Category Archives: Unexpected twists

Florida, Travelog, Unexpected twists

Misadventures again

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rubi_sits_hotgun

[On the road to Lake Talquin State Forest]

Meg: [driving] Turn here?

Liz: [looking at map on phone with GPS] Yes…No…Yes…No

Meg: This one?

Liz: No…Yes…No…Yes…No. Yes.

[Meg turns]

Liz: No, that wasn’t it.

[They drive past a dilapidated church, two dirty mobile homes that were missing windows or had peeling siding, and a clean mobile home with 3 kids playing outside next to a minivan sitting in the yard with a completely flat tire. A stray dog ran in front of the car.]

Thank goodness we only had a 22-foot van to turn around.

We planned to spend the night at Lake Talquin State Forest midway between Ocean Pond in Osceola State Forest and Santa Rosa Beach near Pensacola. We planned a lot of nice things for the day.

After a foggy night, we awoke to everything slightly damp in the van from the humidity. Not deterred, Liz prepared a lovely breakfast spread.

liz_healthy_breakfast

We decided that Ocean Pond, while full of lovely friendly people with a private campsite for only $8/night, was a bit too depressing in the rain and mist. Since we’re headed to Santa Rosa Beach for the 30a Songwriter’s Festival for the weekend, we planned to drive 2 hours and make it halfway there. We found another cheap campground in a different state forest for $10/night. All seemed well.

Things started going off the rails when we decided to do some laundry. We pulled into the Love’s Truck Stop only to find out they didn’t have laundry. What truck stop doesn’t have laundry? The place across the street did, though both the washer and dryer were overpriced for being outside and next to the smokers’ bench. We did our wash as a downpour blew through, dumping buckets multiple times. Luckily, we were off the road and dry.

We continued on to Lake Talquin. Liz called to verify that the road to the campground was paved. After a strained conversation and a consultation with another phone agent, Liz was assured that the road leading to the campground was the only paved road in the place. All seemed well.

We exited the highway and tried to find our way to the campground. Which is when the above dialog occurred. After turning around, the drive just got weirder.

We passed nice-looking, rather spacious homes that were just off somehow. A smidge too close together. Oddly-designed drainage ditches. A little like the community in Edward Scissorhands, but on a thoroughfare. It seemed like a HUD project of single-family homes. It tried to be nice, but just couldn’t quite get there.

As we continued toward the birding trail and campground, there was the oddest mixture of larger, well-kept homes next to abandoned trailers with broken windows. Then a set of 4 homes with one for rent while the end unit was burned out and should have been condemned. There were also a few too many houses with 3-5 people mulling outside on an ugly day. Or with 6 cars in the driveway of a single trailer.

We continued onward and there was a man at the end of his driveway wearing earbuds. Liz waved, as we are accustomed to do in campgrounds. He didn’t acknowledge her and Liz noticed he was drinking a 40 of beer. And then the road turned to dirt.

We turned around at a slightly-less rundown church with an unpaved driveway. As we passed our friend on the street again, he smile and waved enthusiastically. I increased our speed slightly. Two more stray dogs crossed our path.

We decided to get a bit closer to Santa Rosa Beach by heading to the trusty Walmart in Panama City Beach. It looked on the map to be surrounded by golf courses. We hoped we’d be able to take Rubi for a walk on the manicured grounds.

We pulled in at night and found this instead of the golf course:

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The pond was a nice surprise and we had a pleasant walk, but the fog combined with Ripley’s Believe It or Not bizarre architecture and the rundown beach vibe similar to Virginia Beach was not what we expected.

On the bright side, Rubi met her first tiny frog:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQQrg1YNXWE

The Walmart parking lot had a few other RVs, which was comforting. The hippy kids who decided to continue painting their RV with flowers and rainbows while standing in a shopping cart until midnight were not.

I guess at least it was free and we did sleep through the night without incident. In the future, we’ll be sure to do a bit more research about the towns in coastal Florida before pulling in for the night.

Leaving Seattle, Lessons learned, Travelog, Unexpected twists

Day 0.75: Almost on the road

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Comfy hotel outside Seattle as we're waylaid again
Comfy hotel outside Seattle as we’re waylaid again

The day before…

Day 2 of our unexpected delay brought some good news. While the alternator is fried, the shop can build a new cable and get us on the road (fingers and toes crossed) tomorrow. In the meantime, we’re staying at a lovely hotel enjoying a king-sized bed, a truly hot shower, and regular electricity.

Many blame Mercury in retrograde for our mishap. Liz and I blame ourselves. Today, we both finally understand why power management of our house battery is so important. And why we were crazy not to immediately find shore power once our system started failing. The liquid propane detector beeping because it has low power is not just annoying–it’s the canary in the coal mine. Get more power to that battery, quick!, or your battery will reach the point of no return.

I had already come to the conclusion that boondocking, living without additional power sources, was difficult. But I couldn’t articulate exactly why until now. Yes, it’s weird to wear a headlamp and use camping lanterns inside a vehicle equipped with LEDs. Sure, it’s a little funny to wash your face with water from a water bottle since the rig’s water pump won’t work. It really would be nice if the generator would start to power up the battery, but I guess we can do without it. What the fuck were we thinking!?!

Thank goodness we learned this lesson in Seattle, where we know the area, still have our second car (which is very Rubi friendly), have plenty of hotels, and know how to deal with the rainy weather. Let’s hope and pray we never get into this situation again!

The day after…

Leaving Seattle, Travelog, Unexpected twists

Day 0.5: Stuck off the road

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A real bed...heaven!
A real bed…heaven!

The day before…

The next morning, the Golf started just fine, but the RV again took a couple cranks to turn over. It was raining, and the wipers were jumpy when I turned them on. I thought it was related to the fact that wipers didn’t seem to wipe well—I was actually glad that I might have found the solution, namely that the guys who did a little body work for us put them on too tight. As we drove the few blocks to the marina, three dummy lights came on on the dashboard. “This isn’t good,” I thought to myself. Once Liz parked the Golf, I told her to come check out the dashboard. I turned off the van to see if that would reset it, and it wouldn’t start. Battery #3: dead. We used the Golf to jump the van (we had just found the jumpers the night before), and decided to drive it to our local mechanic, who works on all foreign automobiles. We drove about 2 blocks when all the lights in the dashboard flickered in and out. We also realized the van wouldn’t shift out of first gear. More nervous than I’d been in a long time, I eased the van back down the hill to the marina. We called roadside assistance and told them we thought our alternator was bad and that we needed a tow. We put Rubi into the Golf and went back to the coffee shop in our old building to wait.

Three hours later, the tow truck finally came. The driver asked what the problem was. We told him, to which he replied, “You can’t jump a diesel with a car. You need to jump a diesel with a diesel.” He then used his Dodge RAM 4500 truck to charge our battery. We insisted he take the van for a drive before leaving. He agreed that something was funny, but suggested that he use his portable battery jumper to give it a nice jump and then that we drive to the repair place while he followed behind us.

Liz got into the van, I got into the Golf with Rubi, the tow truck driver got into his truck, and we started up the hill. At the same intersection where I freaked out, the van basically lost all power and stalled out. Liz was as freaked out as I had been. The tow truck driver had to then hitch up the van and we followed him to the mechanic. That was Wednesday afternoon, at about 4pm.

We left the van, both batteries dead, and headed to the La Quinta, which is dog friendly and about 3 blocks from one of the apartments we rented in Seattle. We just couldn’t seem to get out of town!

Rubi enjoyed the freedom, warmth, and dryness of the hotel room, as did we. We ordered some Chinese food and tried not to worry.

The day after…

Leaving Seattle, Travelog, Unexpected twists

Day 0: We’re officially van dwellers

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The day before…

The morning of the walk through was completely frantic. After sleeping on the air mattress, we work up early. We still had to load my car with all the Pittsburgh stuff, take out a ton of trash, throw all of the Goodwill remaining items into a vehicle, and clean the apartment some more. We had moved our clothes into the van, but hadn’t moved the refrigerator, kitchen, pantry, or Rubi items in. We woke up at 7am, with the walk through scheduled at noon.

I started on the task of loading up the Golf’s trunk, which went well but took a ton of time. It was packed to the gills, but at least all the items were safely hidden by the trunk cover, so we could leave the car at the marina for Nicole without worrying about it looking like a good break-in target. Right as I was finishing, the movers for our next door neighbor arrived, monopolizing the single elevator. So Liz and I took turns running all everything else down the 3.5 flights of stairs to the garage while the other person cleaned and cleaned. Since the trunk of the Golf was full, we basically just piled all our shit around the car.

At 10:30am, we asked if we could do the walk through at 1pm instead. I also moved the van to an open parking spot on the street in front of the house so we could eventually load it. By 12:30pm, I was sorting through everything in the garage, placing Goodwill items in the Golf, van items in the van, and wondering how we ever managed to accumulate so much stuff. I feared it would NOT all fit in our small space. I also moved the Golf out of the garage so we could turn in all our keys.

When the walk through was over, we were left with this:

Moved out!
Moved out!
How did we get so much stuff?
How did we get so much stuff?
Before the afternoon of organization
Before the afternoon of organization
Can't leave the Golf looking like this
Can’t leave the Golf looking like this

After a refreshing sandwich from Subway outside our former home and a nice final visit from our friend Clare, we migrated everything to the marina to repack and further purge. As darkness descended, we were wrapping up and Liz readied herself for a final Goodwill run. Which is when we realized the Golf’s battery was dead. That was battery #1. We were ready to jump the Golf with the van when some guys came over and helped us with their beat up diesel truck. We welcomed not having to move the rig and Liz was off to Goodwill.

I was left in the rig. I put away our dishes and realized the RV’s house battery (for the lights, heater, fridge, etc.) was low. We luckily have a meter that tells us the voltage that the battery in the back is putting out. It should be 12.6V or higher when healthy. Once it gets to 12.0V, it’s only about 60% charged. And if it goes below 11V, you could be in real trouble. Ours was at 8V. I turned on the engine, which should allow the coach battery (the one that starts the car and powers car-related things like the radio and the power windows) to charge the house battery. Normally, that immediately pops the voltage up to 14+V. The van took a moment to turn over and then started. But the house battery stayed at 8V. I started to get worried and figured the best thing to do was to turn off everything that was drawing power and just use our camping lanterns and headlamps.

I told Liz about my concern about the RV, but we were both too focused on making sure the VW recharged so we could leave it at the marina for my sister Nicole, who was planning to fly out the following week and drive it back to Pittsburgh for me. We took a long ride for dinner to recharge the Golf battery, hoping it would work despite it being nighttime and raining.

Since we were also worried about the RV, we took it for a night drive as well, filing up the air in the tires and getting gas so we’d be ready to begin our adventure on Wednesday morning. I checked the voltage the whole drive and for some odd reason it wasn’t budging about 8V.

We knew the battery in the back was a problem, but it was 11pm and we were exhausted. We really needed shore power, meaning a 30 amp plug like they have at RV parks and marinas to give our battery a good charge. We looked to see if we could run our RV cord through the fence back to our old boat slip, since we still had the marina key, but it wouldn’t fit. We decided to go to bed and deal with it in the morning.

Once we found our parking spot for the evening, we tried to start the generator, so it could power the battery. But the battery was so low, it wouldn’t start. It was clear we had killed battery #2. So, we boondocked down by Lake Union, a couple blocks from our old house, on Tuesday night, sleeping without heat and using camping lanterns. The irony is that Liz and I had both watched this video from the Hipster Gypsies, where he was completely freaked out when his battery got to 1V.

We were too green and tired to realized what a pickle we were about to be in.

The day after…