Got to Jacksonville the next day and Darrin Dyal, the owner of the BMC, met us at the airport. We looked the coach over, took it for a ride and filled it up with diesel @ $3.95 per gallon. That's the highest price we paid for diesel the whole trip. Went to eat with Darrin and his Melanie at Bono's BBQ. We were starving since we had not eaten anything since early that morning. Got the money wired to Darrin's bank and got all the paperwork done later that evening. We spent our first night in the bird at Darrin's beautiful place. Darrin is the pastor at Jax Assembly and they have 26 magnificent acres with their church, school, several houses, and RV hookups. Really a nice place. We really enjoyed their company and doing business with them.
We pulled out the next morning after Darrin had run us to the local Walmart to get some supplies that we couldn't carry with us on the plane. We tried to think of everything we needed, but invariably as we put the miles behind us we figured out various things that we'd forgot. Anyway, we finally got on the road about 11am headed to Venice to see Patsi's good friend, Pat, whom she hadn't seen in over 10 years. We'd called to let Pat know that we were in a large motorhome and she assured us she had room for it. I had purchased a Rand McNally GPS app for my iPad prior to leaving so I put it to the test on our first leg of the road trip. It was guiding us perfectly. We saw all these road signs advertising the Orange Shop so we decided to stop and get some oranges. The coach had been running great.
I tapped the brake to turn off the cruise and pushed on the accelerator to keep my speed up until we needed to turn, but there was not pedal to the accelerator. It was all the way down on the floor and wasn't controlling anything. Kind of made my heart flutter...to say the least. Pulled over on the side of the road and was secretly saying all kinds of bad words. Got on the phone to Darrin and he'd never had this happen to him. He did mention that it was a cable system. So, I reached down to feel since I couldn't see and sure enough the cable had come loose. I felt around and found a pin that had fell out. Put it back in and was good to go...Whew, these things will make your heart rate increase exponentially!!
We pulled into this place......
and tasted some the sweetest oranges I had tasted in many, many seasons. 'Course I've not been to Florida or California during orange season either. We loaded up on oranges and grapefruit. They are definitely great eating.
Drove on down to Venice with no mishaps. That is until we got right to the place we were supposed to turn but there wasn't a street where the GPS said it was supposed to be, plus the GPS decided to totally change modes and screens!!! Great, here we are, really close and don't have a clue as to where we're really supposed to be. Patsi got on the phone and Pat guided us to her house. But, the drive we were supposed to pull into was not really long and wide. In fact it was rather short and pretty narrow. I was really wondering if I could even get it into the spot. But we did, just not real straight and not very level. Not level enough to level up. We were kind of twisted level, you know where one corner is much higher than the opposite corner, so the jacks wouldn't level us. Had an issue with the water hookup, it kind of leaked like a sieve. It was getting dark so I didn't want to fool with it at the time. We went to eat Italian food instead.
Patsi did get a good visit in with Pat. I fixed the water the next morning before we left. I was kind of worried that it would be hard to get out of this spot but we backed out with no problem whatsoever. In fact it was easier to get out than it was to get in. We left for Quincy, Fl., Beaver Lake RV campground to be exact.
More to come - 7 days left.
Until next time........
Overthehump
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