Or at least the current one.

Or…..No One in Florida Gets Scurvy.  (We are swimming in fruit.)

So what’s boondocking you say?  We Americans have a wonderful way of converting nouns to verbs.  When I was a teenager (oh, so long ago) the boondocks were waaaay at the end of the road.  To us, it stood for where we lived, No-Wheresville.  These days, boondocking means dry-camping, or parking your RV wherever you want, without needing electricity, water, or a sewer hookup.  It implies you don’t need to stay in actual campgrounds, that you are free as a bird and totally self-contained.

Boondocking is wonderful.  It is, however, a challenge at times.  We are learning how to solve problems and to enjoy an evening with flashlights when the batteries in the coach suddenly tell you they are low.  Boondocking is definitely for us, we love it.  It reflects our feelings about not intruding on the environment, about looking into more solar panels so we can stay out longer, about being closer to our original ideas of tent-camping.  After you spend a week in a “full hookup” campground, squeezed next to a couple who spend all their time right outside your window talking to the folks back home on their cell phone, where the shuffleboard players are on teams and they wear matching shirts and shorts (and caps and socks) ….. well, you get the picture.  I’m really just describing Florida in the winter, and telling you there are parts of it that we don’t like, but you aren’t surprised.  We’ll be here until after Bike Week at Daytona (the first week in March), then we’re moving on.

We spent a couple of killer days in the Everglades, and wished we had stayed longer.  We boondocked; it was neat.  The Everglades are swell.  Zillions of birds close to you and not caring; alligators everywhere (they certainly cared, though!).  We walked the Anhinga Trail; if you are ever in the Everglades, you MUST, MUST take the time for this walk.  It’s a walk along a waterway.  It was late in the day, and the fish were feeding on the bugs, the birds were feeding on the fish, and the alligators were after both.  Rick took pictures, although he was annoyed with himself for not having the right camera with him, and vowed that would never happen again.  He was almost out of film, too, which really frustrated him.  We’ll be back.  The anhinga is a particularly spectacular bird that is very common in the area.

Staying in the same campground with us was a French couple with their three small children.  We made friends, exchanged e-mail addresses, and have been corresponding.  My French is putrid, but they speak some English, and we expect to have fun keeping in touch.  They have shipped their small European motorhome over, have just recently arrived, will be in the States until August, and have given us their address at home, north of Paris.  Neat!

Upon leaving the Everglades, we moved through Tampa, where we spent a couple of days getting some final work done on both the coach and trailer, and then up into central Florida north of Orlando.  It’s lake country, full of small towns, and we are quite pleased to be here.  Florida is so flat, Rick has decided FL stands for flat.  And the water table is very high, of course.  There’s lots of water, despite recent drought problems.

One advantage of the flatness is that it is a great place for old kids like us to begin bicycling.  As you can see from the attached photo though, as beginners we feel we can still justify taking the motorcycle when tackling the higher elevations.

Latest oddity seen in the grocery store: pork brains in milk gravy.  I decided not to indulge – and didn’t even mention it to Rick.

We’re enjoying being back in the Tampa vicinity.  Rick has developed a fondness for the Buccaneers (football team, sillies).  I told you earlier about the continuing coverage when the owners fired Tony Dungy, and then horsed around about hiring his replacement.  As we drove back into the area, we passed a small church with one of those hand-lettered signs saying “Unlike the Buccaneers, God knows what he’s doing.”  We loved it.

And right after we got back, we picked up one paper saying the owners were in talks with Steve Marriucci, and Rick had a fit.  Then the next day the papers said they had hired Jon Gruden.  That’s really really cool.  We are pleased.  We have now adopted the Bucs as our east coast team.  You should see all the hoopla in the papers over Gruden.  The coming of the Sun King.  Well, I for one think he deserves it.  Let’s see what they can do this next year.  Anything less than a super bowl appearance will leave the locals disgruntled, of course.

But you say it’s not football season???  We know that!  It’s spring training in Florida.  And we went to Opening Day, in Lakeland.  We saw the Pittsburgh Pirates vs. the Detroit Tigers (Lakeland is their Florida home).  It was pretty hoky, but we had a good time.  Surprisingly expensive; we spent $40 between parking, tickets, and food.  We’ve been to Giants games for less.  No we haven’t, says Rick.  Oh, well.

We are making new friends in each park where we stay, and it’s a delight.  We come in, with our Trek and our Gold Wing, and attract others with one or the other.  There are lots of Wing riders out there, and we always compare notes on travels and such.  Many people right now are getting ready to go up to Daytona for Bike Week, and they share where the best places are for seeing things.  And what to stay away from.  People who own Treks are very loyal too, and we all seek each other out.  We are learning lots from other owners on what to do about things, and how to use your space most efficiently.  Other people in the park always have heard of Treks, but some people have never seen one.  So we get the curious coming by to take a look.  It’s the bed that intrigues them.  They love the fact that we have so much floor space as a result, but aren’t sure they want to climb into bed each night.  Oh well, we love it.

New sights:  we’ve been through Webster, which says it’s the flea market capital of the country.  Flea markets are very popular in Florida, and are more like our swap meets than anything else.  Webster, evidently, has 4000 tables when it’s at its peak.  We didn’t indulge.  But then, passing through Orlando, we came across Flea World, which claims to be America’s largest.   And the WORLD’S LARGEST MCDONALDS.   Also self-proclaimed.  So there you have it. 

More fun, we saw a local Red Lobster Restaurant that delivers – in an old red Volkswagen bug painted bright red and sporting a huge red lobster on its roof!  We also saw a sign in front of a house in the country saying “Primitives for Sale” ----- I pondered that one for awhile and came to no good conclusions.  And a sign on a commercial business building saying they sell pre-peeled fruit.  What do you suppose that means?

But the most enterprising company is a termite control group throughout central Florida called Truly Nolan Pest Control.  Besides having a great name, they had good attention-grabbing stuff like an old car along the road filled with rodents carrying semi-automatics, and big signs on their trucks proclaiming “Adios, Cucarachas”.

Rick, the wonderful, creative man that he is, has devised a way of moving our television from its (stupid) spot above the driver’s seat., which is where they are located in the majority of RVs.  It now resides in the center of our home, in a box built especially for it.  This is all quite hard to explain, so please just take my word for it that Rick is absolutely the best person ever!  He really can do most anything.

As we send this message to all of you, we are in Crescent City, a small community (the bass capital of the world ….. just how many times have we all seen that before!), about 30 miles outside Daytona Beach.  We are spending the week here, going to bike races, looking at accessories, hanging out with friends, and (last night) surviving a large rainstorm.  It is supposed to get down into the 20s tonight, so we’re glad to have filled our propane tanks.  Let it snow if it wants to!  As some of you know, we are coming back to the West Coast at the end of the month, and will be in San Luis for a few days the first week of April.  Maybe we’ll see you then.

Bye for now…

Kathy & Rick

See more photos from 2002-2003

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