Thursday October 31st 2024

Happy Halloween

Most of the last few days have been focused on finishing my queen bed project. The bed frame is complete and I will try it out tonight. It has taken much more time than I anticipated and probably should have taken longer. A slower pace would have allowed me to do a better job sanding and been a little more precise with my cuts. The poor sanding shows through the finish in some areas and a couple of the corner joints aren’t as nice as I’d like. It is still a good outcome considering the years it has been since I did something similar.

I had one comical accident that also slowed down the process. Shortly after I started to apply the polyurethane, I knocked over one of the pieces I was working on. It hit the quart can of poly and emptied the contents onto the drop cloth and cement floor of my car port. The entire can was lost except for the one side of the foot board that I had completed. It’s a good thing Lowes is practically next door.

This morning all the parts were complete, stained and coated in three layers of polyurethane. I cleared the blowup bed I’d been using out of the bedroom and carried in each piece of the bed. It took a lot of effort including some extra persuasion to get the pieces assembled. I have created a very heavy bed. Moving it around once it was assembled was a real challenge. The next step was to get the 75 pound Serta Hybird Mattress in a Box onto the bed frame. After I cut the plastic off, it expanded into its mattress shape rather quickly. It is usable now, but it will be 48 hours before it completely expands.

Bed building wasn’t my only activity this week. After the polyurethane spill on Monday, I took a break and went to Walt Disney World. My objective was to view the decorations at the RV sites in the Fort Wilderness Campground. I got there by parking at the Magic Kingdom parking lot and taking the boat to Fort Wilderness. I got there about 6PM and walked several of the loops before it got dark. Once it got dark, the decorations were more vibrant and spooky, but the pictures were harder to take. Overall I walked a little more than half the park. I didn’t walk the loops that were a long way from the settlement area. The walk back to get the boat was still pretty long.

I try to do the Fort Wilderness walk for Halloween every year. It is a little more decorated than the impressive Christmas decorating. I’ll be back in December to see those as well. All of the effort the campers put into these holiday decorations is amazing.

Sunday October 27th 2024

The lower humidity and high temperatures in the low to mid eighties that come with Fall in Florida have aided my bed building activity. My work area is under my car port roof. It is taking longer to build my queen bed than I anticipated. Getting the tools out of the shed in the morning and putting them away later in the day is part of the extra time, but most of it comes from not having the right tools and general rusty skills.

So far I have cut all of the pieces for the bed frame, screwed and bolted them together and then took them apart to stain them. Along the way I have had to deal with imprecise cuts on the legs I made on the first day of the build. I’m going to blame not having the right tools for that one. Bad board selection also caused some issues. The dimensional lumber I am using came from close to the pith of the log resulting in cupping. In general good joints are difficult.

It has been an interesting, but slow process. I’ve learned and relearned many things. The mistakes that are the result of rushing through steps are the worst. I really should have sanded more to a finer grit than I did. Some of the imperfections in the stain job could have been avoided. I have at least two coats of polyurethane to go with a sanding in between coats. After that I’ll assemble the frame in my bedroom, add the slats and mattress to have a usable bed. I plan to add a headboard later. A kitchen/dinning table probably comes next. I am trying to the get the majority of my leaning curve issues worked out on the bed before tackling the more challenging project.

Thursday October 24th 2024

One of the things I decided to do when I bought my new base camp was build a lot of the furniture. I have always enjoyed working with wood and it will likely end up costing a little less. Over the last month I have gradually acquired most of the tools I will need. This week I a got started on a Queen Bed frame as the first furniture item.

Last weekend I scouted the area big box stores for the lumber I need. The majority of what I needed was at a Home Depot about fifteen miles away. The Lowes that is practically a neighbor has a very poor wood selection. On Monday I attempted to purchase what I needed at the Home Depot, but they were unable to cut the wood down for me. Traveling fifteen miles in traffic with wood sticking out of my SUV wasn’t going to happen. On Tuesday I returned with my cordless circular saw and made my own cuts in the parking lot so everything was inside the vehicle. By the time I got home the sun was making my outside work area too hot for comfort. It was a good excuse to head north to Disney’s Magic Kingdom for the evening.

On Wednesday I got started cutting the rough cut lumber down to size and forming the open mortises in the legs. I ran into problems with the tools I have available. Ideally I would like a table saw for some of the cuts, but it represents a cost and lack of available space issue that I don’t want to deal with for the limited use it is likely to get. I switched to hand tools to clean up some of my imprecise circular saw cut issues. That sent me on a chisel buying mission. I finally found one at Walmart after striking out at Lowes.

Today I got the leg mortises complete and a first sanding on all the pieces done. Tomorrow I’ll do another sanding and test assemble to pieces. Then I’ll take everything apart for one more sanding followed by a coat of stain. If I get it done early enough in the day for it to dry, I may be able to get a few more steps accomplished. This is taking a lot longer then I thought it would. The fact that the sun heats up my work area around 3PM isn’t helping.

On my Tuesday evening trip to the Magic Kingdom I got a decent theme park meal at Columbia Harbor House. The grilled skewered shrimp are pretty good. I followed up dinner with a few rides and shows waiting for the 8:30 fireworks. After the fireworks, it was back to the rides while I waited for the after fireworks rush to the exits to calm down. It still took about three quarters of an hour to get from the Magic Kingdom exit across the Seven Seas Lagoon to my car in the parking lot when I departed shortly after 9:30.

Sunday October 20th 2024

All of the activity associated with buying my new base camp and getting moved in has taken my focus off of the weather. Hurricanes Helene and Milton got some of my attention, but overall the transition from summer heat and humidity to fall occurred without a lot of notice. It is the end of October and high temperatures are now in the upper seventies to mid eighties. The humidity is also in the comfortable range.

Yesterday I found a wildlife refuge within easy driving distance. It has some nice trails and a few interesting ponds along the way. I got some good exercise in walking a few of the trails, but I was disappointed that there weren’t more wildflower blossoms or animal life along the way. There weren’t any trees down, but I suspect that the high water level was caused by the hurricane. The high water level in turn caused the blossoming bushes to suffer and may have caused the animals to move to higher ground. I’ll be visiting the area a few more times over the next few weeks to see what the area is really like.

Today was a work around the house kind of day. When I bought the base camp, the house was clean and empty. I am starting from a clean slate acquiring furniture and the necessities of a house hold. The shed is the complete opposite. It wasn’t emptied out. The contents range from the very useful like a gas grill to the useless like a broken down bag of fertilizer. The task I set out on today was cleaning out the shed.

I found it very reminiscent of cleaning tasks I’ve undertaken in the past. A previous owner was using the shed as a shop. There were boxes of hand tools, little containers of leftover screws, nails and connectors along with other coffee cans filled with random stuff. I am very familiar with this pack rat behavior. It is the result of the “it might come in handy” mentality. I have that tendency and so did my dad. I brought a lot of stuff from my house and my mothers house on the road with me, because it might come in handy.

So here is the dilemma. Having a similar approach as the guy that collect all this stuff I find it hard to throw it away. After about three hours of effort I only had half a trash bag full of junk. The rest just got moved around. I’m not creating space just moving things around. I need to make room for my “it might come in handy” stuff that I’ve been keeping for years.

Thursday October 17th 2024

Fall has finally arrived in Florida. The overnight temperature last night was in the fifties. Today’s high was in the mid seventies. The temperature will be back in the mid eighties soon enough, but it is nice to know that the daily highs are coming down.

My daily focus is on getting settled into my new base camp. Furniture is still my main deficiency. The kitchen is just about finished. It is fully functional now with items from my RV home and new purchases. The last purchase was a microwave oven. I can now snack a little healthier and whip up quick microwave meals. The thing about the kitchen is that everything is just a little different. The microwave is a little more powerful necessitating adjusted cooking times. My stove is electric rather than the gas I am used to. Electric stove burners just don’t react as quickly as gas. The refrigerator is a side by side with one side being the freezer. The narrow space causes a lot more stacking than I’m used to having to deal with. I suspect I am going to loose a lot more stuff in this unit. The fridge is probably going to be replaced first among the appliances that came with the house.

Other than the kitchen, I need just about everything. A sofa, recliner, dinning table, and bed along with necessary small tables and lamps are all missing from my base camp at the moment. My current furnishing are a couple of camp chairs, two small outdoor tables and a blow up bed. They are getting old quickly.

So far this week, I have taken some time off for two visits to Disney. On Tuesday I visited EPCOT. The park was very busy. I got in some walking exercise and some people watching style entertainment. Earlier this evening I stopped at Disney Springs for some shopping and entertainment. The rapidly cooling temperature didn’t align with my warm weather form of dress. In other words I got cold and went home after less than two hours and one Hot Fudge Sunday from Ghiradelli Chocolate Shop.

Sunday October 13th 2024

On Saturday I drove to the storage facility to see if it kept my motorhome safe from the perils of hurricane Milton. All was well. It looked just like I left it. While I was there I unloaded more stuff to make my life easier at my new home base. I am trying to only remove things that I will not need in the RV on my next adventure or things that are easily returned. Still I find odd little things I need to buy. Today I discovered that nail clippers were not among the things I didn’t have a duplicate at the base camp. One more thing to add to my shopping list.

The area is gradually getting back to normal. Buying gas on Saturday took waiting in a long line and suffering with very slow pumps after you found a station that was open. Today there were more open stations and shorter lines. The improvement is reported to be because the power is back on at the port of Tampa and delivery trucks can be filled for transport.

There were only a few tree limbs down in the park. In the broader neighborhood piles of debris are growing by the side of the road. White vinyl fences seem to be particularly popular targets for the hurricane winds. Large sections are missing from many of the fences I drove by. This area didn’t get the worst of the storm. I was closer to the west coast today and the damage is much greater. Large trees are down, billboards and road signs are mangled and there is evidence of buildings without roofs. The fact that there wasn’t more loss of life was lucky.

Friday October 11th 2024

I got up this morning, grabbed some breakfast and started my journey back to Hurricane Country. As I ventured from Georgia to Central Florida the signs of a hurricane gradually came into view.

My first observation was the high water level in the St. Johns river in Jacksonville. This river empties most of the rain from the northeastern part of the state. All of the creeks and rivers from just southeast of Orlando all the way to the central ridge up the peninsular drains into the St. Johns estuary. South of Orlando on the eastern side of the central ridge mostly flows toward the Everglades. All of the rivers on the peninsular have a lot of work to do in the next few days.

The second hurricane related observation on my journey south was the utility trucks. The large convoys of trucks moving south I saw on Tuesday were replaced by a few specialized utility trucks heading south from way up north. Today I played car hopscotch with four utility trucks from Ohio and Michigan. They seemed to be big augur trucks design to dig holes for over sized utility poles. I think they had plenty of ordinary line man style trucks. There were a couple of convoys of those smaller bucket trucks heading north. Maybe they completed their job and headed home.

In the St. Augustine area I started to see excessive standing water from overflowing retention pounds along the sides of the interstate. The water came within a few feet of the road. In this area there was also a few random trees down along the side of the road.

I stopped at a rest area north of Orlando. The ground was covered in leaves, pine needles and small branches. The backup generator for the rest area was also running.

Traffic south of Orlando in the resort area was backed up as usual. The theme parks reopened this morning. My GPS indicated it was caused by an accident and the delay was twenty minutes. I took a few short cuts I was familiar with to avoid the delay. It turned out OK, but could have been a mistake. I encountered my first flooded road of the day. There was about five or six inches of water across the road in a low lying area west of Disney. Traffic was going through it fine.

As I got closer to my base camp destination, traffic started to back up. An occasional traffic light was not working. As all of the TV talking heads have been reminding us, you treat an intersection with a non functioning light as a four way stop. The traffic slowed me down a little, but I soon arrived at my base camp. As I made my way through the resort, nothing stood out as significant damage. When I got to the base camp, I found an Amazon package that I didn’t expect until next week and a piece of vinyl trim that doesn’t seem to be from my residence. There were also a collection of random leaves in a corner that wouldn’t allow the wind to disperse.

The bottom line is the base camp made it through the storm fine. I made several walks around the outside looking for anything a miss and didn’t discover anything. The power was on, but blinking clocks indicate it was off at some point. Tomorrow I’ll drive over to the storage lot and check how my RV home survived the storm.

Thursday October 10th 2024

I am about to spend my third night away from home after evacuating from the path of hurricane Milton. My original plan was to return to central Florida today, but when I checked in on Tuesday it seemed like another night to make sure the storm had cleared the area was prudent.

Life here in Georgia about three miles north of the Florida state line has been relatively calm. Wind and rain didn’t make it to this area until about 5PM Wednesday evening. This morning the rain had stopped and the sky was clearing. There was nothing to complain about the weather here.

I am located in an area with several hotel/motel type accommodations and lots of fast food restaurants. A MacDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and several no name brand food outlets are all within walking distance. Yesterday and today I have made several circuits around the hotels and to the restaurants for exercise and nutrition. There are plenty of other evacuees doing similar things.

The rest of the time I watched the weather channel on the TV and various Orlando and Tampa TV stations on Internet feeds. It was informative and nerve racking at the same time. During the afternoon Wednesday three or four tornado warnings were issued for the area my base camp and RV home storage lot are located. It doesn’t seem like any actual tornadoes touched down in the area, but there were tornadoes on the same general path. If there had been significant damage, I think the TV stations would have swarmed the area. No news is good news. I hope.

The path Milton chose to cross the state was also not to my liking. It looks like the center of the storm passed pretty close to my base camp or perhaps it took a path right between my base camp and the RV storage lot. The winds should have been down a lot by then, but it is a little too close for assurance of minimal damage. On a positive note, I checked the power companies outage map this afternoon and there were no outages documented in my base camp’s community.

I am returning home tomorrow with my fingers and toes crossed. Whatever I find, I’ll deal with it, but damn I’ve haven’t owned the place for a month yet.

Tuesday October 8th 2024

Today was an eventful and tiring day. It was all to get out of the path of hurricane Milton. I am now safely in the Quality Inn in Kingsland Georgia just over the line from Florida. This area is likely only going to get tropical storm level activity.

My escape plan began yesterday when I rented a storage lot for my RV home. The rest of the day was filled with moving stuff out of my RV to my base camp. Emptying the refrigerator and moving lots of clothes took a lot of time.

This morning I emptied and flushed my holding tanks then hooked up my car for the journey to the storage lot. I needed to get gas along the way, but many stations were out of gas. All of the evacuees and people filling containers for generator fuel have been consuming lots of gas. The stations with gas had long lines an weren’t really motorhome friendly. About halfway to the storage facility the “Low on Fuel” message came on the display. My anxiety level went through the roof, but I manage to get the RV to the storage facility and parked.

On my way to my base camp I tried to fill the gas tank in my car. All the trips back and forth between the motorhome and my base camp used up more gas than I wanted from Sunday’s fill up. The station ran out of gas when I was next in line. It was going to be challenging making it to Georgia on the gas I had.

Back at my base camp I prepared my travel supplies. They included clothes, electronics, food and important papers. When I was packing the important papers, I noticed the storage lot contract was for a different lot number than the one I parked in. I drove back over to the facility to move the motorhome or get them to change my assigned lot. Luckily, they were able to change my assigned lot.

I finally got on the road north about 2PM. The normal travel time is a little less than four hours. It took five and a half hours. When I started, I compared the GPS distance estimate to the miles to empty on my console. In theory, I had thirty miles of cushion. To mitigate that issue with more opportunities to find gas and avoid the gridlock on the interstate, I traveled north on US 27 and US 301. Most of the gas stations were out of gas. The ones that had gas were jammed with cars. I finally got gas well north of Ocala near Starke at a Pilot. They were in the process of getting a fuel delivery.

I arrived around 7:30. It is old motel, but seems clean. I originally booked two nights until Thursday. At check in I extended my checkout until Friday. The storm is moving slower than the original forecast.

Sunday October 6th 2024

Last week all the focus was on the destruction all the Florida Gulf coast and the inland areas of the southeast caused by hurricane Helene. The TV weather talkers were downplaying a potential tropical system that was approaching from the west for today and Monday. They were right about that one, but on Friday they had a new concern. The forecast suddenly included a hurricane the middle of this week. At first it was only going to be a “little” one, but tonight it is a major hurricane headed for the Tampa Bay area. As it moves across Florida, I’m in the bullseye. This storm really has me concerned.

Getting accurate local information about this storm is difficult. The TV stations available on the RV park cable are all based out of Tampa. A few of the Orlando based stations are available over the air in good atmospheric conditions, but they do not consider this county part of their broadcast area. The Tampa based stations are focused on the beaches and storm surge as they should be. It is the biggest thereat to the majority of their viewers. The inland areas rarely get mentioned by the Tampa stations with respect to this hurricane. The Orlando TV stations are available on the internet and tend to give me more useful, if not specifically target to my area, advice.

I spent most of the day Friday and Saturday along with all day today working on a “survival” plan. That’s a little dramatic, but lets just say I had to figure out what to do. Staying in my RV home isn’t a very good idea. It rocks pretty good in simple thunderstorms. I don’t want to think about the 140mph plus winds gusts in the hurricane eye wall. As far as my new base camp goes, everyone says to evacuate manufactured homes during these events, so I will. Maybe with more experience on how my new base camp behaves in the wind I’d stay. Just, not this time.

My plan is to leave my RV home at a storage facility near my base camp. I’m still trying to lock a location in. This is consistent with my overall plan to relocate to my base camp, but it is moving a little faster than I planned. If I don’t succeed in getting a storage location before the storm, I will leave the RV here at the campground unoccupied.

On Tuesday afternoon I will be driving north along the Atlantic Coast. I have a reservation at a motel just over the line in Georgia for two nights. An escape route up the Interstate 75 corridor would have been better, but that area is still in the middle of hurricane Helene cleanup.

Getting excess stuff and perishable food out of my RV home has been my focus. Once I get it into storage, I don’t think I’ll be able to extend the slide rooms. Getting to stuff when the RV is buttoned up is difficult. My guess is it will be a couple of weeks before the RV moves again once it gets to storage.