Downtown Disney

We decided to take in Mass at the local church right down the road from 1000 Trails on Sunday morning and then head to Downtown Disney.  The service was great but the location appeared to be an old roadside stand that used to sell oranges to tourists.  Very cozy ;-)  

We went to DT Disney and had lunch at the House of Blues.  I think between marathon weekend last weekend and this weekend we have decided that the service is very slow. Maybe it is because of the fact that we have always had 6 or more guests so there is an automatic 18% gratuity and thus the server realizes he doesn't have to work hard for a tip.

Joe and I took Jason and Erik to Disney Quest while Karen and Leona went to a movie.  We met up at Wolfgang Puck's for drinks and to watch the end of the AFC championship.  We then met Bill Davis for dinner at Portobellos.  Good to see Bill again.  He hasn't changed much since last weekend :-O   We will be having dinner with him and his wife Donna next weekend.  Three weekends in a row.

This morning we are going to have breakfast, break camp and go visit the Lake Ridge Winery.

Joe and Leons's first night

Well, Karen's mom and dad had their first night camping in an RV.   Of course a huge weather front came through with 30 knot winds and lots of rain.  We turned on the TV in time to see that there was a tornado warning for our area.  Luckily Karen and I looked at the weather yesterday morning and decided that maybe we should do something for dinner other than burgers on the grill outdoors ;-)  We decided to try out fondu in the new U shaped dinette.  It worked out great.

Karen and I converted the dinette into a bed and slept on that last night.  It was a little bit tight but doable.  We started out the night with the air conditioner running and by 0630 I had to turn on the furnace.  It was 45 degrees when I took Buster for a walk this morning.  The plan today is to have breakfast, go to 11oo Mass and then off to Downtown Disney for a day of fun.  We will be having dinner with Bill Davis who is in town for a conference.  It has been a long time since we have seen Bill ... not!  Him and his wife Donna were here last weekend for the Marathon.

Hott Rod Installation

Well, the hot water heater on our new RV is LP gas only. I really want to have a choice between gas and electricity because when I am hooked up at a campground I much rather use electricity and save my LP gas. I searched my forum ( iRV2.com ) and came up with the answer of installing the Hott Rod.

I ordered my Hott Rod from rvUpgrades.com and it arrived three days later.  I read the instructions and it seemed like a pretty straight forward installation.  Yes, I know that this installation voids my warranty but since the other choice involves and upgrade to a new water heater I decided to not worry about the warranty.

Joe, my father-in-law, and I started the project Friday night.  We figured we would tackle the outside portion and finish up the inside portion on Saturday.  The installation involves replacing the drain plug with the heating element.  Things went smoothly until we re-pressurized the system and discovered a trickle leak.  When we went to disassemble everything I forgot to de-pressurize the system and Joe and I got soaked.  Well, we went through this process again and once again I forgot to de-pressurize the system and water went everywhere.  When we finished up with the outside part Joe and I decided to fire up the LP gas portion of the water heater just to make sure it still worked.  It didn't.  We were hoping that we just got everything wet and when it dried out it would be fine.  We also now had an incentive to get the electrical element working since we were going camping the next day.  I knew no one would be excited about cold showers :-)

We finished up the inside portion and powered up the system.  It takes 45-90' to heat up the water.  We also shop vacuumed the outside portion to suck up as much of the water as possible.  At 0100 I let Buster out and decided to see if the water was hot.  It was :-)  I also decided to give the LP gas a try and it also worked.  What a relief.

Shakedown cruise in the Sunstar

We did our first over-nighter in the Sunstar last night.  Everyone was eager to try out the new RV so since we were pressed for time we decided to go to Hillsborough River State Park just for Saturday night.  Bruce, Jason and Buster picked up me and Erik from Erik's soccer game and we headed straight to the park.  Gabby (our Garmin Nuvio 650 GPS) ended up taking us down a very small country road but a friendly State trooper helped us get back on track.  We got to the park about an hour before sunset.  Boy, was it crowded!

We set up camp quickly because we had Bruce's friend Kevin, his wife Gina and his daughter Megan coming over for chili and campfire pie pizzas.  Megan brought a friend and that worked out well since Jason and Erik brought their Wii.  Apparently all four of them were busy playing tennis, golf and bowling since every one had their own Wii remote.  My chili was excellent as always (or so everyone thought :-))

To the left is a picture of Gina, Bruce and Kevin in the U shaped dinette.  We are impressed with how big and comfortable that dinette is and we expect to have lots of good meals and conversations there!

Erik was really tired and crawled into his bunk at 9 o'clock.  Jason stayed up playing Wii by himself while Bruce and Buster went for a walk around the campground with me.

It seems that everyone had a good nights sleep and Bruce enjoyed the ability to shut off the sleeping area from the lounge.  This let him make his coffee and read a book at 0600 while everyone else was sleeping.

We took Buster for a run around the park and we ended up going over the Hillsborough River and running the "Florida Trail".  We wanted to run 30' but it turned into a 50' run.  Oh well, good shake out run for Disney next week.

When we got back Jason was ready to try out his culinary skills and cook us some pancakes.  They were great.  After breakfast we got the RV ready to go.  Since we were so close to Camping World we decided to swing by and pick up a couple of things.  As we were walking out we ran into Joanne and Tom Heppe.  Joanne is our Lazy Days sales agent and she is the one that found us our great Itasca.  Thanks Joanne!

The ride home was uneventful (we decided not to use Gabby) and we quickly cleaned up the RV and then took it over to storage.  It looks like we won't be RVing again for two weeks when we will take Mom and Dad to 1000 Trails Orlando for their first RV trip.

Happy New Year

Well, we turned in the Jayco and got the Itasca Sunstar on New Year's eve.  Turned into a long day at Lazy Days but I had Jason to help me out.  He was a wild man when it came to unloading the Jayco and loading the Itasca!  Just get out of his way and let him do his thing.  He was stressing about where to put everything and I told him not to worry because no matter where we put it Mom was sure to move it.  We had a couple of minor issues but finally got on the road at 1630 and home about 1730.  Parked it in the driveway and hoped that my neighbors didn't land any fireworks on it.

Karen spent the next morning rearranging everything (didn't see that one coming :-))  We took the RV over to storage and parked it until this weekend.  Everyone wants to use it this weekend so we are going to take it to Hillsborough River State Park .  We will update the blog after the trip.  Below is a picture of our RV in our driveway.