Headed to Florida

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Sunday, February 14, 2021

With five inches of snow on the ground, we started packing up a couple of days ago. It’s time to go to Florida, or as some of my Canadian friends pronounce it, “Flor-eye-da”. With freezing rain yesterday, we couldn’t load the kayaks on the truck, but this morning, we were able to get them loaded and headed out. 

The only worry was a fluctuating oil gauge in our GMC diesel truck. It’s Sunday. If we get into trouble, there will be no one to help. As we headed east on 64, all seemed fine. The gauge settled a little below its usual level. I had the truck inspected Thursday. Maybe something happened at that time. It was almost time to change the oil, but I thought I would wait until after this trip.

As we turned onto I95 South, it started to rain again. Traffic wasn’t terrible on a Sunday, but a few idiots were zipping in and out of lanes. By the time we crossed into North Carolina, the rains came harder. They have had a lot of rain already. All the rivers were high and muddy. Surrounding lands were saturated with water.

By 3:17, we turned into Cliffs of the Neuse State Park. A very nice lady in the Visitor’s Center checked us in. She said it had been raining for a week. As Martha checked in, I took a quick tour of the very nice, little visitor’s center. I stood in front of what I would consider a young, stuffed bear. He looked angry. I imagined what I might do if he came after me. Finally, I decided he would have the best of me. They had it all – owls, a coyote, and a bobcat that you could easily mistake for a house cat. 

We took a wrong turn that gave us a look at a beautiful beach on an equally pretty lake with all the facilities. We found the campground and backed into site #12. It was still raining, so I wiggled around a bit, trying to find a level spot so I wouldn’t have to unhook, but could not. I unhooked, leveled up, hooked up to water and electric, but didn’t turn them on yet. Lithium batteries need to be above freezing before charging, or you will ruin them. They are very expensive, so I wanted to heat the trailer up a bit first. We had been running the heat for the last hour of driving, but they were only at 3 deg. C, and the cutoff is 5 deg. Once the batteries warmed up past 5 deg C, I plugged into electric.

Winterizing and dewinterizing seem to be challenges for me. I had hooked up the water filters a couple of days ago. Now that the trailer was warm, I replaced the shower head, the outside shower head, the water valve to the toilet and replaced the plastic strain in front of the heat pump. Now to turn on the water on from the campground hookup. All I saw was a teeny drip under the galley sink water filter. Of course it was the one in the back – the one that requires removing the sink to get access. I decided to pass until tomorrow. Now to check the water pump, which came on, but didn’t pump water. I primed the pump by pouring some water into the reservoir under the plastic strain. Nope. I put pressure in the small reservoir tank that is supposed to quiet the pump. That didn’t work either, but we had heat and water, so I opted for a glass of wine, or two and decided to sleep on it.