Holiday camping with the family

My dad was in town, so we got him, his sister and her son and grandchildren to all go to Kissimmee Prairie Preserve state park for a weekend of camping. Here I thought I would let the elders have the coach beds, but they both chose to sleep in the tents. Our tent is the bigger one on the left. This is the equestrian loop, so there's only a composting toilet and no showers. They were not impressed until we told them to go to the main bathhouse. We used the bikes to get there. Nobody seemed to even want to set foot in our coach. But the sky was nice and clear, and we all spent time laying on the ground looking at the stars. We actually were in the road, the campsites had so much tree cover that we had to walk to the other side and laid tarps down. My cousin brought a bottle of wine, the kids had blankets and saw fireflies and so many stars.

This time of year is nice with the windows open.

Coach is full of wood for burning...

Pyroman - can't camp without a fire!

Kids in trees at night

Kids in trees in daytime

Sunset over the trees

My outdoor washing station had a visitor. I'm not sure how I'm even going to be able the wash that cutting board inside, I guess I'll have to use the tub.


We were able to go on the buggy ride, which gives you a tour of the preserve. The ground was wet, the buggy had some deep puddles to go through, but it was interesting. Especially considering there was a part of a Military Trail there, thinking about the poor men slogging through the wet marshes in the late 1800s. If you want to see a bit of old Florida, there's also land for sale nearby, reminding us of the old Florida swamp land sales. Still going on. Anyway, this park is also the only Florida habitat for the Crested Caracara bird, which normally is more in S and Central America. Definitely a cool bird.

Pair of Crested Caracara birds

Jonathan Dickenson State Park

JD - southern pine snake

We were only able to get wednesday and thursday nights at Fort Wilderness, so we moved on to Jonathan Dickenson State Park for Friday night. It's not our favorite, mainly because the trees shading the Pine Grove campground are all gone, but other parks were full. We rode our bikes to the lookout tower at night, and also went to the visitor center where we met JD out for a slither in the grass. He was recovering from an accident and it was the first time he had been outside in 6 weeks! Apparently someone dropped the cage top on his tail and broke something so they were being extra careful.

Outdoor kitchen

Pine Grove campground is no longer piney

Me driving curvy roads!

Use it while under construction...

Someone told us that many people buy one of these and gut it to fix it up and then for whatever reason, years may go by before it is usable again. So we cut out a plywood countertop and headed to Fort Wilderness for our somewhat annual Halloween camping trip. So not that things are hooked up in the kitchen or anything like that, but a countertop is good for putting stuff on. And Fort Wilderness is hard to get into, so we're technically at a tent site. John was a bit concerned, but it fit perfectly on the driveway. Our daughter said it's a lot like a rolling tent right now. We still have not gotten to the toilet, bathtub, shower , basically anything doing with the plumbing. Or the generator. Anyway, more fun, less work. We got lots of complements on our rig. The cast member at the checkin was quite impressed at how quickly John was able to back up to change lanes.

Tiki drinks at the Polynesian watching the fireworks at Magic Kingdom

Our site is positively minimalistic!

It's Halloween at Fort Wilderness. So many decorations!

Backside of our tent site. Could have brought our tent and more friends!

Monorails are cool!

View from Swiss Family Tree house!

Contemporary Resort at night

We are kind of minimalistic about the trip, we only go to the Magic Kingdom for the Not so Scary Halloween Party, and spend most of the time around the rest of the resort area. Bicycling, the pool, riding the monorail to the other resorts. Plus the Fort has so many decorated sites, there's contests for best decorated site, best decorated golf cart and so many other things to do. This was the one across the street from us.

Coach at work...

So in order to promote my school, we are participating in the Boynton Beach Haunted Pirates and Mermaids festival. It got used as a dressing room for my students and myself.

Parked on the other side of the tent

Planning the interior

Small bit is spoonflower sample.

So we have a general idea that we want a retro 70s tiki look. What does that mean? Bright Tropical prints, in yellows and reds. Wood goes with it well, maybe add some bamboo to add more exoticism. So I found some designs on Spoonflower I liked and had some samples printed. And hunted at Joanns and ebay for fabric too. So many choices. Oh and pinterest does not help. I did not know the the 70s had such space age cool looks too. Yes, it was known for being tacky and loud, but there was also a modern edge to some of it.

My pinterest ideas for decor

The Countertop

Still trying to decide what to do about the countertop. I spent the better part of two weeks removing the laminate but when I got to the last section, I cracked it. Then I broke the skinny piece completely off. We got a few chips to check out but nothing really matched or even coordinates. These were the best of at least 50 that we looked through.

The Gaucho Bed

A word of advice when buying something like this, make sure you look under everything. Did my husband look under the sheet on the bed or the nice little bag holder on the counter? No, he looked at mechanicals for the most part. Which, to his credit, he is a mechanical guy and nothing major showed up there. The frame rust would have required him to scoot under the GMC to find. But the bag holder was conveniently covering some water damage on the wall, and the sheet covered the water damage on the mattress. Yes, thanks for the sheets and blankets.

So when I looked at this bed, I had all sorts of questions. Why three parts? Why was the fabric different from the dinette? How did it get the stain? What is the cutout in the wall for? Why is there a padded bar(it's on the floor in the picture) and why is that not attached? Can we both sleep on it? In practice, not really. That one cushion against the wall is not as compressed at the rest, so it's uneven and I roll off it. I'm going to have to change the cushions.

Exterior Progress

We've been slowly cleaning off the decals. I would scrape the plastic off with a razor and John would clean off the residue with cleaning fluid. You can see the residue looks like a shadow sticker! You can really see the difference in the front, where half was cleaned off too.

Also, we opened up the hot water panel and found old wasp nests.

And things hanging down and more zip tied stuff!

Countertop

We like the retro look, and wanted to try to match the drink cabinet countertop, but the pressboard was pretty blown. I went on a hunt for new laminate of the same pattern - no luck. Even sent photos to various companies to see if they had any old stock. no luck.

Countertop out of the coach

Stove corner

Edge of stove cutout

End grain butcher block

I think that it could be possible to salvage the laminate. I will have to try different ways of removing the laminate.

Hunting for leaks - roof survey

So on the hunt for possible leak locations. The one leak seemed fairly obvious.

Cracked lights

Seam over the Driver side. Looks like one good culprit.

Top View of Driver side seam

Another cracked light

Side seam under the window

Lovely roof top view!

Ugh - Water damage!

So it is rainy season here in Florida, the coach has been sitting at home for all of 2-3 days and I see this -

The counter is cupped. The edge of the sink is not touching the counter anymore. Great. Also parts of the dinette chair is wet/stained. Hint to future buyers, look at all stains carefully! Apparently there were/are multiple leaks. I start peeling off the green carpet to find water destroyed wood panels.

Wood has delaminated

Black stain on chair

water damaged wood