Shakedown to Pensacola on I10

Sure shook down a lot on this three day two night trip. We stopped at a rest area around mile marker 318 about 10:30 a.m. or so but then on exiting we hit a swarm of love bugs … now you non-Floridians may not know about love bugs but they fly all over mating on the wing incessantly (hence the name of course). They are also icky sticky bug guts … now the Wolf is icky (see windshield pic insert) and buggy and our bug scrubber is woefully too short to get rid of much of anything, the windshield becomes a smeary mess. 

I had just been sort of congratulating myself that I could read and do some stuff as we traveled which I have never been able to do without getting rapidly car sick and was putting it down to the huge windshield letting me see the moving road while I did stuff … but I quickly discovered that the smeary windshield was definitely bothering my vision. The arc of smear caused by the wipers seemed to be the worst and at our next stop we got it slightly improved with the remaining up and down smears not being as visually troubling.

We did stop at a BP truck stop at exit 217 for filling up both us and the Wolf. The restaurant was run by a local church group trying hard to do a nice job. Quite southern and I had fried okra and fried gizzards while Ohio boy Geoff went for a burger which he said was excellent, nice to do something different than the chain eateries.

For some reason our gas purchase was limited to $100 so we didn’t quite fill the tank. And stopped again down the road apiece to fill it up the rest of the way and find an extended handle windshield scrubber.

We stayed at the Pensacola RV Park which is a nice helpful family run place. As novices we had some hookup issues which was some straightened out by Friday morning but have also discovered a lot of heat comes off the engine cover area between driver and passenger, the shower leaks (nice puddle in adjacent corner of bedroom) and the toilet likes to stop up … NOT FUN! But then that is what shakedown cruises are for and we’ll email the General RV dealership tonight and call them Monday!!!

The darling man at the RV park came by Friday and helped get our windshield cleaned up and told us that probably one of the biggest problems RV’ers have is stopped up toilets!!!

As planned, on Friday Geoff went off in a rental car to the National Naval Aviation Museum and I hung around the coach to tidy up and organize and such, more fun for me than a stupid museum full of airplanes! That’s part of the whole charm of the trip of course, Geoff can go spend all the time he wants at these museum places I could care less about while I relax, reading my Kindle and puttering around and he doesn’t have to worry about my comfort. Of course I am sure there will be times when the shoe is on the other foot!

 

He returned mid -afternoon bearing gifts: a sweet little stuffed bear who I am informed is named Butch after Edward ‘Butch’ O’Hare, the Navy’s first flying ace for whom the airport in Chicago is named; some delicious banana bread which we had for dessert and then polished off in the morning for breakfast; and in case you don’t recognize that spiral looking thing behind the bear, a toilet plunger although sad to say we are still having trouble with the potty <sigh>!

We got home safely Saturday evening and promptly started working on the list of “stuff we did not have” and more lists of things to do and take care of.

In case you missed the “announcement” the Wolf’s full name is:

                Timmber Wolf