Pretty quiet on the Florida front

Been a quiet week made a bit quieter by Jan flying out to Albuquerque to visit her mom, Viv, and her 2 sisters, Nancy and Karen, and, of course CT.  Meanwhile I decided to do a few little items on the coach, what else, right?  Well, the first chore was an utter failure.

I wanted to put in a AC outlet in the dash on the right side in front of the passenger seat, so we would have a more convenient place to plug in the laptop when going down the road.  As I've said in the past, I am a GPS nut.  I have a Garmin RV 760 set up in front of me, and Jan double-checks and confirms as we move along with a MacBook Pro running Street Atlas by Delorme.  This works well for us, and it definitely keeps us out of trouble MOST of the time.  So anyway we wanted a more convenient plug for the laptop.  So I dug into the cabinet overhead to find a AC source, no luck, then removed the trim work along both sides of the windshield to see if I could find a AC wire in there, no luck, then decided to go behind a panel outboard of the driver's seat to see if I could hook in there, no luck, okay one more, tore apart the electronics cabinet, I could find an AC outlet, but no good way to find enough wire to splice into, so at least for the time being we will live without a new outlet.  2 1/2 hours of frustration, but what else did I have to do?  And then Jan sends a picture of their lunch in Santa Fe, and ooh, I feel even worse:-)

Santa Fe Bite
The greatest green chili cheeseburger in the WORLD!

Then I tackled another little project, and with some help got that one done successfully.  We have a coolant reservoir for the engine where you can add coolant and check to see if the coolant level is correct.  Now this tank is all aluminum, mounted high up in the engine compartment, and has a sight glass so you can see the level of the coolant.  Well I haven't been able to see through it for some time.  Just like a leaking roof that only leaks when it rains, I only notice the obscured sight glass when I check the coolant level every month or so.  I though wrong that the material was plastic and had just gotten opaque with age, turns out the sight is tempered glass.  So I pull it out and try my best to clean it with soap and Q-tips, no luck, run down to NAPA to see if I can just replace it, they don't have one and can't get one, so I ask Jack what he thinks?  He pulls out a Dremel, modifies an attachment and proceeds to polish and grind away on it for several minutes and gets it so we can see through the glass once again!  So that gets reinstalled, coolant level adjusted,  and one more project successfully completed.  

I'll sign off now with just a few more odds and ends. 

We got the redone armrests back and they look good! 

Complete!

The new arm rest the way it should have been done
in the first place

Our tomatoes that we planted in December are ripening nicely!

Coming along

Nice, huh?

We saw this very pretty bird at our neighbor's feeder the other day.

Any one know what it is?

We found perhaps the best fish taco in Florida, maybe the world, at a little tiny joint in Venice, The Lucky Dog.

You get 3 of these beauties, but I couldn't stop eating the
first 2 before I thought to take the picture:-)

Then I'll close this with a few pictures of the jetties in Venice, both north and south. We go over to watch the sunset a lot, but it's also pretty to visit most anytime.

The path out to the north jetty
That's the south jetty in the distance

Looking north at part of Nokomis beach

Have you ever seen pelicans sitting in a tree??

South jetty waiting for sunset

Our plans they are a'changing

I wrote a post back in January about our tentative plans for this year.  Some major things have happened since.  Kelly, Todd, and our grandkids are going to be moving from KY back to Texas!  Todd got a brand new job in Lubbock, and is ecstatic to be back to his home state, although this time they will be in west Texas as opposed to east Texas.  So our rendezvous with them will hopefully be in Lubbock after their house sells and they get all moved.  Otherwise we will see Kelly and the kids while we are up in KY after our time in Atlanta.

We had an opportunity come up to spend 4th of July in New Hampshire with our dear friends, Ray and April, and Mark and Ginger made the generous offer to park in their driveway where R&A will be house sitting.  We weren't planning on another New England trip so soon, but we really want to take advantage of this opportunity to be with them.  So then we figured since we were already that far north, lobster roll heaven wasn't that much further, right?  We decided to make a little loop as far downeast as Harrington, ME, about 35 miles farther east than Bar Harbor.  When we were in Maine two years ago we tried to stay in this little campground on the water, but it books full very quickly.  Could we squeeze in this year?  It turns out yes, but the full hookup sites are already gone!  Then we thought wow, if those sites are already booked this far out maybe we ought to take a look at the other places we want to go.  So sure enough we were just able to make reservations at most of the places we wanted to go, several were already booked for the entire season.  We don't prefer to have our plans this set so far out, but in the east, especially in New England there are fewer campgrounds, most are on the smaller size, and their summer season is very short, so it can be a challenge.  We are hoping Karen will join us for most of this loop.  We will follow the coast north, and then loop back through Augusta to try to see friends there, and beat feet for Buffalo, WY.  We want to spend some time exploring in the Bighorn Mountains.  One of our favorite authors, CJ Box sets many of his books in this area of the country with his featured character, Joe Pickett who is a game warden in the county, and although it is definitely fiction he sets a lot of stories accurately in these mountains and the tiny town of Saddlestring, WY.  Much like James Lee Burke sets his fictional character, Dave Robicheaux in New Iberia, LA, and his character Billie Bob Holland in Missoula, MT, both places we've visited because of the appealing description by the author.  We even many years ago searched in vain for the town of Twenty Mile, WY the setting of Trevanian's Incident at Twenty Mile, a fascinating read by the way.

But I digress, then we will head south to Rocky Mountain National Park, Denver, Gunnison, and Montrose for pizza, before our 5 weeks in Durango.  So quite out of character for us our plans have become quite firm.

Then just to be sure you know Murphy is still with us every once in a while.  I mentioned that I needed to replace a chattering water solenoid valve on our washer, a simple fix.  The parts came, I tore into the washer, swapped out the valves, put it back together, decided to run it through its cycle before buttoning it up and.... leaked like a sieve!!  Aww, come on.  It was leaking from the new valves where they met their fittings, and then it was leaking profusely from a plastic "tray" that channels the water into the drum and on closer scrutiny it looked like it had been leaking a little bit for some time, and when did this occur, oh yeah, on Friday.  So ordered more parts, had to tell Jan the washer was dead until yesterday, Wednesday, but all is well now, no leaks, no chattering, and running well.

Also, in a blast from the past, had an old Delta friend contact me, so Doug, Jan and I had a pleasant catchup lunch and visit, and hope to get together again while he is down this way.  Amazing that we each looked exactly the same after 15+ years!  Jan is heading to Albuquerque to visit her mom and Nancy and CT on Sunday, so I am hoping to complete a few little projects in her absence, mainly to stay out of the bars:-)