Warning, Long Post, Another Year, Part A

We were supposed to start our year in Florida, but due to turbo troubles on our new truck and having to get a dental implant, we kept pushing it back and back.  We did actually leave Ellijay, GA on the 2nd of Jan and with one stop arrived at our new winter digs on the 4th with the plan of staying 3 months.  By now we had almost given up on finding a piece of land or even a house, so we felt it would be good to just get away from it for awhile.  We got settled into our new site, and immediately assumed our Florida ways.  We soon decided we would shorten our stay to 2 months, the shine was coming off the apple.  We were working and talking about plans for the travel year and had our reservation in Maine in the spring and plans that Karen and Tom would join us.  As we talked more and more about our planned change of life, house or land, we decided that we should go out west, maybe for the last time.  Meanwhile the clear coat on our coach was in terrible shape and we knew we'd have to do something about it or just watch our beloved coach disintegrate before our eyes.  We found a place outside of Elkhart, IN that would do it for a fair price so that was another piece of the puzzle.  We had wanted to stop and visit family in western Pennsylvania and that would work right in on our trek westward.

Then as it turned out we could not install the new baseplate ourselves to tow the truck and had to incorporate an initial detour to Texas for the install, and, of course, while there see our daughter, Kelly and Brian.  So our plans were solidifying.  Amazingly, we did find a piece of land in the spring, got that settled so we felt better heading west knowing we had something to come back for.  We had a good trip, a huge loop, that we further had to detour back to Florida to get all the ducks in a row for my upcoming hip surgery, so here we are now back in Ellijay with me recovering and getting better day by day.

On to the nitty-gritty, with our big loop and detours we drove 11,745 miles in the coach compared to only 6865 last year.  We had 51 travel days vs 34 last year.  We stayed in 20 different states, not including our AirBnB stays while the coach was being painted.  Our shortest day was between Cartersville, GA and Ellijay, GA at 50.3, and our longest day was 416.6 between Fort Chiswell, VA and Barnesville, PA.  Our average campground cost increased a bit from $64.73 to $66.17, with $0 stays at service centers and our most expensive stay was $115.20 with 4 stays over $100/night.  We bought 2124 gallons of diesel at an average cost of $3.27, a welcome reduction, and averaged just a bit over 6.0 mpg, maybe things are loosening up with over 218,000 miles on the coach.

So dig in, it's a long slog, lots of pictures as I review our year.

We settled into our new site, and although we had been coming down to the Nokomis/Venice area for more than 25 years, we rarely ventured north to Bradenton, another 30 miles north.  It gave us an opportunity to explore another area and a jumping off place to St Pete.

We quickly found a new restaurant specializing in New England seafood.

And it put us closer to one of our favorite Thai places.

We found on arrival we had a coolant leak in a very tough place to get to so we called in a mechanic, which after several visits got us fixed up.

We needed to replace our water accumulator that failed and replace our air cleaner for normal maintenance.

In the meantime we found a good Dim Sum restaurant near us as well.

We met our dear friend's Debbie and Harold for lunch.

And our great old friend, Harvey.

Thanks to a very nice Xmas gift from our son Jason and Joanne we had a superb lunch at St. Pete beach.

Then we had a wonderful visit and said good bye for the season to our long time friend, Ray, who is a spritely 94, whom we've known since we lived in NH well over 30 years ago.

So after our shortened 2 month stay we headed out, first to get the coach's oil and chassis service.

We spent the night before and for the second and last time they lost the prime on the fuel filters and took several hours to get it restarted before we could get on our way:-(

On to Texas with a hitchhiker to get the baseplate installed, took only 1 hour!

Had a nice visit with our daughter, Kelly and Brian and since crawfish were in season, managed to devour several hundred:-)  One of us, in the last picture, more than the others.

Then back to GA, so we ran right to one of our favorite seafood spots.

And since it was St Paddy's Day we made homemade reubens, yummy!

Found an oil leak underneath the engine, had it checked out and luckily it was only the oil pan gasket, and got it fixed.  Then a leak under our stairs on the hydraulic system that operates our slides that we had been fighting for a long time was worsening.  We found a place near the paint shop in Elkhart that was willing to fix it so we added that to the list.

After a sushi lunch at yet another new restaurant we actually found a piece of land!!

A little over 2 acres which we jumped on.

Then we had one of our AquaHot circulation pumps die, that's for our heat,, and while I was replacing it decided to go ahead and do the annual service at the same time.

The top disc looking thing in the picture is the offending pump.

Squeezed in a wash.

Jan even managed to put a 3rd coat of paint on the roof

Wonderful to know the all night light polluters are still at it:-(  Bright enough?  Grrrrrrrrr.

And then our microwave/convection oven bit the dust so it got replaced with quite a bit of angst courtesy of the installer.  We used some initiative to cover the holes we had to make.

We said good bye to our dentist of over 25 years and wished him well in retirement.

 We had numerous great times with friends' John and Diane.

We saw Karen and Tom say good bye to their rig and welcome in a new one, not without a little pain, a persistent fuel leak that finally got fixed.

The old, the new, and the ugly.

But all good now.

Off to Maine, and so desperate for seafood, we went into a mall parking lot near Kittery, ME, dropped the coach and drove the truck over to Bob's Clam Shack for some amazing clams, something we had never done before!

And the next day?????  Buck a shuck day at Billy's Chowder House, yayyyyyyy!

What's next?  Our first lobster fix:-)

Karen and Tom met us there and spent almost 7 weeks with us, and unfortunately spring in Maine never came, we were outside for a total of only 2 times for Happy Hour:-(

More normal HH's inside switching off between the two rigs.

Then the 3 J's came for a short visit, son Jason, Joanne, and Jax, they even brought Sophie!

We had to say good bye to them and had to do something that was required:-)  We four, Karen & Tom, Jan & I jumped in the truck and headed for Wiscassett to Red's Eats for the best lobster roll in the whole world.  We got there at 11am and they open at 1130, we still ended up about 10 in line!  But was it worth it, oh yeah!

The four of us also went on the mail boat in Casco Bay.

We, mostly Tom, ripped the old DirecTV dish off our roof that we weren't using anymore.

And with much hassle and delay by the salvage yard, replaced our peeling mirror arms and upgraded our cameras at the same time.

We made homemade lobster rolls many times, actually the very best.

We went up to Augusta to the Red Barn to meet long time friends we met in Florida long ago who live in Maine, Bob and Harlean, and Scott and Sue.  It was a delicious lunch, and a wonderful visit followed by dessert back at Bob and Harlean's.  Very sadly we had to say good bye to Harlean 6 weeks later.

Left to right; Moi, Harlean, Jan, Scott, Sue, and Bob

We bought a ton of fresh fish for the freezer, more on that later.

Karen and Tom left Scarborough before us and she had a lot of trouble getting her truck lights to work, yes, we both had the same guy wire us up.  Then when we were leaving we had a bugger of a time getting the lights to work, so when we arrived at our next stop, I tore apart the rear lights to see what was up.  Turned out they had been wired completely wrong, and with the wrong diodes!  Amazing they worked at all, and then all we could wonder about was if it had messed up our trucks.  After some research and discussion on the phone with pros, we ordered new diodes and rewired the lights correctly, no more troubles.

Original and incorrect

Corrected

When we arrived outside of Bangor to Pumpkin Patch we encountered something we hadn't encountered before, a pair of nesting killdeer that had made their nest right in the middle of our gravel parking site.  We tried to go over them but that didn't work so we went around and backed into our site.  We were there 10 days or so and every time you'd go anywhere near their nest they would put on a show as if their wings were broken to draw you away from the nest.  The eggs hatched just before we left and they disappeared.

We met great friends, Doug and Nancy for a great lunch at Anglers and a super visit.

We even caught back up with Karen and Tom for a quick visit on up the coast.

After the biggest haddock sandwich we had ever seen, we finally splurged on an absolutely awesome homemade Maine wild blueberry pie, and it was amazing at Helen's in Machias.

Then on to Houlton where we got some new potatoes from one of the many stands along the road, definitely potato country.  Then down to Moosehead Lake where we took a seaplane ride, first time for both of us.

Then back to the coast for 3 more things; 1) to go eat at Bagaduce Lunch, one of our favorites, 2) splurge on a huge lobster dinner bought at Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound where they pack them in seaweed to cook them in, and 3) get enough small ones to make 2 final lunches of lobster rolls as we bid good bye to Maine.

You made it through the first part, good bye Maine headed west.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!