Sling Bay

We are at Bahia Honda State Park, on the eponymous Key in the Lower Florida Keys (map).

This is a beautiful park, even if our particular camp site is a bit humdrum. We arrived yesterday around 2ish, and had to wait a good fifteen minutes or more in a line to check in. Between the check-in ranger being the slowest person in the state park system, and the campers in front of us not knowing such basic information as their vehicle license plate numbers, it was a painful process.

Once we got settled in, we pulled the scooters out and explored the park. The swim beach at the east end seemed inviting, so we went back for our suits and I took a swim, which was, umm, "refreshing" (Louise now knows this as code for "too cold for you, honey"). I did not need to say it, though, as apparently it was written on my face. Once I was completely immersed it was fine. I'm sure it would have felt better at the hottest part of the day.

Since we already had the scooters out, we rode to dinner two Keys over, on Big Pine Key, at the famous (if difficult to find) No Name Pub. (The proprietors were not unimaginative -- No Name Key is just across the channel.) Casual food in a kitschy atmosphere, with enormous portions -- we both got lunch today out of our leftovers.

This morning we walked out onto the remains of the east end of the old Bahia Honda Bridge. This was one of the original bridges on Flagler's overseas railroad; its truss construction presented a challenge when the railroad was converted into a highway. Engineers solved the conundrum by building superstructure above the trusses, and putting the road deck on the top, making for a very weird looking auto bridge. Like many of the original structures, it is slowly crumbling into the sea.

Shortly we will pack up and head back the way we came, landing at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park on Key Largo.

Photo by Kevin Labianco, used under a Creative Commons license.

Relaxing in the Keys

We are at the Florida Keys Elks Lodge, on Tavernier Key just south of Key Largo (map).

We ended up spending a third night Friday at the Isle Pompano Casino. After carefully studying our various guides and web sites, we could not come up with any overnight options between there and here that made sense, and it was only a hundred miles between the two. So we just had a relaxing day at home yesterday, digesting the enormous dinner we ate at Farraday's on Thanksgiving. (The line for the buffet was enormous, but we sauntered right in to the steakhouse and were seated immediately.)

Louise did take her scooter out Friday and trundled off to do laundry while I fiddled with computers most of the day. I'm still trying to get one of my two Gateways to a point where I can sell it. Then, having made the decision to stick around one more night, we were able to squeeze in our complimentary dinner at the Tower Club in downtown Ft. Lauderdale, which was a painless 20-minute ride away on Broward County's transit system. I will say the downtown bus station is a little rough around the edges, but it was just a five block walk to the club from there.

We did finally get to sample the buffet yesterday, as they serve breakfast on the weekends, just $5 with our Isle One players club cards. Long time readers of this blog know that we don't really gamble, but we always sign up for the players' club when we arrive at a new casino. The card alone often yields a dining discount, even if you have not earned any points, and many casinos give you cash or gaming credit when you first sign up. A handful of casinos require you to belong to the club in order to park overnight.

After breakfast, we loaded up and headed south, stopping briefly in Ft. Lauderdale for 150 gallons of diesel at $2.719, the best deal I could find on Gas Buddy. (We later passed a pair of $2.699 stations, on US-1 well south of town, but even so, we did great -- most stations in the south Florida area are running well north of $2.80 a gallon, and we've seen as high as $3). We landed here around 4pm, in plenty of time to enjoy the sunset from the dock with a glass of wine.

We have a nice site here with a view over the water, and there are only three other rigs here, including the camp hosts. A marked contrast to our last time through, well into the busy season, where all ten sites on the bay side were full up, and they offered us a tight space on the highway side of the lodge, which we declined. They tell me it will get busy in January, and many Elks stay a month or two. There is no long-term rate, so that's at $30 per night, but I suppose $900 a month is a good price here in the Keys at high season, right on the water.

Today we will continue south to Bahia Honda State Park, where we were able to get only a single night's reservation. We'll try to arrive right at or a little before official check-in, and stay right through check-out tomorrow. We are thinking about pulling the scooters out and riding the ~35 miles into Key West tonight for dinner.

Thanksgiving at the track

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

We are once again at the Isle Casino and Racing at Pompano Park (map). We are among five rigs (and about a dozen trucks) here this beautiful Thanksgiving day; our nearest neighbor is a good hundred feet away, it's very quiet, and it's dark at night in the RV lot. We feel particularly welcome here since Isle Casino's brand marketing and PR manager (at their St. Louis corporate HQ), Elissa Plastino, commented on my post here yesterday.

Yesterday we had lunch at the Islamorada Fish Company, in the Bass Pro store. We couldn't find anything else we needed to buy in the store, and our friends opted to take us "off campus" Tuesday night, yet we felt we ought to at least spend a few bucks there since they provided us a parking space. The rain had let up by lunch time, but we still had to crawl out the driver door to avoid the giant puddle. After lunch we headed out; I was able to find the unmarked south exit from the property, to avoid the low-tree dodge and weave we did on the way in, past the fancy new commuter rail station.

It was dry and pleasant on the way here, and once we arrived we picked out our choice spot. Shortly thereafter, the rain returned, and an hour or two later, we again could not leave via the air door -- I seem to have a knack for finding the low spot in what otherwise appears to be a level lot. Odd, since I actually had to lower the right side to level out when we parked. For a brief while, even the driver door had a 1" deep puddle under it (still better than the 2" on the other side).

We had dinner reservations last night at the Tower Club downtown, and, as I wrote here yesterday, we could get there from here on a single bus that runs right past our parking space. By the time we were ready to leave, though, the rain was coming down in buckets, we could not get out either door without getting soaked -- something we were loath to do in the required business attire for the club -- and we'd face a half-mile walk in that weather at the other end. We ended up canceling the reservation, knowing we'll be back in town in a week or two and can take advantage of our "free" dinner then.

Instead, we waited until the rain had died down somewhat and the water had a chance to drain away, at least from the driver door, and wandered over to the casino for dinner. The casino is blissfully smoke-free throughout, and sports three restaurants. We opted for the early-bird (before 7pm) special prix-fixe menu at Farraday's Steakhouse. At $25 for three courses, it's an unbeatable deal for a high-end steak house, where typical entrees alone start above that price. Louise had shrimp over pasta, and I had the New York strip steak; both were very good and appropriately sized. By contrast, the deserts were enormous, and I ended up taking part of my cheesecake home.

While we were there, we noticed they are serving a prix-fixe Thanksgiving dinner menu tonight, for $33. That's in addition to the special Thanksgiving buffet option that Elissa wrote about in her comment, at $15 (weekday dinner at the buffet is normally $10 this time of year). Between those two options, we are seriously considering just eating here tonight as well, even though we have reservations at Todd English's da Campo Osteria, on the Intracoastal over in Lauderdale. The prix fixe is twice as much over there, and it's hard to imagine that a turkey dinner will be twice as good, besides which we'd have to watch our wine consumption since we'd be riding the scooters back.

Otherwise, we are just having a quiet day at home. We have much to be thankful for, not the least of which is to be here in the beautiful weather and just enjoying each other's company. If I work up some ambition, I might tackle a couple of the computer-related projects that have been languishing, and I am also on deadline for another magazine article, so perhaps I will get that started.

Tomorrow, we'll probably head south, looking for a place to stay just north of the Keys. We are expected in Tavernier Saturday afternoon.

Photo by nenortas photography , used under a Creative Commons license.

Wet in Fort Lauderdale

We are at the Bass Pro Shop in Dania, Florida (map), near Fort Lauderdale. Most Bass Pro shops allow a night of parking for their customers; this one has a gravel lot at the edge of the property for trucks and RVs. We are just a few miles from the marina where our trawler charter began back in January.

Monday afternoon we arrived in the area without much of a plan for where to go or where to stay. I had hoped to spend Monday evening and Tuesday morning working on Keys reservations, dive lessons, and bus shops. So we pulled into the first Wal-Mart on our route, in Sunrise. Even though it was not on our no-no list, we were unsurprised to find "no parking" signs, since it is adjacent to a major mall, and we are now in the serious no-parking part of the state.

We proceeded to a different Wal-Mart, also in Sunrise. This one had no signs (at least, not prohibiting overnight parking -- spitting, however, was out), was not on our list, and had a completely unused area of the parking lot. It was also right next to an Office Depot, which has a UPS counter that we needed, so we settled in.

I had to make two trips into the store for shipping supplies -- we sold our fancy five-disc DVD/CD changer on Amazon (in anticipation of replacing it with a single-disc Blu-Ray player sometime this holiday fire-sale season). I was able to grab a suitably-sized box for free, as this is the season for Wal-Mart to be busily stocking holiday tchotchkes in the garden department. A case of holiday tea-light holders turns out to be exactly the right size (and already marked as fragile) and they were happy to give us the carton when we asked. I did have to buy a roll of bubble-wrap, eating up most of Amazon's puny shipping credit. Later I had to run back in when my roll of packing tape ran out in the middle.

After we dropped the DVD player off at the UPS counter, we walked over to a Cuban/Mexican restaurant for dinner. After dinner, I set to work on plans for our stay in south Florida. Wal-Mart's security patrol passed us more than a dozen times (on two different shifts), and did nothing more than wave at us.

Nevertheless, at 11pm, while I had half a dozen ReserveAmerica windows open, the landlord's towing company came by and booted us out. Again, we were not all that surprised, given the nature of this whole area, and upon reflection, I should have recognized the hallmarks of a location where Wal-Mart was not the property owner. Oh well -- we still have a pretty good track record, since this is only the second or third time in five years we've been asked to move off private property.

Given the lateness of the hour, though, it was a mad scramble for the backup plan. We won't drive into most unfamiliar territory in the dark, which rules out a lot of Wal-Marts in this area, many of which have low trees in the parking lot. We remembered a pleasant night at the store in Hallandale, right on the intracoastal, back in 2006, but when I called them they told me it was no longer permitted there. For whatever reason, we had forgotten completely about this Bass Pro store, even though we've eaten at the restaurant here before, and so we turned our attention to our list of casinos.

The Casino Camper web site provided some confusing information about the two closest options, a pair of casinos operated by the Seminole tribe just a few miles from where were were parked in Sunrise. We remembered being turned down at one of them four years ago, though, and the other is a Hard Rock branded property, which are almost never RV-friendly, and so I called both. That confirmed what I suspected, which is that neither permits overnight stays (Casino Camper is updating the web site to reflect this), and so we called the next in line, the Isle of Capri casino at Pompano Park, home to a renowned horse track.

Security at the Isle confirmed what we had read on Casino Camper, that RV parking was free and unlimited in the gravel oversized vehicle lot at the southwest corner of the property, and that's where we headed (map). It was close to midnight when we arrived, but there was plenty of room and we had a nice quiet spot off by ourselves. Two other rigs and a host of trucks were also in the lot; we later learned that the paucity of truck stops in the area make the track one of the few places the truckers can get their mandatory rest periods. While we had to drive a dozen miles to get there, free parking in this area is hard to beat.

We might well have just stayed there last night, too, had it not been for two things. One is that it has been fairly hot and humid since we arrived in Fort Lauderdale, and a power outlet, while not mandatory, would be an attractive option. The second was that local friend and fellow Neoplan Spaceliner owner Steve had referred me to a local shop here that he thought might be able to match up parts and reline our brakes.

When I called the shop, Power Brake and Suspension, they told me they could take a look at it right away, whereas they were all booked up if we waited till today, so we packed up and headed south a dozen miles to the shop. Pulling the front brake drums off confirmed what, really, I already knew: (1) the brakes are done -- we desperately need to have them relined in the next thousand miles and (2) the linings are weird and will definitely have to come from Germany. Regular readers may be aware that we've been trying to do just that for nearly a month now; I called Neopart again yesterday to ask them to light a fire under their German counterparts.

The good news was that the drive axle brakes are in great shape, with plenty of meat left on the linings, and all the drums are reusable (although the fronts are close enough that they suggest just changing the linings, and not resurfacing the drums, for fear of taking off too much material). Also, the hour they charged me to take the drums off and inspect will be credited to our bill if they end up doing the brake work; if I can find parts in the next two weeks, I will have them drop-shipped directly here to Fort Lauderdale.

In the meantime, our research had turned up a nice county park just a few miles south, with full hookups and fairly easy scooter access to downtown for $40 per night (non-resident rate), a bargain in expensive south Florida. The full name is Topeekeege Yugnee, but it is known locally as simply the T.Y. park. That's where we were headed from the brake shop when we whizzed right past this Bass Pro on the freeway, and we decided to check out the parking situation. Permission secured, we settled in for the night, reasoning that the day was almost over anyway, we'd already had to run the generator an hour or so anyway, and this would defer our $40 per night expenditure for another night; we'd planned to just roll down to T.Y. this morning -- it's just a couple blocks away.

Once we settled in, Steve and his wife came by and we all went to dinner, followed by a quick tour of his Spaceliner, which he completed since our last visit. It really came out great, and we're just a bit envious of his bodywork and paint (at five years old, ours is somewhat battle-scarred now).

This morning we woke to pouring rain, as well as a half dozen alerts on the weather radio for thunderstorms, high winds, and small craft warnings. When I went to walk the dog, I was greeted with an enormous puddle so deep that only the very top of our free-standing entry step was visible, and it's nearly three inches tall on its lowest setting. I ended up taking her out the driver's side, which was not underwater.

The rain has had the effect of dropping the temperature here considerably -- it's a mere 70° right now, and the stifling humidity has, quite literally, dropped. It's supposed to rain all the way through to tomorrow afternoon, which also puts the kibosh on our plans to ride the scooters into town tonight. The combination suddenly makes T.Y. a lot less attractive, and so we are going to head right back up to the casino in Pompano this afternoon.

From there it is a single city bus to get downtown for our dinner reservations tonight, and I suspect we will have no trouble getting to either of the locations we've pre-booked for Thanksgiving tomorrow (we'll pick one and cancel the other when we figure out the transportation). It's free, and we can run the generator all we want and still not come close to the $40 it would cost us at T.Y.. Given that it will be raining most of the time anyway, and we're not really going to be able to enjoy any of T.Y.'s amenities, we'll save that option for another visit.

By tomorrow morning we'll be committed, since T.Y. is closed Thursday and Friday to anyone other than registered campers. It will just be for the two nights, anyway, since we've made plans to be in the Keys by Saturday night, and we'll likely spend Friday night someplace halfway there. I should note here that we have a standing offer from our friends of a parking space in their driveway, complete with a 50-amp receptacle, but really we don't want to impose on anyone over a holiday, and we'd rather save our good mojo with them for when we really need it, which is whenever we need to leave the bus here for a while while we gallivant elsewhere, such as on a cruise.

Speaking of the Keys, I was able to get reservations at Bahia Honda for one night (Sunday, the only availability they had), followed by three nights at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park on Key Largo. We'll spend Saturday night at the Elks lodge on Tavernier, which will let us maximize our time on Bahia Honda and possibly even run out to Key West if we feel like it.

I am also on the verge of booking diving lessons for three days at an undisclosed shop somewhere in the Keys. I say that because one of the shops I spoke to, when asked if we could park there for the course of our program, told us they could not allow it due to some Monroe County ordinance. Monroe does not put their code on line, so I could not confirm this definitively, but I found other references to it elsewhere, and it squares with the Keys being RV-unfriendly in general. So I will not name the dive shop that agreed to this until we're done there, but suffice it to say that it is a reputable shop. Depending on the dive schedule, we may cut our stay at the Pennekamp campground short by a day.

So our schedule has firmed up for the next week or so, after which we will end up right back here in Fort Lauderdale to visit with our friends Martin and Steph, who will just be returning from Curacao. The rest of December is something of a blank, but I have my fingers crossed that we can get brake parts in time to have that done here as well.

Full hookups on the lake

We are at the South Bay RV Park, at the southern end of Lake Okeechobee in the town of South Bay, Florida (map). Despite the commercial-sounding name, this is actually a Palm Beach County Park; at just over $26 a night it is a bargain.

It's a bit early in the season, and the park is mostly empty. There are two loops, and we are the only rig in one of them; there are probably a dozen or so rigs in the other. When we arrived yesterday afternoon, the gate was locked and unattended; we had to call the manager, who gave us the gate code and told us to just pick any space. There are a mix of 50-amp and 30-amp spaces, but I don't think there is a price difference. We chose a 30-amp site for its location -- in this weather, we don't need much power.

That was enough to top up our batteries, though, and run the air conditioners most of the time we've been here. It's not really that hot, but the humidity is quite high now. We've been very comfortable with one unit running. We didn't really need the hookups at all, but overnight stopping options between Lake Placid and Fort Lauderdale along this route are scarce -- the lone Wal-Mart, in Clewiston, does not allow overnight parking, and there are really no boondocking options. We could have pressed on to the Fort Lauderdale last night, where there are more options, but really wanted a shorter day.

We pulled the scooters out when we arrived, and had a nice ride up to the top of the Herbert Hoover Dike that runs around the lake. At sunset we set out to find dinner, but no dice. Neither South Bay nor Belle Glade a bit further along the lake had even a single open restaurant, other than fast food, on a Sunday night. We ended up heating up whatever was in the fridge. Still, we enjoyed the ride into town.

In a few minutes, we will be on our way to the Ft. Lauderdale area. With the airport requirement off the table, we decided on the more direct route, rather then heading through Palm Beach and all the glotch in between.

Mid-state stopover

We are at the Wal-Mart in Sebring, Flordida (map).

I plotted our route from Tampa to the general Palm Beach area, since that's a good compromise between Miami/Ft. Lauderdale and Daytona. That route will take us past the north end of Lake Okeechobee, and Sebring was a good stopping point. In addition to the Wal-Mart, I knew there was an Elks lodge here that could accommodate us if we needed it.

The Wal-Mart was more directly on our route, and we needed supplies anyway. We ended up strolling across the street to Ruby Tuesday for a casual dinner. In a few minutes, we will continue on towards Palm Beach.

In the meantime, we've heard good news that our friend was released from the hospital and is doing much better. Apparently an acute crisis, likely from chemo, that has passed. So airports are no longer really driving our agenda. That said, we still have friends to visit in Ft. Lauderdale and we are still looking into a Keys trip as well as dive instruction, so getting over to the east coast is a fine plan.

Image by sun dazed, used under a Creative Commons license.

Breezing through Tampa

We are at a Wal-Mart in Tampa (map). As I wrote yesterday, this store is marked No Overnight on my list, and is so posted in most of the lot, but when we called to ask, they told us it was OK. When we arrived, security directed us to a section of the lot near Dale Mabry that was not posted, adjacent to a fenced-off empty lot where Tia's TexMex restaurant once stood. It was quiet enough here, and darker than the main lot.

We took a lone scooter out to ride the two and a half miles to the Centre Club for dinner last night. Dinner was quite tasty, and while we were there we were reminded that many of these clubs are serving Thanksgiving dinner. While that would not be included on our super-duper free meal every month plan, it's definitely an option in case we don't come up with anything else.

Shortly after we returned and stowed the scooter, I was out walking the dog when a news van with a TV crew from local channel 13 news showed up in our little remote parking lot. They deployed their 50' antenna mast and microwave dish, so I knew they were setting up for a live shot. I tuned the news in on the TV; it turns out the live shot was of the shopping center across the street, for a reporter doing a lead-in and then wrap-up on a previously taped segment on unemployment (seasonal retail jobs, it seems, are way down this year). What a waste, we thought, to deploy an electronic news-gathering van for two and a half minutes of talking head, that could easily have been shot in the studio. Fittingly, featured in the center of the shot was the still-illuminated store sign for now-defunct Circuit City.

While we were at dinner we received a phone call that threw something of a monkey wrench into any attempt to develop concrete plans. One of our dear friends has been hospitalized in California with complications from cancer. We are awaiting further word as to whether he will even be lucid enough to recognize us before deciding whether to fly out there for a visit.

While we had been considering perhaps settling in someplace pleasant here in the Tampa Bay area for a few days while we figured out plans for Thanksgiving, scuba, and bus maintenance, we are now motivated to cross over to the other side of the state. That's because most of the less expensive flight options are out of Daytona, Palm Beach, or Ft. Lauderdale, and this will put us closer. Besides, we need to end up there anyway. In a few minutes we will start rolling in that direction, angling down towards Lake Okeechobee.

Photo by Marcus Q, used under a Creative Commons license.

Land O' Lakes

We are at what used to be a Wal-Mart in unincorporated Hillsborough County, just north of Lutz (map). The store has moved about a mile away, to a much larger facility, recently enough that they are still dismantling this one.

The store here did not allow overnight parking, I presume because the lot is really too small for it in such a popular destination. (The new store around the corner, with its much larger lot, does allow it -- I called them to check.) The signs are still up, but with the store now closed, we were undisturbed. A couple of semis also spending the night in the lot was a reassuring sight. I am guessing the cameras are still hot (Wal-Mart still has lots of assets in place here), but the roving patrols have been discontinued, and I noticed a person sleeping under a blanket between the store entrance and a vending machine; he was also undisturbed. We're tucked in a discreet out-of-the-way corner, far from either the idling trucks or transients sleeping al fresco.

We chose this spot because it is literally across the street from where our friends are staying; their site is a two minute walk from here. We had a nice evening with them, spending hours catching up and having a nice meal at casual Italian restaurant Capri a couple miles away, one of Louise's many coupon coups at Restaurant.com. No liquor license, but they let us bring in a nice bottle of Merlot that I ran to get at the Publix next door.

They picked us up for breakfast this morning at a nice cafe just a couple blocks from here; we had a great visit and enjoyed catching up. Given the current status of this property, we could probably spend another night here if we needed to, but we'd rather not push our luck.

Instead, we will move to a Wal-Mart close to downtown Tampa, where we've stayed before. Again our purpose is to visit our club there, just two miles away. Last time we took a cab, but tonight we'll pull a scooter out. Oddly, when I checked my No Overnight Parking list, this store is on it, but I called them anyway to ask. As last time, they said it was no problem as long as we stayed in the further reaches of the lot. It's very rare that our list is wrong in this way, although more than once, we've hit a store not on the list where overnight parking is forbidden. Given the scarcity of parking throughout Florida, I also checked the Tampa city ordinances, which thankfully do not regulate parking on private property.

We'll be heading that way in just a few minutes. I confess that, once again, I have no real plan for where we will head in the morning.

Image by Wyrmworld, used under a Creative Commons license.

Suggestions?

We are at a Wal-Mart in Ocala, Florida, just west of Silver Springs (map).

We had a very pleasant and uncrowded drive down US-27 from Branford, after a short stint on US-129 from Live Oak. Ocala was a logical stopping place, and there are three Wal-Marts here. Unfortunately, the one closest to our "route" (such as it is) is a no-overnight location, so we had to come a few miles east to this one. We had a nice dinner at the Horse and Hounds pub just a few doors down.

On our way here, it dawned on me that our friends Tom and Kathleen had told us they'd be in Bushnell -- we had missed them earlier this month in Glen Burnie, MD by only a day. That's just an hour south of here, so I messaged them on the Blackberry when we knew we'd be here. As it turns out, they've moved to Lutz, which is closer to Tampa, and, had we known that, we could have bypassed Ocala and continued directly south on either US-19 or US-41. Still, it's not much of a diversion west, and we arranged to stop by this afternoon and have dinner with them. They are staying at an Encore park there, which I don't think is open to the public. My map shows a Wal-Mart across the street, which my list says is no-overnight, but Tom told us the place is closed as the store moved around the corner. I'm hoping we'll be able to park there for a night while we visit.

Our plan beyond dinner tonight is still very much a tabula rasa. However, there are three things on our to-do list for the remainder of the year, and we can probably use some help from our readers here in the form of some suggestions. The three things are not really related, but combining them into the same stop or two would be a bonus.

First, as I mentioned yesterday, we are looking to get our open-water scuba certification. We've both done two "resort dives," so we know we enjoy the sport, but neither of us has fancied the idea of doing the certification in anything other than warm water. Much to the disdain, I might add, of the many dive shops where we lived before we hit the road, who all did their open-water work in Monterey Bay, where the water is 50°-55° year-round. Brrr.

So a suggestion for a dive shop is in order, with the requirements that the open-water work be in relatively warm water, and that there is someplace close by where we can legally park the bus. Reasonable pricing for a total package would also be nice, but bus parking is paramount. For example, my research so far has suggested that the Keys are an ideal place to learn to dive, but parking options there are extremely limited. Which is an excellent segue to...

We'd like to re-visit the Keys. I know this may be a pipe dream, but I'm hoping we'll be able to find an opening or two at one or more of the state parks there. (On our first trip to the Keys, the state parks there did not allow pets in the campgrounds, a policy which changed the very next month.) The parks are booked months in advance, but cancellations do happen. That said, if we do make it that far, we'd enjoy another visit to Key West; however, we've vowed not to do that again from the extremely distant, overpriced, and overcrowded campgrounds on Stock Island. I know I have asked this here before, but we have many new readers since then: if you have access to a parking spot on Key West closer to Duval street, we're more than happy to fork over the money we'd be spending at, say, Boyd's to someone else.

Lastly, somewhere in all of this, we need to get the oil changed. While that sounds straightforward, like many things about Odyssey, it's never as simple as it sounds. Specifically, we need a shop that stocks straight 40-weight oil in a bulk system with a pump. Our ancient two-stroke Detroit requires the single-weight, and the location and arrangement of our oil fills make it nearly impossible to just pour the oil in from a jug (I have to add make-up oil this way, and it involves a three-foot hose, a giant funnel held high above my head, and three or four minutes per gallon). So a recommendation for a diesel shop with this amenity would be appreciated.

In the spirit of returning the favor, I will share with you a "secret" we discovered yesterday. We stopped by a post office to mail in our paperwork for our new PMB and to pick up a couple of "change of address kits." The post office has managed to outsource these, so that they cost the USPS nothing at all. Unsurprisingly, the contractor is paying for them with advertising, but it turns out they actually contain some nice coupons. For example, a 10% discount at Lowe's on any single visit, up to $5,000 (for a potential discount of $500). Nothing on these coupons requires you to have actually moved (although they are limited to one per household and are time-limited), so if you have a big purchase coming up, walk in to your local post office and see what's in the free change of address kit. Ours included discounts at Lowe's, Best Buy, and several other retailers.

Photo by hashmil, used under a Creative Commons license.

We're moving!

We are at the Wal-Mart in Live Oak, Florida (map), only a few miles south of the Spirit of the Suwannee.

We had a mad scramble on Saturday to nail down a new "address" and sign all the paperwork to make ourselves legal. I have to say that Friday's news that our mail service was closing was roughly akin to an apartment dweller being evicted on two weeks notice -- it was that disruptive. We ultimately decided that changing our address into a different state was too big a step to take without enough time to do all the research and fully understand all the consequences. So even though it means we will have to do this all over again in a few years, when we move from the bus to a boat, we'll at least have time then to do all the legwork in advance. We settled on a "move" just down the street to a UPS Store, although it's actually in a different city. I will try to update our contact page with the new address within the next day or so.

Yesterday, being Monday, was our first opportunity to get the USPS forms 1583 notarized, and contact many of the businesses and government agencies that have our mailing address. Between spending a couple of hours on that, rising late due to a late night out socializing with our friends Monday night (not to mention the music running to well past midnight), and tearing down our extensive camp site (having deployed absolutely everything for the long weekend, including the patio mat and all the furniture, the hot tub, the screen tent over the hot tub, and the scooters), we got a very late start yesterday. We also took an hour for a final lunch and goodbyes with our friends, and we did not roll out of the park until after 3.

Not only did we not feel like driving a couple of hours starting that late, we also had no clue which way to head once we got to Live Oak. So we decided to just stop here for the night. We were certainly not alone, this location being right next to the freeway. Neither of our cell phones worked well while we were at the park, so this was also our first opportunity to make a dozen or so phone calls to update our address with various entities, and we spent most of the morning here doing just that. This was also our first opportunity to test out the repairs to the satellite dish, and all is well; in fact, I think the new reflector is giving us a slightly better signal strength, probably because the gusset cracks in the old one had the feedhorn slightly out of the focal "sweet spot."

Now that the crisis is behind us, and we can turn our attention to other matters, we've decided to head basically south from here, splitting the difference between the coasts while we do some more research on where to spend Thanksgiving, where to have the bus worked on (we are due for oil and filter changes), and maybe where to go for our open-water scuba certification, something we keep saying we are going to get done in Florida "when we have time." Tonight we should be somewhere near Ocala.

Photo by Andrew Huff, used under a Creative Commons license.

Return to Sender, Address Unknown...

We are at the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park, on the Suwannee River (yes, the one made famous by the Stephen Foster song), just north of Live Oak, Florida (map). We've settled in for the weekend, taking the scooters out to zip around the park, and even setting up the patio mat and the hot tub.

We have a nice site in the woods with full hookups. We can't get the dish on-line, but we have plenty of signal from the park's Wi-Fi network. Festival admission is being handled by an outside promoter, but we were able to get the insider rate, and we have our wristbands. Now all we need is some tie-dye to fit in (and plenty is available for sale).

We've been able to enjoy lots of the music right here at our site, which is fairly close to three of the main stages. That's good, because I decided to tackle the "dish project" today, and spent five hours or so on the roof. The music made a nice backdrop.

"What dish project?" I hear you ask. The MotoSat DataStorm self-aiming internet satellite system has been creaking a lot lately, and I've had it on my to-do list to get up there, pull all the servo-motors out, and lubricate everything. The reflector was also "done," in the sense that it's got lots of cracks in the gussets, and the lower lip, to which is attached the feedhorn mounting arm, appeared to be on the verge of self-destruction. We've used this thing constantly for over five years, and I bought it third-hand to begin with, not to mention we whacked the feedhorn off once on a low overpass, so it's really no surprise.

Back when we destroyed the feedhorn, I repaired the system myself by buying an entire used DirecWay system on eBay. I think I spent about $150, and I was able to just mount up the feedhorn bits that had been destroyed to our existing reflector and mount. That left me with a spare modem, which I sold on eBay, a spare transmitter, which came in handy a few months ago when the old one quit, and a spare reflector, which I asked my folks to store in their attic. Knowing I needed to refurbish the dish, we picked that up from them when we visited last month.

I've been waiting for the conjunction of warm weather, a full spare day, and access to Wi-Fi (in case I needed to look something up while I had the dish apart and off-line), and today was it. The spare reflector has otherwise been taking up space and generally getting in the way down in the scooter bay, so we really did not want to wait for the next opportunity.

It took me all afternoon -- I had not realized the new reflector would need some additional holes drilled into it, and the mounting studs removed -- but the whole mount has been cleaned and lubricated, the reflector changed out (and hardly a moment too soon, based on the extensive cracking at the feedarm mounting point), and the full range of motion tested. I can't actually check the system "hot" here under the trees, but I have no reason to suspect anything I worked on today will impact the ability to acquire signal.

While I was in the middle of reassembling everything, Louise popped her head up through the hatch to tell me "we have a huge problem." I thought one of the pets had escaped, or the toilet had quit working. Nope -- she had just called our mail forwarding service to confirm they sent our mail out yesterday, and they casually informed her that "oh, we've been meaning to call you -- we are closing permanently on December 1st."

WHAT?!? With only two weeks notice?

So, yes, we have a huge problem. We have just two weeks to find another mail service and change our address with absolutely everyone. The post office will not forward mail for PMB's, so we can't just fill out one of those moving kits they have there at the counter and expect any mail to follow us. And we have to do it all by remote control; non-trivial, since the post office requires positive ID and a signature on a form in order to open up a PMB at a new service.

One of the things we are now considering is whether to open a PMB in a different state. As long-time readers here know, our plan for when we are "done" with the bus (whenever that is -- we have no schedule for it, and it could be as much as five years from now) is to get a long-distance power boat, and continue our adventure by sea. The domicile considerations for boat ownership are different than those for full-time RV living, and Washington is not necessarily the best option. However, I'm not sure I can fully research these issues in the limited time we now have available to us.

In the meantime, if you are one of the very, very few entities that has occasion to send us anything by mail or delivery service, if it arrives after the end of this month, it will be returned to sender. As soon as I have a new mailing address, I will update our contact page and post it here.

Photo by shoehorn99, used under a Creative Commons license.

Picky about our Wal-Marts

We are at the Wal-Mart in Lake City, Florida (map).

Yesterday morning we heard from our friend Charles the air traffic controller that he had arranged a tour for us at 1pm. Knowing it was a good forty minutes away, and we'd have to park and pull the scooters out, we started packing up the bus for travel right at noon.

Just as I was starting my walk-around, one of our readers pulled up and walked over to me. Apparently, he had also stopped by the afternoon before, when we were out getting our massages. I felt bad that we did not have the time to linger and talk, considering that up to that moment, it had been a lazy day in the parking lot. If I got it right, he is converting an Eagle; it was nice to meet, as brief as it was.

We drove most of the way to Hilliard and parked Odyssey at the Winn-Dixie supermarket south of town. We were already a bit behind at that point, so we only took out one scooter and rode up to ZJX two-up. While our drive up in the bus was pleasant and sunny, as luck would have it, the rain (from Ida) started just as we rode the last mile to the facility. Oh well.

After a screening not unlike what is required to board an airplane (I had to leave my Leatherman in the bike, and we had to clear through metal detectors), we passed through security and Charles met us at the gatehouse. He gave us a most excellent tour lasting nearly two hours, which included some time sitting at a scope and listening in to the communications with the aircraft, a visit with the National Weather Service forecasters, and even a tour of the massive computer complex that makes it all work (he knows we are total geeks). Thanks, Charles!

By the time we got the scooter stowed and started rolling back south, it was past 3pm. We were out of water, and so we stopped at a truck stop in Baldwin to put some in, making it past 4pm by the time we were rolling west. Also, the skies were very dark from the massive cloud cover Ida brought with her. We decided to make it a short day and stop early, rather than try to make it all the way to the Suwannee.

Our GPS and guide both said there was a Wal-Mart in Macclenny, and the map showed several restaurants nearby. When we rolled up, though, we found the store had moved. There were no other services near the new location, and I did not feel like cooking in the parking lot, so we pressed on to this location. We tried to have dinner at Applebees, a block away, but they were running a promotion for Veterans Day and the wait was 45 minutes. We ended up at Texas Road house a few doors down, where we waltzed right in.

In a few minutes we will pull up stakes and head over to the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park, and get settled in for the weekend.

Photo by US Army Korea - IMCOM, used under a Creative Commons license.

A plan emerges

We are at the Wal-Mart at City Square, near the airport at the north end of Jacksonville, Florida (map).

We needed to get out of the truck stop yesterday afternoon, but with Ida not weakening as fast as expected, and still threatening the gulf coast, we did not want to overshoot Jacksonville or the early turn onto I-10, the fastest way to Hattiesburg or Baton Rouge. This Wal-Mart had been our original goal for Sunday night, and it served the same purpose last night. We did not realize it when we first set our sights here, but a bonus was that there is an Olive Garden in this same complex.

When we first pulled in to the enormous City Square shopping center, we were disappointed to see a sign forbidding overnight parking of trucks or RVs. It was not listed as prohibited, though, on my big Wal-Mart "no no" list, so we checked with customer service, who informed us that we could park overnight "in the last row of the garden center." Sure enough, the entire swath along the garden center, between Wal-Mart and Lowe's, has been occupied by tractor-trailers since we arrived. We picked a discreet spot next to some of Wal-Mart's ubiquitous shipping containers -- it seems no matter how big they build the new stores, they still need extra storage.

We loaded up on supplies in the store, then headed over to OG for dinner. On the way we walked past a huge Gander Mountain store, and I found some much-needed sandals for 60% off, and Clarks at that. In fact, there are quite a few interesting stores here, and even a multiplex cinema; we ended up making an evening of shopping.

When we had not gotten any calls by mid-morning regarding the storm, we knew we would not be needed this time. So we dragged the scooters out and rode the dozen miles into town for a nice lunch at the University Club, followed by a quick riding tour of downtown Jacksonville. We needed to be back for a 3:30 Red Cross conference call, though, and we made it back just in time to escape the rain that Ida brought here with her.

We'll be here for an uncharacteristic second night. I managed to get in touch with our local friends; he's a tin pusher at Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) and has offered us a tour tomorrow. The center is actually in Hilliard, so heading further south from here would not be the right move; I suggested we'd move tonight to the Wal-Mart on Lem Turner, just a few miles from here and actually the closest place to the ARTCC we could legally park. When he heard that, he wrote that we should emphatically not stay there (he feels it's not a good neighborhood) and suggested we stay where we are instead.

That gave us the opportunity to patronize yet another business here in the City Square; it turns out there is a massage studio just the other side of Wal-Mart called "Massage Heights" (a chain, I think) and we went in for a pair of Swedish massages at the special introductory rate of $40 for an hour. What a treat. There are half a dozen other restaurants in this complex as well, should we have needed one, but today's big meal out was lunch. But we are definitely marking this place down on our list of great overnight stops, considering it is easily accessible from both I-95 and US-17.

Our friends here in Jacksonville also happen to be among the owners of the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park, a couple hours west of here in Live Oak. This weekend is the Bear Creek Music Festival, and since we have the happy coincidence of being in the area and having some time on our hands, we've decided to attend. I'm sure we'll enjoy the festival, but mostly we are looking forward to spending some time with our friends. The last time we tried to do this, during Magnoliafest a couple years ago, we had to bail out before the festival even started, to respond to massive wildfires in California.

So tomorrow morning we will head up to Callahan or thereabouts, and find a place to "day park" while we zip up to the ARTCC on the scooters (security at a restricted FAA facility would plotz if we rolled up in the bus). From there we will head south on US-301 to US-90 and west to Live Oak. Of course, I still have no clue what we'll be doing once the weekend is over.

Photo by ASurroca, used under a Creative Commons license.

Storm Watch

We are at the Petro truck stop in Kingsland, Georgia (map).

When we called the River's End Campground on Tybee Island yesterday, they told us a large rally had just come in and they had no spaces left that could fit us. We'd been seeing a lot of Airstreams in town, so perhaps it was an airstream rally. In any case, that called for a different plan.

By this time, the forecast for Hurricane Ida had strengthened, and a hurricane watch had been issued for a good stretch of the gulf coast, from New Orleans all the way to lower Alabama. After checking our projected travel times to the three Red Cross "hot sites" in Montgomery Alabama, Hattiesburg Mississippi, and Baton Rouge Louisiana, we decided it would be prudent to head out of Savannah and get a bit further south, in case the storm did some damage on landfall. We ended up having a final lunch with our friends, who picked us up and took us out to Tybee just so we wouldn't miss it entirely.

We set our sights on a Wal-Mart just north of Jacksonville. Owing to a very late start, it was well past dark for the last hour of our drive, and ~20 miles of highway construction, with narrow lanes constrained by jersey barriers and no shoulders, took its toll, so we ended up here, about half an hour shy. Other than being parked under a Klieglight, it was a fine stop.

At some point during our drive, the hurricane watch got extended all the way to Mexico Beach at the eastern end of the Florida panhandle. By this morning, the watch had turned into a warning for the gulf coasts of Mississippi and Alabama,. At this writing, however, the cyclone is becoming extratropical, the warnings have been canceled, and the watches have been downgraded from hurricane to tropical storm. I think it is extremely unlikely that we will be called.

There are a mere 20 days left in the Atlantic hurricane season, and Ida is the first named storm to make landfall in the continental US this season. This is the first time in four years that we have made it all the way to November without being called; at this time last year, we had already been deployed for 14 weeks straight.

Now we find ourselves in a truck stop with no real plan for the next couple of weeks. We have some friends in Jacksonville, and I have dropped them a note in case they might be available for a visit in the next few days. We have some tentative plans to catch up with friends in Fort Lauderdale the first week in December, which leaves the rest of this month to fill out. I think we will work our way slowly down the Atlantic coast, catching up on our project backlog, and we might even try to visit the Keys again, now that Opal is allowed into the state parks there.

Photo by House Of Sims, used under a Creative Commons license.

Comfort zone

We are at a Wal-Mart in Savannah, Georgia, about halfway to Tybee Island on US-80 (map). It's a small store, but there is a nice out-of-the-way parking lot, and even a couple of restaurants here.

This is the closest spot to our friends out on Wilmington Island; they picked us up here yesterday afternoon and whisked us off to their place for a wonderful home-cooked meal, too much wine, and lots of catching up -- it's been nearly five years since we stopped here last. They also have what must be the world's largest hot tub in their otherwise tiny yard, and the weather was just perfect for a soak.

In fact, the weather is so pleasant right here that we are going to see if the city-operated campground on Tybee Island can accommodate us for a couple of nights. We're already most of the way there, and have never seen the place, which our friends recommend. Since we seem to have hit the ideal-weather zone, and don't need to be anywhere in Florida until the second half of December, this is as good a place as any to slow down and enjoy.

The only fly in the ointment might be Hurricane Ida, which is forecast to regain some strength as it spins out into the Gulf of Mexico today. The track models have it threatening southeastern Louisiana and coastal Mississippi on Tuesday, but with luck, it will have degraded into an extratropical cyclone by then. Nevertheless, we are watching it carefully, as our current location puts us an easy day from any possible landfall for the storm.

Photo by Penningtron, used under a Creative Commons license.

Charmed, I'm sure

We are at the Wal-Mart in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina (map), just east of Charleston.

While only some 70 miles from where we started yesterday in Murrells Inlet, we stopped here because it is the closest legal parking spot to downtown Charleston, about seven miles away, and we wanted to have dinner last night at our affiliate club in town, the Harbour Club.

We found a stealthy corner of the parking lot, which in this instance is chock full of signs warning about securing valuables, of all things, and unloaded the scooters. Louise trundled off to the laundromat, while I went into the store for the inevitable restocking visit. This store was unusual in that it was recently turned into a "SuperCenter" (Wal-Mart's term for a store with a full grocery department) and the grocery area is arranged along the back wall of the original store footprint. Smaller than the usual SuperCenter, but they had everything we needed.

We had a nice ride into town over the fancy modern Ravenal bridge. The Harbour Club is just a block from the waterfront and two blocks from the Charleston City Market. The whole downtown was hopping on a pleasant Friday night. After a very nice dinner at the club, we walked through the lovely waterfront park with its wading-allowed fountains, then rode around the historic town, from the market all the way down to the battery on Bay Street, across the south end to the Captain of the Port, then back across town on South Battery to Meeting Street for the trip back up to the market and town center before heading back up to the bridge.

Charleston is perhaps the epitome of genteel southern towns, and we really enjoyed our ride. Even though it was after dark, most of the immaculately kept houses along the southern end of the peninsula are well lit; many are historic, and a handful are now guest houses of one type or another. We're adding Charleston to the list of places where we need to return by boat, so we can stay closer to town and explore for several days.

This morning we will again head across the bridge, this time in Odyssey (her second crossing, having done this route five years ago) on our way to Savannah, Georgia, where we will visit some friends. They actually live halfway to Tybee Island, so our challenge this afternoon will be finding a place to park; on our last visit, their condo complex was not yet finished and we were able to park on-site, but that is not an option this time.

Photo by Willie T. Neckbone, used under a Creative Commons license

Warm at last

We are at Huntington Beach State Park near Murrells Inlet, South Carolina (map). It was around 70° when we arrived yesterday afternoon, and about that again this afternoon. We've taken the electric blanket off the bed, I'm back in short sleeves, and we can finally open all the vents and windows and air the bus out fully.

We've been here before, on our very first circuit around the country five years ago. Back then, I was not in the habit of blogging from almost every stop, and I only mentioned the place a few days later; no map links then, either. We only spent one night then, and it was very much off-season although only a month later in the year than this visit.

What I also did not mention back then was that the park was basically the grounds of Atalaya, the summer home of Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington and today a feature of the park, which, together with the adjacent Brookgreen Gardens, the Huntingtons left to the state. I feel distantly connected to Anna Hyatt Huntington, who was a sculptor. One of the several castings of her famous sculpture "The Torch-Bearers" holds a prominent central position on the campus of my alma mater, Stevens Institute of Technology; up until my class year, it had been a tradition for the freshman class to paint their class year on the horse's, umm, behind, but the administration put a stop to it as the incessant cleanings were thinning the aluminum too much. It is actually a very moving sculpture, and I often stopped to admire it on my travels around campus.

Since it was still in the high 60s even after sunset, we rode the scooters to Nico's Italian Restaurant, halfway back to Myrtle Beach, for dinner. All the towns along this stretch of coast have a high tourist factor, but this place got good reviews, and Louise found a coupon on Restaurant.com for it. While it's tempting to ride into town again tonight, it's lovely here and I will grill a steak instead.

We really needed the downtime afforded by spending a couple of nights here. I had a deadline to get an article submitted to Bus Conversions Magazine, basically a re-run of the centerfold we did five years ago, and spent the morning getting that done. I also pulled the dip tube out of the fresh water tank, and reseated all the seals on the intake system -- we've been getting air in the lines as the water level drops. And the spare computer printer that my dad palmed off on me when we visited last week sold today on eBay, so I got that packed and labeled for drop-off at UPS tomorrow morning.

All told, a productive day. We could only get this spot for two nights -- the shoulder season is still busy on the weekends here -- so tomorrow I will run the printer into town on the scooter, and we will pack up before the noon checkout. We've made a date to visit our friends in Savannah on Saturday, so I expect we'll land someplace about halfway there tomorrow night. The rest of my project list, including getting the old computers ready for sale, and refurbishing the satellite dish, will have to wait until after the weekend.

Photo by brungrrl, used under a Creative Commons license.

Minor diversion

We are at the Sam's Club in Raleigh, North Carolina (map). Raleigh was not really on the most direct route to the coast and more pleasant temperatures, but we knew that would be a two-day drive anyway. But it was only a 20-mile diversion, and we realized we have a pair of reciprocal clubs here and we could probably eek out a free dinner if we stopped.

We had hoped to stay at a small truck stop a bit closer to town, where the two downtown clubs would have actually been within walking distance, just about a mile. As we pulled in, though, there seemed to be a preponderance of shady characters lurking about, and no sooner had I stopped to scope out the best place to park than we were panhandled. It felt to both of us like not the safest place to leave the bus unattended for a few hours, and to top it off, the small truck parking lot was essentially a giant mud puddle, which would have made coming and going in our dinner clothes less than pleasant.

We decided to move along, and this Sam's was the closest backup option. From here we had to scooter into town, so we discretely extracted Chip. We were glad there was plenty of room for us here; by the time we had to wave off the truck stop, it was sunset, and we arrived here in the very last vestiges of twilight -- old Raleigh is the last place I want to be wandering around in the bus looking for parking after dark, as low thick trees are everywhere.

We're still keen on getting to the coast south of here, and so it was a very quick stop. We had a nice dinner at the Capital City Club last night (the Cardinal Club turns out not to serve dinner), and this morning we will be getting an early start, with the goal of Murrells Inlet, SC, where we remember a nice state park.

Sidewinder

We are at the Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World store in Ashland, Virginia (map), off I-95 just north of Richmond. We've stopped here before, knew it was available and comfortable, and it was mostly right on our route south. The store has an integral restaurant, the Islamorada Fish Company, that has some decent dinner selections, and it's always fun to browse the store, even if we seldom buy anything (last night was an exception -- I bought a Swedish Firesteel for my emergency kit).

We really need to stop someplace for a couple of days to catch up with ourselves -- I've committed to a magazine article that is due on the 8th, the living room is still full of computer bits from the migration to this new netbook, and I need to take the fresh water pump intake system apart to see why we keep getting air in the lines. But I want to deal with all of this someplace where the daytime temperatures are pleasant, and preferably where it is quiet and serene. So like the snake whose name titles today's post, I keep peering at the maps on Wunderground and pointing the bus towards the warmer shades of orange.

Richmond is hardly far enough, but it was more or less on the most direct route to someplace that is. It was pretty much a straight shot here down US-301, crossing a very wide Potomac River on the Harry Nice Bridge, hopefully our last chance to exercise the E-ZPass transponder for a while. From here we will continue south, aiming for the coast somewhere near the NC/SC border, where we hope things will finally be pleasant enough to settle in for a bit. We are still on-call for hurricane season, though, and Investigation 97L can spin up and change our plans in a heartbeat.

Photo by zmcabee, used under a Creative Commons license.

Done with the northeast

We are at the Wal-Mart in Severn, Maryland (map). This complex is so new, it shows under construction in Google's satellite view, and the street address was not in the GPS's database.

I was feeling much better by yesterday afternoon, although still not 100%. We would have just spent a third night there in Havre de Grace, had it not been for the fact that we were completely out of water. There was a spigot at the lodge, but it was too far away to fill without moving the bus, and once we had everything packed up enough to drive over to the spigot, I thought we might as well get a little further down the road.

This was the first Wal-Mart SuperCenter on our route, and at just about an hour away, was as far as I wanted to drive while still feeling crummy. We desperately needed the Wal-Mart because we ended up discarding all our floor mats over the last couple of days due to pet issues, and we needed a handful of other essentials. There is also a Lowe's here and I need some hardware, which I will pick up later this morning.

Ironically, we had been heading generally for Severn anyway, as we hoped to catch up with some full-timing friends who have been staying here for the last several months, parked at their daughter's house. As luck would have it, they left yesterday for Florida, so being sidelined for a couple days with a cold meant we missed them by mere hours. We hope to catch up with them in Florida before the year's out.

Today we will continue south, picking up US-301 where it turns south of US-50, west of Annapolis. That will keep us well east of the DC metropolis, and will take us all the way to Richmond. We will be in Virginia tonight, which is officially "the south."