Bradenton FL to Crystal River FL
Yesterday did not go as smoothly as we had hoped. All we had to do was finish every little project and to-do in Sarasota. We'd been there so long - what could be difficult? Well, the trouble started with the new truck. Its bed had different dimensions from the old truck so we had to start over with arranging our boxes, bikes, and other gear. Kelly worked on that most of the day. I cleared up all the little paperwork bits. We didn't get back to our campsite until 11:30 pm. Since heavy storms were forecast for Tuesday, we decided to dump our sewer and load the boats before quitting for the day.
I should know better by now about anything related to the sewer system. There is a flexible hose, called a Stinky Slinky, which runs from the sewer valve on the trailer to the septic system in the ground. At most RV parks, the ground pipe has threads that fit the end of our hose. But, not at the Linger Lodge. All they had was an open pipe that we just set our hose into. So, Kelly held the hose in place while I opened the valves. Who knew the septic system was nearly full?!? It was quite a smelly germ-ie mess. While Kelly gagged and swore, I closed the valve and ran the water hose over everything, trying to dilute the evidence. We finally got our system dumped, but it was not a fun night.
There are some unwritten rules about RV living. Don't run your generator too late at night. Don't let your dog poop on other peoples' sites. Don't walk through other peoples' sites. But the biggest rule of all is: Don't let black water (i.e. goop from your toilet) get outside the pipes. You can go to Hell for breaking that rule.
After cleaning up our mess, we loaded the kayaks onto the truck and slunk off to bed - by now it was 2-ish AM.
We slept in a bit and woke up quite full of ourselves. We were nearly ready to go and it was still early! So, we treated ourselves to breakfast out and made some returns to the local library. There had been on-and-off hard rain over night, and it continued to shower as the morning wore on.
We pulled out of Linger Lodge around 1:30 and headed up the road for Crystal River. I finally convinced both of us that I was ready to tow the trailer. I guess there is one good thing about getting a bigger truck: it takes up so much of the lane that adding a couple more inches of trailer doesn’t seem so bad. Towing was easy, but I doubt it will be “fun” any time soon.
The folks at the Encore Crystal Isle RV Resort (http://www.rvonthego.com/Crystal-Isle.html) assigned us to a site near the river. It was really hard to back into it, but we finally got settled. We had noticed that the sites nearer the river were a bit boggy, but we didn’t think much of it until a long-time resident stopped by to warn us. High tides were expected and the wind was picking up – both would probably bring the water over the access road and into our site – how high was the question. We pulled up stakes so fast and high-tailed it to the office, angry as hornets! Why would they even think of putting us on a site with flooding expected? The office was closed and workers were getting into their cars. We flagged one down and she suggested we just set up wherever we wanted and work it out with them the next day.
Yesterday did not go as smoothly as we had hoped. All we had to do was finish every little project and to-do in Sarasota. We'd been there so long - what could be difficult? Well, the trouble started with the new truck. Its bed had different dimensions from the old truck so we had to start over with arranging our boxes, bikes, and other gear. Kelly worked on that most of the day. I cleared up all the little paperwork bits. We didn't get back to our campsite until 11:30 pm. Since heavy storms were forecast for Tuesday, we decided to dump our sewer and load the boats before quitting for the day.
I should know better by now about anything related to the sewer system. There is a flexible hose, called a Stinky Slinky, which runs from the sewer valve on the trailer to the septic system in the ground. At most RV parks, the ground pipe has threads that fit the end of our hose. But, not at the Linger Lodge. All they had was an open pipe that we just set our hose into. So, Kelly held the hose in place while I opened the valves. Who knew the septic system was nearly full?!? It was quite a smelly germ-ie mess. While Kelly gagged and swore, I closed the valve and ran the water hose over everything, trying to dilute the evidence. We finally got our system dumped, but it was not a fun night.
There are some unwritten rules about RV living. Don't run your generator too late at night. Don't let your dog poop on other peoples' sites. Don't walk through other peoples' sites. But the biggest rule of all is: Don't let black water (i.e. goop from your toilet) get outside the pipes. You can go to Hell for breaking that rule.
After cleaning up our mess, we loaded the kayaks onto the truck and slunk off to bed - by now it was 2-ish AM.
We slept in a bit and woke up quite full of ourselves. We were nearly ready to go and it was still early! So, we treated ourselves to breakfast out and made some returns to the local library. There had been on-and-off hard rain over night, and it continued to shower as the morning wore on.
We pulled out of Linger Lodge around 1:30 and headed up the road for Crystal River. I finally convinced both of us that I was ready to tow the trailer. I guess there is one good thing about getting a bigger truck: it takes up so much of the lane that adding a couple more inches of trailer doesn’t seem so bad. Towing was easy, but I doubt it will be “fun” any time soon.
The folks at the Encore Crystal Isle RV Resort (http://www.rvonthego.com/Crystal-Isle.html) assigned us to a site near the river. It was really hard to back into it, but we finally got settled. We had noticed that the sites nearer the river were a bit boggy, but we didn’t think much of it until a long-time resident stopped by to warn us. High tides were expected and the wind was picking up – both would probably bring the water over the access road and into our site – how high was the question. We pulled up stakes so fast and high-tailed it to the office, angry as hornets! Why would they even think of putting us on a site with flooding expected? The office was closed and workers were getting into their cars. We flagged one down and she suggested we just set up wherever we wanted and work it out with them the next day.
Kelly found us a nice spot on high ground (Is there high ground along the Florida coast?) and near the bath house. Thanks Heavens we’d had a nourishing lunch/snack of ham (thanks, Sue & Mary) along with some crackers and fruit!
While setting up the inside of the trailer, I discovered we had sheared off the shower hose, nice and close to the fixture. This did not go over well with the Divine Miss K as she was still pretty pissed about the flooded site. We decided to worry about it tomorrow, when hope would be fresh and new. We ended the day with eating a nice supper and watching The Biggest Loser.
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