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February 2016

Off Season Beach

by Richie

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Panama City Beach
Florida

We’ve been spending our vacation at this beach community during the off season. There’s a lot of advantages to visiting this area before the Spring Break degenerates descend – the restaurants are nearly empty, shops and services are waiting for customers, and the beaches have plenty of room to stretch a blanket.

Of course the disadvantage of off-season camping is the variable weather. We were fortunate to catch a week’s worth of mild and sunny climate, but then the day we were scheduled to leave, Tuesday, the elements changed. A strong front was surging from the west, bringing a string of tornados from the Panhandle up through the Wire Grass (mid-Alabama). The storm was tracking along the same route that we would need to travel home, and the following day was expected to bring fierce winds. So a quick decision was made to extend our stay an additional two nights here at St. Andrews State Park in Panama City Beach. It was a wise choice, as tornados did crop up all around us last night, ripping through an RV park in Pensacola, just west of here, and killing a bunch of campers. Yikes!  

We’ve spent the day indoors today, snuggling in the new motorhome as the winds whip across the lagoon and swirl through the campground. It’s given me a chance to sort out our vacation pictures and catch up on some paperwork.  

Here’s the highlights of our trip – 

We took the new RV out to the beachfront to snap some Hero Shots. I’ll need to update the masthead picture for this blog to feature The Flying Mantis III.hero

 

 

The food has been suburb in this area, and we’ve gorged on seafood at every opportunity. Recommended restaurants are Schooners (Sunday brunch with a beach view), Hammerhead Fred’s (50 beers on tap), Sharky’s (good lunch spot), and Half-Baked (oyster dive). We also boiled up a pound of fresh-caught Gulf shrimp using local spices and their recipe – boil for 5 minutes, soak for 25. Don’t skip the soak! 

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Many creatures were spotted in and around the state park, including tame deer that are so small the buck looks like a reindeer. Sea birds of every type ply the waters of both the lagoon and the gulf. Lizards, frogs, and snakes are found in the margins of the marshes. And the nastiest creature we encountered was our own puppy who is busy cutting her adult teeth. Makes her very cranky and disagreeable for a few days.

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St. Andrews, where we are camped, is a large park with diverse ecosystems and plenty of walking trails. The Gator Lake area is a fresh water pond with looping trails through hanging Spanish moss. And, yes, there are alligators in that water. I think Coco could take one with her new set of choppers. gator

 

At the end of the park’s peninsula is a salt water marsh with many hiking trails that twist through the bogs of saw palmettos and wander among sandy brackets. We spotted odd formations of button moss and found wild rosemary and licorice-smelling sage. It was a two-hour stroll around this area, which proved to be more strenuous than the puppy could manage so she needed to be carried home the last half-hour. marsh

 

This was an enjoyable off-season beach vacation, and I even got to spend a few afternoons on the shore with my sand chair and a lavish appointment of sun screen. And it will be a comfortable ride home tomorrow under sunny, calm skies.

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Six New Tires

by Richie

 

Thor Ace

Panama City Beach
Florida

We bought six new tires. They are attached to a brand new Thor Ace motorhome.

Talk about a souvenir from Florida!

We traded in our nearly 10 year old Coach House (Class B+) for this new 29-foot Thor Ace (Class A – gas powered).

The new rig is huge compared to our old RV. It sports two slide-outs and a large bedroom with enough closet space to fit a Hollywood wardrobe. It’s fitted on a Ford F53 chassis, which is a bus frame, so it will ride a lot smoother with less road bumps compared to our old “Bread Truck” style frame.

The Ace has a decent size kitchen including an oven, a big bathroom with roomy shower, couch, dinette, and the driving seats swivel around to become a cocktail area with a table between. There’s also a motorized sleeping loft above the cab that drops down – a good place to stuff the puppy when she gets rowdy!

On the outside are half a dozen giant storage bins. You could pack a whole band in there. And there’s some other outside features that we will probably never use – like an outdoor TV, and a second kitchen with fridge & sink. One thing I do like is the special BBQ grill that hooks up to the RV propane tank – no charcoal needed.

Overall the Fit & Finish quality of the Thor Ace is a bit below the luxury appointments of our old Coach House. But it’s roomy and brand new. And after three rear tire blow-outs, I was ready to move into something newer and safer.

So we are spending the rest of the week in Florida camping in the new rig. Quite the vacation souvenir!

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TCB in PCB

by Richie

camp

Panama City Beach, Florida

After two days of short driving due to tire issues, we made the final long distance run to the Florida Panhandle on Tuesday, settling into camp just at dusk and flopping into bed at 9:00.

The rest of the week we’ll be Taking Care of Business (TCB) in Panama City Beach (PCB).

Our campsite in St. Andrews State Park has a stunning view across the Grand Lagoon to the mainland. In the dark blue waters pelicans dive for fish and sailboats gently rock in their moorings. At night the lights of Panama City twinkle across the bay.

Dawn brings a naval-orange sun over the lagoon. I know this because I was up that early. Coco and I took a long walk around the camp in the thin morning hours, shambling over to the boat launch. In the summer months a water taxi embarks from here for excursions to the mainland and nearby Shell Island, also part of the state park.

After finishing up the rest of the morning in a lazy loll of pajamas and coffee, we all took a stroll through the sandy brackens up to the park entrance to meet the rental car chauffeur.

I reserved a cheap-o compact car from Enterprise ($99 for the week) but received a swanky new mid-size Chrysler 200 instead. No complaints there!

So now we’ve got the whole week to run around this swell beach town, eat at every seafood place we can find, and spend a good chunk of time each day on the sand.

TCV – Taking Care of Vacation!

pier pics

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This Blows

by Richie

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Birmingham, Alabama

This morning we were waiting at Camping World when the doors opened to have our rear tire checked out – the inside dually on the left looked soft to me. Camping World didn’t have our size in stock, so they sent us to a tire store some 6 miles away. There a young fella walked around the coach, kicked the tires a bit, and proclaimed everything A-OK.

Well, I felt like a complete fool. I was a Nervous Nelly last night and insisted we stop in Nashville because I thought we had a bad tire.

Many apologies were issued to my forgiving husband and we headed south again. It poured all day. Nasty, stormy weather with me trying to shake off the tire anxiety. And then a couple hundred miles later … the tire blew.

Mother Hubbard.

Happened just as we passed the exit for Birmingham. Right on the overpass. Only it was the right hand dually, not the left one that I had been suspicious about. BLAM! Thumpa Thumpa.

We pulled over immediately, just above a spot on the highway embankment where a tow truck was retrieving a car out of the ditch. An elderly couple had slid off the road in the pouring rain. I flagged down the tow driver and in short order he was examining our shredded tire. Needs to be replaced was the obvious verdict. At a tire store, he said, pointing across the interstate.

Lights flashing, he led us slowly down the wrong way on the highway ramp, blocking oncoming traffic, and right into the Firestone dealer.

After a long wait in the Firestone parking lot, a new $188 tire was installed. By then it was well after dark and the worst of the storm front was bearing down on us with lightening and buckets of rain. So we slid down the road a mile or so on new rubber and pulled into a WalMart parking lot. Most WalMarts permit overnight parking for RVs and truckers, and there was already small enclave gathered in the back lot when we settled in for the night.

This sure has been a lot of fuss just to get somewhere fun!

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Valentine Surprise

by Richie

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Nashville, TN

It’s Valentine’s Day and we are headed out for a romantic getaway to the closest beach. The drive will take a couple of days because we move pretty slow and lazy-like in the RV and the nearest spot for sun & surf is quite far away.

Today’s trip held a couple of surprises – the first was driving through a dense snow shower in the morning. That storm system wasn’t supposed to arrive until evening, but it made an early appearance at the Tennessee border. A bit of a white knuckle drive, especially when combined with the second surprise: A bad tire. Again.

I should hardly be surprised at this anymore. Lately any long-distance trip we undertake has involved emergency tire replacement. Even though we have Six Brand New Tires on the coach.

The tire in question is the same one we had to replace on the fly last August when traveling south. (We got 6 whole months out of it! Not bad for our luck.) The bum tire has gone soft, thumping and wobbling, and is just plain unsafe.

So we aborted the day’s drive several hours early to tuck into a KOA campground in Nashville. Being a Sunday, there are no tire stores open today. We selected this overnight spot because it is right beside a giant Camping World service center. In the morning we’ll be the first in line at the service counter for repairs.

Meanwhile, this campground is also next door to a favorite crazy restaurant we like – Cock of the Walk. Thus a delicious Valentine dinner was enjoyed there tonight and we managed to make the best of this unintended stop.

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