Living In Our Camper

When we are home in Minnesota and we take the camper to one of our usual spots, a Minnesota State Park, Paul and I are camping. So, our space in the North Trail has been used accordingly.  However, now, I guess we are officially snowbirds.

There is a difference between camping and living in one's camper. There are people who do not understand this concept. They believe because we live in a camper, we are actually scavenging in the woods for fuel to cook our dinners and slicing meat off a stick hanging over an open fire. Rather Neanderthal, if you will.

When we arrived in our present location near Tampa, we knew we had to make the transition from campers to "semi-full timers." It was so cold in Minnesota when we were packing, we just filled the camper with our stuff. When we opened the camper here, we stood and looked at what we needed to unpack into our small space and felt a bit like this:

So, we set to work to scrub and clean and organize our space, inside and out. We received a few comments from our resident sages as we were organizing our shoes out on the patio.

"Good Lord! How many pairs of shoes do you need?" Okay. Three months worth. I thought I narrowed it down quite well, thank you very much!

After the outdoor storage areas were reorganized, we turned to the inside. This required a bit of a paradigm shift. We have had our travel trailer for 1 1/2 years and have grown used to where we have things placed. We had to rethink and repack so all we needed for living in our camper for three months would find a home.

We were, surprisingly, quite successful! We are feeling pretty comfortable! We will be able to settle in a bit more when we get to our "permanent" spot in Venice, but things feel pretty good around here!




Well, Paul just came in from outside. Honestly, he was shat upon by a vulture. There are hundreds of them circling overhead.

There must be a dead wooly mammoth out there somewhere!  Talk to you soon.

Our two new best friends

We put many miles on our truck in the past three days hauling our world down to Florida. This is our second trip down here with our camper. This trip was easier for us for two reasons.

"Garda", our GPS. I am not advertising for this particular kind of navigator. We are probably the last two people in the United States to have one of these in our vehicle, but nevertheless, we certainly appreciated it on this trip. Granted, we didn't need her to tell us how to get from Wisconsin to Illinois, but she sure did help when we were traveling through Atlanta, for example. Knowing well in advance which lane we would need to get the truck and camper into before our next exit sure made our trip easier. And, it was fun to anger her by pulling off the route and make her "recalculate" her route. I am quite sure she was ready to swear at us a few times.

Speaking of exits, we also appreciated the help given us by this book we purchased at the Minneapolis Camping Show last winter. Again, I am not advertising for this particular book. There are others out there on the market which I am certain are just as helpful. Last year on our trip down to Florida, we wasted travel time because we would get off of the freeway to fill with gas only to find it was impossible for us to pull the truck and camper into a station at that particular exit. Well, no problems this year with this book as our guide. We also had to stay in hotels two nights because of the cold climate, so we used the book to find places with parking lots that were "rv friendly." Even if we weren't pulling a camper, this book would be a useful guide. It lists what restaurants, stores and scenic sites are at each freeway exit in the entire United States and Canada!


We were busy today getting settled. Tomorrow we will venture out a little bit more. Super Walmart was our only big adventure of the day. Our heads turned when we passed a vegetable stand today. And there are some state parks close by. 

Day Three: We are in Florida!

We were on the road from Perry, Georgia by 6:15 this morning, anxious to get to an RV park to make our "winterized" camper liveable. We stopped at a truck wash somewhere along the freeway in southern Georgia to remove the road salt and grime we had accumulated along the way. The camper and truck looked much happier after that job was accomplished!

We drove 344 miles today, from Perry to Ruskin, Florida, which is a little south of Tampa.

Today's miles were considerably fewer than what we drove on Tuesday and Wednesday. Our reservations for Oscar Scherer State Park begin on Monday, January 18.  We used our Woodall's Campground Guide to locate an RV park in Florida where we could stop for a few days.  Our plan was to get settled and "dewinterize" before our stay in the state park.

We settled on River Oaks RV Resort located on the Little Manatee River. We are holding our opinion on the park until we get settled.  We have a nice little site, right across the road from a canal.

As soon as we stopped at our spot and got out of the truck, we were met by the campground "welcoming" committee. One woman of rather advanced age and four elderly gentlemen, two of whom rode up on big tricycles, were immediately there to offer their guidance as we backed into the site. They even decided the first site assigned to us was not good enough and one of them marched to the office to demand we be allowed to switch to a site they deemed a better choice. Paul and I really could have announced we were going to take a little stroll around the campground and they would have been perfectly content to do everything for us. We really enjoyed the experience.  As we unpacked the truck and worked to set up, they popped open their cans of Budweiser, sat  down in their lawn chairs and watched and offered comments to us along the way. What a fun time!

Tonight, we are pretty exhausted. We pushed pretty hard in the past two days to get to warm weather. We are not disappointed. It was a beautiful 68ºF when we arrived.  We are mostly unpacked and the plumbing has been flushed of the antifreeze. The rest of the work will wait until tomorrow. We are feeling so relaxed. Not everyone could be comfortable in a small space like this, but we think it is just right!  Tomorrow we will finish getting settled and will start exploring this area we will call home for the next three days.

Day Two Florida Trip 2010

This morning, we left Mt. Vernon, Illinois at 5:45 a.m. and drove 585 miles.  I think Tennessee is a beautiful state.  From the car window, that is!

We are in Perry, Georgia tonight.  Temperature: 52ºF.  The snow bank on top of the camper finally melted as we were driving through Atlanta!  Tomorrow we will find an rv park in Florida and move into the camper. We are looking forward to getting settled!

We'll keep you posted!

Day One

Day 1 is completed. We left at 6:47 a.m. from Inver Grove Heights. Nick was there to wave good bye! Temperature at time of departure: 3º F.  We had no problems today as we found good, dry roads and a sunny day. Our new truck proves to be a very comfortable ride!

Tonight, we are in a hotel in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, about 650 miles from home. Temperature: 27ºF. There is very little snow left! We plan to start before 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. We want to get to warmer climates so we can start living in the camper!  Gas is too expensive.

And they think it's cold in Florida!

We spent the day packing our belongings into the camper and truck.

It is an odd experience placing one's warm weather clothes into a frozen shelter.  I have a hard time leaving all of my flannel and fleece behind!!! Especially when one is freezing while packing things!

We are all loaded and ready to go. Tomorrow morning before the sunrise, we will climb into the truck and our road trip will begin.

The first few hundred feet will be most interesting as we have quite a snowy hill to climb right at the bottom of our driveway.  Our goal for tomorrow? Illinois. Hopefully, we may even be out of the snow belt. We'll keep you posted!!

Is he anxious for us to leave?

Nick was here today and started up the snowblower.

And worked to clear a path around the camper.

Do you think he might be anxious for us to leave? Just kidding. He offered to help clear the last snowfall from the driveway.

Looking at it out there in our frozen yard, it's hard to believe we will be soon be living in our camper for 3 months.

Starting next week, this will be our home. The adventure begins!