TN5 plan

Posted on March 11, 2019 by Sparky
TN5 plan

TN5 plan

The plan for the fifth trip north (TN5) has us towing the RV 1,732 miles in 15 days and 7 hops, from Fort Myers FL to Conway NH. It will be a relatively quick trip, the compressed span being necessitated by our obligation to be in NH by Memorial Day and our interest in getting our shed insulated and air conditioned before we leave. We hope to leave May 6 and arrive May 21.

But we expect to see some new and interesting places, too:

  • St Augustine FL.  This is one of the oldest cities in North America. It is somewhere on my bucket list.
  • Hilton Head Island SC.  Also somewhere on that bucket list.
  • Columbia SC.  Not on my bucket list, but a city that I have never been to.
  • Allentown PA.  Also not on the list, but will look around.

We will also make a return visit to the campground at Lake Compounce in Bristol CT.  It was pre-season and spooky on our previous visit.  We will see what it is like when the amusement park is open.

We will also make a brief stop in Worcester MA to retrieve the Corolla that Jett’s brother Ray has volunteered to drive north for us.  I will have to find a good place to stop with the RV in the very urban Worcester.

That is the plan.  But our previous two trips (TN4 and TS4) both encountered major problems with both the truck and the RV.  It is hard being confident that we can execute the TN5 plan flawlessly. Time will tell.

Categories: Preparation/Planning, Routes, TN5 | Leave a comment

Plans for summer 2019

Posted on March 10, 2019 by Sparky

Last summer was spent hanging out in Phillipston MA, which was great because it was close to the summer cottage of Jett’s brother and his wife.  The time spent at the cottage was wonderful.  But the rest of the time was rather boring.

The summer of 2017 was spent touring New England and then taking an early exit to head west.  The summer of 2016 was spent on Lake Champlain in Vermont.

Do you see a pattern?  No?  The only pattern is that we try to do something different each summer.

Since it has been 3 years since our last workamping gig (Lake Champlain) we thought we were due for another.  So we will be workampers for 4 months in Conway NH.  That is still 2 hours from Boston, but much closer to Boston than Lake Champlain.  We should be able to see family occasionally without needing to overnight in Boston.

Our home for the summer will be the Eastern Slope Camping Area.  That is a pretty generic name for a private campground but it looks very nice.  The things that attracted us were (1) the area (Conway is nestled in the White Mountains) (2) the work (it includes a kayak/canoe excursion business, so I could be spending some time on the Saco River and (3) the owners seem to be very nice.

We start work just before Memorial Day.  So I need to figure out how to get there by then. We will be squeezed a bit on the time because we need to stay in Florida longer than we would like to get some work done on the shed. Details of the 5th Trip North (TN5) will be forthcoming shortly.

Categories: NH, Places, Preparation/Planning, RV Living, RV Parks | Leave a comment

More steps!

Posted on March 6, 2019 by Sparky
Completed shed steps

Completed shed steps

Construction getting started

Construction getting started

Yes, the shed now has steps.  It wasn’t a huge project, but it was done in sweltering heat so I invested a lot of “sweat equity.”  I am pretty happy with how they turned out because (1) I didn’t screw up any cuts and waste some material and (2) they are solid.  Stepping on them feels like stepping on concrete.

I did make a couple of minor mistakes.  For no good reason, I decided to use screws to attach the cosmetic strip at the top and, no surprise, the screws split the thin strip of wood.  I will eventually replace the strip and this time use finishing nails, as any halfway competent carpenter would do.  I also painted the stringers brown initially and didn’t like the result, so I redid them in white.  But no screwups on the things that mattered.

Got ’em done just in time, too – the electrician is arriving today.

I now have an entrance “alley” that I think looks pretty attractive.

Our entrance "alley"

Our entrance “alley”

Categories: FL, Places, RV Living | Leave a comment

Consistently inconsistent

Posted on February 28, 2019 by Sparky

That would be a good description of my softball team. We scored 17 runs in our first game of the season, then won several low-scoring games to get to 4 wins, 2 losses. Then we lost 5 straight, scoring no more than 7 runs in any of those games. That is less than 1 run per inning. In slow-pitch softball where you need to score at least 10 to have any realistic chance of winning scoring less than 1 run per inning is pathetic. A team-wide hitting drought.

Then we won our last 2 games 19-12 and 27-14. After scoring no more than 7 in the previous 5 games, we score 19 and 27.

Consistently inconsistent.

Categories: FL, Places, Sports | Leave a comment

Railing!

Posted on February 22, 2019 by Sparky

The finished railing on painted steps

The finished railing on painted steps

Now that we have fiberglass steps it seemed like a good idea to attach a railing. Jett has vertigo occasionally (where the “occasion” is “every day”) and her older sister Sybil, who is none too steady on her pins, is coming for a visit. So a railing seemed like a REALLY good idea.

I could have cheaped out and cobbled together something workable out of 2x4s. But I decided I should make it as attractive as possible, so I opted for a white PVC plastic railing. The railing is designed to work with sheaths that slip over 4x4s, so the hard work was cutting the 4x4s and securely attaching them to the steps. Putting up the railing was a piece of cake after getting the posts installed.

Of course we had to paint the steps, too. No sense in putting a nice PVC handrail on a crappy-looking set of steps. So I painted them beige, to match the RV, more or less.

I also completed the front-side frame for the vinyl skirt that we will be putting around the shed. This frame, on the front side, also doubles as the foundation for the steps that I will be building. This was a lot of work, but I have already had compliments from two men in the trades – a general contractor and an electrician – who admired the frame and said that I “did it right.” I take some pride in that.

Painting the steps

Painting the steps

The shed frame

The shed frame

Categories: FL, Places, RV Living | 1 Comment

Taco in a bag

Posted on February 20, 2019 by Sparky
Taco in a bag

Taco in a bag

Steel drum music

Steel drum music

Jett and I volunteered to serve at a “taco in a bag” patio party recently.  We had no idea what we had signed up for, but felt that we were due for some volunteer work.  I guess I was expecting to hand out bag lunches from Taco Bell.  But the reality was quite different.

To create a “taco in a bag” you first get a bag of Doritos.  Not that tiny lunch-size bag, but the larger 99 cent bag.  You cut it open on the long side, crush the chips, then load the bag with beef or chicken taco meat, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions and taco sauce.  Hand the bag to the customer along with a plastic fork and a napkin and send him/her on his/her way.  $5 for what turned out to be a pretty tasty light dinner.  Beer for sale for $2.

We sold about 100 of these.  All the time listening to steel drum music.  A very pleasant volunteer experience.

Then we watched a piñata be destroyed.  No one was injured and it turned out to be filled with candy bars and bags of peanuts.  Dessert.

Pinata

Piñata

Dining al fresco

Dining al fresco

Categories: FL, Food, Places, RV Living | Leave a comment

Bonefish Grill

Posted on February 18, 2019 by Sparky

We haven’t dined out much lately, but we couldn’t let my 70th birthday pass without some kind of celebration.  So we decided to blow a few bucks on a nice dinner.  My first choice was Bahama Breeze – dining al fresco on the patio with a steel drum band playing and a signature margarita in my hand.  Ahh! My idea of a nice dinner.  We had to wait for a spell of cold rainy weather to pass, so it was a few days after my birthday that we sallied forth.

And found a line about an hour long.

Too much waiting.  So we looked for another nice restaurant nearby and settled on Bonefish Grill.  We had dined at a Bonefish Grill in Georgia a couple of years ago and had positive memories.  And it had immediate seating.

Jett chose a filet mignon – superb – and I tried the Georges Bank Scallops and Shrimp.  Likewise superb.  But the real surprise was the side of crusty broiled brussels sprouts.  They looked terrible – black and crusty – but tasted great.

I also got my requisite margarita.  A fine dinner.

Scallops and shrimp

Scallops and shrimp

Crusty brussels sprouts

Crusty brussels sprouts

Categories: FL, Food, Places | Leave a comment

“Hello, Darkness” by Sandra Brown

Posted on February 12, 2019 by Sparky

Simon & Schuster, 2003

I think I have read a Sandra Brown mystery before.  I have certainly listened to one of her audiobooks.  I had a fairly positive view of her skill as a writer.  So it was with a modicum of pleasant anticipation that I picked up Hello, Darkness.

Imagine my disappointment.

This is a book of 353 pages, about 350 of which are devoted to desperate attempts to convince the reader that one of the four possible suspects is the person who has kidnapped and threatened to kill a teen girl.  Unfortunately, Sandra’s attempts to feed me red herrings were not very convincing.  I figured out pretty early on where this one was headed and got pretty annoyed with her for wasting my time.

The capsule summary is this: a female late-night Austin radio DJ, Paris, receives a phone call from “Valentino” who tells her that he is holding his girlfriend captive and will kill her in 72 hours because she has been unfaithful and is trying to dump him.  The police – including a psychologist profiler who has a history with Paris – are notified and try to find the caller.  The suspects are the radio station’s manager, the station’s janitor, a dentist with a sex addiction (who once molested Paris) and the profiler’s teen son.  It is discovered that the abducted “girlfriend” is the teen daughter of a judge who refuses to believe that she has been abducted or that she was one of the loosest girls in town, a founding member of the Sex Club, a teen social media concoction that fed their need to hook up on the shores of Lake Travis.

Not only are the red herring stories completely unconvincing, every character in this book is immoral and pretty much a scumbag, including, sadly, the purported “heroes.”  Thin plot, unlikable characters.  Bad combination.

2 out of 10.

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Blog booklets, 2014-2016 (QTN, STS, STN and TTS)

Posted on February 9, 2019 by Sparky

Here are the PDFs for the blog booklets for the years 2014 to 2016.

OurWanderYears 2014 (10.8 MB) – the Quick Trip North (QTN), summer in MA and coming off the road

OurWanderYears 2015 (21.4 MB) – winter in MA, Carnival cruise and the Second Trip South (STS)

OurWanderYears 2016 (21.3 MB) – Second Trip North (STN), workamping in VT and the Third Trip South (TTS)

 

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Mobstah Lobstah

Posted on February 5, 2019 by Sparky
Connecticut

Connecticut

Our RV park invites food trucks onto the premises twice a week – Wednesday and Friday. We have sampled several of them and weren’t greatly impressed with either the quality or the value. That all changed on the past Friday when we sampled the fare at the Mobstah Lobstah food truck (byline: “seafood to die for”). Both Jett and I got lobster rolls, but Jett got the “Connecticut” version (cold, with mayonnaise and celery) and I chose the “Maine” (warm, with butter). Both were outstanding. Large, fresh chunks of lobster meat, a toasted bun, a very nice cup of coleslaw and crispy tater tots with a tangy chipotle aioli sauce. Everything was perfectly done and perfectly delicious.

Maine (half eaten)

Maine (half eaten)


The food truck

The food truck

Categories: FL, Food, Places | Leave a comment