Living Our Dream

Blueberry Hill RV Resort

Bushnell, FL - Events of Friday, October 24 to Monday, October 27, 2014

We had been staying at the campground at Lazydays RV to do some 5th wheel shopping at Lazydays and at a couple of other dealerships in the area. One of the other dealerships was North Trail RV in Fort Myers. We visited them on Wednesday and requested a price on a DRV Tradition 5th wheel. They called on Thursday with a price that was a good bit less than Lazydays and much more in line with what we thought it should be. When Paul asked if they could do any better on price, they even came down a little more. We found a 5th wheel we liked at a price we thought was fair, so we had a big decision to make. We told North Trail RV we would need a few days to think about it.

In the meantime, we left Lazydays on Friday and headed to Blueberry Hill RV Resort. It was only a one-hour drive, so we didn't bother hooking up the toad. Margery drove on ahead and stopped in the office to check in so Paul was able to drive directly to our site when he got there.

We were both thrilled to see all our landscape plants had not only survived, but they thrived. All the rain central Florida had over the summer helped our plants, but we feared it might have also helped the weeds to take over the landscape beds. The good news is the mulch did its job and kept the weeds down to a minimum. It only took us about half an hour to weed.

Our site at Blueberry Hill

This is the earliest we have ever arrived at Blueberry Hill, and we're surprised to see more people here than we are used to seeing when we usually arrive almost a month later. It must be the fact Blueberry Hill had the promotion last year that offered paving, a shed and landscaping in exchange for a two-year committment to the 6-month rate. Like us, many others who took advantage of the promotion figured if you're paying for 6 months on the site, you might as well use as much of it as you can.

After considering 6 or 8 different makes of 5th wheels and after much deliberation, we finally made a decision to order a DRV Tradition from North Trail RV. Last Monday, we drove to Fort Myers to sign on the dotted line and give them a deposit. Our 5th wheel is scheduled to be delivered in late January. Clint Hatfield is our salesman, and we highly recommend him. We found him to be extremely responsive to all inquiries, there was no high pressure and he was knowledgeable about their products. Clint is a true gentleman.

When we were in Pittsburgh in September, we didn't yet know what we were going to do about buying a 5th wheel, but we talked to Colussy Chevrolet where J. Michael works while we were there to spec out a one-ton diesel dually just in case. As soon as we finalized our decision to buy the 5th wheel, we gave Colussy the go-ahead to order the truck. While we both love our Equinox and will be sad to give it up, Margery is looking forward to gaining more kitchen counter space and to having all ingredients for her menus in one location in the 5th wheel instead of being scattered all over the rig like in the motor home due to the small kitchen. Paul is excited at the opportunity to have a truck again. He had to give up his beloved Silverado when we went full-time. We're hoping the new truck will arrive in time to pick it up when we go to Pittsburgh for Christmas. And yes, the truck won't be as convenient or as economical for day-to-day driving, but it is a necessary evil for the 5th wheel lifestyle.

On the way back from signing the order for the 5th wheel on Monday, we stopped for lupper at Pancho's Villa in San Antonio, FL. We discovered Pancho's last spring, and it has become our favorite Mexican restaurant in the area.

Pancho's Villa

We started off with the traditional corn chips and salsa. We like the corn chips there a lot because they are nicely salted. The salsa is good, too.

Pancho's has lunches for around $6 to $8, and most dinners range in price from about $8 to $10. We both had a chicken chimichanga. The chimis are served with sour cream, guacamole, molé sauce, lettuce, tomato, refried beans and rice. Most Mexican rice is rather bland, but Pancho's serves some of the best, most flavorful Mexican rice we have ever had. Everything else was yummy, too!

Paul with his chimichanga

With our bellies full, we headed back to the motor home. While we wait for our 5th wheel and truck to arrive, we have several projects planned including starting to clean out the motor home storage bays. We also plan to eat out, and we hope to have some time to relax and enjoy our pavement and landscaping. Who knows? We may even do a little sightseeing. Stay tuned.

Shopping

Bushnell, FL - Events of Monday, October 20 to Friday, October 24, 2014

After spending the weekend relaxing at Paradise Lake Campground in Brookfield, GA, we headed out on Monday morning to Florida where we had one more stop to make before heading to our site at Blueberry Hill RV Resort. After a 5-hour drive, we pulled into the Lazydays RV Park adjacent to the huge Lazydays RV dealership. Lazydays is located in Seffner, FL, which is just to the east of Tampa.

The roads and pads in the campground are paved. The sites, which are all back-ins, are a decent size. There are full hookups with 30/50-amp electric, free breakfast and lunch at the cafeteria inside the RV dealership every day during your stay, free newspapers every morning, free cable and free Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi signal was fairly strong, and the connection was fairly fast. There is also good Verizon 4G service.

Our site at Lazydays

View up the road at Lazydays

The daily rate at Lazydays is $40 a night. However, they had a special when we were there that provided a third night free if you stayed two nights, so we reserved three nights.

The reason we stopped at Lazydays was to go RV shopping. We haven't mentioned it in our blog until now because we were unsure of what we were going to do, but we have been looking at new 5th wheels since late summer. Because we had a dizzying number of decisions to make and we kept bouncing back and forth between buying and not buying and looking at so many different makes of 5th wheels, we knew anything we wrote about our RV shopping would be confusing. Therefore, we waited until things were clearer.

Lydia's arrival last summer changed everything for us. Our travel style has been slowing for the past few years anyway, but now it looks like it may slow even more now that we have a granddaughter because, although we still want to travel, we also want spend a good bit of our summers near Pittsburgh so we can be part of Lydia's life. Skyping is good and Lora sends pictures, but that only goes so far to satisfy the granddaughter itch. Lydia was two-months old when we were in Pittsburgh in September. She is now three-months old. From the pictures like the one below Lora sent us recently, we can already see a big difference in Lydia in just one month. By the way, her bib says, "I'm so cute it's scary." That just about says it all.

Lydia at three months

We always said we may consider a 5th wheel when our travel slowed down because 5th wheels seem better suited to staying in one location for longer periods since they don't have an engine and transmission that need to be exercised and serviced periodically like a motor home does. Knowing our travel style was slowing, we started casually looking at 5th wheels at the Tampa RV show a year or two ago. Lydia's arrival last July made us start to think about 5th wheels more seriously.

Bighorn is one of the brands we saw at the Tampa RV show that we liked. Therefore, we visited an RV dealer in Akron late in the summer while we were staying in Ohio to take a closer look at them. We liked what we saw, but we wanted to see some other brands.

After we left Pittsburgh in September, we headed to Knoxville, TN. Not only did we want to do a little sightseeing there, but Knoxville has several RV dealers that sell a few other brands we wanted to investigate.

One of the makes we saw while in Knoxville that we really liked was the Tradition by DRV. Although we got a good price on the Tradition from the dealer in Knoxville, he didn't give us a very good deal on our trade-in because they don't sell motor homes themselves and would have had to wholesale our trade-in to a third party. The result was a cash difference that was way too high for us to consider.

That's when we made plans to go to Lazydays, which also carries Traditions. By the time we got set up at the Lazydays campground on Monday, it was a little late to go to the dealership so we waited until Tuesday morning. Unfortunately, the price on the Tradition at Lazydays was even higher than in Knoxville.

Anna Maria Oyster Bar is a favorite seafood restaurant of ours. One of their three locations is only about half an hour from Seffner, so after our disappointing visit to Lazydays on Tuesday, we went there for lupper.

Anna Maria Oyster Bar

We love the clams at Anna Maria's, so that's what we both had. Margery had slaw and onion straws for her sides and Paul had slaw and red potatoes. Everything was yummy!

Paul ready to dig into his clams

Although our hopes of buying a new 5th wheel were starting to fade, we decided to extend our stay at the Lazydays Campground another night so we could check out a couple of other RV dealerships before heading to Bushnell. On Wednesday, we drove two hours south of Tampa to Fort Myers to North Trail RV, which also sells DRV Traditions. North Trail said they would get back to us the next day with a price after their appraiser had time to go over the info we gave them about our trade-in and after they had time to check with the factory rep on a couple of special options we requested.

On Thursday while we were waiting for the price from North Trail, we drove to La Mesa RV in Sanford, FL, which is just north of Orlando. We wanted to take one more look at Bighorn 5th wheels. Bighorns are nice, but not as nice as the Tradition; and even though Bighorns are marketed as full-time rigs, they don't have enough cargo carrying capacity to suit us.

On our way back through Orlando, we stopped at Bahama Breeze for lupper.

Bahama Breeze

Bahama Breeze has happy hour with half-price appetizers from 4:00 to 6:00 so we had appetizers for our lupper. We had an order of Firecracker Shrimp, a chicken quesadilla, and a crab stack. The crab stack is lump crab meat, shrimp, mango and guacamole. It looks great and tastes even better. The crab stack is expensive at $14; but at half price you can't go wrong if you like crab and shrimp.

Crab stack

Margery waiting to dig in

On Friday, we left the campground at Lazydays and drove an hour north to our site at Blueberry Hill RV Resort. We'll tell you about our arrival and about our final decision on buying a 5th wheel in our next post.

Heading to Florida

Brookfield, GA - Events of Thursday, October 16, 2014 to Sunday, October 19, 2014

As we said at the end of our last post, we had a lot of rain while in Knoxville. We were hoping to see a little fall color there in the foothills of the Smokies, but as soon as a few leaves began to turn, the rain knocked them off the trees. Not only that, but every time it rained, it cooled off a little more. It was definitely time to head south.

We left Knoxville around 9:30 a.m. on Thursday for about a three-hour drive to our first overnight stop at Harvest Moon RV Park in Adairsville, GA. Adairsville is located about an hour north of Atlanta.

Harvest Moon has about 75 sites, most of which are pull-throughs. While many of the sites, especially the back-ins, are occupied by seasonals, there are about 20 extra-long pull-throughs in the front section that seem to be used primarily for overnighters.

The roads are fresh gravel and are nice and wide. The sites, which are also plenty big, have gravel pads, nice grass and an occasdional shrub or two. There are full hookups with 30/50-amp electric, free cable and free Wi-Fi. The cable channels are somewhat limited, and we found the Wi-Fi to be so slow it was almost useless. Fortunately, there was a strong Verizon 4G signal. The photos below show our site at Harvest Moon RV and a view down the road past our site.

Our site at Harvest Moon

View down the road past our site

Although we thought their nightly rate of $35 was a little high for a non-tourist area, Harvest Moon is a very nice campground. They have plenty of amenities like a swimming pool, game room and clubhouse, free laundry, free cable and free Wi-Fi that apparently attract a lot of seasonals and weekenders from Atlanta.

The next morning (Friday) we were on the road around 9:15 a.m. for the second leg of our journey to Florida. This leg was supposed to be a drive of a little over 4 hours to Paradise Lake RV Park in Brookfield, GA, which is just north of the Georgia/Florida border. However, the drive ended up taking almost 5 hours because we lost at least 15 or 20 minutes to the infamous Atlanta traffic even though it was well past rush hour, and we also had to stop for fuel.

Since we usually don't like to travel more than two days in a row and since we usually don't like to travel on weekends, we decided to spend the whole weekend at Paradise Lake. Although we considered staying at another campground a few miles farther down the interstate, we chose Paradise Lake because it was about 10 miles from the interstate, and we thought it would be a quieter place to chill out for the weekend. Well, we were wrong. The campground itself was nice and quiet, but the 4-lane road that passes Paradise Lake was quite busy and included a lot of truck traffic. We didn't notice the noise that much when we first got there, but we had to close our door later on Friday evening so we could hear the TV. Fortunately, the traffic died down to almost nothing late at night, and it wasn't quite as heavy during the day on Saturday or Sunday either.

Paradise Lake has full hookups. We requested 50 amps because we thought we might need to use our air conditioner since we finally got back into some nice, sunny, warm weather. We got one of only two 50-amp sites available. The Passport America rate for our 50-amp site was $19 a night.

Our semi-shady site at Paradise Lake RV

Paradise Lake is somewhat rustic. There are no frills, and the main road is just two sandy tracks through the grass. However, the all-grass sites are fairly large and are nice and level. There are pine trees dotted around the campground that provide some welcome shade without completely blocking out the sun.

View down the main road in the campground

Many of the sites at Paradise Lake are occupied by seasonals, and all of the RVs there are older. As we drove in, Paul commented that our 10-year old motor home was probably the newest RV there. Fortunately, most of the RVs are fairly well maintained, and most of the sites are relatively neat.

There were some sightseeing opportunities in the area, but we were content to just chill out around the campground all weekend after making a Walmart run on Saturday morning. Paul got a much-needed haircut in the afternoon on Saturday, and we watched the NASCAR race on Sunday.

On Monday, we headed out on the final leg of our journey to Florida. We'll tell you about it in our next post.

More Good Eats in Knoxville

Heiskell (Knoxville), TN - Events of Thursday, October 9 to Wednesday, October 15, 2014

As we said at the end of our last post, seeing all those baked beans during our visit to Bush's Beans made us hungry. One of our blog readers wrote to recommend a good barbecue place in Knoxville called Buddy's Bar-b-q, so that's where we headed.

Buddy's has 11 corporate locations and three franchise restaurants in and around Knoxville. One of the franchise restaurants is one exit south of the exit where the Escapees RV park is located.

We were a little leery because this particular restaurant is located adjacent to a gas station. However, the restaurant is very nice outside and in.

Buddy's Bar-b-q

We were surprised by how reasonable the prices are at Buddy's. Sandwiches are $2.19 for a smoked hot dog to $4.99 for a large beef brisket sandwich. Dinner plates that include two sides range in price from $6.19 for ham to $8.89 for a half pound of ribs.

We both had pulled pork plates with cole slaw and potato salad for $6.39. Hush puppies were also included.

Paul with his pulled pork plate

Even with the low price, the portions were generous, and the pork was excellent! It was tender and moist with a nice hint of smoke. They had two sauces - mild and hot, which were similar except for the heat. Both sauces are thick and tart with a touch of sweetness, which is just the way we like our barbecue sauce. The cole slaw and potato salad were both good, too. All in all, it was an excellent meal, especially in view of the very reasonable prices.

The rain moved in again on Friday. However, we headed back to the Holy Land Market again in the afternoon in spite of the rain. We usually don't go out to eat two days in a row, but our time in Knoxville was growing short, and we just had to have another one of their fantastic Reuben sandwiches.

Reuben sandwich

Margery enjoying her Reuben

The weekend brought more rain and cooling temperatures again, so we just hung out at the rig. We watched a movie we had borrowed from Lora and J. Michael on Saturday, the NASCAR race from Charlotte on Saturday evening and another movie we had previously recorded on Sunday.

Knoxville is about 75 miles from Crossville, TN where our friends, Darrell and Judy, live. They got in touch with us earlier in our stay, and we made arrangements to meet them for lupper on Monday. We offered to meet them half way, but they wanted to meet us at a favorite restaurant of theirs near Knoxville called Golden Girls.

Golden Girls

Golden Girls has a large selection of good, home-style comfort food at very reasonable prices. Sandwiches are around $3 to $5, and most dinners are under $10. There are daily specials for $5.75 before 4:00 p.m. and $6.75 after 4:00.

Margery had catfish with onion rings and slaw, and Paul had broasted chicken. Everything was delish!

Darrell, Judy, Margery and Paul

Since it was mid-afternoon, the restaurant wasn't very crowded so we were able to hang around for quite a while after our meal to chat. It was great to be able to catch up with Darrell and Judy again.

Tuesday brought more rain so we hunkered down in the motor home again. Wednesday was our last day in the Knoxville area, so after doing some of our pre-departure chores in the morning, we made a quick run to Hobby Lobby in the afternoon so Margery could pick up some yarn for a new project. On the way back, we stopped at Archer's BBQ for lupper. We stopped at Archer's when we first arrived in Knoxville, and it was located close to Hobby Lobby so we decided to go again before we left.

Archer's BBQ

We had the same thing we had the first time we went to Archer's - pulled pork plate combos with slaw and potato salad for our sides with a drink for $13. Everything was just as good as it was the first time we went.

Margery adding Memphis-style sauce to her pork barbecue

We got a lot of rain while we were in Knoxville - over 4 inches in our last week there alone. Every time it rains, the temperature drops a little more than the time before, so it was definitely time to head south. We'll tell you where we went in our next post.

Barbecue and Beans

Heiskell (Knoxville), TN - Events of Monday, October 6 to Thursday, October 9, 2014

We had rain and cooler temperatures over the weekend as predicted. It was still cool and cloudy on Monday, so it wasn't very conducive to doing any sightseeing. However, we had several restaurants in the Knoxville area we wanted to try so we headed out to Dead End B-B-Q in the afternoon in spite of the weather.

Dead End B-B-Q is located west of downtown Knoxville a few doors up the street from the Holy Land Market where we went a few days prior. Dead End B-B-Q gets its name from a group of friends and neighbors who gathered at the end of their dead end street to barbecue.

Dead End B-B-Q

Dead End B-B-Q has pulled pork, beef brisket, chicken, sausage and ribs. Sandwiches are served with house-made potato chips and range in price from $7 for chicken to $9.50 for brisket. Plates with two sides are $10 for sausage to $16 for brisket. We both had pulled pork with slaw and waffle-cut sweet potato fries (they call them chips) for $11.

Margery about to dig into her pulled pork

We weren't that impressed by Dead End Bar-B-Q. The pork was moist, but it was a little stringy and not too tender. It wasn't very smoky either. They had two sauces - hot and mild, and both were a little too sweet for our tastes. We liked the pork and the sauces at Archers far better than at Dead End. Although the sides at Dead End were good, we thought the sides at Archers were better, too.

We had more rain and clouds on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, the clouds started to break up a bit, and it started to warm up again. Therefore, we decided to take a drive about 45 minutes east of Knoxville to check out the Bush's Beans Visitor Center and Museum in Chestnut Hill, TN.

Bush's Beans Visitor Center

Paul with a 1940 or 1941 Ford pickup outside the visitor center

Bush's is best known for their baked beans. They have about 30 kinds of baked and "Grillin'" beans as well as about 20 kinds of regular canned beans such as black, kidney, garbanzo, navy, etc.

Bush's started an ad campaign in the 1990s featuring Jay Bush, great grandson of the company's founder, and his talking dog, Duke. There is a running gag in the commercials with Duke coming up with different schemes to sell the secret family recipe for the baked beans.

Margery posing for a tourist photo with Jay Bush and Duke

One of the company's canneries is located right across the road from the visitor center. Although there are no tours of the factory itself, there is an excellent movie in the visitor center with the history of the company and with scenes of the bean-making process.

Bush's Bean factory

Also across the road from the visitor center and adjacent to the factory is the homestead of A. J. and Sally Bush, founders of Bush's Beans. The home is still used for company gatherings.

Bush family homestead

We arrived just in time for the next showing of the movie. It started out with several of the cute commercials with Jay and Duke. The movie then continued with the family and company history.

In 1904, A. J. Bush was about to open a hosiery factory in Chestnut Hill, TN when he was approached by the Stokley family (of Stokley-Van Camp fame) to partner with them to open a tomato cannery instead. Bush's tomato cannery was so successful, he was able to buy out the Stokley interest within two years and begin operating the cannery independently as Bush Brothers & Company.

The company grew, but suffered set-backs following WWI. In the 1920s, Bush's began to prosper again, and they acquired a couple of other canneries and expanded their line of canned foods to include vegetables other than tomatoes as well as fruits.

In the 1930s, inexpensive canned foods helped struggling families survive the Depression. Pork and beans became a staple in the American diet.

The company continued to grow through WWII as it supplied canned goods to our troops overseas. The building of a hydro-electric dam in 1942 resulted in the loss of Bush Brothers farm land and a cannery, but the company used the money they were paid as compensation to further expand their operations elsewhere.

Although they had previously been producing pork and beans, Bush's introduced a new line of baked beans in the 1970s and 1980s that was a huge success. Today, beans are Bush's primary product, and they supply 80% of the canned baked beans sold in the United States. They process over 55 million pounds of beans a year.

The movie also shows how beans are prepared and canned. The beans are cleaned, soaked and cleaned again on one side of the factory, and the sauce is prepared on the other. The beans and sauce meet up with the cans in the middle. After filling, the cans are cooked in a retort and are then labeled, boxed and palletized for shipment.

After the movie, we walked through the museum, which has more information on the production of canned beans. They also have a fun demonstration of the canning process where you can turn various cranks to deliver beans (actually plastic balls) down a series of chutes.

There is also a scale that gives you your weight in beans. Of course, we know there are two things you should never ask a lady - her age and her weight; but because we have been able to maintain our weight loss of several years ago by sticking to a low-carb diet, Margery doesn't mind telling everyone she only weighs 125,184 beans.

Margery weighs 125,184 beans

The rest of the museum has more details on the history of the Bush family and of Bush's Beans.

A. J. and Sally Bush, founders of Bush's Beans

Automated sealing of cans is done at the rate of hundreds of cans a minute, but it wasn't always that fast. The display in the photo below shows "hole and cap" cans. The cans were manufactured with the lids and bottoms already soldered on, but the lid had a hole about 1 inch in diameter through which the food was inserted. A cap with a small vent hole was then hand soldered over the 1-inch hole. After the can went through cooking in a retort, the vent hole was sealed (also by hand) with a drop of solder.

Cans were once hand-soldered

The museum exits through the gift shop, which is filled with country-themed merchandise. There are also shelves stocked with just about every product Bush's makes.

Gift shop

Seeing all those baked beans made us hungry. The visitor center has a café that serves southern specialties and various bean desserts including pinto bean pie, but we decided to pass and head back toward Knoxville because we had a different restaurant in mind. We'll tell you all about it in our next post.