Keli: “I’m ready to go somewhere.”
Me: “Where do you wanna go?”
Keli: “I don’t know…ANYWHERE!!!”
Me: “Shouldn’t we at least decide on a general direction?”
Keli: “I’ll start packing.”

I’m also sure you’ve cleverly determined at this point that we headed south…at the end of July…and not just south, but about as far south as we can go…at the end of July…yeah…I know…

RV Maintenance Before Departure

I’m equally certain you have also determined what a manly man I am and how I enjoy (insist?) on doing my own maintenance on our stuff when it makes sense…and sometimes even when it doesn’t. I am, therefore, on a first name basis with our mechanic who politely bails me out of messes I end up getting myself into.

The RV was due for an oil change and fuel filter change. So, naturally I dove in head first with absolutely no experience on the Mercedes diesel chassis…but I had watched a YouTube video and was, of course, an expert by osmosis.

The reason I’m telling you this is because I did something wrong and had to address it on our voyage. My simple goof had an effect that I will likely tell folks about for centuries to come. It restored my faith in humanity.

I know that sounds a bit melodramatic, but during our current state of affairs in our beloved and beautiful country, we all need an occasional sign that things maybe aren’t as screwed as we are led to believe.

My brilliant mistake: I overfilled the oil.

Mercedes has a little digital screen in the middle of the dash that will display an error message sometimes when a warning light comes on. It’s pretty helpful since there are about 372 little warning lights that can come on…and those clever German engineers like to make them into symbols that require deciphering via the codex that is the owners manual. (The DEF fluid symbol looks like the van is passing gas in a rainstorm.) This time the little oil can symbol appeared with a message that said “Hi”.

Germans. When is the last time you’ve actually seen an oil can?

Anyway…we had decided to stick with two-lane roads which took us through all kinds of charming little towns. We stopped at a little tire shop on a Main Street in a cute little town somewhere in South Carolina so I could tell someone how bad I am at doing simple tasks and have my man card revoked. The experience couldn’t have been more perfect.

The little, 2-bay used-to-be-a-service-station-with-gas-pumps shop was clean and tidy and there wasn’t a customer in sight when I pulled into the parking area. I told the polite young man what an idiot I was and that I needed a little oil drained. As it turns out, this can be a difficult conversation to try and have with someone who doesn’t speak good English, but we eventually communicated and he very pleasantly did exactly what was needed and with a smile only charged me $5. He got a big tip.

When I imagine having vehicular issues while traveling, my mind drifts to a Mayberry-like experience where I find a small shop in a sleepy little town with nice folks who know what they’re doing and are happy to help. This is exactly what that was. It was very refreshing and really made my day.

Little Ocmulgee State Park

I believe successful traveling in an RV requires the ability to manage the highs and lows and keep expectations realistic. I am, mostly, a failure at that. Keli is very good at it. Arriving at Little Ocmulgee State Park in southern Georgia was a real disappointment. I suppose I was still riding high after the previous stop and now expected unicorns and rainbows for the duration of the trip.

On their website, this place looks great, with a lodge and a lake and activities…but because of the neverending pandemic, the only things operational at this park were the golf course and campground…but the rates were unchanged. It was only an overnight stop for us but it was incredibly disappointing. We were not there to play golf. We wouldn’t have anyway because it was 97 degrees. Our “pull through” site was poorly designed with a picnic table on the wrong side, very unlevel and barely enough room to extend our awning. It was also parallel to and adjacent to the campground road and, as we discovered, the choice congregating spot for everyone under 12 in the entire park. Ok…pretty trivial.

The condition of the bathrooms was not trivial. Possibly the dirtiest I’ve ever seen at a campground and no toilet paper in sight. I have the distinct feeling that there is NO management whatsoever at this place. If there were, they would have likely told Bubba with his jacked up truck that back-in sites are meant to be backed in to and not to drive head-in, up and over landscape timbers just because he’s too lazy to learn how to use reverse.
We won’t be back there.

Stops Along The Way

We really dig being able to stop at places that look neat. Sometimes we have a reason, sometimes we just need a break from driving.

I observed something during our two-lane journey south through South Carolina and Georgia this time: nearly every little town we passed through had railroad tracks running right through it. It really made me wonder about the histories of these places and if they sprung up because of the railroad or if the railroad came through because of the towns. Either way it was really fascinating to see the older buildings and the homes and how the houses and buildings changed as you moved away from the town and tracks.

We are really fortunate to live in an area that is inundated with craft beer and small, local breweries. In fact, we are so accustomed to it that it seems odd not to find breweries in every downtown area we pass through. Keli found this one for us and we REALLY wish it was closer to home.

Halpatter Brewing Company is one of those gems we really love to uncover on the road. It is the type of stop we will most likely include on our next southerly tour. Great folks working there, a small but diverse and well thought out selection of beers and really great food. This place is poised for success and if you are ever traveling anywhere near it, we HIGHLY recommend you make time to visit. And take home a selection of crowlers to share with your friends! We’ll be back!

Silver Springs State Park

Our first REAL destination on this adventure was Silver Springs State Park and, for the most part, it did not disappoint. This was pretty high on Keli’s priority list and it really was worth the effort…even though the museum and stores were closed. They are known for their glass bottom boat tours, but after seeing one from land, we don’t think we can recommend it. What we can both recommend is renting a kayak and paddling the loop. It is stunningly beautiful. We can’t wait to visit a few more springs like this.

It’s also worth noting that we stayed at the Silver Springs State Park Campground and (like most state parks) it was fantastic. It had VERY roomy sites, very clean, very up to date, and you can bike through the woods to get to the springs!

Check out our videos below and let us know what you think about Silver Springs!

Because we had sooooo much video from the paddling tour, Keli made an extended cut that you can watch below.

The post RVing to the Florida Keys – Part 1 -Silver Springs appeared first on RV Travel Blog.

So, obviously we haven’t posted anything in a while. Sometime shortly after we finished our inaugural 10-day road trip we wrote about here, we had to terminate an employee who (we discovered too late) was so unbelievably bad at her job that we had to do damage control for weeks afterward. Of course we were also looking for a new candidate to fill that position as well so we put off the travel plans we had lined up. We found a very, very good candidate and began the training process until…something called a Coronavirus happened.

I’m not going to go too deep into talking about the pandemic thingy because we’re all in uncharted waters and have no idea where we will end up at this point. All I can say for certain is that we’ll remember this for a long time and I’m glad we weren’t full-timing in our RV with no home base to hunker down in. I feel for all of you out there trying to figure out where to stay next and looking for toilet paper. There might be a surge in bidet sales for RVs after this, if there even is such a thing…

During this productive time of business repair and plague lockdown, we have done a LOT of cleaning (of everything) and prepping the rig for a departure sometime in the unquantifiable future. Since we returned from our 10-day adventure at the beginning of January and since we live someplace that does get cold, we winterized after unpacking. I prefer the compressed air method just because I don’t like the thought of chemicals in the water lines. No big deal. We did it the same way in the fall. This time as we were dewinterizing and getting her ready to high tail it to the nearest anyplace else as soon as this crap is over, something different happened. Something wet happened.

I’m a procedures guy. I’m a VERY linear-thinking procedures guy. I’m also pretty mechanically inclined. I’m not the least bit afraid to take stuff apart, figure out how it works and repair or replace whatever that stuff is. My brain catalogs that junk in a place that I can easily recall later. I might forget the names of my kids but by golly I can rebuild a carburetor that I haven’t seen since 1993. So when I started opening up water lines and flushing out the system in our beautiful, newly cleaned home on wheels, I was completely baffled when no water came out of 2 of the 3 water distributing devices on the rig. BAFFLED! Shower faucet: perfectly fine. Bathroom faucet: nada. Kitchen faucet: bone dry.

Being the confident American male that I am, I told Keli to read the damn owners manual while I keep looking critically at things I don’t know the names of with hopes that an intimidating stare will simply unbreak whatever is broken. She informed me that part of the procedure was to fill the fresh water tank and try using the water pump to send liquid to the sinks. That linear-thinking brain I was talking about earlier couldn’t fathom a logical reason why that would make any difference whatsoever, but I relented and flipped the valve to fill the tank. I waited. When it was full I went in and tested the pump method of water delivery to confirm I was right all along and the stupid owners manual is crap.

The next series of events felt a lot like three stooges episodes I remember as a kid. Water was most certainly being distributed, but not out of a sink. It was flowing freely from under the corner of the bed, which, coincidentally and curiously (I’d like to speak with your engineers), is exactly where the electrical panel is located. Keli was not in the RV. So here I go grabbing towels to throw down on the floor, running around to the back of the RV to unplug shore power, running back in the cabin to see what I can take apart quickly to determine where the hell the water decided to flow from that is clearly NOT a specified location in the owners manual.

There’s this new thing I learned about in RVs that looks like this:

According to the stupid manual, this thing is supposed to be checked, cleaned, maintained, blah, blah, blah…regularly and IF YOU’RE USING COMPRESSED AIR TO CLEAR YOUR LINES YOU SHOULD REMOVE THE BOTTOM BOWL SO YOU DON’T DAMAGE IT AND CAUSE A LEAK.
Stupid manual.

Do you have any idea what kind of idiots go to the camping store to buy a stupid water strainer they just broke in the middle of a pandemic?
Me neither.

Our leisurely day of cleaning and prepping our beloved mini-coach with starry eyed anticipation of the next voyage morphed into tools and RV parts and foul language scattered everywhere with panels removed, wet towels and tiny fans shoved into nooks and crannies while we crawled around attempting to dry out all the things that were never meant to have to be dried out.

New strainer installed, water tank filled (again), lines tested, little fans blowing into moistened RV nether-regions, water hose attached and live… kitchen faucet test: nothing. Bathroom faucet: same.

Do you know what other things RVs have that we discovered that day?
Faucet screens.

Do you know what faucet screens do?
They catch crud.

Do you know what we found in the strainer that some moron blew up and flooded the RV?
Crud.

Do you know what happens when faucet screens catch a bunch of crud? They don’t let water through.

Just read the stupid manual.

Happy camping and everyone stay safe out there!

The post Life, Pandemics and the Beginners Guide on How to Flood Your RV appeared first on RV Travel Blog.