We have closed the blog delinquency gap from 3 1/2 months to 2 now, and will have it down to 1 within a couple of days.

The Distance:  2 miles as we shifted from our full hook up spot to dracamping and back again at Sigsbee Campground in NASD Key West.  Total for the year is now 643 miles.  We expect March to be another low mileage run, but things will pick up in April as we begin our travels for the year.

The Places:   Just NAS Key West for the entire month.  So for this month it was 28 days in a military campground, no nights anywhere else for me, though Rose did have her monthly trip up to Virginia.  We had 19 days with full hook ups, and 9 days of dry camping.

The Budget:  Another great month for the finances; we finished 23% under budget thanks to cheap campground fees, very limited gas costs (since we hardly moved the big rig, all we had to do was keep the tank full enough to run the big generator) and a series of 11 market days.

The Drama and the Improvements:  Our biggest gripe about Serenity is the low quality of the interior and the bland decor.  The former means things inside are really showing wear, the latter just doesn’t suit our aesthetic tastes.  So we have resolved to make headway on this while we are in the Keys, and continue improvements during our travels.  We started with finishing up painting the bedroom area and then tearing out the old never used couch back there and installing a crafting work bench.  This cost us very little, particularly since the work bench is made from recovered boat deck and trim scattered along the coast from Hurricane Irma.

The other notable drama event was the final failure of Serenity’s starter battery.  When we went to leave our full hook up spot for dry camp early in the month, turning the key produced not a wit of electricity.  I got help from some neighbors with a truck starter device and made the move, but this left us with two questions: can the battery be saved and what is causing the electrical drain that killed it?  The first answer was resolved within a couple of days when my attempts to recharge it failed.  As for the latter, we still don’t know for sure, but the replacement battery from Napa is not giving us any difficulty.

Next up: Our last month in Key West until Winter.

January Monthly Report

And here are our 2017, 2016, and 2015 annual summaries which include monthly report links.