  The meal was decent if nothing to rave about: one last oyster poor boy in Louisiana.

The draw of this casino spot for RVers is that it is directly off I-10, less than 5 minutes from exit to parking spot, and thus it can compete with full service RV sites in casinos further off the interstate even when the price is comparable.  If we ever pass through here again and need to stop for the night, I will either take the free parking rather than the powered spot, or drive 20 miles out of our way to stay at the full service and well rated Coushatta Casino Resort’s Red Shoes RV Park.  They offer full hook ups, wi-fi, cable, lodge amenities, pool, game room, etc for $25 a night.

A few days back we left the wonderful Bay Breeze RV park in Alabama, with more than one of the seasonal residents taking the time to come say good-bye, though they had known us less than three days.  One couple even brought us a departing gift of local gouda cheese Sweet Home Farm.  This gesture reinforced our belief that Bay Breeze is one of those truly special RV parks that we simply must come back to when our travels take us to the region.  We swung north towards Mobile in order to cross the bay and then west a couple of hours into Mississippi for a two night stop.

Davis Bayou, Gulf Islands National Seashore, MS:  $22 night for a spacious site with 50 amp electric and water hook ups, clean bath houses, fire pits, a very nice welcome/nature center and walking paths.  The ride in on wide well paved roads is quite easy, even for the big rigs, and all of the sites were paved.  That said, a number of the RV spots were oddly uneven, particularly in front to back pitch if not side to side roll.  We saw one motorhome that had gone through a bit of difficulty to achieve a level floor, having had to put their front leveling jacks up on a series of 4″x4″ blocks and then extend them all out.  While biking and easy trail hiking was nice, this was little more than a stopover for us, particularly since without a tow vehicle nothing was close enough to visit outside of the park.

Our spacious site, fire pit and picnic table below and behind, near the trail to the water

Marsh gator pond, sans visible gators

A bit less foliage in the winter, but still beautiful

Bayou Segnette State Park, LA:  Simply fantastic.  Just like the Mississippi park above, this one was only $22 a night, but also included free laundry machines (very rare) and sometimes sorta working park wide wifi.  If you have transport, this is an ideal location to visit NOLA, as you can take your ride up to Algiers Point, park in public transportation there, and for $2 a person take the ferry across right to the French Quarter landing.  This will save you untold misery trying to drive and park in downtown New Orleans.  If you don’t have a tow vehicle or friends to drive you around, this is still a very nice park and one of the best values we have come across, and in the summer includes a pool and water park as well.

Our very large spot

Nice short boardwalk trails

We didn’t see a lot of wildlife, just evidence of their stay

I mentioned some months back that we had made great initial progress in selling off our major items (condo, reef aquarium, etc) but had been stymied in our ability to sell our cars. My white hatchback Saab sold in December, but Bad Kitty, Rosie’s electric blue convertible Saab 9-3 Aero was getting lots of queries but no legit buyer.  After months of slowly lowering the price, week by week, we were forced to dump off the car and all paperwork with Xavier, who agreed to show it and act as our selling agent.  Through January and part of February we had plenty of flirtations, including three potential buyers maintaining frequent contact after they had taken it for a test drive, but we still had no actual offers.  I had just made arrangements for my son Jackson to come down to Miami and bring Bad Kitty back to Central Florida, which would alleviate the burden on Xavier and expose the car to a new market, when it sold a day before he was scheduled to pick her up. 

Hard lesson learned: You may get a great price on a salvage/rebuilt title car, as I feel we did, but when it is time to resell it you have a very narrow market of people willing to purchase a rebuilt titled car.  It’s a bit of shame that Bad Kitty is not a suitable tow vehicle, as she would require a tow dolly to get the drive wheels off the ground.  Ah well… time to hunt down a Jeep!  Any advice on that appreciated…

We are just finishing three days of self-imposed internet blackout in order to keep from incurring data use overage charges.  We are back up now, and hope to put out several catch up posts over the next 48 hours. 

Yesterday we concluded a fantastic three-day stay in Bayou Segnette State Park on the outskirts of New Orleans.  We had the very good fortune of catching Fred, one of our old friends from Miami Beach during the aughts, working the last two weeks of his contract job in Boutte, also on the outskirts of New Orleans.  He picked us up on our second night in town and took us out for our first authentic Louisiana meal: three pounds of boiled crawfish plus boudin and char broiled oysters at Perinos Boiling Pot on the west bank of the Mississippi just south of NOLA.  Good god that was damn good eating.  Have you had boudin?  I refer you to the wiki page; we probably had the boudin blanc variety common in Cajun cooking.  Pork liver, heart meat, rice, what more could you ask? As for the crawfish, all I can say is pinch the tail, suck the head, and don’t think about it too hard.

Crawfish and more

The next day Fred picked us up again and we headed into the heart of New Orleans, parking on the outskirts of the French Quarter, where we spent the afternoon among the Mardi Gras revelers, street performers, musicians, bead tossers, and paraders.  Daylight hours allow for something closer to a kid friendly, or at least PG rated, party atmosphere, with beads flying from the balconies for everyone regardless of their willingness to, er, expose.

No exposure required for the cute ones…

… some of us had to resort to the traditional method…

We warmed up with coffee and beignets, though we took them from the very cool Cafe Beignet rather than suffer the ludicrous lines at the famous Cafe du Monde.  Covered in powdered sugar, we enjoyed a parade and then one of the coolest street bands I have seen, St Cinder, a six piece ensemble band with a style difficult to describe.  Clear Louisiana bayou with funk, folk, and blue grass influences?  Sure, why not.  Their EP.  I think they could benefit from a good sound studio, but man they are a joy to watch live.

St Cinder performing on Bourban Street

After a tour of Jackson Square and local beer from the Jackson Brewery Bar (yes, for me an IPA of course, Hopitoulas) we headed back across the river for a true Cajun meal without the New Orleans price tag.  Fred took us up the road to Zydeco’s in Boutte, a fantastic choice.   Rosie went with the seafood buffet with unlimited crab (snow, king, Dungeness, boiled, stuffed, fried) while I opted for an alligator sausage poor-boy and a ludicrously large beer.  Thanks to Jade, our top-notch waitress, for the service and recommendations.   We headed back to the Big Kahuna, stopping along the way for a drive-through daiquiri. Yes, a drive-through daiquiri.

At Zydeco’s

Simply put, this was a great stop.  Rosie had her first taste of New Orleans, and after some initial reluctance she embraced it fully, finally getting what all the fuss is about.  We had fantastic food, a wonderful RV site, and great guide to show us the way.  We only wish Fred’s wife, Donna, had been up to the trip west to join us.  Perhaps next time!

Mardi Gras: A wonderful time… though some wankers would disagree.

Not sure we are considered full members of the RV Club without having this displayed prominently.

Fillin’ her in, one state at a time…

We put our yacht in the water yesterday.  Affectionately christened “The Coconut,” our vessel is a four person inflatable dinghy sputteringly powered by a cheap electric trolling motor paired to a ludicrously expensive Optima Blue Top deep cycle battery. I purchased the whole package off Craigslist Miami from someone who had only used it once, so I scored the boat, manual pump, paddles, trolling motor and battery at about 50% of Amazon or retail prices.  While we have been near water most of our journey, this is the first time since we started full-timing that we got around to using her.  Feeling the pressure to use what we paid for, and seeing as how the conditions at Bay Breeze were strikingly calm, and further that our site was located about 50 feet from the boat ramp, we hauled out The Coconut and went through the somewhat painful process of getting her ready for sea.

The Coconut, sans motor and battery, on the boat ramp at Bay Breeze.

This is the problem with having toys that are designed to fold up, deflate, collapse or otherwise shrink down to minimize storage space in an RV: Getting them unfolded, inflated, prolapsed, and otherwise ready for use can seem more trouble than it is worth. The boat is a prime example, but even our folding bikes are a real PITA to manhandle in and out of lower storage without entangling the folded handlebars into the spokes while avoiding the plumbing, wiring, insulation, and everything else down below.  Like all difficult tasks, I find swearing at them helps the process quite a bit.

The foldable bikes, unfolded

The Coconut is deceptively stored in a compact soft sided bag about 3’x1.5’x1.5′.  It weighs somewhere around 77 pounds, and requires pulling it out, manually inflating the four pontoon side compartments, the keel compartment, and the three seat inserts.  Oh wait, did you forget to put in the roll up slat flooring before you inflated the sides?  Deflate at least two of those, then put in the floor, and re-inflate.  Now attach the removable transom to the back and the paddles to their holders.  Haul the whole thing down to the water, and separately carry down the deep cycle battery, the trolling motor, and the cooler of beer, all the while knowing you will have to do this whole process, with the exception of the beer, in reverse after your done playing on the water.

On the water at Gulf Shores, AL

But man is it worth it once you are on the water, especially when conditions are as near perfectly glassy as they were for two days on the Gulf Shores.  Sure, we encountered another problem while on the water, in that the incredibly cheap little electric trolling motor cut off every time tried to put it in more than the lowest forward speed setting, but with no wind and minimal current we made do.

I am coming to realize two critical aspects of the foldable toy game:

1. To reduce your butt-pain, you must make a serious assessment of the value of the collapsibility of the item is vs. the difficulty of prepping it for use.
2. If you go for the foldable option you need to experiment with different techniques and storage options to find the one that is the least painful.

For instance, our bikes are not the traditional folding bikes you usually see among RVers. We opted for the Colomba brand from 2KSilver because they offered products that, frankly, looked less dinky and more like “real” bikes.  We were able to get a 26″ wheel version for me and 20″ wheel for Rosemarie.  And they work great!  Particularly since they are our primary means of transportation once in an RV park. But we very rapidly found that the set up and fold up process is rather awkward, immediately abandoning the use of the storage bags since it was so difficult to get the bikes into them.  Getting the bikes into the 29″ tall storage compartment, with pipes and wires reducing that height in key areas, was particularly challenging, especially for my bike.  Pulling them out was perhaps even more difficult.  So at the conclusion to our recent stay in Alabama I resolved to find a better method, and through trial and error discovered that my bike was much easier to manuever in and out of storage longitudinally parallel to the bus rather than athwart ship, and with a bit of reorganizing I could store the bikes apart from each other so that they would not become entangled during the process.  Bingo, SO much easier, but it was not intuitively obvious; rather, it took some painful experimentation, just as our numerous storage compartment reorganizations have gradually moved us closer to efficiency.

The “B” Compartment, left to right: Bike, Bike, Boat, Battery, outBoard. Looks efficient, but isn’t.

So too, I hope, with The Coconut.   If we had it to do over again I might have purchased an inflatable two person kayak instead, but then I would have to paddle alone while Rosemarie took pictures.  Our longer term plan is to replace the whole boating package with a sturdy but light weight inflatible with a built-in transom paired with a Honda 2.3 HP outboard, one of the highest rated light weight four stroke motors.   But for now we will work on perfecting the process by which we prep and stow The Coconut, and hopefully you will all be seeing more pictures of us lounging on her spacious decks.

Bay Breeze RV on the Bay:  Yesterday, with but a little bit of drama involving a runaway hubcap, we left Grayton Beach State Park and headed west across the FL-AL border along the coast near the barrier islands.  We are barely in Alabama, maybe eight miles beyond the FL line, but we have officially left Florida until next Winter.  We are staying in a fantastic little private park, Bay Breeze RV on the Bay.  It has only 25 spots right on the inner bay, but the welcome and support from both the managers and seasonal residents is like nothing we have encountered.  The reservations, made only by phone, were smooth. Hours before we arrived the managers called to check on our status, and upon arrival one of them personally walked us down to the spot and provided maneuvering directions to back in perfectly, even offering to get us leveling blocks if we felt it necessary.  After we settled in they brought us our forwarded mail.  Most of the residents gather each late afternoon for a small bonfire, cocktails, and conversation.

The Board Meeting

It is a bit out from any sort of town, i.e., there is nothing in the way of stores or restaurants within biking distance, but a local car rental will provide a vehicle for $20 per day, and the managers even offered to drop us off at their rental lot.  The bay, at least so far during our stay, has been incredibly tranquil with very glassy waters and magnificent evening sky colors.  If the weather holds, tomorrow we may go through the trouble of setting up our little inflatable dinghy and electric outboard.

The dock right behind our site in the bright of day…

… and as dusk falls.

Grayton Beach State Park: We spent three days at this great panhandle state park. The weather was a bit chilly and windy so we did not get to enjoy the beach as much as we would have liked.  It is worth comparing this sort of North Florida beach park to something like St George Island, one of our recent previous stays.

Comming up over the dunes to the beach

The beaches here are not quite as impressive in raw natural beauty as St George, but the location is far more accessible to town on bike or walking: less than a mile from our site to the nearest coffee shops and oyster bar.

Around the World Oyster Sampler and carft beer from Hurricane Oyster Bar

The park offers two loops for campers, the lower numbered loop is hard pack dirt with signficant potholes and rather narrow sites, but with lots of thick vegetation between each spot, offering privacy.  The higher numbered loop is paved with slightly more spacious sites though with less vegetation.  The bath house and laundry facility was clean with lots of hot water.  It was a toss up for us whether to stay here or at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park; perhaps next year we will be able to provide a direct comparison.

Our back yard during this stay

What follows is a long and involved explanation of two mechanical problems we experienced in the last couple of days. The short story: we had to fill up on tranny fluid and temporarily lost a hubcap.  Read on for the longer version.

On Tuesday we left Florida Caverns in route to Grayton Beach State Park in Santa Rosa FL. What should have been a short two and a half hour casual jaunt south turned into a drama filled all day journey.  I had trouble getting the bus to “air up,” i.e., for the air compression system to come up to 90 PSI and fill the air ride bags such that the bus lifts up to the appropriate ride height.  If you don’t get that right, as we have found out through hard lessons, you may have trouble with the front wheels rubbing on the fender liners during hard turns and experience a very bumpy ride in general.  I fiddled with some switches in the cockpit and back at the engine compartment, and the system aired up, though a bit unevenly.

Satisfied, we headed out, only to have a very loud and insistent audible alarm fill the cockpit area as soon as I put it into gear.  In neutral: blessed silence.  In forward or reverse: banshee like shrieking filled the cabin.  I could find no associated warning light, and the alarm speaker was physically located behind a wood panel.  Based on the coincidental problems with the air ride system, I assumed it was somehow related to that, or possibly a solenoid issue given our past reverse gear solenoid problem that a previous diesel mechanic had worked on.  The odd thing was that despite the alarm we had no problem getting the Big Kahuna into gear.  When swearing at all and sundry proved futile in solving the problem, we elected to head down the road to the first mechanic we could find.

First stop: Love’s truck stop chain. The mechanic on duty had no idea at all and, as he made clear, no intention of looking at anything he couldn’t hook up to a computer.  He did at least recommend we try “Simbo’s” in Bonifay, apparently just down the road and right off I-10.  We pushed on down the interstate to the Bonifay exit and searched in vain for Simbo’s, both visually and via The Google, before giving up and asking advice at a truck gas stop.  The randomly selected young man referred us to Eastern Diesel, just down the block behind a Thai restaurant.

Now, normally I would have left that whole unnecessary bit about not being able to find Simbo’s out of this story except for one arguably interesting thing: During the course of writing this post I wanted to give the mechanic at Eastern Diesel that actually helped me credit, but I couldn’t find his company via any of my multiple online searches.  Being someone who always prided myself on superior Google-Fu, I pressed on and resolved to find the place via Google street view.  And wouldn’t you know it, the Thai restaurant in front of Eastern Diesel used to be called Simbo’s!  We accidentally ended up at the exact place the Love’s mechanic recommended.  In any case, Josh at Eastern Diesel was initially reluctant to offer more than advice from a distance, but with some cajoling he pulled open the rear doors and took a look, assessed that my transmission fluid level was unusually low, and that might very well be the source of all the problems. He suggested that things should be fine for the limited travel we had left to do that day.  I compensated him for his effort and we went on our way.

Once we arrived at Grayton Beach State Park I pleaded for help and advice on the Bus Nuts Online forum, and RJ Long and others helped me out quite a bit, recommending I put in a few quarts of Dexron and see how things looked.  I managed to find the transmission maintenance manual, helpfully filed by the previous owner under “water pumps” in his extensive files, and confirmed my specific model of automatic transmission (an Allison VS 2-6 if you must know) and that Dexron is indeed the proper fluid for it.  This morning when we headed up the road the annoying alarm did not recur, but we took no chances and picked up some Dexron at Wal-Mart and topped off the tranny straight away.  So far so good.

But… as I was bringing my two gallons of tranny fluid and other miscellaneous supplies back out to the bus I noticed the alarming lack of a shiny silvery hubcap on the rear right wheel.  Faithful readers may recall that this is the exact wheel that gave us problems right after having all of the tires replaced.  The evening after installing new Michelins, we found the hubcap very much ajar and loosely bound to the wheel, while the next morning the tires on that quarter were flat.  I thought I had worked around the stripped threads on some of the extenders to the hubcap, but apparently they were damaged worse than I had thought.  As we were only 20 minutes down the road from the last known position of the hubcap, we chose to backtrack to Grayton and hope we might find it.  The park rangers were sympathetic but did not have possession, though they were happy to let us drive back into the park and retrace our steps.  Which we did, to no avail, until we were within minutes of being back at the very same Wal-Mart when Rosemarie screeched with excitement having spotted the damn thing on the side of the road.  

Oh man, did I foolishly whine about the cold and mention our longing for the tropical South Florida weather in a recent post from Central Florida?  Shockingly, it turns out as you continue north it gets colder!  Who knew?  Though nothing like what any of you in actual northern climates are suffering, for those of us accustomed to Miami temperatures the increasing chill has been a difficult adjustment, particularly the 30 degree low the night before last. Fortunately that was a short-lived drop such that even our puny heating strips on the roof ACs kept us pretty toasty while the water heater in the storage compartment kept the pipes clear.

At Andrea’s Cute Yellow House

We adjusted our schedule to have a one night stay in Gainesville visiting daughter Andrea and Nate, and Cousin Robb, Colleen, Maeve and Nola. Thanks to all for the hospitality, especially the “all barbecue all the time” meal planning, starting with Andrea’s order of BBQ tempah pizza and Colleen’s pulled pork, ribs and beans.  After an evening of “drinkin’ with fire and stories” it was nice to have a break from the bus and sleep in a real bed as well.

Scaring one child…

… and the other.

St George Island State Park:  This is a spectacular place near Apalachicola, Florida, just west of the crook in the state between the panhandle and the main peninsula.  We started and ended the three day stay the same way: with fresh raw Apalachicola oysters at a very local fish market on the coast.   Having entered true oyster country we plan to take full advantage.  Located on a barrier island the park is more isolated than most of the places we have stayed; the entrance is about four miles from commercial stores and the campground an additional four miles into the park.  Perhaps this will help ease us into truly remote boondocking out west.  The sites were very spacious and reasonably level, with power and water hook ups and a nearby dump station.  The park offers both forest hiking and fantastic stretches of beach, exhibiting some of the largest sand dunes I have seen in the state.  We did quite a bit of biking and day hiking, during the course of which we found all 12 active geocaches in the park.  Though the island offers pretty good opportunities for the shell collector, given the cold and wind neither of us were up for getting up before dawn to catch the low tide for first run at the best.

Miles of beaches, very few people

Perhaps our most critical learning experience for this stop was figuring out how many days our holding tanks will handle when we are exclusively and liberally using our own shower, sink and facilities rather than the park’s.  Three days is the limit, meaning if we want to stretch a week out of our tanks while boondocking we will need to make some lifestyle adjustments, such as paper plates vice dishwashing, and more conservative water use during showers.

Easy hiking in the scrub forest…

…but not much wildlife spotted, despite the extra effort.

Florida Caverns State Park: After two stops to satisfy an apparently unquenchable lust for the previously raved about Apalachicola raw oysters, we made the pleasant drive through Tate’s Hell State Forest and the adjoining Apalachicola National Forest, during which all of Rosemarie’s distorted beliefs about The South were confirmed when we passed by Children With Guns Alone In The Forest.  We entered the park just north of Marianna, and found our very spacious site, though the ground is packed dirt rather than gravel, and in the rain things can get a bit muddy.  Unusually, this park has sewer hook ups on all sites, alleviating the need for a stop at the dump station.  As these were our coldest and rainiest days to date, we did not do much more than a couple of miles on the bikes in order to take the cavern tour, Though we did manage to snag four or five geocaches.  Our biggest learning point for this stop was finally figuring out exactly where a slow roof leak was occurring, something we will need to address shortly.

Wild animal spotted in the cavern

Sure it’s looks amazing, but what does it taste like?