Pictures from our trip

To the left is a picture of Karen and me at the 1000 Trails preserve at Peace River.  This is part of the campground membership that Karen and I joined.  We got a spot right on the river that was perfect.  We will definitely be going back there.  Below is a picture of us on the road.  Jason and Erik are watching a video.  Buster is checking out the scenery.  Buster is a pretty mellow dog and likes to travel.  He got very stressed when I was moving the RV away from the gas pump and Karen was inside the gas station.  I guess it just proves he is a momma's boy.

Well, we are finally back home so we can upload pictures from Karen's camera.  I have included some pictures of Buster on Christmas day.  As you can see he got a giant rawhide bone (about 24" long).  That is always one of Buster's favorites.  He also got a tennis ball bone that we had to throw in the water for him.  He was loving that one.  He looks more like a bunny rabbit running out into the water because he bounds instead of just swimming.

I have also included a picture of us having our traditional Christmas eve fondu dinner.  Being around the dinette in the RV made it nice since no one had to reach far for the fondue :)

Below is a picture of the family outside the RV at Key West.

We are home

We stayed at the 1000 Trails Peace River preserve last night and it was really nice.  We had bought a membership in the 1000 Trails system back in September and this was our first chance to use one of the preserves as a member.  We ended up building a campfire and cooking our turkey burgers on it.  All four of us ended up sitting around the fire and talking for another three hours.  Actually it felt like five of us since Erik and Jason were busy texting their friend Gina and she was included in our conversation via text message.

We called Lazy Days after we discovered that our roof issue was once again an issue.  We have really enjoyed the RV lifestyle but the roof issue was turning into more of a time sink than it was worth.  We discussed some options with a our sales rep Joanne Heppe and one of the options we wanted to explore was moving up to a Class A RV (our Jayco is a class C).  Joanne called us and told us of a couple of models that she thought would fit our needs.  Since Class Cs tend to have more sleep area than Class As we were initially more interested in Class Cs.  Joanne had found some Class As that had bunk beds in addition to the queen size bed and that piqued our interest.  

Long story short the Jayco is leaving the family and an Itsaca is joining the family.   The boys were very excited because now the rock-paper-scissors for the bed has become a rock-paper-scissors for the top bunk.  Each bunk has its own DVD player so that is a definite plus.  We took it for a 20 mile test drive and Jason texted Karen from the bunk while she was driving saying that he loved the bunk.  When Karen read the text aloud in front of Joanne we lost our negotiation room :-)  No problem.  We know we like the RV lifestyle and the parts of Florida that have been opened up to us so it was pretty much a done deal.   We have discovered that we either sit around the campfire and talk or around the dinner table and talk.  We have never found ourselves saying, "I wish we had a bigger bed" or "I wish we had a bigger living room" but we have found ourselves saying, "Boy, this dinette is small".  The dinette on our new RV is "U" shaped and very comfortably sits 4.  Tight fit it can seat 8.  The couch is also bigger.  In a pinch we can comfortably sleep 8 people and one rather large yellow lab.

Arcadia FL

Well, I am sitting here in the parking lot of WALMART in Arcadia, FL.  Been an interesting trip.  We left the Keys yesterday at 0830 and spent about 7 hours driving.  I didn't plan that part of the trip to well but that's how it goes sometimes.  We stayed at Myakka River State Park last night.  Nice park.  Karen and I took Buster for a run this morning and ended up running through the woods.  We came across a great suspended bridge that took you to a 76' tower above the treeline.  The view was great.  Buster didn't like the suspended bridge.  Too much swinging and swaying for his taste.  With all the moving around he does in the RV when we are on the road you would think that it doesn't bother him but I guess it does.  When we got back to the campsite I asked Jason and Erik if they wanted to go see the bridge and tower.  They thought it would be fun so off we headed.  It was about a 3/4 mile walk but Erik is calling it 6 :-)  We crossed the Myakka river on our way and I told the boys to keep their eyes open since they might see a gator or two.  Sure enough there were two gators floating in the river.  Now why can't I use those powers to pick lottery numbers :-)  

We are on the road to the 1000 Trails Preserve at Peace River.  Probably another 10 miles of driving to do.  That will give us a total of 45 for the day.  Back to my statement about not planning to well yesterday :-)  Our roof problem appears to be back.  It sounds like someone is knocking on the roof as we are driving down the road.  I guess we will be paying the Lazy Days service folks another call.  Oh well, at least we are using the RV enough to have these problems.  Karen and I were doing the math this morning.  We have had the RV for four months and we have slept in it 27 days.  That is almost one out of every four days!  I guess we are RV people.

Christmas Night

Well, it was an interesting Christmas day.  We rode our bikes into town for Christmas service at Our Lady of the Sea.  The priest was fantastic and the whole family enjoyed it.  After mass we rode back to base and we watched one of Erik's Christmas presents, the dvd Transformers.  After that we watched my dvd, Blades of Glory.  We then rode our bike back into town for dinner.  We had reservations at Alice's.  It was a fixed menu that looked fantastic but of course it didn't have chicken fingers on it so Erik was interested in it.  It was also $50 per person so I wasn't interested in paying for Erik to sit there and not enjoy it.  We left and ended up eating at Crabby Dick's.  The food was good and everyone enjoyed the Christmas dinner.  We ended up riding our bikes back to base in the dark.  My bike was making a funny noise all weekend and it turned out the noise was my chain.  I discovered this when I went to pedal away from the front gate and my chain ended up on the ground.  Oh well, no problem.  Karen pedaled back and I held on to her seat for a free tow back to the RV.  

Karen and I went for a walk with Buster and enjoyed all of the lights on the different RVs.  Gave us some good ideas for next year.  Now we are all in the RV watching ... what eles, RV (the movie starring Robin Williams).

Christmas morning

Got the day started at 0630 with a dog that was sure he should be snuggled between Karen and me.  Now we do I have a queen size bed on the RV but it is what is called an "RV Queen" so it isn't really a full queen size.  Not to fear, the intrepid Buster didn't let that fact slow him down.

We got up and woke up Jason and Erik and started the gift opening process.  It is a lot more intimate in a 31' RV with a 105 lb dog in the middle of everything.  Everyone got some great gifts and it was a wonderful Christmas.

Duval Street

We rode our bikes into town.  It was about a 2 mile ride.  We stopped at the southern most point in the U.S.  There was a line of about 20 people waiting to take a picture at the marker.  We decided that the Kodak moment just wasn't worth the wait.  We parked our bikes on Duval street and proceeded to walk north.  Everyone was hungry so we started looking for a restaurant.  Someone saw a sign for the Hog's Breath and I mentioned that the everyone had been to the western most Hog's Breath (there is a thing for mosts today) so it was "game on" to eat at the eastern most Hog's Breath.  Hard to beat the Christmas decor of the Hog's Breath.  We spent about 3 hours exploring downtown and then riding back to base.  We are hoping that there is Christmas mass at the chapel tomorrow so we don't have to ride downtown for mass, back to base because nothing will be open downtown and then back downtown to Alice's for Christmas dinner.  Could make for a long day.

We are back at the RV now.  Buster is quite popular with all of our neighbors.  

He makes friends very easily.  We are making our Christmas eve fondu dinner.  It has become something of a Black family tradition.  I don't think the Chocolate fountain made the trip this year :-(

So we are back from our run

We got here yesterday and set up our camp.  Jason and I immediately grabbed our snorkeling gear and headed to the water.  The sun was getting low so we decided to come back in and inflate the kayak and watch the sunset from the water.   Got out there just in time to watch the sun set behind a line of low laying clouds.  Pretty neat.  As we turned around to paddle back in we saw a full moon coming up over the RV park.  Not a bad way to spend Christmas.

Got back to the RV and showered up just in time to start dinner.  We decided to have the Omaha steaks that Woody and Monica got us for Christmas (thanks Woody and Monica, they were GREAT).  Had a great bottle of red wine from the Lakeridge Winery (the winery where we had the pre-race dinner before my first Ironman - Great Floridian '94) and that got the night off to a great start.  After dinner and clean up we decide to bake a couple dozen cookies and then watch a Christmas classic dvd - Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation.  That one never gets old.

Hit the rack about 2230 only to wake up at 0230 to the wind buffeting around our awning.  I am sure the neighbors loved the racket of me bringing in my awning at 0230 :-)  

The RV Park here at Naval Station Key West is called Sigsbee RV park.  I think there are about 75 full hook ups (water, electric and sewer),  100 partial hook ups (water and electric) and about 200 dry camping spots (no hook ups).  Since we are active duty we got a full hook up.  The park is about full and I think we are one of three active duty families.  The retirees that didn't get a full hook up are not happy with us.

We are going to hop on our bikes and explore Key West so I will post more later.

Christmas Key West!

Well, t'was the night before Christmas and here we are on the beach at Key West!  We left home Saturday morning and drove to Koreshan State Park right outside of Ft. Meyers, FL.  Nice state park but hard to explore when you get there two hours before sunset and you are planning on leaving the next morning as early as possible.  

After we set up our campsite  (since just about everything is "push one button" it is not real hard) Jason and I grabbed our mountain bikes and went for a ride.  Neat campground right on the Estero River.  Lots of signs that warned of Alligators so we figured we better keep Buster away from the water.

We left about 1000 on Sunday morning to start the drive from Koreshan to Key West since we had about 250 miles to drive.  I took the first leg across Alligator Alley (didn't see any gators) and then we stopped to refuel.  $100 later we were back on the road (got to love a 50 gallon tank at $3 + a gallon.  Karen volunteered to take her second drive of the trip (her first was 100 miles on Saturday while I slept on the couch).  Karen got the bum end of the deal.  Around Miami and then 20 miles on Hwy 1 on the Keys under construction.

Karen and Buster want to go for a run so I need to sign off for now.  More later.

First Posting

We bought a Recreational Vehicle in August 2007 and we have created this blog to keep our family and friends up-to-date on our travels and adventures in the RV. This is the first post so I will keep it short.