Lake Wales, FL – Mar 2022

So my last full month here in sunny Florida has come to a close.  I’ve got less than two weeks left here to wrap things up, put things away, and get ready for my departure on the 12th of April.  As depicted in the picture above, fuel prices have gone through the roof.  Diesel, which is what I run in my truck, is upwards of $5.00 per gallon these days.  I have a 65 gallon tank on my truck, so I’m looking at in excess of $300 to fill it.  But I don’t care!  I’d prefer the prices were back to the $3.00 per gallon as they were in 2021, but I’m hitting the road despite whatever the costs.  I’m ready to be mobile again, and resume my nomadic lifestyle traveling around the country.  I’m just gonna have to cut back on some other budget item to compensate for the high fuel prices.  Maybe beer and wine …. Nah!

Friends & Family

I had some great visits with friends and family this month.  First up was a visit from my former boss (she hates it when I say old boss) Mary.  She retired from GDIT a few years before me, and in fact, it was her position that I moved into when she left.  She sold her house in VA, and has since moved up to the Ohio/Michigan area with a newly built place.  She spends the winters down here in Florida to be with her son’s family – most notably the two grand kids.  It had been a couple of years since I’d seen her due to the pandemic, so it was nice catching up.  We shared a few meals together, and a nice campfire back at the RV.  I showed her around historic downtown, and we also spent time visiting Bok Tower gardens.  She’s a seasoned gardener, and was easily able to identify many of the flowers and bushes throughout the gardens.  It was a fun visit and great catching up with her again.

Speaking of Bok Tower Gardens, my brother Dave and sister-in-law Deb also came up for a visit during the month, and we too took a trip to the gardens.  Though not their first trip to Lake Wales, it was their first visit to Bok Tower.  It was a beautiful sunny day, not too hot, just perfect for touring the lush gardens and seeing the 60+ bell carillon tower.  It was great seeing them before I leave for the summer, and look forward to seeing them again when I return next winter.

I also got to spend a bit of time with a dear friend named Susan.  She lives here in Florida in the Hollywood area, and I’ve known her for many decades.  She’s the daughter of neighbors to the condo my parents had here.  So, when I used to come down to visit my parents, Susan, my cousin Louise, and I would often hang out together.  Usually a trip to Jai Alai followed by Jaxson’s Ice Cream.  Anyway, she was taking a roadtrip to visit with friends up in GA and the Carolinas, and stopped by here for a few hours to check out my home base and so we could have lunch.  It was a short visit, but I truly enjoyed seeing her again and appreciate her going out of her way to stop by.

Though I’m only gonna be here for just under two weeks in April, I’m looking forward to lots of visitors.  My daughter and her family are relocating to southern Florida, and will be arriving on the 1st to spend a couple days on their way down.  My brother Don is also coming out for a couple of days for a visit.  Last, but certainly not least, my dear friend from elementary school is also relocating to Florida and I expect to spend some time with her before I leave.  It’s gonna be a crazy, hectic, fun partial month!

Projects

It’s certainly never a dull moment around here.  There’s always something to work on.  That is especially true for RV maintenance.  It’s important to keep the RV in tip top shape – especially just before a long trip.  I was having some difficulty with one of my AC units, and I also was aware that some sealant cracking was starting to happen.  I’m frankly not a fan of going up on the roof anymore, so I’ll usually leave that up to the younger professionals.  I got a mobile RV tech scheduled to come out to address my AC and sealant issues.  As for the AC, it turns out some wires had gotten loose and were burnt causing connection issues.  Fortunately, that was a quick and inexpensive repair, and the AC is now running great.  He also applied fresh self leveling caulk around all the areas where cracking was occurring.  This is a normal practice as continued exposure to the sun will cause the sealant to harden, shift, and crack.  Untreated, this can lead to water penetration, leaks, mold, and rotten wood.  None of which I’m interested in having.  It also looks like I’m going to need to reseal my entire roof in the near future as that too is starting to age and potentially fail.  So, I’ll make arrangements with this tech to perform that work when I return next winter.  Before he left, he also lubricated all areas that needed it, so I’m now officially ready to depart for my cross country trip.

Another project I just completed this month was running and burying a cable from my pedestal over to my shed.  Reason being, I’ve subscribed to Spectrum cable Internet here in the community.  This is great while I’m here as it provides blazing fast Internet for me to use, and gives my cellular based options a bit of a rest. But once I leave, I’ll not have any place to put the cable modem.  I could just suspend the subscription while I’m gone, but I’ve actually installed a camera on my shed, and maintaining Internet here while I’m gone will allow me to keep an eye on the place when I’m not here.  You know, watch as any hurricanes come through, and to make sure my lawn guy is doing his job in keeping the grass mowed.  I don’t really need the camera for security as this place is the most safe and secure place I’ve ever lived.  But it will be nice to check in on things while I’m out on the road.  So I needed a way to extend the cable service into the shed.  So I bought 100 ft of cable, dug a trench from the pedestal to the shed, buried the cable, then neatly extended it into the shed.  So, now when I leave, I can move the cable modem into the shed and continue to have Internet service for the camera while I’m out on the road.

Local Events

I didn’t get out too much this month, bit I did get to visit the RC Jet show at the Lakeland airport. I’ve always enjoyed RC flying, and even tried my hand at it several years ago (but turns out I suck at it and crashed more than I flew).  This was a jet only event so each plane was powered by a jet engine.  They had all shapes and sizes and styles of aircraft at the show.  It was quite a bit windy during the event, which provided an opportunity for the pilots to show just how talented they were at flying.  In addition to the traditional jet engine planes, they also had turbo prop planes, and even a jet powered glider.  The latter rode upon an RC trolly down the runway for takeoff, then zoomed through the air via jet power.  When done, it made a soft and safe landing on a grassy area near the runway.  This is a major multi-day event that brings RC pilots from all over the world.  It was a fun day watching these planes fly.

We’ve also had a few events here in the community.  First up was the loss of yet another RV site to a permanent home.  This double wide unit was transported onto a nice waterfront lot that was once setup for an RV.  Sadly, more and more RV site are being converted.  In fact, of the original 790 sites that all held campers and RVs back in the early days, only 72 sites remain that are strictly RV sites.  But thats progress I guess.  In fact, I will likely be converting my site over to a park model at some point in the future when I decide to cease my RV lifestyle.  Hopefully not for many more years to come.  Next, we’ve had a pair of Sandhill Cranes wander throughout the community for some time now.  Well, it appears they are in fact a boy/girl pair, and have since given birth to a couple of babies.  So, I guess we’ll have a couple more additions to the community.  Lastly, we had a loss to the community when a 14 foot American Aligator was removed from our lake.  Apparently he was being a bit too aggressive so a trapper was called in to capture and relocate him.  He made pretty quick time of getting him caught, taped, and moved into his truck to be taken somewhere else to live out his life.  I for one am happy to see him gone.  There are plenty of waterways that are not occupied by humans where he can live out his life.  No reason to put us and our pets at risk.  Good luck to you Wally!

Final Thoughts

As I prepare to head out on my 204 day, 6,100 mile adventure, I’m thankful that I’ve still got the means and reasonable health to continue on this journey.  I’m hopeful this damn virus will stay at bay so that I may enjoy visiting national parks and various Roadside America sites along the way.  I’ve got lots of people and places to visit along my travels, and I greatly look forward to those visits.  I’ve often said there is so much to see and experience while traveling through this country that I could spend the rest of my life doing this, and still not see it all.  I’ve got three years left to complete my initial pass through the country, which I hope is then followed by many more years fillings in the gaps to see and experience more.  One can only hope and dream!  Till next time, stay healthy and safe travels.

I only show a sampling of my adventure pictures here in the blog, and do so mostly in collage format for brevity and ease of reading. If you want to view an album containing individual full fidelity and hi-res images of all my travel pictures related to this specific blog, click the image below. Enjoy!