Riverbend RV Resort, Fort Denaud, FL

Our April rally with the Suncoast Allegro Club was held at Riverbend RV Resort near Labelle, FL.  What a fine place this is. We can honestly say that this is the nicest RV facility we have been to, and one of only a handful of facilities we have seen that has earned the right to use the term “resort”. It is admittedly a high-end resort, and prices reflect this, but the landscaping is gorgeous. The facilities are immaculate and the staff and residents are very friendly. We are here after their high season, and many of the owner-residents have departed to the north. As such, most of the activities are no longer being offered and the restaurant is not open. The pool and adjacent clubhouse were available and we held our potluck dinners in the clubhouse. The RV sites are nicely spaced, fully paved, and each one offers a wonderful view of the several lakes or wooded areas.

Because we wished to extend our stay an extra day our originally booked site was changed and we ended up in a site that has seen little use over the past few years, and occasionally a neighbor would stop by asking if we were the owners since they had never seen anyone on this site. It has not been updated or extravagantly landscaped, but it was fine for us. It was a nice end lot looking out on a greenway and lake; nice and private. We loved it.

The view from our pull-in site.

We joined another couple in visiting the Edison Museum in Fort Meyers. The museum provides a history of Tomas Edison’s life and accomplishments. Edison and Henry Ford were close friends and Ford bought the property adjacent to the Edison estate. There were items in the museum that were Ford related, like a nicely restored flathead V-8 engine. The museum also has the restored laboratory used for Edison’s research in rubber production from plants native to North America. If you are in the Fort Meyers area the museum and estate tour are a worthwhile investment of our time.

 

Edison brought music into the home.

3kw DC current generator, or Dynamo.

Early Ford Flathead V-8 engine.

Edison and Ford went on extended camping roadtrips. This is the chuckwagon.

On Saturday the guys got together for a discussion of technical issues with the coaches, and the ladies took over the Nature Center crafts room to make Memorial Day Wreaths.

After gathering for Sunday breakfast the group broke up and headed home, but we stayed to enjoy a quiet Sunday catching up on motor home chores and just relaxing. This gave us the opportunity to finish installing the Magnashade windshield cover that arrived at the house just before we left. This is a mesh cover that blocks 80% of the sunlight from entering the coach through the windshield while camped. This cuts down dramatically the amount of heat the builds up during the day. It allows you to see out and enjoy the view, but provides privacy at the same time. The shade is held in place by very strong magnets. One set is stitched in to pockets on the shade. A matching set is adhered to the inside of the windshield. Installation amounted to lining up the interior magnets while the shade was held in place from outside. Once the interior magnet locations were set, the protective cover on the adhesive was removed and the magnets pressed in place. It takes a little time, but is not difficult. It does take two people and a ladder, but once the initial setup is done one person can put the shade in place without the need of a ladder. We find this to be a great improvement over our previous snap-on shade that did require a ladder to install each time. It was just enough hassle to cause the shade to go unused on short trips.

Magnashade in place. The wiper covers are separate pieces.

Orlando's 2016 MS Walk

I belong to the Orange County Communications Auxiliary here in Orlando. While it is meant to be a supplement to county operations in an emergency, we provide communications assistance to public events through the year as a means of exercising our equipment and maintaining our skills. The majority of these are cycling events, which cover large areas, but some are much smaller such as today’s MS Walk around the lake at Baldwin Park. It is a nice setting and a worthwhile cause.

I misunderstood the start time and arrived quite early, but it gave me a chance to enjoy coffee and a muffin while watching the sunrise over Lake Baldwin. Our roll was simply to provide eyes and ears to the event organizers. When you have several hundred participants of all ages and health it is important to monitor their progress and be ready to offer aid, if required. On as beautiful a day as this it was a pleasure to sit in the sunshine and chat with the folks as they came by. All age groups were represented, and many were wearing crazy costumes. It was a lot of fun, and much less work than following the progress of cyclists as they complete a one hundred mile course. 

It was a quiet, cool morning. Just right for a 2.8 mile walk around the lake.

All ages were represented and there were lots of dogs, too.

I even took a selfie! That doesn't happen often.

Stagecoach RV Park, St Augustine, FL

Close on the heels of our Sarasota rally with the parent Tiffin Allegro Club we set out for St. Augustine Florida and a weekend with the Suncoast Chapter of the club. We had about fifteen coaches, and that made it a much more enjoyable outing. We stayed at the Stagecoach RV Park on County Road 208 near the intersection of Hwy 16 and I-95. I can highly recommend this park. Like many, it can get a little muddy when it rains, but the staff is great and it is very convenient to everything in St. Augustine. Should you decide to stay here I suggest that you plan to disconnect the toad prior to going to the site. The utilities are towards the back of the sites, so you will want to stop short of the front of the site and park your toad in front of the coach. Speaking of utilities, the Stagecoach RV Park has the best WiFi of ANY park or resort we have stayed at.

We had Friday as a free day and took the opportunity to go to the beach with Bella. Bella loved it since there were so many new scents to explore. She had fun chasing the waves, too. The girl loves the water.

We enjoyed this, our second gathering with this group, but had to leave them Saturday morning to travel to attend my stepmother’s memorial service in Santa Barbara, California.

Tiffin Allegro Club Rally, Sarasota, FL

We are attending our second Tiffin Allegro Club rally in Sarasota, FL. Our first was in Orlando last year. The Allegro Club is the factory-sponsored club for Tiffin Motor Home owners. They have about a half dozen rallies across the country each year. They are usually quite large and this one turned out to be the largest so far. The RVing community is pretty social and there are several large clubs that bring people together. At the higher level are the manufacturer’s clubs and RVing association clubs. Tiffin and Winnebago clubs are an example of the former, and the Family Motor Coach Association and Good Sam’s Club are examples of the latter. There are many others in each category. These larger clubs have subchapters, which cater to regions of the country or special interests.

Every available space inside the fence was taken up by coaches.

Pretty tight spacing. No room for awnings.

Our attraction to the Tiffin Allegro Club rallies is part social and part practical. We enjoy meeting friends we have met on the road, and there are forums where we learn more about our coach and its subsystems. We also gain tips on how to travel and camp more comfortably. A big benefit of attending a Tiffin rally is that the manufacturer brings technicians that will perform three minor repairs to each RV at no charge. That is a big benefit. Scheduling and driving some distance for small repairs can actually become time consuming and expensive. I had an air conditioner repaired, two water inlet fittings replaced, and the cable TV input fitting repaired. Tiffin also brought technicians from the Lippert Company to perform a recall on the retracting steps leading into the coach. This saves scheduling and traveling to a dealer to have that modification done, and right now in Florida the lead time for a maintenance appointment is in the neighborhood of two months. Thank You, Tiffin!

Kirk and Phil were great guys and fixed my A/C. Thanks for your service, Kirk.

Approximately three hundred and fifty Tiffin motorhomes were at the rally. For the most part there are two people in each one, so it got crowded at mealtime. It is hard to feed that many people and have a quality meal. The breakfast buffet was fine, but let’s just say the evening meals were nothing special. The Sarasota Military Academy provided the student-servers and they did a bang up job serving this very large crowd.

A (not so) quiet evening with 700 of our closest friends.

You might wonder where you could hold such a big gathering. In this case it is the Sarasota Fairgrounds, and it turned out to be well suited to the task. There was sufficient parking for all of the motorhomes, as well as the sixteen 2016 coaches Lazy Days brought to display (they sold or got orders for over a dozen for their trouble). There were buildings for the forums and a large arena for meals. All in all it went well. The size of the event is a little outside our comfort zone, so we will not do this often. The smaller events put on by the subchapters are more to our liking, particularly those of the FMCA Four-Wheelers out west. We plan to join them for off-roading adventures in Spearfish, SD and Moab, UT this year so watch this space this fall. We also belong to the Suncoast Allegro chapter and we will be enjoying getting together with them four times this winter here in Florida.

Winfred Durand put together a video that shows the scope of this event:

 https://www.youtube.com/embed/kN9cl-2T3Bs

It wasn’t all about motorhomes. We managed to meet close friends of Barbara’s for lunch. It was worth the fight in traffic to join Tom and Sharon Smith for lunch at their beautiful home on Long Boat Key.

Freightliner Service Center, Gaffney, SC

Shame on me. Well, at least for part of the story.

We travel to Gaffney, SC each winter to have our motorhome serviced at the Freightliner Service Center. These are the people who build the chassis the motorhome sits on. They know their stuff, and they are great to deal with. Today has been no exception.

We limped out of Orlando Tuesday morning with a throttle issue that seemed to be overcome through the use of the cruise control. Once at speed everything was fine, so we only had trouble when we stopped at a rest stop and had to get going again. Yesterday it was a bit more problematic and we felt lucky to have made it here. Needless to say, our confidence in the RV for a long haul trip was weakened. Today the tech checked all of the possible electrical connections in the involved circuit and found no fault. He made an adjustment to a parameter in the control unit that should allow the throttle to override the low voltage error the computer was seeing, and a test ride had no repeat of the issue. Still, our concern remained because this has been intermittent. It is hard for a tech to fix what is not broken when he checks. Last year we experienced the same symptom as we approach Gaffney. The solution was to replace the throttle sensor, which is actually an assembly that includes the pedal and bracket. It is an $800 part! That replacement did solve the problem for a year and 10,000 miles. Yet, here it is again. We elected to go for the sensor replacement again. It will increase our confidence, but there is still no guarantee. We shall see.

So much for the good news. Now for the whine. Wasn't National Whine Day last week? Maybe that was Wine Day, but I digress. We also intended to replace the shocks on the motorhome with top of the line Konis. Folks say they improve handling and the ride, and with our last coach an upgrade in shocks was noticeable. They were just not Konis. Konis are supposed to be a bit better than the brand we used before, so we shall see. Just not today. Or, tomorrow. Well, maybe a little. It turns out that shockwarehouse.com sent the incorrect shocks for the front of the coach. When they arrived at the house I noted a difference in the size of the boxes. I checked the part numbers and they seemed correct. Here is the mia culpa. I only checked the last four digits of the part numbers, and from memory to boot. The tech brought the bad news: "not even close". I have sent an email to shockwarehouse.com with a photo of the box with the part number and a copy of their order confirmation. They are not a match. I expect this will all work out, except for the inconvenience and added expense of getting them mounted elsewhere. I will post how this works out, and how shockwarehouse.com handles their error.

I wish that was the end of the bad news today. It can't be good when the tech asks you to step into the shop and says, " I have something you need to see". In this case what he wanted me to see was damage to the fuel tank caused by an improperly mounted steering stabilizer. The steering stabilizer is called a Safe-T-Plus. It is a great addition to any motorhome. We swear by them after our front tire blowout in west Texas. They really help maintain control. Anyway, it turns out that when this item was installed by Lazy Days in Florida when we bought the coach, they failed to do two things. First, there is a spacer that must be installed to provide adequate clearance from the fuel tank, and second, a clearance check is supposed to be performed to insure that the spacer used was adequate. Didn't happen obviously. A call to Safe-T-Plus uncovered this shortcoming and they are happy to send the proper spacer and longer bolt if needed. Aside from a little inconvenience on my part, a happy ending. Yea!

Tomorrow we get the new pedal assembly installed and head to Bluffton, SC for dinner with Nina and Archie Sellew. That is always an experience that will wash away whatever ails you. Such great people.

If the next post is just to let you know how the shockwarehouse.com experience turns out, all is well.

EDIT: Shockwarehouse.com failed to respond to multiple attempts to contact them through email, phone, their website and Facebook. They only responded when I initiated a dispute resolution through PayPal. I eventually got the correct shocks, but I am now looking for a trusted place for the install.

Golden Retriever Rescue of Mid-Florida

Golden Retriever Rescue of Mid-Florida held its twenty-fifth annual reunion at Parker Lake Park in Lakeland, FL today. Barbara is a foster coordinator for the organization and very active with the group. For days in advance she was filling 136 gift bags for all of the registrants. This morning she left very early to deliver the bags and help get the venue set up for the arrival of fosters, adopters and lots of dogs.

It is always a fun day, and this was no exception. There was a food vendor, DJ, dog masseuse, and the DogLypics. Sea Scouts helped with dog walking and selling of raffle tickets. There was also a silent auction of dog-related items. For the most part all of the dogs got along and enjoyed the day. It is a great opportunity for fosters to again meet the dogs that spent time in their homes while awaiting their forever family. In many cases it is also a time for the adopted dogs to meet dog friends from their foster homes. Our dog, Bella, for example, got to spent time with Cooper who is a tripod living with her original foster family. Only having three legs does not slow Cooper down in the least. The two had a ball playing with one another. All in all it is a wonderful experience.

The DogLympics gave the dogs a chance to show their stuff. There were several events like the ball toss and agility course. Bella entered two food related events and, considering her strong food focus, we had high expectations. First was the Bobbing for Bisquits event and Bella was in a three-way tie for first place. A bob-off followed and an over-coached competitor narrowly edged her out of the gold. Bella was again nudged away from the gold in the Popcorn Toss by the same dog with the over achieving human assistant. She has since told us that she expects to focus on these events over the upcoming year so that she can be triumphant in the 2017 rematch.

Bella took silver in two events!

Savannah, GA

We took an extra day on the way home from North Carolina this trip to visit Savannah, GA. We stop at a no-frills campground in Hardeeville, SC on our way to and from North Carolina and it just a twenty-minute drive down Highway 17 to downtown Savannah.

I lived in Savannah for two years while stationed at Hunter Army Airfield in the late sixties. It was fun to drop by the areas I remembered from that time. There are many changes of course, for example the row house my apartment was in has now been combined with several others to be an inn. It is called The Savannah Bed & Breakfast Inn on West Gordon. We got a chance to walk through it and plan to return sometime and stay there. It is just around the corner from Forsyth Park. We parked on the square and walked the area. It is amazing how beautiful the area is, though it was largely lost on me as a 22 year-old Vietnam returnee.

119 West Gordon. Fond memories from the 60s.

The lobby of the inn that now incorporates my old apartment.

Mrs. Wilkes’ Boarding House was a mainstay eatery for me then, and it was nice to see that it was still operating under the ownership of Mrs. Wilkes’ granddaughter. We found no waiting (unusual most times of the year) so we went in and were seated with seven others at a large table. We were a mix of visitors and locals. Three were from England, two from Atlanta, two owners of a men’s wear shop on Broughton, and the two of us from Florida. The family style setting is conducive to mingling and having a nice conversation, and it all starts with “pass the peas”. The fried chicken was every bit as good as I remembered, but there was also beef stew and pork. There were more sides than I could recall as I write this. There were twenty some odd bowls on the table. When done you clear your own plates and take them to the kitchen. What a great time it was. If in Savannah, and the line is not down the block, give it a try. Just remember it is cash only.

So much food; so little time.

When we were here a few years ago the campground at Hunter Army Airfield had just opened. We found it to be a mud hole that time, so we thought we would drive through and see if things had been improved. Turns out they have not. If you have a large RV and are not into “rustic” camping I would pass on Lott Island Campground at Hunter AAF. There is one site, #16, which seems high enough and was dry. The remainder did not seem suitable for our needs and were muddy despite two clear and warm days since the last rain.