And So We Move Again...

I continue to be amazed at the "Catch 22" situations we end up getting into with club memberships. We were staying at Potlatch RV Park which is a reciprocal club with both RPI (Resort Parks International) and ROD (Resorts of Distinction), both of which we have memberships with. They both have a rather strange rule which provides that you may only stay 7 nights -- instead of the usual 14 -- at any resort within 125 air miles of your home address. I guess it kinda makes sense if you are a part-time RVer -- they don't want you hanging out at a nearby camp-site all summer.

However, if you are a full time RVer, what difference does it make where your mail (and address of record) goes? They also have another rather obscure rule (at least the camp manager here had never heard of it before!) that you cannot combine the days you have with RPI and ROD! or use them one after the other!

What it amounts to is that Potlatch RV has several empty sites. We cannot move to our new campsite at Riverbend RV until August 4 when they have an opening (unless one guy moves out this weekend like he's been hinting to the managers...). We would have liked to just stay at Potlatch -- and pay for the extra days -- and the manager would have liked to fill one of his empty slots. But, both the ROD and RPI reservations people on the telephone told him that he would be voiding his contract with them (though one of the operators had told us that the campground could waive the 125 mile rule...) if we did so...

So we packed up and moved a half hour or so down the road to park in front of Daughter Mary Mae's house. It isn't ideal since it's a pretty narrow dead end road. Fortunately, there is only one house on the road beyond theirs, so we're not inconveniencing too many people. We have an extra 50 amp extension cord -very heavy - that we store here so that we can plug in at the end of the house.

 Son-in-law Scott and Granddaughter Claire are off tonight to Blackrock/Rexville Amphitheatre for another performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor. MM is the stage manager, so she went along as well to deal with any emergencies that come up as well as last-minute details for tomorrow's Iron Man when the troupe will perform all three shows starting at 1 PM.

Movin' On

We got up and got going fairly early this morning and pulled out of Bee's RV Park by 10:30 even with putting all of the Christmas stuff away. We really didn't move to far, just a couple of hours south to Peace River RV Park near Wauchula. I don't think we've traveled a single leg of all our travels this year without running into this --

Road construction is just part of the game -- and in this part of the world they don't have to stop for snow and ice!

We definitely were in orchard country today! We passed miles of orange groves --

And lots of trucks full of oranges --

These mesh sided trailers looked really neat all filled with fruit --

I think we passed a juice processing plant. There was no signage that we could see, but there sure were a lot of trucks heading that way --

It sort of reminded me of home. Instead of wheat or potatoes or onions along the road that had bounced off of the trucks, there were oranges.

Then we began to see the empty trucks heading back out to the orchards --

We actually drove past the RV park which was on the other side of the four-lane divided highway and had to make a U-turn at the next corner to get back to it. We made reservations at Peace River RV Park through our Resort Parks International (RPI) membership, but it actually is a large (400 plus sites) Thousand Trails facility. It's the only park we have ever been at (except for a couple very small self-service parks in the west) where we were NOT assigned a site!

The lady at the desk showed us the park map, showed us the areas that "were pretty full," and the sites where we "might get satellite service," and then told us to "call her and let her know what site we parked in..." It reminded me a bit of flying Southwest Airlines with the people evidencing the same kind of rather rude pushy behavior.

There were two rigs, and then a third, rig that pulled in behind us. While we were unhooking Toad (as advised by the lady in the office) so that we could check out the available sites, they pulled around us with their tows still attached. Keep in mind that this is an older park with fairly narrow roads. They went racing up and down the roads looking for sites. I watched one of them come around the same area three times...! There are actually quite a few empty sites, I counted at least twenty as we drove around in Toad. And there are fifty or sixty more in the area with only water and electric hookups.

In the meantime, we had found a spot down towards the end of the sites with sewer hook-ups. All of the sites are back-ins as the pipes in between are not buried very far below the surface and are vulnerable to breaking if driven over. While I waited in Toad at the site for Forry to drive Auntie Violet down to it, I watched one of the later-comers actually pull around and pass him on that narrow road!

We are sitting in a site that is oriented north-south, so we could look out the Auntie Violet's and watch this gorgeous sunset tonight.

Finally, FLORIDA!

This morning we left Styx River RV Park in Alabama to head for Florida. I picked up my Mother's Day lavender plant (a present from Granddaughter Claire) that sits by the front door of Auntie Violet when we are parked. As I was getting ready to put it on the floor in the front seat of Toad, I noticed movement. At first I thought it was another leaf. Can you spot what I found?

It was a pretty straight shot east on Interstate 10 into Florida. I-10 is a four-lane highway in very good shape. We only ran into one small slow stretch of bridge construction. (It is very unusual not to run into a GREAT deal of construction!) We stopped at the Florida Welcome Center and picked up a couple of maps and a whole passel of brochures. We are planning to be in Florida for a couple of months, so we should find lots to explore.

We turned off on State Highway 231 and headed south about fourteen miles to Pine Lake RV Park. This is one of the parks affiliated with our Resort Parks International membership, so we are staying here for a week at $15 per night for a 50 amp site.

Before we left this morning, I sat down and wrote out several checks for our annual insurance fees (the bills came in that batch of mail yesterday...). We'll have to make a run into town and the post office in the morning.