Back to our RV in Florida and Our Wedding Anniversary

Tuesday December 18, 2012 

We flew back to Fort Lauderdale yesterday and arrived too late, 4 pm, to set up the rig.  We stayed the night at the same hotel where we stayed the night before we left for Buffalo a month ago.  It is amazing how fast the time flew by.  We were gone for exactly a month and we traveled by rental car 2700 miles between Buffalo NY, Crawfordsville IN, Keyport NJ, and back to Buffalo. 

Hotel pool by the Fort Lauderdale airport

Tuesday Morning we got a car service to take us to the resort we are staying at for the next 3 months in Davie Florida.  We were excited to see the rig and our plant, Rosie, again after being away for a month.  The rig was fine except for a low tire pressure on the front right side.  I started the generator to use the air compressor to fill the tire.  I also started the refrigerator so it would be cold by the time we got food to put in it.  

Rosie was not so good.  She was very dry and it looks like there wasn’t enough sun where we left her.  She had 8 flower buds when we left and now has 7.  So some bloomed while we were gone and one is now in bloom.  She is also missing many of her leaves.

We got the tire aired up and we were ready to put the rig into our spot in the resort.  The resort has a couple of hosts that helped guide us into the back-in site.  That was a good thing as the sites are very narrow.  The sites are grass with a good sized concrete patio.  The trick to parking the RV is to thread it between the patio and the utilities while getting as close to the patio as possible.  The hosts did a great job and we were in perfectly after about ½ hour of maneuvering the rig.

 Our home until mid-March

Rosie with one large bloom.

The hosts stayed around to make sure we had everything we needed.  We have one big issue and one small issue.  The big one is that there is no electricity on this site!  It is supposed to be 50 amp service.  It was a good thing the hosts stayed and that we had a 25 foot 50 amp extension cord.  There is a 50 amp outlet on the other side of the occupied site next to us.  The hosts got under our neighbors RV and they pulled the extension cords from our rig to the site with 50 amps.  The cord is running right over their patio!  The hosts said they are going to add a new 50 amp connection to our site so we can remove the long cord.  So far we have had several people ask us why we did this and they were astonished to learn that the site doesn't have electricity on it.

The little issue is that the sewer connection needs a 4 inch donut to connect.  I only have threaded connection stuff.  The only other time we needed a donut connection there was one already there.  The host also warned us of the south Florida weather and the need to tie down our awning.  Both the donut and the awning tie downs we knew we were going to get anyway eventually.  So it looks like we will be going to Wally world in the near future.

So we got everything hooked up and our Christmas tree plugged in and now we needed food and wine.  There is a Publix just a couple of miles up the road so off we went.  After almost 2 hours and $300 later we were back at the RV with food and wine.  By the time we finished putting away the food it was 6:30 pm.  We got some fresh fish while we were out so I started up the grille and we had the fish for dinner.

Our little tree.

After dinner we went to the pool and hot tub just to check them out.  We didn't have intentions to get wet so we just looked around.  The pool and hot tub looked fine and we only saw 3 people in our tour of the facilities.  There is a bar and a small restaurant that are not open yet.  We were told that they would be soon.  We really don’t care if those ever open as we have our own food and drink.

We got back to the RV around 9:30 and watched some TV called it a night.  We were so busy today we kept forgetting that it was our 13th wedding anniversary.  We remembered off and on all day but we didn't do anything special.  Special was that we set up our RV home for a long stay in South Florida!

Tomorrow, who knows what we will do.  We will probably go out for some Christmas lights and get the tie-downs and the sewer donut.  Also, we will start to mingle.  Seems most of the people here are French Canadian and are speaking French.

Stay tuned!