This will be a short post about our first couple of weeks in New Jersey. We will have our RV here in Keyport NJ for the next 10 weeks in our friends, Rob and Cindy’s, driveway. On the 8th of August we are traveling down to our new house in North Port Florida to move Patty’s son Chas there.
We arrived in Keyport New Jersey about 2:30pm on the 23rd of July. This is our 7th time staying here during the summer. It is also the place we started out full time back in 2012. This will be the last time we will be here in our Sanibel too. And that is a little sad, but more on that later.
It has been very hot the past few days here and on our way to NJ. The temperature has been close to or at 100 with high humidity; in the 70-80 range. We keep track of the temperatures here and at our house in FL and the temperatures and humidity have been higher here in the north the past few days! Seems the biggest difference is the rain this time of year. It seems to rain almost every day in Florida during the summer.
While here in NJ our friends had their annual Luau party. It was great to be here for that! The annual Crab Fest event in Highlands NJ was also happening while we were there so we got to attend that too. Also, the annual Fireman's Carnival was happening in Keyport and we went one night to that. So the 2 weeks spent in NJ has been a lot about eating fair food as well as some good seafood. Way too much eating!
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| Crab Fest in Highlands NJ |
We had a little scare from our house in FL too. We got a call from the guy who cuts our grass to say that the sidewalk in front of our house had water running across it. This wasn’t just from the rain either, only the sidewalk in front of our house was wet! About this time I am kicking myself for not turning off the water before we left.
I asked our lawn guy Lance if he could look around and see if he could figure out anything. About 30 minutes later he called back to say that the water was not coming from inside the house, that was good news. Other than that he had no idea about where the water was coming from except that it was coming from our yard! He suggested I call the town water utility and see if they could find anything out.
I called the North Port Water Utility’s emergency number and right away got a very nice woman who said she would relay the message to a tech. Within the next 10 minutes the tech called and I gave him our address and what the issue was. He said he was just a few minutes from there and he would call me after he arrived. In another 10 minutes he called from our house. He reaffirmed that the water was not coming from the house but it was coming from the front yard. He said that water was running in the house though as the meter was running. He figures that we may have a toilet running in the house and it has filled the septic tank and is now running out the leach field in the front yard and now across the sidewalk. So I had him turn off the water to the house at the street and we will investigate when we are there in a few days.
When we were at the house before we went north I heard the master bath toilet running very slightly. I did try to fix it before we left 6 weeks ago and had thought it was not even leaking when we left. I am guessing that the toilet flush valve must have now later failed and was running full on. I can’t imagine the very tiny leak I heard would put that much water into the tank. So now we really want to get to the house to take a look ourselves!
We are moving Patty’s son Chas down to our house in Florida to live there for a while. He is going to establish his life there and somewhat start over. When we went full time we had him move out when we sold the house. He was 23 at the time and not very independent. Our moving him out on his own made him independent. He has been on his own for the past 6 years and needs (we think) to start again. We have no idea if we are doing the right thing but we convinced him to move into our house and stay to maintain it while we are away. And for him to save money and start off in a better direction with everything. He wasn’t asking to do this but we just felt that he was just not getting anywhere doing what he was doing so we decided to help. We hope this works!!
The last few days we spent loading up a small trailer we are going to tow down to Florida with Patty’s son Chas’s stuff on it. The plan was for him to follow us in his car. It must have been fate, the day before we are going to leave for Florida we learn that his auto insurance company dropped him. Not only did they drop him but only a couple would even offer a quote to insure him at all and then at $9k a year! So basically he is now uninsurable! We are nearly finished packing him up when this happens so now we have to make room for him in the truck and we need to get his car to FL.
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| Trailer empty |
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| Trailer full and ready to go |
We never thought we would be in this position of having a grown kid move back in and be without a car or job but that is what we have and we sort of asked for it. Are we crazy?! We hope not! The kid is a good kid and has a lot of potential and that is why we wanted to try and get him on the right track. However, for the next year and maybe longer we will not be in the house a lot. We still have a lot of places we want to travel to and things to do. Having someone in the house for us is better than leaving it vacant. We shall see!
So now, a little about selling the Sanibel and the truck. We plan to put them on the market in a few weeks. We want to sell the 5th wheel and the truck and then purchase a large SUV and tow a smaller travel trailer. We still want to land travel in the US and we want to do some travel outside the country not with an RV. Our plan is to travel a month or so and then back to the house for a few weeks and then out again. We still plan on doing the blog as we think we will have enough interesting travel as well as life transition stuff to write about. As with everything, it’s all subject to change.
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| Sunset in Keyport NJ |
Time to rest up for that drive to FL.
Stay tuned!
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