The coach was 51 when I went to bed and 51 when I woke up, so that was better than it being colder!
I did wake up around 3 or 4 and put my hoodie on to use the toilet as I just had warm PJ pants and a tshirt on. I ending up keeping the hoodie on and over my head and went back to sleep that way.
At 8AM I was jostled awake to what sounded like someone knocking on the door. I called out wait a minute I'm up, and extricated myself from under the blankets. I sleepily stumbled toward the door and opened it up. No one was there except a full grown turkey who got spooked by the door and ran around in a circle and left around the side of the coach.
I was understandably befuddled as I was sure there was a knock on the door, but the kids were still asleep in the tent. Later I was talking to a guy 2 sites over and told him the turkey knocked on my door and he told me he was watching that morning peck at it's reflection in the chrome center caps on my coach. Ah, now it made sense as I was on the gaucho bed right over the two rear wheels.
Right away I knew it would be a lot warmer today as it was already warmer outside than in the coach. I opened a few windows to let it breath and pulled the windshield curtains back as there was moisture on the inside from the cold and my breathing all night.
Lazy morning after putting a serious dent in the rum supplies. As you can see our astronomy neighbor packed out early (probably around 9ish) happy that he got better photos last night. The fire pit was filling up with paper and cardboard from 2 days of not lighing a fire, so it'd be and easy start later.
All of a sudden there were a bunch of horse trailers pulling in. More than I have ever seen at one time in the park (probably 10-12 trailers). Turns out there was a 'Toy Trot' to collect Christmas gifts. The local Sheriff came by and got in on the fun, posing for photos.
If you look just to the left of the silver pickup's windshield, you can see the corner of the Taco truck. We were VERY excited about it, as we never get a Taco Truck while camping. We walked over and sure enough they were happy to take our cash. I had a beef burrito and a Pineapple (what else?!) Jarritos. It was very good. I also got an order of Churros as I wanted some deep fried sugar.
By about 11 AM it was in the mid 60s already! It topped out around 70 for the day. The warming trend was caused by the wind swinging around from the NE. With it came the marine moisture and clouds. As it was getting near sundown, I started to worry that the planets may be obscured from viewing.
The clouds thankfully kept pushing west and it was more and more promising. With Lucy and Naya showing up and our friends and Lucy's cousin and his kids all arriving, I knew tonight would be a lot different experience.
You can see the pile of wood just waiting. The power cord tells me I have the telescope already set up (it's soooo much easier in the daytime lol).
It was touch and go at first with the planets as the clouds kept blocking them, making it hard to get dialed in. I then switched up to the moon for a few minutes to get the scope dialed in. Unfortunately, I don't have a camera setup on the scope yet, however, talking to guy on the next site I learned alot about astrophotography.
I shamelessly stole this pic and the one below off of the web to illustrate what we could see. Colorwise to the naked eye, these are the closest ones.
To be able to see two planets and some moons with this detail at the same time in a telescope was beyond my wildest dreams honestly. Between this and seeing a comet naked eye back in July, has made 2020 the best year in my star gazing career.
This is another web grab. it is a layered photo. In other words, the scope didn't move, but there are at least 4 different photos layered here. One of Jupiter, one of Saturn, one of the moons, and one of the background stars. You can see all this with your eye, but hard to get the exposures right with a camera, hence the layers (one of the things I learned).
Unfortunately the planets started low in the sky and only got lower in a hurry. As they drop toward the horizon you are looking through more and more atmosphere. So they start getting fuzzier with the interference.
By 8PM everyone (including some neighbors) had a good look at the conjunction, Mars, and the Moon and people were antsy to light the fire. I didn't want soot on the scope so we packed it up and gave the all clear.
We kept our distance and had a great dinner and some drinks and burned all the wood I had brought outside.
Epilogue:
French Toast for Breakfast and a slow start, I was off the site by 12 and on the road. On the way home the exhaust note changed dramatically as chuck of the muffler left. My ears were ringing by the time I got home as it was basically open headers.
I tried to catch the binary readout on the odometer at 10101.0, but I didn't quite get it. Got home around 3:00 and offloaded everything an put her away as we had to swing into Christmas mode.
Did I mention it was cold? Friday morning it was 41 F outside. The coach did well at 53F as it's usually only good for about 10 degrees over the outside when cold.
The 'outside' temp is actually the inside of the refrigerator and the inside is the temp in the coach just above the fridge. I got up and started the coffee
While I was sipping my coffee and waiting for the kids to come in from the tent, this crew showed up for breakfast.
There were about 6 of them chomping away. JT's tent is just out of frame on the left. Probably a good thing it wasn't green lol.
Close up of the picture above. I like this shot a lot.
Funny thing about site 22. I never thought it one of the shady ones (less coverage = better for astronomy), but with it being only 2 days away from the shortest day of the year, the sun stayed low and kept the coach in the shade the entire day with only about an hour of sun on the front of the coach.
I had noticed this the day before and left the shades open to collect warmth as I would do later today.
We ate breakfast and waited for it to warm up a little, then decided to do a hike. I had noticed two things on the drive in. First, the road was in great shape and looked freshly graded (it was). Secondly, it was very wet for this time of year out here.
Our site was in the Equestrian loop so we started off to make the Green loop. I've done several times before and figured that one was quick and easy with the most variation without getting tiresome. It was still pretty cold so we bundled up and set out.
We got to where the green arrow is and it was wet. Not super deep (ankle to shin), but it was about 50 degrees out and I didn't have a second pair of shoes. We explored options to try and get around it on high ground, but looking at the trail map, we could see this area was slightly depressed and thus no way to get around the water. Photos from a previous trip
We backtracked all of a hundred feet and set off on the Prairie Loop trail in red. It's about a 2 hr walk so not horrible. We set off and found it enjoyable as the sun was on us from the south and trees on the north of us were blocking the cold wind. Not sure how far we got down this trail but it was probably a quarter to a half of mile before we encountered mud. Thick gooey swamp mud. We poked around looking for a way by and I thought I had one until I was sinking...I quickly retreated. It was a smaller passage and we were looking for a way by, but I pulled the trail map and saw that even if we got past here, there was more rough going ahead. Some pics of this trail are available here from a previous trip.
I announced that we could most likely be successful on the area in the oval above as it's a quick loop through a hammock so definitely on higher ground. We picked up the bikes and headed over. This was a quick and easy one and only one small spot of mud, which we got by by throwing some cabbage palm fronds down over the mud and stepped lively. Photos of that part are in the first link above as I was messing around with my GoPro (may have enough footage later) and didn't take any stills.
After the quick hike we went back to the site for lunch. It was now in the mid 50s out and the temp in the coach was sloooooowy inching up. In fact the warmest it got was 62 inside right around sunset. After lunch the kids headed off to the gator hole on the bikes and let them have some alone time.
We got dinner going early as we were doing the telescope thing again that night. Our one astronomy neighbor was still here as he was thwarted the night before by the wind buffeting his scope so he didn't get the pictures he wanted.
Notice the small amount of sun on the front of the coach. JT is looking at the moon already and it's about half an hour before sunset. It was actually really cool as the sky was blue next to the moon but then it was black through the telescope, but still blue to the naked eye.
Got a text from my buddy who was bringing his RV up from Kendall, they were delayed and would make it up the following night :(
Tonight was a repeat of the first night, but with less wind. My buddy Mike with the twinsie GMC bought a Roadmaster wagon and he drove it out to visit with us and look at the planets. We packed it in a lot earlier this night as it was colder.
Being courteous astronomy fans, we skipped on the fire again and went inside the coach. I had batched a couple of cocktails before I left, so it was craft cocktail time in the coach. We had a nice visit with Mike and we kept going until about 12 or so. We went out and looked at the Milky Way and a few other things with our eyes as we packed up the scope around 9PM.
It was 51F inside the coach when I went to bed, but tomorrow was going to be warmer! I woke up in the middle of the night and put my hoodie on to use the bathroom. I kept it on the rest of the night under a blanket and a comforter.
Lucy suggested I take a heater with, but if my son was sleeping outside in a tent, I could deal with it (I did invite them in but they wanted their privacy).
Sometimes fate works in your favor and the stars and planets align just for you and their is a cosmic convergence of goodness. Obviously by the title, you think I'm talking about the 'Christmas Star' conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. I am, but that is just the icing on the cake as the whole weekend just fell into lockstep for the most part!
Art by Russell Mofsky
With 2020 and the lack of being able to travel much, I had a backlog of vacation time that I needed to use, so the last quarter of the year has afforded me with a lot of vacation days as I didn't take any until the end of July (see the Skidaway adventure).
My work prevented me of having Christmas week proper off as someone had to work and I got the short stick this year. I figured the week before was almost as good so I took Dec 10-20th off. On October 1, I booked 3 nights at the prairie (17,18,19) as it was a young waxing crescent so it would be good for astronomy and I got a site that is easy to set the scope up on for the western sky (young moon goes down early).
At this point I had no idea about a few things that come into play and serendipitously played out into a great weekend. Right around the time I booked, I saw that an old friend of mine was now making YouTube videos about RVing. He just bought a class C in August and was busy hitting up a lot of parks. You can check him out here. I let him know we would be there and he booked in 2 overlapping nights with us (Fri & Sat). About a week later my son called and said that he would have Christmas off but didn't have his exact dates yet. I gave him the dates we would be at the park. As it worked out, his leave coincided with our visit to the prairie so it was shaping up as a cool trip!
In mid to late November, I found out about the conjunction. I got very excited as I knew even though we would miss the closest day by 2 nights, it would be really good if the weather co-operated. As time rolled forward, I started thinking of adding more days to the trip, but the park was booked out. By the time it was days away, I had some other issues around the house that popped up so I stuck with the original plan.
As I was off for the week, I had everything pretty well packed by Wed. I actually thought about leaving as a spot came available, but a cold front was coming and I would be by myself, it would rain, and I'd have to move sites the next day. I decided to stay home and get out early. My boy got lucky with work and got out early which worked well for him as he was able to leave Virginia a day early and avoid the incoming snow storm.
I got on the road and was on the campsite before 2:30PM. I drove through the front (it was low 80s in Delray when I left).
The drive into the park was showing a lot of clouds overhead, but I knew the front was still pushing through so crossed my fingers it wouldn't stall.
I got a text from the boy and had an hour before their arrival. He said is was cloudless about 50 miles north. I got busy taking out chairs, and the telescope tripod, bikes, etc. We debuted a flag Lucy designed and got made for us. The other side says 1976 (year of our coach).
We ended up moving the tripod a bit further away before we set the scope up. My son arrived and so did the locals. I told his mentioned to his girlfriend that the wildlife in the park didn't shy away from people much and she wasn't disappointed. I think the turkeys came by about 10 minutes after they got their tent up.
You can see here by 4PM or so the clouds are all gone!
About 6-8 feet behind the back of the coach just picking their way through, didn't mind us at all.
Just a couple minutes later there were more!
As we were focused on astronomy, I planned an easy dinner to cook before it got dark. A hearty meal of pasta and meatballs. Pretty much warm it up and boil the pasta. I used the induction cooktop in the coach for sauce and meatballs (pre-cooked, store bought). I had JT use the gas burner to boil the pasta on the picnic table outside. We got it done as it was getting dark (was smart for once and got the scope set up in the daylight).
We ate and cleaned up in the dying light and got busy with the scope. I started with the moon as it's easy and got everything dialed in and switched over to the planets as they were lower in the sky.
Right as we were doing this, a guy pulled into the site next to us and frantically started putting up his scope. He had some serious hardware and soon had a second scope going up.
Meanwhile, it was getting chilly. It was 80ish when I left home, 68 when I got to the site, and it was dropping by the minute with no cloud cover. I got Saturn dialed in and saw a view I hadn't seen since I was about 10-11 years old through the telescope. Saturn and one moon, clear as a bell, with distinct rings! I had gotten the scope aligned pretty well for casual viewing and it was tracking well. We rolled up through different lenses all the was to the 6mm, but unfortunately couldn't get it into sharp focus with it....
It was an easy move to Jupiter as they were so close (both in the spotting scope) so I used the fine tuning to move over. Same result as the 12 mm lens was the highest power we could get clear. Sorry for the lack of photos, but I don't have a camera set up on the scope.
As the planets set (they were below the VERY low tree line by 7:30PM), I moved up to the moon as that was next. a 12% waxing crescent. We spent a good amount of time on that and the temp kept dropping.
We actually had to wait for Orion to clear the trees to the east before we could look at the Nebula. We had a few drinks and I kinda wanted a fire for warmth but not the light that came with it. The neighbor had a buddy roll up. Turns out the guy drove from Homestead (3+ hours) to help take pictures all night and had to drive back and go to work in the morning! We talked with them a bit and checked out their rig. It was impressive as they were taking layer photos of Andromeda and Triangulum over a few hours. We could see what they were getting as they had computer screens (vs. an eyepiece).
Once I got the Orion Nebula dialed in, I invited the first guy over to check it out. He looked and was freaking out how good it was (thanks for the ego pump :) ) and called his buddy over to look. They spent a good 15 minutes taking turns and we tried various lenses to switch it up.
We finished up and packed the scope away. I couldn't bring myself to light the fire and destroy their darkness so we retreated to the coach for more cocktails and lively conversation. I was about 62 inside the coach when I went to bed.
As the lady told us the day before at the outpost that the early bird gets the worm with rental boats, I was up around 7:30, but my little princess likes her beauty rest and we let her sleep a bit as it was fairly chilly first thing. We rousted her by 10:30ish and made her get up. We had breakfast and pumped up the crappy bike tire. It would hold air for about 3 hours max. Good thing Lucy had a hand pump that was easily carried. Only issue with it is that it can only handle about 20-25 psi, so the tire is pretty spongy.
Of course me being the heaviest person, got stuck with it as it's my bike. Usually, my daughter takes it because it's the better bike, lol. Then we are lunch before we went, so we wouldn't have to bring food.
Anyway, totally not listening to advice, we finally got over there close to 1PM. We got the last tandem kayak they had so we were lucky.
Hanging out on the dock, waiting for Dad. Sit inside tandem.
To make life on the return trip better, we paddled against the tide, and the wind. It was work, but we made it up to Strickland Creek in about an hour.
Looking at the map above it looks like we paddled half to three quarter of a mile up to the creek entrance. We wrongly assumed when we got in the creek the wind would die down. It didn't as it was running right down the creek in our face. We passed a number of others paddling back. Had we gone earlier the tide would have helped carry us toward the creek, but it was already running against us when we started.
We went up the creek for about 5 minutes and decided to turn around. We found a little hole and scooted through that to see what we could find and it was a dead end. Lucy got tangled up a bit and got it on camera.
Not wanting to lose my camera I left it back at the coach. Lucy had her waterproof one and her phone in a bag.
Heading back from the creek toward the bridge on the map above (Old Dixie Highway).
We explored some of the grassy areas off to the left of the picture and followed one to a dead end that Naya remarked looked alot like a gator nest (it did), so we didn't stick around there too long.
The way back I only paddled to steer the boat and work from getting blown to the left of the picture. Holding the paddle I could feel the breeze pushing on it and used it like a little sail, which was minorly effective due to the small size of the 'sail'.
We were out for all of 2 hours which was fine as it was an hourly rental. Worked out to about $70-75 for the two kayaks. We bought a couple other little things so don't have the exact number.
After that we took Naya over to see the statue and walk around. Again the sun was dropping so we headed back to the site and started getting dinner ready.
Last meal of the trip was big shrimp on skewers with mushrooms and orange bell pepper over the fire, with couscous. It was delicious. More campfire action and loaded up the bikes and started to prep for an early departure the next morning.....
DAY 5
I got up near my normal work time (5:50) around 6. Got up and made some coffee and started getting things ready to roll out. We got all the gear stored and the beds put away and AMAZINGLY was rolling out of the campsite at 7:59AM Thanksgiving morning. A quick stop at the dump station and we passed the ranger station at 8:08AM.
I had looked at google the night before and it routed my back toward the NW to I-95, vs. down through Ormand Beach downtown and out SR40. I'm thinking on the holiday morning it would have been faster with no traffic as the way we went added about 8 miles (but was show 11 min faster the eve before). Jury is out on that one, but the way we went was a country drive, vs. town with traffic lights so it was enjoyable.
Then a 4 hour blast down I-95 with one stop in Cocoa for gas (5 min pit stop) and we were in my driveway at 12:10. Somewhere around Titusville I looked over at the northbound traffic and saw another GMC coming from the south. I yelled "Hey a GMC!", and it flashed its lights at me as I stuck my arm out the window to wave. Then I realized it was my good buddy Mike with my twinsie coach heading up to the Daytona Turkey Run.
Once home we quickly unloaded, realized my house AC was broken (compressor not kicking on), and quick shower and out the door at 1:10PM to collect my Mom for Turkey Dinner at my sisters.
Overall, she ran like a champ, although I need new mufflers, I think one is cracked as it's quite raspy. On the one tank I did mileage on (mix of highway and country road driving), it got 9.3 mpg
Day 3 of our trip overlaps both parks. As it was only an hour drive or so from one to the other, we slept in a little. I had already folded up the pop-up tent the night before as it was dry and I didn't want it to get dew on it and have to put it away wet. We really didn't need it after the rain stopped as our site was pretty shady.
Naya was slow to get up as usual, so we cooked a big breakfast with bacon and eggs which turned into bacon and omelettes as we started throwing veggies and cheese in it.
After breakfast Lucy and I went on the nature trail nearby. It had a geocache on it, so the hunt was on. I wasn't a fan of these for a long time, but it turns out I'm pretty good at finding them.
It was the Ancient Dunes Nature Trail and was pretty short, but surprisingly had a lot of up and down as the name implies. The geocache was off the trail by about 50ft in a hollow section at the base of a tree. it was a fun couple minutes as others came down the trail and we hid in the bushes so they couldn't see us. Me in my bright yellow t-shirt blended right in and they went by without seeing us lol.
We rolled out right around 1 and started heading south on A1A. About 10 minutes down the road we stopped off at The Surf Station in Crescent Beach. It's their second store and where they have all the used boards.
Tommy and Hugo were left on guard duty while we went in. I'm in the market for a new to me longboard, so wanted to check out what they had available. The only board I liked in the place wasn't for sale (figures).
Naya, however, found this cosigned 5'6" Rat Boy model Surftech reduced to $160. It needs some minor epoxy repair, but it presents well and she is very excited to try it. I would need a snorkel if I sat on this board as its so small, but she is light enough that it may work well for her. It's her first board that is all hers so that's a big deal!
The area just off of A1A between Flagler and Ormand is an amazing marshy area with some great cruising roads. This is a section of Old Dixie Highway heading south toward the park. Lucy got some good video of the drive she is editing into a piece which will debut later.
Good ole spot 98 in Tomoka SP. It's a great spot if you can find it! We drove around the campground twice before we found it. It's an oval and the sites start at 1. They end at 97 so I was confused as they didn't have any park maps when we checked in. There are two little 'side streets' and it is nestled back in one of them. The site isn't as deep as it looks if you notice the 'street' curving toward the camera. I like this picture as it looks like the coach is stalking you.
Naya wanted to read, so Lucy and I took off on the bikes to see if the Trading Post was open as normally they are closed Tues and Wed (the days we were there). Luckily, they were open for the holiday week and we inquired about kayak rentals for the following day. It's first come first serve so they advised to be early. This is a shot of the river off their back porch.
Just North of the trading post is the tip of a peninsula where the Timucua Indians had a village. Back in the 1950s this statue was built to commemorate it. It was pretty cool, but unfortunately has fallen into a state of disrepair as there were some body parts of the supporting Indians laying on the ground where they had fallen off.
A closeup of the Chief. We bought a magnet for the coach with a drawing of this statue on it. His sword needs a little fixing up too.
Shot from the peninsula's tip looking west. I strategically silhouetted the sabal palm to cut the glare down in the picture. I think it came out okay.
Looking north off the peninsula. Lucy was having fun with her video camera. It was about 5PM here so daylight was going to disappear fairly quickly.
We rode back to the campsite and I started the fire just as twilight was dwindling. I won't bore you with another campfire picture, but I built it up to cook with. Lucy made some chicken skewers and I quickly found out we needed the trusty grilling cage again.
After dinner, we threw some more logs on and had a great view of the Moon and Mars in conjunction. They were VERY close in the sky. There was a small gap in the tree canopy at just the right angle and time we are looking. Neither of us had to even move out of our chairs. Super clear evening and less breezy than it was near the beach, but just enough. It cooled down to the mid 60s overnight.
One of the things I noticed was how cold the air/wind was compared to SFL. The ocean was fine at 71F, but the wind was cooler than the water and blowing about 15mph. This was good to keep the bugs down, but the wind was not helping the waves as it made them fairly choppy.
Slept in a bit, had my coffee and sauntered over to the beach around 9:30. I knew the wind would be sideshore as it was the night before too, so wasn't in a hurry. I had forgotten my wetsuit, so it was going to have to be pretty good for me to be cold as the last thing anyone needs now is a cold or fever.
I love how undeveloped this beach is! This is looking north toward the inlet.
Notice how many more clouds in this pic from the last one. It was less than 10 min later. These clouds were pretty low and moving fast with the cool damp air. This is walking back through the dunes to the parking lot.
With one bike having a leaky tire, no long rides in the mix for today, so we walked about a mile south on the beach and had lunch at Little Margies FA Cafe as it wasn't a chain or high dollar place, it was convenient, and had good reviews. The menu was quite varied as Naya had Chicken Wings, I had Manhattan Clam Chowder (hardly ever can find this in a restaurant!), and Lucy had a Filipino dish of Pancit with shrimp.
North side of St. Augustine pier. Surf was about 2-4 foot. I watched some guys out, but no one was getting good waves so I felt better about not going out.
Two Chinook helicopters went over fairly low. Constantly in production since 1961, they are the US military's heavy lift copters. If you have ever seen one up close, they are pretty big with a fuselage of 52 ft or over twice as long as the Space Pineapple! It can hold up to 55 troops in it...
Anyway, it's impressive when they came down the beach. We had a nice leisurely walk back up the beach with Lucy shooting lots of bird videos and us looking for shells. Great way to relax and kill an afternoon.
This basket, I don't even recall where I got it, but it's super useful with the campfire. On the grate this evening is a Dominican Sausage coil. It was pretty tasty and we had a nice salad with it.
The Pineapple LED is also of great use as it's become our campground light as it's fairly bright but the yellow and green keep it from being too glaring. just a low key evening for the three of us, sitting around burning wood and chatting.
As mentioned it was a quick turn from picking up the coach to rolling out the next day. Lucy works on Saturdays and with all that's going on in the world, she needs to be avail, so we left a a day later (plus the coach pickup, etc.). As I got back home around 1ish on Saturday, I went through all the mechanicals and made sure everything was ready to roll for a decent run of about 270 miles. All systems were go and she ran like a champ on the 90 miles back from Okeechobee, so I started the load out for the next morning, as I wanted to be on the road no later than 10AM as I surmised it would be about 4:45 to 5 hours.
Things went as smoothly as one can expect, and we were indeed on the road at 9:59AM. The ride north had a bit of a headwind, and bouts of rain.
Around Melbourne, we hit an accident. I was ready to get off and use Wickham road as an alternate, but Lucy said WAZE was saying it was only a 10 minute delay. It was closer to 20, but even so, probably close to a wash with the detour, so we stayed the course.
This allowed me the time to get an odometer shot for my buddies (we play this game and to win, I should have been going 94 MPH which would be ludicrous in the GMC)....the speedo is off as I was actually not moving and it reads about 10 mph slow. the Odo is spot on though.
The worst of the rain was around New Smyrna/Daytona area. We powered through it and got into the sunlight for a short time. By the time we are at the gate and waiting our turn to enter the park (3ish), I saw on the radar that the nasty stuff we ran through was chasing us.
We got to our site and I plugged in and hooked up the water. I immediately took a bike off (oh BTW, my bike tire was flat after filling it up right before we left so 5 hours max on ride time) and did a proper surf check. 4 guys out, wind hard sideshore and cold, and while it was head high, didn't see anything rideable in the 15 min I was watching it. Should have brought a spring suit but as a SFL guy didnt think of it. Anyway, the rain was coming up fast, so I peddled hard back to the campground whizzing past Lucy who had just turned around herself.
We arrived back at the site just as the monsoon rain was setting in, and our friends Beth and Lee and their dog had just shown up. We put our 13x13 shelter up in the rain and moved under it. We need to Scotch Guard it again as it leaks, but it took care of us for the most part.
Plan B for the filet mignon that Beth and Lee brought over. Hard to light a campfire in a deluge, so the trusty camp grill did the trick, and Lucy prepared the veggies on the griddle inside the coach (nice to have options!).
About the time we finished eating the rain moved out and we got busy burning wood for light, conversation, and entertainment. As you can see it was a roasty-toasty fire. We enjoyed this for quite awhile and just before they left for the evening (they live fairly close by), we headed down to the beach. Full on hijinks and hilarity ensued and we chalked it up to another classic evening spent with friends enjoying the good life.
I had arranged for a fairly quick turn around on the new flywheel install, as we had a trip planned for the day after I picked it up.
I had discussed with the shop, to 1. replace the flywheel, 2. install the new speedo cable. and 3. try to identify where the leak on the driver's side was coming in. I said that 2 and 3 were optional if they had the time. Well they got 1 and 2 done so I was happy. I knew the leak is a lot more time consuming, so didn't expect that. Until we resolve it, we can't really move forward on the interior remodel.
My good friend Scott agreed to shuttle my back to Okeechobee to pick it up Sat. morning. We were going to leave around 8:30, but then he called me the night before with a conflict. He had to drop his oldest off at Boy Scout camp in Jupiter FL at 7:30. Not a big deal and it's on his way really, so they collected me at 6:30 and we went to breakfast after dropping his boy off.
We picked the coach up right as it started to rain. So I chatted with a couple that were there looking at coaches to buy. I answered a few questions about the reality of driving a 45 year old motorhome. They seemed nice, I hope they get one :)
Getting ready to pull out of Sirum's and head back home. Photo by Flash Gumby
The ride home was interesting as the rear bags were jacked up pretty high and the wind was about 15+ broadside, so she was a handful. I stopped for gas and let air out of the bags and she was a lot easier after that.
Action photo on the BeeLine Highway heading back toward WPB. Photo by Flash Gumby
Jeff gave me the old flywheel as a souvenir and you can see the carnage.
The starter only had about 5K on it like the engine, but the bendix got chewed up a bit too. I had a spare one from our KY trip and took it with. They wisely used it. I'm told, I can swap the bendix sprocket out, so I'll do that and this will become my spare.
The speedo cable also gave them issues as the holes didn't line up (I had figured that out), so they dremeled out the hole to make it work. After cursing my head off for 3 hours on the Prairie earlier this year, I was happy to pay the labor for this. Is nice to have a speedometer again after about a year (and I figure about 2000 miles).
I got home around 1PM and immediately started prepping for out departure the next day.
