Greetings From Deerfield Beach, Florida

A lot has happened since the beginning of our road trip on December 26 and the passage of time since the last post, while not planned, has given us time for reflection on our constant learning curve over these past 3 weeks.  Had we posted the earlier draft of this blog post, it would have been filled with details of our departure and the packing and loading of the truck/rig (Gertie, for short).  This now seems like a distant memory, worthy of a mention but not of an entire post.  The learning curve has been constant and reminds us that this trip will teach us a great deal about many things, not the least of which is how to NOT over-react and how time provides the gift of calm reflection.

To Pack or Not To Pack

When we were organizing our belongings for the trip, we KNEW that we were going to leave on the trip with Gertie looking like she was on the set of the Beverly Hillbillies with items loaded inside the cab, the truck cap, the roof and a hitch carrier on the back.  We laughed about how we would look but patted ourselves on the back about how much stuff we would be able to transport: fridge and solar power system within the cab, camping gear on top with the bikes, emergency equipment and tools on the hitch carrier and loads of long term items, designed to start our life in Panama, stored within the truck cap (the bed of the truck within the cap).

Truck packed, we departed on December 26 and headed west toward the first of our planned stops. We were no more than an hour into our drive when we realized that even after 2 years of trip planning, we missed the obvious: did we load Gertie beyond her payload weight limits?  OMG – what were we thinking when we believed we could transport hundreds of pounds of belongings, secured in huge 55 gallon storage boxes, all the way from DC to Panama, when we wouldn’t even USE them for years to come??? In the 3 boxes were kitchen items (Kitchenaid mixer, Cuisinart, pots and pans and more), clothes (intended for use in our new home but not along the road), and general household items (TV, stereo equipment, tools, etc.). The boxes were so heavy that to load one on top of the other in Gertie, we had to use a piece of plywood as a ramp to slide on atop the other. (Later, we stopped to weigh Gertie at a certified scale at a truck stop and learned that we were nearly 50% over our payload weight rating).Panic set in and we immediately considered options such as stopping and returning to Baltimore to store these boxes for future shipping (rejected due to the sheer hassle of unloading and carrying/schlepping so many pounds of stuff to the basement) and shipping these boxes to friends in Mexico or Panama to accept them in our absence (rejected for multiple reasons). When emotions calmed and we (more “I” than “we”) were able to think more rationally, we resolved to rent a UHaul trailer to transport the boxes to Florida (since Gertie’s towing capacity greatly exceeds her payload limits) where we would rent a small storage unit to warehouse the belongings for future shipping to Panama.

The immediate solution had its downsides – schlepping a trailer up and down the mountainous roads in the Great Smoky Mountains and surrounds definitely affected our fuel consumption and hauling a trailer sure limits parking pretty much everywhere — but it did resolve the weight issue and we found a temporary solution to the “scheppability”problem by dropping the trailer at each campground along the route so we could travel locally freed of the additional appendage (thanks to the purchase of a bottle jack which allowed us to raise the trailer off the hitch when we were stationary). Whew.

Logistics solved, we traveled westward through stops in Louisville, Owensboro and Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, Nashville, Chattanooga and Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Great Smoky National Park and Asheville, North Carolina, Charleston, S.C., Savannah, Ga and then into St. Augustine, Cape Canaveral and Deerfield Beach in rapid succession at a pace that seemed like we were still traveling on a vacation with a finite beginning and end dates as compared to a pace that being retired should permit.  The problem was not our itinerary, which was intentionally open-ended in terms of dates and times, but mindset: learning to slow down was clearly going to be as much of a challenge as originally anticipated.  (Breathe, Sharon, breathe!).

In fairness to my hypercritical view of myself, the first week or so of the trip took us through locations where the weather would not allow us to camp so we were staying in hotels. Anxious to start our camping and avoid the unnecessary sterility of hotel stops, we were delighted when we arrived in Charleston, SC to weather that was nice enough to allow us to set up camp.  Without a fixed itinerary, we were making campground reservations on the fly as we approached our next stops and in SC and Georgia, we were extremely lucky in locating wonderful campgrounds that provided beautiful sites, equipped with electricity and water at each camp site (James Island Country Park in Charleston, SC and Skidaway Island State Park near Savannah, GA).  By the time we reserved our campsite in St. Augustine (Anastasia State Park), we were lucky to find one night’s availability but nothing longer so after joining (new) friends, Diana and Jack Rawle for dinner (Diana and Jack’s son, Andrew, was Sophie’s boyfriend at Drexel and following her passing, were great emotional support to me, via email, and we were excited to meet them face-to-face and thank them for their years of support and long-distance support) and walking in historic St. Augustine, we headed out for Cape Canaveral to visit the Kennedy Space Center.  The incredible KSC more than compensated for the shantytown feel of our campground in Titusville, FL (Mannatee Hammock County Park) so we were not unhappy to leave for our breakfast with DC-friend, Janet Samuelson, before heading south to Deerfield Beach and our home for the following 2 weeks at Quiet Waters Park.

Life here at Quiet Waters has been blessedly peaceful and relaxing. This county park’s campground is unlike any we have encountered before as each site is equipped with a platform tent, which is spacious and roomy, where each campsite backs onto ponds that provide water views.  The sites are large and well equipped and the campground and bathhouses are well maintained and clean and is conveniently located within easy bike or vehicle access to stores, movie theaters and parents (Phil and Naomi Benzil’s condo is in a community located right across the street from the park). The previous week was filled with “honey do’s” for Phil and Naomi, time spent with family, biking and easy-paced days.  This week will include more outings with friends, downtime and an opportunity to continue to practice slowing down.

It hardly feels like 3 weeks have passed since leaving on our trip and yet living in a brick-and-mortar home in DC/Baltimore seems like lifetime ago.  While the configuration of every campground is different and requires constant tweaking and adjustments for our nomadic camping life, every set-up and breakdown gets easier as we continue to shed ourselves of gear and add new things that we never thought about over the past 2 years of planning.  Some things have been much easier than we expected (among which were establishing our residency in Florida, complete with new drivers’ licenses and vehicle registration, was a breeze and took only several hours on our first day in Deerfield Beach and watching the season premier of “Homeland”) and some have been more challenging (slowing down among them). As of today, though, our spirits are high and our lodgings are perfect and we have retained our senses of humor and abilities to be flexible that have characterized us before and, we hope, into the future.

Some Interesting Unofficial Trip Stats to Date:

Miles driven: 2328

Driving Hours: 83

# of cities/locations visited: 14  (Hurricane, WV, Louisville, KY, Owensboro, KY, Mammoth Cave National Park, Nashville, Chattanooga, TN, Asheville, Great Smoky National Park), Gatlinburg, Charleston, SC, Savannah, GA, St. Augustine, FL, Titusville, FL and Deerfield Beach, FL)

# of friends/family Seen/Visited Along the Way: 7

# of PBJ sandwiches consumed for lunch: approximately 50

# of fuel stops: approximately 20 (mostly caused by tugging the trailer behind us and lots of highway travel during first 2 weeks)

# of propane canisters for lantern: 3 (or, at least portions of the 3 we brought with us)

# of items left behind accidentally: 1

# of times we’ve entertained at our campsite: 1 (dinner for Phil and Naomi last week)

# of laundromat stops: 1

# of times I’ve applied any make up along the trip: 2 (mascara only)

# of campgrounds with wifi: all of them (so far)

# of times we have shed/organized/reorganized gear : too many to count

Best along-the-road purchases: digital TV antenna (allows for viewing of local news and network shows when wifi is spotty), bottle jack (invaluable for dropping the UHaul at our campgrounds) and new bike rack (that allows for bikes on the back of Gertie – a plus after our roof-racked bikes picked up more than a little Spanish moss from low hanging trees in SC, Ga and northern Florida)

Best Experiences to date (not counting visits with friends/family): Kennedy Space Center (truly amazing) and the Mohammed Ali Center in Louisville (similarly amazing and awe-inspiring).

Best local foods eaten: ribs at 12 Bones in Ashville, she-crab soup at Roadside Seafood in Charleston, rock shrimp at Dixie Crossroads in Titusville, FL and fried catfish at Catfish Deweys in F. Lauderdale.

Some of the best photos along the way: (see below)

 

Clockwise from top left:Louisville Slugger Museum, Mammoth Cave historic entrance, Waterfront Park (downtown Charleston), Congregation Mickve Israel in Savannah, Kennedy Space Center, biking with Phil in Deerfield Beach, FL, Quiet Waters Park view from tent, alligator in Wakodahatchee Wetlands, Delray, FL, Deerfield Beach, FL, view from Site 27, Quiet Waters Park in Deerfield Beach, FL, St. Augustine, Fl house lights, Charleston, SC architecture, downtown Asheville, NC and Great Smoky National Park.