Keep On, Keepin' On
~Saturday, November 6, 2021~
Day 510 (Travel Day)
Even though I turned in around 11:00 last night (early for me), I woke up feeling unrefreshed. We both didn’t sleep well due to the loud rain, falling acorns, and our dog waking us up every few hours to do her business, IN THE RAIN of course!! Remember, falling acorns and rain on an RV are 10 times louder than on a house roof, where even a gentle rain is enough to drive you nuts. And this explains just how loud loud it was. Jeff evidently got up in the night and heard a slight drip inside the trailer coming from the hole where the TV antenna normally is located on the roof. At the moment, we have a new antenna waiting to be put on the rig which is why there is a void there. Normally in rainy weather, we have plastic over the hole, but we forgot to put it on before this storm. In his Teva's and a rain jacket he went on the roof to put that darn plastic over the hole. I didn’t hear a thing. At least it was a small leak and thank goodness Jeff heard it in the first place.
And when the sun came up, it was no different. What a perfect day to break down (not). The rain and winds just kept on coming. Add a dog with diarrhea in the mix and it makes for one fun morning. Can’t figure out what got Sadie, but when I saw her less than enthused about her breakfast, added with the fact she was up in the night, I knew something was up. We’ll monitor her of course, but I think she just has a “bug”.
The camp hosts were busy driving their golf carts throughout the park cleaning up the aftermath from the night’s storm….fallen branches and moss everywhere. At one point our campsite was full of water up to the ankles but with most of the ground being sand, it quickly soaked in. No danger.
Our goal was to leave by 9:00, but didn’t get out until 10:30. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to say goodbye to Leon, but hopefully he’ll get in touch with us through our travel blog since we don’t have any of his information. Along the way for at least another 3 of the 7 hours of driving, the rain kept on coming and hard (thanks for the carwash!). Thankfully, we headed out of the storm, via highways 95 and 10. Really looking forward to our sunny and warmer weather ahead at our old stomping ground of Santa Rosa Beach, Florida at Topsail Hill Preserve Campground (one of our favorites). This place is in high demand, even in November. Thank goodness we booked way in advance, but even so, to be able to stay here, we’ll have to switch sites. This happened to us last time as well. After our 3 nights here, we’ll be venturing into The South, putting our East Coast stint in our rear-view mirror, at least for a while. With the 400-mile day, it gave us plenty of time to talk more about our 2022 plans. While traveling, let’s talk about more traveling shall we? The results are in, which of course is all subject to change.
So far, we have lodging reservations through the early part of June but halted making anything past that, when at the time, we were unsure as to what we wanted our summer of 2022 to look like. Here are the 3 things we were considering……..
Meet up with my sister and bro-in-law in Switzerland (he’s got a long work sabbatical so they’ve got a long stay planned), piggybacked with our own trip to Italy or…..
continue this amazing trip on the road with our Sadie, Hank and Billie Jean to the new and unfamiliar territory for us in Alaska and if there were iffy things with the border we would…...
travel the midwest.
Can you guess what we decided on?
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Alaska it is!! Why? For the following reasons (in no particular order):
Dog logistics. It’s a big deal finding a “home” for your pet for a large chunk of time. So we thought it would be easier finding a pet sitter from a home base in the future than from our RV.
Going to Europe (for us) would be a HUGE deal. The only international travel we’ve done is The Caribbean, St. Lucia and Ireland. It’s such a big deal that we’d want it to be its OWN thing to look forward to. We’re already on an amazing trip, so compounding or forcing another big trip into our current one just seemed to be toooo much!
Alaska works well with our route. We have plans after the Holidays to be on the western side of the U.S., where then, we’ll be making our way north to Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, then into Saskatuwan, then Alberta, then Northern Territories, then the Yukon Territory and then into Alaska. After that, we’ll head back south, through B.C. to Washington (Olympic Peninsula) in September. The plan is to return to California again for the Holidays of 2022. Then in early 2023, we head east to winter in Florida where in the spring we begin our quest to purchase our new digs (if the market is somewhat “normal” by then). Our focus will likely be in the east (North Carolina/Virginia specifically). There is a slight possibility that Colorado is a candidate. And who knows, we may find something else we love between now and 2023.
One thing’s for certain. If COVID hadn't happened, and the real estate market didn’t go wacko, we would likely have purchased a home by now. So, we just keep on RV’in!! At least this is what we’re shooting for, for now.
Kind of strange being back in “alligator land” again and in a different time zone at that (1 hour difference). But, we got a double whammy of time changes since tonight is “falling back” to standard time too. To our bodies, it feels 2 hours later. The drive went pretty smooth and it helped that we split our driving duties. I took the latter which meant once again, me backing into the campsite. At least it’s good practice. This campsite was a bit trickier than the last one because I had to enter from the passenger side. But I definitely did better than the last time I did one of those. At least I didn’t have an audience this go around.