Living Our Dream

Suncoast Designers Part Deux

Bushnell, FL - Events of Friday, Dec. 2 to Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2011

Last year we stopped at Suncoast Designers in Hudson, FL to have four of our dual pane windows repaired. Fogging of dual pane windows is a fairly common problem for RVs because bouncing down the highway tends to break the seal between the panes of glass. Once the seal is broken, moisture can get in between the panes. As the glass heats and cools, the moisture condenses on the inside surfaces creating a foggy appearance. The presence of moisture not only is unsightly, but it reduces the insulating value of the window. If left unrepaired, the moisture can also eventually etch the glass making the repair even more expensive because you will then have to replace the glass or possibly the whole window.

Over the past year, we noticed that three additional windows had shown a little bit of fogging at one time or another, so we decided to stop at Suncoast again to have them repaired before settling in at our winter roost at Blueberry Hill in Bushnell.

Last year, we made the trek from Summerdale to Suncoast in two days, a drive of a total of about 10 hours. That is certainly doable, but we usually like to keep our travel days to four hours or less. We have also been spoiled this year with so many short travel days, so we decided to break the drive to Suncoast into three days.

The first night, we stopped in Fountain, FL at Pine Lake RV, which is located about 15 miles south of the interstate and to the north of Panama City, FL. We stopped there in March, 2010 on our way from Bushnell to Summerdale. Pine Lake RV is a Passport America campground with half price camping. Even with the discount, however, our site was still almost $20 even before tax because there is an extra $5 charge for 50 amp that isn't subject to the discount.

The roads at Pine Lakes RV are paved, but the pavement is quite narrow. It doesn't look too bad in the view down the road past our site in the photo below, but there are some tight turns where it is hard to keep your rig on the pavement. Fortunately, the ground is firm so there's no chance of getting stuck, but you do have to be careful of several trees close to the road and a couple of rigs that were parked with their back ends sticking out.

The sites are a combination of grass and sand, and most are long pull-throughs. The sites are a little close together, but the width isn't too bad for a private campground.

Some sites have 30-amp electric and some have 50 amp. Pine Lake has full hook-ups with free Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi signal was fairly strong, but the connection was way slower than our Verizon 3G and way, waaay slower than the 4G we had gotten used to in Summerdale.

There is some highway noise from four-lane U. S. Highway 231 that passes by the campground on the way to Panama City. There is also a railroad track a few hundred feet on the other side of the highway. Fortunately, there weren't many trains because the one or two that did pass rumbled by very loudly. Fortunately, there aren't any crossings near the campground, so we didn't hear any train horns.

We headed out the next morning and had a drive of about four hours to our next stop at Palm RV in Worthington Springs, FL. Palm RV is another Passport America campground, and the price was $18 a night with the discount. Palm RV consists of about a dozen RV sites in the large side yard of the owner's home.

Palm RV has full hookups, and at least some of the sites have 50 amps. Although the entrance driveway is paved, it is quite narrow; however, there are no obstructions to worry about once you get through the entrance gate, and the gate is plenty wide enough. The rest of the campground is grass except for a few sites that have a small, concrete RV pad. Most of the RVs there were older, and some looked like they were permanent.

The two-lane road that passes by the campground is surprisingly busy (including quite a few 18-wheelers) during the day, so there is some traffic noise. Traffic diminished to almost nothing later at night, and the campground was pretty quiet except for the rooster somewhere in the neighborhood that started crowing about 4:45 AM. Since we had crossed into the Eastern Time Zone, it didn't even start to get light until after 6:00 AM. How do roosters know morning is coming that far in advance?

The drive for the last leg of our journey to Suncoast was a little less than 3 hours, and we pulled into Suncoast shortly after noon on Sunday. Since Suncoast has a limited number of RV spaces and since we were arriving on Sunday when Suncoast was closed with no one there to direct the parking, we wanted to keep our last travel day short so we could arrive fairly early in the day. That was another reason for breaking our trip into three days instead of just two. Some of the spaces face the building. Not only is backing into those spaces a little tight, the sites facing the building are pretty noisy during the work day. Fortunately, we arrived early enough to not only get a space facing away from the building, we also got one on the end so we had a little extra room to open our slides.

Suncoast is an architectural window manufacturer that has also built a niche business repairing RV windows. You can remove the window yourself and drop it off if you are local, you can ship the window to them for repair, or you can stop by and they will remove the window for you and repair it. The price is the same - $250 for large windows (like the ones in the cockpit area of motor homes) and $200 for smaller windows.

Suncoast has about 15 RV sites with water and electric (50 amp only - 30-amp adapters are for sale in the office if you need one). There is also a dump station.

There is plenty of hustle and bustle during the day with workmen removing and re-installing windows, with machinery humming inside the Suncoast building and with delivery trucks coming and going; but that is to be expected because it is a repair/manufacturing facility not an RV resort. Fortunately, it quiets down after 3:00 PM when the workers go home.

On Monday morning, someone came to our door at 7:00 AM to see which windows needed to be repaired, then Paul went to the office to sign the work order to get us into the queue. Workmen came back around 8:00 and removed the three windows that needed repairing and covered the openings with cardboard.

When we were at Suncoast last year, we reported on the process they use to repair the dual pane windows. Click here to read our post from last year and to see pictures of the process.

We planned on spending two nights at Suncoast Designers because they tend to be busy this time of year. Although they can sometimes repair and replace windows in one day, there is no guarantee all of your windows will get done that quickly.

As expected, none of our windows were finished on Monday. The first window didn't show up until about 10:30 Tuesday morning. By the time the guys got the last window in, and by the time we paid our bill, got packed up, and hooked up the toad, we didn't get on the road until almost 2:00 PM. Fortunately, it was only a little over an hour to Bushnell.

Last year, we had a problem with streaks and smudges between the panes of glass in 3 of the 4 windows we had repaired, and Suncoast had to do them over. This year, we are pleased to report there were no streaks and that Suncoast appears to have solved whatever it was that caused that problem last year.

After stopping at Flying J to gas up and to top off our propane tank, we arrived at Blueberry Hill RV Resort in Bushnell, FL a little after 3:00 and got registered and set up on our usual site.

Blueberry Hill has two sections. The front section has paved, pull-through sites that are fairly close together. They usually use the front section for rallies and for people who are staying less than a month. The back section where our site is located has extra-large back-ins that are all grass. The next photo is another view of some of the sites in the rear section.

Blueberry Hill has full hookups with 30/50-amp electric, cable and Wi-Fi. There used to be a fee for Wi-Fi, but now it's free. The campground Wi-Fi seems pretty fast, and there are numerous transmitters around the campground so the signal is strong. We do like to supplement our Verizon usage with campground Wi-Fi when possible because we have a tendency to go over our 5GB limit. Unfortunately, the connection at Blueberry Hill is spotty. It's sometimes hard to get online and we occasionally get dumped off. It will probably get worse once the campground fills up and there are more people trying to use the Wi-Fi, so we'll probably stick to our Verizon Broadband, which we have been very pleased with since we switched from satellite internet back in October.

Blueberry Hill also has a heated pool, a large club house, showers, a laundry, shuffleboard, horseshoes, and a rec center with pool tables, a library and a card room. There is a new activity director this year, and there are already numerous activities on the schedule.

We'll be hanging out here at Blueberry Hill for at least the next three months. We'll be doing a little sightseeing, we'll be working on some projects, and we'll be eating out a few times. Our life will be a little more laid back than it is in summer when we're traveling and doing a lot of sightseeing, so our posts may be a little less frequent; but there will be periodic updates on what we're up to so stay tuned.

On the Road Again

First of all, we would like to thank all our friends and readers who expressed their condolences about the loss of our sweet dog, Molly. She was such a good traveler, and we'll miss her.

After delaying our departure from Bushnell, we finally hit the road on Thursday. We made an overnight stop at Pine Lake RV, a Passport America campground near Fountain, FL, in the panhandle. In other years after leaving Bushnell, we stayed at Chattahoochee RV located on the Apalachicola River. Chattahoochee is closer to half-way to our destination in Summerdale, AL; but last year, the river was flooded and some of the sites at the campground had recently been underwater. With more rain this year, we thought we would just drive a little farther and try a new campground that wasn't located near a river. The next photo shows our site at Pine Lake RV.

Pine Lake RV is located about 16 miles from the interstate, but there is still some highway noise from four-lane U. S. Highway 231 that passes by the campground on the way to Panama City. There is a railroad track a few hundred feet on the other side of the highway. Fortunately, there were very few trains because the rumble of the few that did pass was very loud. Fortunately, there is no crossing near the campground so there were only a few, distant toots of the train horns.

The roads through the campground are paved, but the pavement is quite narrow. The sites are a combination of grass and sand, and most are extra-long pull-throughs. The site width isn't too bad for a private campground. Pine Lake has full hook-ups with free Wi-Fi. Some sites have 30 amp electric and some have 50 amp. As you can see from the above photo, there are a few trees, but the office was very accommodating in allowing us to move to another site to get satellite reception. In the first site they gave us we could get internet, but not TV. They are on two different satellites, and a tree branch was blocking the TV signal.

In the morning we hit the road at 8:30, which is a little earlier than usual. We pulled into Rainbow Plantation in Summerdale, AL, shortly after noon. It was a good thing we got an early start because we got the last available site. A lot of Escepees spend the winter in Summerdale; and although some had moved on, others (like us) were stopping on our way north from Florida.

Rainbow Plantation is one of our favorite Escapees RV parks. The roads are paved, and the sites are a combination of grass and sand. There are full hook-ups and free Wi-Fi. Fifty-amp electric is available for an extra charge. Sites are nice and wide, and the campground is quiet.

One of the things we like about the Summerdale area is there are lots of things to do and see. Even though our visit to Summerdale was shortened because we extended our stay in Bushnell, we still wanted to see the azaleas blooming at Bellingrath Gardens over in Mobile. Bellingrath is famous for the over 250,000 azaleas that normally bloom around the middle two weeks of March. Unfortunately, when we checked the Bellingrath web site, we found out the unusually cold weather this winter had delayed the blooming by about two weeks. This delay was confirmed by observing the azaleas in people's yards in the area. Only about a third of the blossoms on most of the plants open, and it looked like the azaleas still had at least a week to 10 days to go before they even neared their peak. Therefore, we decided to save seeing azaleas for another time.

One of the other things we like about the Summerdale area is the close proximity to the Gulf of Mexico which means there is a lot of delicious seafood available. Last fall when we were in the area we discovered Shrimp Basket restaurants. Shrimp Basket is a chain of about a dozen restaurants with one in nearby Foley. Paul was hungry for fried shrimp, and the Shrimp Basket has all-you-can-eat shrimp baskets on Wednesdays and Sundays, so we headed down to Foley on Sunday.

 

After spending the weekend at Rainbow Plantation, we hit the road again on Monday. We were heading to Branson, MO, for the wedding of Heather, who is our daughter Lora's best friend and former roommate. We were friends with Heather's parents from our former church back in Pittsburgh, and we were pleased to have been invited to participate in the festivities.

With extending our stay back in Bushnell, our recent travels were a bit less leisurely than normal. We usually plan to travel no more than four hours a day, but this time, we would be traveling 5+ hours a day for a couple of days in a row. Our next overnight stop was at Movietown RV Park in Canton, MS, a little north of Jackson.

Movietown RV is a nice RV park. It has gravel roads and pads with full hookups and 50/30 amp electric. Sites are mostly pull-throughs and are fairly wide with grass between. Even though the campground is conveniently located near the interstate, there is surprisingly little traffic noise - and there are NO trains!

Apparently, the name of the RV park comes from the fact that quite a few movies have been filmed in the Canton area. Canton even has a movie office and a couple of movie museums. Maybe we'll go back some day for a longer visit, especially now that we know a good place to stay.

From Canton, we drove north to Little Rock, AR, in another 5+ hour travel day. We stayed at Maumelle Park north of the city last fall when we met up with our friends Marilyn and Alan. Since that time, Alan took a voluntary layoff when he found out the company he worked for was planning a cut-back, they sold their house, and they are now full-timers.

Maumelle Park is a Corps of Engineers campground located along the Arkansas River. The campground has paved roads and pads and gravel patios. There are water and electric hookups (30 amp) only. As with most COE campgrounds, sites are very generously spaced. The photo below shows our site at Maumelle Park.

We didn't make reservations because we were uncertain about our arrival date and because we thought the campground would be empty in the middle of the week in March. Boy, were we surprised when we arrived and found the campground was almost full! It looked like a lot of families were spending the week at the campground, so we're guessing we hit spring break for the Arkansas schools. There were also some college kids on spring break, and we're pleased to report the group tenting on the site next to us were very well behaved. The next photo is a view down the road from our site and gives you an idea of how crowded it was.

We normally look for a campground with pull-through sites when we make a one-night stop, but we liked Maumelle so much, it was worth unhooking the toad. Not only that, but Marilyn and Alan took us to Larry's Pizza when we were there last fall. Larry's is a chain of about a dozen restaurants around the Little Rock area, and, fortunately, there is one right down the road from Maumelle Park. They have a lunch buffet every day, but they only have the dinner buffet on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Luckily for us, we were there on Tuesday, so we had another good reason to unhook the car. The next photo shows Margery loading up at Larry's. Yum!

Here Paul is toasting Alan and Marilyn for introducing us to Larry's.

The next morning, we headed out for an unprecedented third straight travel day. The distance was a little shorter, and we were only on the road for about 3 1/2 hours instead of the 5+ hours we had been doing. We pulled into Escapees Turkey Creek Campground near Branson, MO, a little after noon.

In contrast to Maumelle Park, the campground in Branson was nearly empty. Late spring, summer and fall are the most popular times for Turkey Creek Campground, and we were a little early. But that was OK because some of the sites are also a little small, so we had plenty of elbow room with the campground almost empty.

Turkey Creek has gravel roads and pads, full hook-ups (there is an extra charge for 50 amp electric), free Wi-Fi and cable. Although the temperature was in the 60s when we arrived, we opted to pay extra for a 50 amp site because the weather forecast was calling for rain and falling temperatures so we thought 50 amp would make it easier to do laundry and use the electric heater at the same time. The photo below shows our site at Turkey creek.

We'll be spending a week in Branson, so we'll have time to relax a little between the wedding festivities. We're also looking forward to seeing Lora and J. Michael. We might even come up with some other activities or possibly a good restaurant, so stay tuned.

 

Mobile, AL Part I: Shrimp and More

After spending four full months in Florida (with the exception of taking three trips to Pittsburgh with a duration of about ten days each), we headed north and west to begin our summer travel adventure. Our primary destination this year will be Yosemite National Park in California, but we will make a number of other stops on the way there. Afterward, we plan to visit northern California, Oregon, and Washington before heading back east for fall and winter.

After we left Bushnell, we made an overnight stop at Chattahoochee RV Resort in Chattahoochee, FL. We stayed at this campground, which is located right along the Apalachicola River, our first year of full-timing. The campground is located just downstream of a dam that forms Lake Seminole. The city of Chattahoochee operates the campground and honors a 50% Passport America discount for stays of up to three days. There is also a picnic and boat launch area adjacent to the campground.

The use of the word "resort" in the name may be a little too hopeful, but it is still a fairly nice campground - especially at a Passport America price of about $8 a night. The photo below shows our site at Chattahoochee RV Resort.

 

If you go to this campground, make sure you use a pressure regulator because their water pressure is very high. Without a regulator, the pressure pegged our 100 psi gauge.

The main road in the campground is paved, but the rest of the roads are gravel. Some sites are gravel, but the ones down over the hill near the river are grass. The sites are all back-ins; but the last time we were there, they let us park down over the hill and just pull across several unoccupied sites so we wouldn't have to unhook the toad for a one-night stop. This year, since they again weren't very filled, we did the same thing except we were at the far end of the upper section of the campground. The sites near the river were still a bit soggy because they had been underwater until a few days prior.

Northern Florida and Georgia have had quite a bit of rain lately. There have been a series of heavy storms passing through for the past few weeks. A storm gave Chattahoochee over four inches of rain the day before we arrived. After we got set up, we walked down to the boat launch and picnic area where we could see the water was still pretty high.

From Chattahoochee, it was on to Rainbow Plantation, the Escapees RV Park in Summerdale, AL, near Mobile. Rainbow Plantation has a transient camping area, leased/co-op sites, and deeded lots. The photo below shows our site in the camping area.

We also stayed at Rainbow Plantation our first year of full-timing; but it was fairly cool because it was the end of December so we didn't stay long and we didn't do any sightseeing. Summerdale is located on the eastern side of Mobile Bay, and the city of Mobile is located on the western side of the bay.

One of the things Mobile Bay is known for is seafood. We did a little research online and decided on a restaurant not too far from Summerdale called Big Daddy's Grill, which is located on the Fish River. Big Daddy's is shown in the photo below.

Big Daddy's has live entertainment on weekends, but it bills itself as a family restaurant. The entertainment usually runs from 3 or 4 in the afternoon until 7 or 8 in the evening instead of late into the night. They even have a couple of piles of sand for the kids to play in. There is indoor seating, outdoor seating in the pavilion shown above where there is a huge fireplace for cool evenings, and outdoor seating behind the restaurant overlooking a small marina. Although is was a weekday when we were there and there was no activity to watch at the marina, we chose a picnic table overlooking the water.

 

Margery had a catfish strip basket and Paul had a fried shrimp basket with local shrimp. Both were excellent. The baskets come with hush puppies, slaw, and a choice of fries or onion rings.

Another thing that showed up in our research for seafood was the fact that the Annual Shrimp Cook-off would be held in Mobile the Saturday we were in town. The cook-off is a fund raiser for an organization called Volunteer Mobile, which seeks to promote volunteerism to solve community problems such as disaster relief.

The admission price to the cook-off is a little steep at $15 per person; but it is for a good cause, and it entitles you to all the shrimp you can eat at no additional charge. Advance purchase discount tickets are available at some of the area banks, but the branches on the Summerdale side of the bay didn't have the tickets because they said they were too far from downtown Mobile.

The Organized Seafood Association of Alabama provides all the shrimp for the cook-off at no cost. The contestants, which are made up of professionals such as area restaurants and amateur teams such as civic groups, submit their dishes for judging. The winners in both the professional and amateur categories receive bragging rights. The teams also serve samples of their dishes to the public.

The event is held in Bienville Square, which is a pleasant, shady park that covers one square block in the downtown area of Mobile.

 

The cook-off runs from 11:00 AM until 2:00 PM. We arrived around 11:30, and some of the booths already have fairly long lines. We developed a system where one of us would stand in one of the longer lines line while the other would walk to one of the nearby, shorter lines and bring two samples back to where the other was waiting. The photo below shows Margery enjoying one of our favorite dishes of the entire cook-off - shrimp in an Alfredo-style cheese sauce. We liked that one so well, Margery went back three times and Paul went back four times.

 

The shrimp cook-off had live entertainment that included a band that sounded pretty good. Miss Seafood, the event queen, and several pre-teen members of her court also sang. They were quite talented.

 

We had fried shrimp, peel-and-eat-shrimp with old bay seasoning, shrimp with pine nuts, shrimp with rice, barbecued shrimp, grilled shrimp wrapped in prosciutto, oriental shrimp, and our favorite shrimp in cheese sauce. By about 12:30, most of the lines were getting quite long, but that was OK with us because we were getting pretty full. We had another sample or two and left a little after 1:00.

Since it was still early in the day and since we were already downtown, we decided to drive several blocks to the Mobile Carnival Museum. Carnival is another name for Mardi Gras. The Mobile Carnival Museum is shown in the photo below.

When someone mentions Mardi Gras, we always think of New Orleans. The celebration in New Orleans is more well known than the one in Mobile because New Orleans publicizes theirs more. Carnival in Mobile bills itself as being more family oriented which may also help account for the greater notoriety of the celebration held in New Orleans.

Mobile claims to have the oldest Mardi Gras or Carnival celebration in what would eventually become the United States dating back to 1703. Mardi Gras literally means "fat Tuesday" in French. It is a celebration prior to Lent when supplies of fat and other foods that the pious would traditionally forgo during Lent are used up. Parades and masquerading typically associated with Mardi Gras and Carnival can be traced back to medieval Italy.

Carnival in Mobile is centered around mystic societies (called krewes in New Orleans and other locations) that sponsor parades, balls, and other activities for members, guests, and the public. The mystic societies are private organizations that grew out of the social and business structure that cotton brought to the city. There are approximately 55 active social societies today. Membership in a society is by invitation only.

The king and queen of Carnival are selected almost a year in advance. The selection is made based on social standing, connections, and money. The king and queen don't necessarily need to be residents of Mobile, but they must have a connection to the city. For example, one past queen was a New York opera star, but her mother was a resident of Mobile.

The debutantes of the season serve as Ladies of the Court. Each lady selects her escort. The societies kick off the season in Mobile with a formal debutante ball held Thanksgiving weekend.

The societies also select their own kings and queens who wear elaborate costumes that include ornate trains to some of the events. The Carnival Museum has many of these beautiful costumes and trains on display, some of which are shown in the photo below.



The photo below shows the trains and costumes of the 2008 Mobile Carnival Association king and queen.



The next photo shows the costumes of the 2008 Mobile Mardi Gras Association (formerly the Colored Carnival Association) king and queen.



The gown and train shown in the photo below are from 1936. Although this train is very elegant, you can see how much more elaborate the trains have become today.

 

Children's page costumes are shown in the next photo. The job of the pages is to look cute and stay out of mischief.

The importance of the king and queen having financial resources can't be overstated. All of the dresses, robes, crowns, scepters, and men's costumes are paid for by the families. Each train is designed to include symbols which are meaningful to the wearer. The embellishments are all hand-sewn and the costumes take many months to complete.

The museum also has portions of a couple of parade floats on display. The floats are made from paper mache. The photo below shows us pretending to ride on a float and to throw Mardi Gras beads.



The next photo shows a decoration from another float on display in the museum gift shop.



And finally, here we are posing as King Felix III and Queen Margery. All Carnival kings in Mobile are traditionally named Felix, and since the current Carnival Association is the third embodiment of the ruling organization, the king is called Felix III. The queen gets to use her own name. We can't seem to pass up those tourist cutouts and statues that you stick your faces through for photos.



It was a fun and interesting day, but there is more to see in Mobile. Look for our next post in a few days.