Leaving Florida Panhandle’s Gulf Coast (and a slight mishap)

As long as we've been on the road, we're still occasionally finding places that we think "I could stay much longer in this place." The Florida Panhandle is one of those places. I thought I'd show you a few of the houses here on the gulf coast, in case you aren't from around here. 

Here's a little info I found about a specific homebuilder who claims "Hurricane-Proof Homes" that might be interesting/informative.

And here are a couple shots from our drive today:

Okay we drove past this place a couple times and I didn't call because we had a great spot already, but the location where this sign was looked amazing, and I think someone needs to call them and go stay there, because HOW GREAT! Waterfront RV spot on the gulf with full hookups! The location was killer…between the peninsula, and the Indian Pass Raw Bar. 

We drove through Ocala, FL today, and holy moly there are a TON of horse farms (really nice ones) there. I did a little Googling and learned that Ocala is the Horse Capital of the World. I know!! It is, though…really!

So today, we had an "incident." It was one of those things that you think could happen at some point based on what you know, but you hope you remember the checklist items so that it doesn't happen. Today, we forgot that one checklist item: Pump=Off.

Note: Do not try to "remember" your checklist items. That's why you have a checklist. It's an object. Not a memory.

As you might remember, we replaced our factory kitchen faucet with a much better one. We learned that there was one downside to this faucet: the on/off handle is a little heavy, and if you're going down a bumpy road, it can occasionally vibrate itself down into the "on" position. Now, the freshwater tank holds 39 gallons, and the gray water tank holds 39 gallons, so if you emptied the whole contents of the fresh water tank into an empty gray water tank, then no problem. 39 = 39. Cool. However, if:

(1) you stay at a place with water and no sewer, such as St. Joseph Peninsula State Park, and
(2) already have the fresh water tank full, and
(3) have a half-full gray water tank that you decide not to dump between one place and the next, AND
(4) forget to turn off the water pump before traveling as it CLEARLY states on the checklist, and
(5) the faucet vibrates to "on" going down the road, and
(6) you drive a couple hours before you pull into a shopping center parking lot for lunch and notice water dripping from the bottom of the trailer ("It's runoff from that rainstorm we just drove through, right?") but then you go in and the entire floor is wet, the rugs are soaked, and it smells a little like last night's fish dinner. 

Oops. For those of you who are wondering, when your gray water tank overflows, it overflows first into the bottom of the shower. This is a nice feature, because the bottom of the shower can hold quite a bit of water (several gallons!) before it gets so full that it overflows then sploshes out the shower door and onto your Airstream floor. Tip: use a bucket or large bowl to bail water out of the shower and into the toilet, so that you can drive to the nearest dump station without sloshing more water out onto your floor. 

We used many towels, rugs, etc. to mop up the water, and when we got to our stop for the night, we happily learned there was a laundry room and managed to wash and dry all of our rugs/towels/that pile of clothes on my side of the bed that had gotten soaked during our mishap. Now, all is well. 

We're camped out for the night at Lake Marian RV "Paradise". It's nice, and kinda rustic and quaint, but are there really this many mosquitoes in "paradise"? 

We cooked the fresh gulf shrimp that we picked up the other day (scampi style, with a salad) and they were delicious.

Tomorrow: Miami.