Pecan Park in North Jacksonville

At first things seemed to be happening in dribs and drabs but all of a sudden it’s like going into overdrive or something! I’ve been trying to learn the Puppy Pad – the Rand McNally RV Tablet GPS thingy. I’m learning to like some things about and frustrated at the learning curve although I have discovered that it really helps to read the manual about whatever it is I am trying to do! But more about the ins and outs of the Puppy Pad as we travel, tis enough to say here that using the Quick Planner we have roughly plotted out the trip and it looks like about two months and ten thousand miles!

Tax season ended Monday, April 18^th, so Tuesday the 19^th we took off for our first overnight trip heading just an hour away to the north side of Jacksonville to meet up with my RV’ing cousins, Scott and Cindy Pride at Pecan Park RV Park. It’s a nicely laid out park with long pull through slots which make getting in place easy. Scott and Cindy showed up shortly after we did and Geoff was glad to see Scott and his setting up experience, mostly the plugging in to the electricity and hooking up to the water etc. We survived and had a lovely dinner at their terrific Tiffin Allegro RV and got a good few tips about managing on the road since they spend about six months out of the year traveling.

We got ourselves unhooked and unset from being in place in the morning although it was definitely reassuring to know expert help was nearby. It is great finding that our mattress is comfortable and that The Wolf will be comfortable enough. We got back to St Augustine in time for our afternoon appointment and then ran up to WalMart for some of those forgotten odds and ends finally collapsing at home, rather exhausted.

Thursday we delivered The Wolf to Camping World so they could install front and rear sway bars and a steering stabilizer on Friday. Of course when we called Friday afternoon about picking it up they had discovered that the rear sway bar had been mismarked on the box and was the wrong one! Fortunately the three installs are separate items and we were good to go with the front bar and stabilizer done, doomed to wait for the backordered rear sway bar which will show up hopefully in less than the 30 days they mentioned.

I dropped Geoff off to pick The Wolf up and take it to storage* this morning and he took the opportunity for a short run on the Interstate to try out the changes. He reports that it makes a big difference in the handling and steering even without the rear sway bar in yet. But, his adventure wasn’t over yet. On arriving at the storage place he hopped out and entered his code at the gate, getting back in to drive through … but the gate opened and closed before he could drive in! He then maneuvered The Wolf to the other side and put the code in again and rushed back into the beats, managing to get it through before it closed!

He parked Wolf and retrieved his car, returning home so we could head south to Daytona to check out some places for the intercom we are looking for. Just in case any of you have a brilliant idea we’re wanting some way to communicate with each other when we are traveling in The Wolf that will counter any road noise or Geoff’s loss of some hearing. Heading up for Pecan Park I had to raise my voice to help with navigation which was okay for an hour but we have a whole lot of longer stretches than that!

NOTE: no images in this one, just a few links added on the blog

*for those who might be unfamiliar with Florida developments such as the one we live in, not only is there no room to keep an RV but there is a restriction against it.