During the month of January, we visited with our children and grandchildren in Florida.  We spent a week with friends in Okeechobee, a week at Disney with our youngest son and a week in Tampa/St. Pete with our daughter.   At one point both of our sons arrived and we had the whole family except our new daughter in law under one roof.  A rare event that was nonetheless exciting for us. We even got our oldest son to buy dinner for the whole family a couple of nights.  Revenge is sweet.  Besides, he is now making the big bucks in our family.  We are homeless and unemployed.

Libby had her medical checkup in Blairsville, GA and Atlanta, GA at the very end of January and everything checked out ok.  There was some discussion of surgery, but the Atlanta specialist said not to worry.  Just come back next fall and get another check up.  It was fine with us.  We got the good news on Tuesday, 2/1 and left the cold mountains on Thursday.

Normally, we do not like to drive long distances anymore, but it was 15 degrees when we got up.  We left Blairsville at 7 am (long before what is becoming our traditional 10 am departure time) and drove 598 miles before we stopped for the night.  We traveled GA-515 to Jasper, where we headed southwest on GA 53.  At Fairmont, we picked up US 411 and pointed the D toward Alabama.  Except for one turn where we both decided a sign said 411 when it really said 41, we did ok.  Our little side trip up US 41 took about 5 miles of incorrect road for us to find a place to turn around.  Not long after that little detour, we were in Alabama, back in the central time zone and heading for Gadsden.  At Gadsden, we picked up I 59 and followed it to the gulf coast in Louisiana.  We picked up I 12 and rolled to the north of Lake Ponchartrain, stopping for the night at a C2C campground at Roberts, LA.

This is a huge campground with all sorts of family attractions. Boating, fishing, game pavilions, and playgrounds dotted the park.  If your kids are bored at this place, they probably need therapy.  The park is called Passport to Leisure, but it appears to be part of a Yogi Bear park.  You register at the office at the Yogi Bear park and then exit it to the next driveway which is the Passport to Leisure part.  Its all really one big park.  My only complaint is that the streets are narrow and the turns are tight.  We got the D into its spot without any problems, but it was still tight going as we entered and exited the park.  In all fairness, its appears that this park has been there for a long time and rigs have grown while the roads stayed the same.  It was a great place to spend the night for $6.

02/04/00
We left Roberts on Friday morning about 8 am and drove I-12/I-10 to Beaumont, Texas.  Everyone says that I 10 in Louisiana is an awful road, but I did not find this to be true. Lots of it has been repaved, some construction is ongoing, but the road was just fine.  I-10 in east Texas is a different story.  It was very rough and the rig took a pounding, even with me driving 55 for the 30 miles or so we had to negotiate to get to our turn off.

In Beaumont, we took US 69 North toward Lufkin.  This is a pretty good road until you turn off on FM road 1003 and then FM road 943.  943 is about as wide as my old driveway and meanders for around 30 miles through the Big Thicket of east Texas.  Not much shoulder and very narrow lanes.  It was a perfect place for Libby to practice driving the D in tight spots.  She did great.  When we got to Rainbow's End in Livingston, I unhooked the toad and drove it to our campsite.  Libby took the motorhome, backed it in to the spot with no problems at all.  She put this 37 foot monster in the space like she did it all the time, when in reality, this was the first time she had ever backed the RV up.

As we were getting settled in, our friend Sanda Horeis came over. She and Willie are parked just behind us.  We met them at Rainbow Plantation in Alabama back in December.  The really funny thing was, we had sent them a snail mail and they had just picked it up from the Escapees mail office.  They read we were going to be here, looked out their kitchen window and there we were.

Another interesting tidbit, the fellow guided us to the campsite, looked at our registration slip and wanted to know if I was John Veach of RV America fame.  I told him I didn't know if fame had anything to do with it, but as long has he wouldn't tell the police that yes, I have been know to frequent that BB from time to time.

02/05/00
You know how we all like to trade up to big rigs for this fulltime stuff.   Well, today we saw what has to be the world's smallest fulltime setup.  These folks have been here at Rainbow's End since December at least because I read an article about them in the Gypsy Journal.  Here is the rig that they have chosen for fulltiming. 
One must assume that conversations with these folks start out pretty generic.  Here is the sign fastened to the tire of this trailer.

02/07/00
Friday we went to the Texas Department of Public Safety to pick up our driver's license test booklets.  The examiner told us to read chapter's 1,2 and 15 and come back to take our written exam.  We spent a few hours over the weekend reading and quizzing each other on the sample questions in the back.   Texas requires anyone driving a motorhome of over 26,001 lbs GVWR to obtain a class B non CDL license.  Our rig is rated at 26,350 lbs, so we needed to upgrade our current class C license.  I believe the requirement for fivers is 26,001 lbs GCVWR, but I'm not totally clear on this one.

While we were in downtown Livingston, we went by the tax assessors office and picked up our Ham radio callsign license plates.  Texas DSP sent us a letter a few weeks ago telling us the plates were being made and shipped to our home county.   They were waiting on us when we arrived.   We put Libby's call,  KB4FFO on the the Tracker and my call, KE4D on the Discovery.

Sunday a very unusual motorhome drove past our site.  Our neighbor and I walked down to see what it was as it was like nothing either of us had ever seen before.  It turns out this motorhome was homemade.  The fellow found a shell somewhere in Washington state.  It apparently had been a project of some race car driver.  He speculated that it was supposed to be a tool shed or some other type of utility vehicle, but it was never finished.   It had no engine when he purchased it, so he put a Chevy Vortec 7.4L V8 in where the old diesel power plant had been.  It certainly is the most unique gas pusher I have ever seen.  This fellow  did a really good job in finishing this rig.  (note. I went down the road to take a picture of this rig today (Tuesday), no luck, they left this morning before we got back from town)
 

On Monday, we went down to the DSP and took our written exams for the class B license.  The test was 20 questions, no big deal.  It consists of questions on pole trucks, cotton harvesting equipment and other very useful RV related topics.  On the positive side, Libby can always get a job driving a dump truck now.  After the written, we made an appointment to come back at 10:30 to take our driving test.  Libby went first and was back in about 15 minutes.  My test was about 10 minutes of driving since the examiner had already done the lights, wipers, horn etc. check with Libby.  The driving test was a breeze.  If you can drive your rig through a campground, you can pass this exam.

02/08/00
This morning we ran into Livingston to have a very healthy breakfast at Billy's Doughnuts.  It was a good idea, but they don't have inside seating, so we returned to the Whistle Stop Cafe which has become our favorite breakfast spot in town.

After breakfast, we went to the bank and cashed a check.  This isn't an unusual task, but we just opened the account yesterday, so we expected some flack.  No one even asked for ID.  Small towns are so cool.   Returning to our motorhome, we started packing up for our move to Corpus Christi tomorrow.  I put the bikes back on the Tracker, removed my screwdriver antenna, and went through my beginning of the month maintenance checks.  Oil in the rig, oil in the genset, tranny fluid, water in the batteries, which is a real trick since I cannot see into the rear 6V battery in my 4 battery bank, wash the windows, lock the bays etc.  It takes me about an hour to get everything ready to roll, so I like to get a lot of it done the day before we move.  That way, we can get up, have breakfast and be on the road at the crack of 10.  Street Atlas says it is 296 miles to Hatch RV MH Park in Corpus Christi, so it will take us most of the day to get there.  This is a little farther than we want to drive, but we have a reservation in Harlingen next week and want to spend a few days in Corpus Christi before we move on down there.  On the positive side, the move from Corpus to the Y2K party will only be 130 miles or so.

Following the RVers favorite agenda, we went to lunch with our friends, Willie and Sanda and Jerry and Iris.   They wanted to go to the Beacon Bay cafe over on Lake Livingston.  Tuesdays they serve a barbecue beef sandwich for a buck and on Thursday they serve burgers for a buck.  After spending a couple of bucks on gas to get over there, we found out that the cafe has discontinued their $1 sandwich on Tuesday, but we could go back for the burger on Thursday.  Oh well, we had the barbecue anyway and it was great.  It cost $3.50, which is still a pretty good price.  This would be a $6 sandwich in an urban area.  It was a great drive and the weather is fantastic. The temperature today was near 70 degrees, no clouds, just perfect.

To complete the trifecta, we went back to the Texas Pepper for dinner.  What can I say, RVers eat a lot!

Our neighbors Joe and Charlotte had a problem with their Mountain Air this afternoon, that is was really a water heater malfunction.  The electric side of the water heater was not working properly, but they couldn't repair it, so its off to an RV shop.

Several folks stopped by to see how the driver's license testing and road test went.  It is also an RVers trait to not be able to have any secrets in a park.  They all seemed slightly amazed that we both passed this exam.  Again, it was no big deal.  We have already passed our DSP booklets on to another couple.

I would like to make some observations here about our short fulltiming travel experiences.

Rvers like to eat, but they can find the cheapest places with good food in any town.
Rvers are the friendliest folks anywhere.  Age, sex, race,  are all irrelevant to Rvers.  We are just one big family.  Prevost to Home made, everyone here is an Rver.
Most fulltimers now carry computers.  They are the cybergrampa and cybergramma of the country.  The line to access the Internet can get long in an RV park.
The most popular Internet site in Livingston, Texas is Yahoo Finance!
Fuel is getting very expensive.
Barb and Ron Hofmeister are wonderful folks.
Libby wants to drive the rig too much.
We know we are traveling too much, but we are having such a good time, we don't care.
Work, sorry for the obscenity, has become a very distant memory.  I don't miss it at all.
A great number of fulltimers are Boomers.  The couple on our right is 53.  I'd guess about 10% of us in each park are Boomers.
The great unspoken story is how all of these Boomers are supporting themselves.