I am led to think that one of the things that I believed my whole life might not be so true. For me and almost everyone I know, setting down roots and getting established has meant a certain set of events and conditions. The primary change to this thinking has been to let go of the house/dwelling concept as we have adapted to the mobile and arguably less secure environment wherein "home is where we park it". It's been a fun adventure after all, and it seems as though we can 'come home' wherever we are. It's not that we don't still talk about 'settling down' and it's not that we don't miss what we left behind ... but we've had some pretty cool opportunities to see some pretty cool places and set ourselves up as 'visitors' while we're in our home. What I really like is the capacity to explore from new center points. This was a fairly frustrating aspect of the big move last year, mostly because we were constantly lost; having to search out and discover everything from Starbucks to groceries, doctors to gas stations and places to eat and shop. How bad is it when you don't know where the nearest Home Depot or (gulp) Best Buy is??? In a year, we've found only one quarter car wash :). All in all, the ordeal has been adventure. This is due to the spirit which we came here in and even though it's been tried a few times it has prevailed. We have so much to be thankful for.
So last week we hooked up from our nearly 6 month stay at Topeekeegee Yugnee County Park in Hollywood (just south of Fort Lauderdale) and pulled back down to the south side of Miami (Cutler Bay). The trip was uneventful (except for nearly missing an exit and doing a tiny section of cross-country travel at 55 mph with the trailer in tow ... but we won't expound on that particular adrenaline event except to note that Fordzilla doesn't seem to care if there's a 14,000 pound trailer attached or not ... four-wheeling is fun!) with Robin driving the car and me driving the truck/fifth-wheel combo.
*One of our ~favorite~ interchanges*
It was about an hour's worth of travel and we arrived at the Larry and Penny Thompson Park around noon.
Now this is something of a 'homecoming' for us, as this park was our very first parking spot when we arrived in Miami just over a year ago. It was actually very cool to come driving in to RV area and be in familiar territory. We had a lot of memories attached to this park, and this area of Miami; mostly surrounding relocation trauma mind you, but now that we have grown more comfortable with the lay of the land and now that we have had a year's experience living in the RV there was a different attitude prevailing as we pulled in, greeted the office staff (who remembered us!) and proceeded to set up the coach in our assigned space.
We've done the 'prep for travel' and 'set up housekeeping' drills a few times now, and Robin is an excellent partner when it comes to helping her 'backing-a-fourty-foot-trailer-with-a-long-bed-truck' challenged husband to spot us in our parking slot. No trees or electrical posts were harmed in the parking of the Fifth-Wheel (not this time, anyway). We got set up and were relaxing with lunch in an hour or so.
*Just for the record the procedure is to:-Establish alignment in the parking spot.
-Establish left-to-right level in the parking spot. This involves placing a couple, or several, leveling blocks under the wheels and pulling/pushing the coach onto them and determining 'level'. Rinse and repeat if necessary.
-Chock the wheels and lower the front struts (landing gear).
-Using the landing gear, remove the weight from the hitch pin (about 2,400 pounds of it), release the hitch, uncouple the electrical and emergency brake connectors and drive the truck away.
-Check the chocks.
-Level the coach fore-to-aft.
-Check the chocks.
-Lower the rear stabilizers (usually onto cement blocks if they are over grass)
-Tighten the chocks .. they will loosen after stabilizers take some weight off the axles.
-Verify clearances around the coach to extend the sliders (no trees, no posts, etc.)
-Robin will extend the rooms while Gary connects up to shorepower, water, sewer and satellite receiver.
-Unhook the bikes from the rack on the car, drag out the lawn chairs unstrap the furniture, re connect the surround sound (the cables to the subwoofer have to bestowed before sliding the room closed) and voila! we have the afternoon to relax. Oh wait, maybe I'll check those chocks onemore time...
Moving in on November 1st, we were just hitting the first days if 'High Season" for tourism and there was a lot of activity already. During the next month or so the park will fill to capacity and each week will bring a turnover of tourists coming to visit for weeks or months at a time. There are preferences given to those campers who come back every year and since we were pretty sure we'd be back, we placed a deposit on a site when we left last spring. We had been promised availability, but since we were 'newcomers' to the system, we were only guaranteed a place during November and December. In January, it was up for grabs depending on whether or not a previously reserved spot might be cancelled. So we set up thinking that we'd be here for at least two months, and hopefully six, the maximum length allowable. It was only two days later that we moved again...
We were notified that indeed there had been a cancellation, and that if we wanted to we could make the ove to a new spot and stay there for the whole six months. Yay! So ... follow the checklist backwards, then move 200 feet, then follow the checklist forward :)
We are "settled"! So ... what shall we do next?
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