Getting Ready to Head Farther South

Bushnell, FL - Events of Wednesday, November 2 to Sunday, November 13, 2015

The day after we arrived at Blueberry Hill (Wednesday), Paul weeded and weed-whacked our site in the morning. The maintenance staff mows over the summer, and they will also mow when we're there in the winter if we request it, but they don't trim or weed. They use big, riding mowers that can't get close to the edging around our landscape beds or to our pavement so things always look a little ragged by the time we arrive in the fall. The hot summers also produce a good many weeds in the landscape beds in spite of the heavy layer of cypress mulch Paul put down.

During the last two weeks we would be spending in Bushnell, we wanted to visit our favorite restaurants before we moved to the SKP Resort in Wauchula. Therefore, we headed out to lupper at Dan's Clam Stand later on Wednesday afternoon. Dan's is about 45 minutes away in Homasassa, and they have the second-best fried clam strips we have ever had. The best were at the Ipswitch Clambake Co. in Ipswitch, Massachusetts.

Dan's Clam Stand

Their dinner-sized fried clam strip basket has either frozen strips for $8 or fresh for $10. We always get fresh because they tend to be sweeter and more tender. The baskets include two sides. Margery had slaw and onion straws, and had Paul slaw and Cajun fries.

Paul with his fried clam strip basket

We made a day trip to Wauchula first thing Thursday morning. As we said in our last post, Paul wanted to pressure-wash the concrete before moving the 5th wheel to the new site.

We first stopped in the office and introduced ourselves. After we spent a little time getting some answers to a couple of questions we had about the co-op, we headed to our site and got the pressure washer hooked up. The SKP Florida Co-op is 20 to 30 years old, and much of the concrete dates back to the early days of the resort. Therefore, it is well-weathered, and the porous surface quickly picks up plenty of dark stains in Florida's humid climate.

Paul pressure washing the concrete on our new site in Wauchula

There was evidence the concrete had been pressure washed at some time in the past, but as you can see from the photo above, it was pretty dirty and took a lot of time to get clean with our small pressure washer. Paul wanted to at least get the concrete that would be under the 5th wheel done before we moved the rig down to Wauchula, but with the time we spent at the beginning of our visit getting answers to our questions and meeting neighbors, Paul only had a little more than half that area done by mid-afternoon. Since we planned to stop to eat on our way back to Blueberry Hill and since it was getting late, we decided to call it a day and come back the following day to finish up.

Pancho's Villa is only a few minutes off I-75 in San Antonio, Florida, on the way back to Blueberry Hill, so that's where we planned to stop for dinner. It was about 4:30 when we arrived.

Pancho's Villa

Chimichangas are one of our favorites at Pancho's, and as luck would have it, chimis were the special of the day for $8.75 (regularly $9.75). We both had ground beef chimis with queso sauce instead of the regular rojo (molé) sauce. The chimis were yummy as were the corn chips and salsa. We love, love, LOVE the corn chips and salsa at Panchos because the chips are warm, thin, crisp and lightly salted, and the salsa has lots of fresh cilantro.

Paul with his chimichanga at Pancho's Villa

After dinner, we headed back to Blueberry Hill for an evening of TV.

Bright and early Friday morning, we drove back to Wauchula in the truck to finish pressure washing the concrete. Paul got the area done that will be under the 5th wheel plus most of the patio area, but he still didn't have enough time to finish the driveway where we'll be parking the truck. Oh well, he'll be able finish that after we get there with the rig in a week or so. We got back to the 5th wheel in time for dinner, then spent Friday evening and the weekend relaxing.

Speaking of relaxing, Freeway is pretty good at it. If he's not on someone's lap, he likes to sit up on the back of the recliner. Here's a picture for his fan club.

Freeway relaxing on the top of the recliner

On Monday, we went to Beef O'Brady's up the road in Bushnell for Burger Monday. Their build-your-own burgers are great, and they're only $6 on Mondays (regularly $8) including fries. Margery had onion rings with her burger ($2 extra), and Paul had cheese on his burger ($.75 extra) and regular fries.

We needed a few things from Sam's Club, which is located in The Villages just up the road from OakWood Grill. OakWood has their delicious baby back ribs priced at $14 Wednesday through Sunday (regularly $17), so we headed to Sam's on Wednesday afternoon and stopped at OakWood afterward for ribs. The ribs include two sides - Margery had slaw and onion rings, and Paul had slaw and lima beans.

Baby back ribs, slaw and lima beans

Margery about to dig in

In addition to wanting to pressure wash the concrete that would be under the 5th wheel on our new site before we parked the 5th there, another reason we stopped over at Blueberry Hill on the way to Wauchula was because we were waiting for the new computer we ordered to arrive. We wrote about working on computer problems in a couple of previous posts. Not only does the old computer not have a resolution high enough for the work we do with our photos, but we were pretty sure the problem with the computer was a software (Windows) problem. We figured if we had to re-install Windows to get the old computer working again, we would also have to reinstall all our software and restore all our data from a backup anyway. Therefore, we finally gave up trying to solve the problem with the old computer and just ordered a new one that would be faster and that would have a display better suited for working with photos.

The computer came in Wednesday afternoon, and we picked it up in the office at Blueberry Hill on our way back to the rig after lupper. Paul was up bright and early on Thursday and dug right into setting up the new computer. He made good progress over the course of the day, and Margery was able to use the new laptop for web browsing, email and recipes by evening.

Unfortunately, the new computer started bogging down by the time Margery went to bed Thursday night, so Paul was on the phone with Dell tech support first thing Friday morning. The tech remotely installed some new drivers and updated the BIOS (the firmware that initializes hardware during boot up), and the new computer was back to normal. Not only does the new computer have a faster processor, but it also has a solid state hard drive that makes accessing files lightening fast.

Paul worked on downloading the last few apps for the new computer and he tweaked some of the settings on Friday. With the computer setup essentially complete, we relaxed most of the rest of the weekend.

Since Pancho's is a lot closer to Blueberry Hill than it is to Wauchula, we thought we would take advantage of that fact and head to Pancho's Saturday afternoon to eat one there more time before we left Blueberry. Margery had another ground beef chimichanga, and Paul had a chicken burrito. They were delish as were the corn chips and salsa.

Margery with her chimichanga at Pancho's

We did some pre-departure chores on Sunday then relaxed and watched the second-to-last NASCAR race of the season. On Monday, we headed to our new site in the SKP Florida RV Resort. We'll tell you all about it in our next post.

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Comments

[Marsha]

What a difference that pressure washer makes.
Yea! a photo of Freeway. He is still a charmer.
Oh boy...can't wait to see the unveiling of the new home spot.

[Janice L Evans]

I know Paul is itching to get to the new place, and get started with his plans.

Hoping you guys really love it!

[Bob & Jo Baskerville]

Freeway is a jewel.

[Cheryl]

Freeway, so good to see you! Glad your doing well.