Angie and I are RVing fulltime in our 2006 Monaco Knight 40PLQ. I work full time as a web programmer, and Ang works full time taking care of me :-). Thanks for reading our stuff.
Those People are the folks we talk about when the topic of RVers comes up. Those People are the ones that have great disdain for the cold. Those People are the that run to the south when the mercury drops below 60°. We are now, officially, some of Those People.
We arrived in Sarasota on Sunday, after a fantastic drive across the US. The more I drive, the more I am in awe of the beauty of this country. We have both found new appreciation for the desert, the hill country of Texas, the swamp land of Louisiana and Mississippi. The flatness and the heat and the humidity and the large bugs of Florida. We love driving, but we love arriving just a bit more.
On our way to Sarasota, Florida, we found a gem in a very unlikely location. The location was Steinhatchee, Florida, and the gem was called Nature's Coast RV Resort.
I fully expected to do a blog entry on the long drive from Livingston, Texas, to Sarasota. There was such a comedy of unlikely events - including taking us over 5 hours to go the 15ish miles through Baton Rouge, LA, because of a very bad accident. No, you get a happy report, because we found a happy place...
In the past two and a half hours, we have driven just under three miles. We are somewhere between the 20 mile bridge and Baton Rouge on I-10. Apparently there was a very bad wreck - and we are still about 20 miles from it. This is going to be a long stretch of highway...
--kev
Life in Livingston has been pretty mellow. Been trying to get caught up on some work while here, and the chill has talked me into staying inside a bit more than usual. That doesn't, however, make me less prone to injury.
Upon a rare appearance outside the confines of my coach, I went outside to mess with the service bay. Don't really know what motivated me to leave the warm womb (rhymes with room) I call my office, but something called me outside to mess with that particular bay. The bay with the bedroom street-side slide just above it.
What a difference a couple of days make. Over the course of the last several days, we have been in three different time zones, and went from 15% humidity to 90%, mid 70s at midnight to 53°. I almost forgot what rain and cold and humidity was like. I have been reminded.
We arrived at Rainbow's End yesterday evening just as the sun was dropping. In the half-darkness, I connected the outside umbilicals while Ang got the inside set up for living. As I was setting up the satellite dish, I took great notice to the fact that I was extremely wet. The sky was clear, so that could only mean one thing - we have found humidity.
I use to be able to drive a couple of days and not feel it (too much). That has all changed. I feel it now.
Today we arrived at Buckhorn Lake RV Park in Kerrville, Texas. We left Brenda, Arizona, yesterday around 1:00 in the afternoon, after a morning of finishing up some work stuff. I am pretty sure most of the problem with my tiredness was that we crossed two time zones in just a few hours, so it made my 2:00am stop actually 4am. In theory, I only drove until 2am, but my brain knew that it was now 4 because of our new location in the Central Time Zone.
Great tag line. Blackrock RV Village uses this tag on their promotional material they hand out. When we first saw that, we thought it was a little funny. Seems odd, like Alpine RV's tag - "Where the Coffee is Free". Huh? Yea, that would be sure to pull me into their lot. I guess "Number One in RV's" was taken.
However, once we parked and set up, we had a look around at the place and reevaluated our position. The tag line is perfect for this place. These sites are freaking huge.
I stumbled upon a very sweet 2007 Holiday Rambler Scepter 42 PLQ for sale. The Scepter is the HR equivalent of the Monaco Camelot, which is a couple of coaches above our Knight. Finding a new PLQ is rather rare, since Monaco/HR discontinued the floorplan in '08 for Knights and Camelots (Ambassador and Scepter).
It may not be our beloved Black Rock City, but the Blackrock RV Village sure shares a similarity - desert. But, I think that this Blackrock may be in a kinder, gentler desert. So far, no dust, and very limited number of freaky people.
We made another Interstate-less (almost) run today from Twentynine Palms, CA, to Brenda, AZ. It was another great drive - we had the highway to ourselves most of the time. I figured the time difference wouldn't be much, since we are allowed only 55mph in California since we are towing the Jeep. If I'm going to do 55, it might as well be somewhere nice - devoid of 18-wheelers passing me every five minutes.
Ang and I made a day trip to Joshua Tree National Park today, and it ended up being one more adventure to remember.
Joshua Tree is a huge national park located between the right edge and the middle of nowhere. We didn't really know what to expect going in, but were blown away with what we found.
Leaving "home" is never easy. Even though we are fulltime, glamping technomads (heh - new buzzwords!!), we still feel like the Bay Area is still home. Its always nice to get there, but not always easy to leave.
We are now in Twentynine Palms, CA., in cool little RV park that sits next to a golf course. The park is called Twentynine Palms Golf Resort, and there were a couple of things that attracted us to it...
And Robert Smith, too!
Tom and Jessica, Ang and I found The Cure at the Shoreline Amphitheater last night. The Cure has been Angie's favorite band since she started listening to music. She knows all the words to all the songs, has weird facts about Robert and the band, and can tell a story about something that happened in her life to any Cure song that comes on. She is, without a doubt, a "fan".
We had a great night out with Tom and Jess. We went to our favorite sushi haunt, arrived at the venue just as AFI were playing all their cool songs, and finished up with desert at their place. The ending of the night was a little sad - it would be our last outting for the summer with them, and we won't see them until spring when we return to the Bay Area after the winter thaw. We will miss them sorely.