House for Sale!

Our house if finally up for sale. Here's the listing. 2 calls the first day.
Haven't been writing much because really not much going on.
Enjoying time with my parents. We've played dominoes a couple of nights.
Lots of walks around the lake with our setters.
Planning our next stop further south in Florida.
Our life right now  is relaxed & pretty much stress free, and I like it that way.

Proof that NJ stinks!!!!!

The more we are away from NJ, the more we hate NJ!
Just spent 2 weeks at a wonderful campground, Willow Tree RV Resort with paved roads, clean campsites, everything working, a lovely lake, etc., all for between $30.-$35. per night. As said before, our NJ site was $52. per night with dirt roads.
Just before arriving at Willow Tree, the GPS said turn left, so we did...right onto a dirt road with a gate a couple hundred feet ahead.  This can't be Willow Tree, so we had to back out, passed a private home with an old Akita loose in the front yard. I'm sure we gave that old guy a little entertainment.
So we (Scott) had to back the RV and turn onto the road.  I'm in the rear making sure no cars came, which not a one the whole time. Scott made such a sharp turn that the wheels started skidding and twisted. I yelled to stop. Scott eventually got us on the road and another 500 feet and there is Willow Tree RV Resort.

We had a wonderful time with the Cedar Creek Owners Club. Lots of pot luck dinners, a beautiful campfire going every evening.
Willow Tree was a great RV resort with a paved path around the lake.
During some of our down time, Scott decided to look UNDER the RV and lo and behold...our frame was bent! What a great excuse to gather all the men around and discuss what can be done.
We ended up with Randy's huge diesel pusher pulling our rig one way, then the other and it seemed to work.  

When we left Willow Tree, our frame was straight and aligned.
We drove about an hour to check how things were and damn! The frame went back to almost it's original bent position. Can we make it to our planned overnight near Savannah, GA? We drove slower than usual and I looked at the tires a lot but we made it to Camping World near Savannah.
  CW said they couldn't do the work on our suspension hanger, but they referred us to a local guy that does all their welding and frame work.
SO FAR SO GOOD! This guy came to CW within 5 min. of being called. His shop is 2 miles down the road. George C. mentioned that the best place to bring our rig was to a person that works on trucks/suspensions etc., not to an RV place. We this guy is exactly that! We really lucked out.
We spent the night in CW lot and brought our rig to Dwain at WALKER WELDING & TRAILER REPAIR in Pooler, GA  at 8am. It was done by 3pm! Only costs $550!!! We thought it was going to run around $1500. (NJ prices). So another reason we hate NJ.
He reinforced the hangers with welded brackets and he put a whole piece of angle iron? across the whole width of the rig. He even tested out a sharp 90 degree turn to see how it held. He said we can push it to the limit now. I hope we don't have to. Now for some new tires and we're ready for Alaska.
Scott will post photos eventually.
While we were "homeless" waiting for the RV repair, we spent our time at a beautiful park in Savannah, GA.
We stopped for coffee at THE SENTIENT BEAN. Coffee was great, but their pastries were better!  I had a fruit scone that was fabulous! We walked with the dogs around the park for a while, and then nature called me. So back to the the coffee shop to use the facilities & while there to buy another scone or two for later. THEY RAN OUT! Oh the horror! So we settled for a couple of snickerdoodles that were pretty good, but HUGE. I love cookies with coffee or tea. I couldn't eat the whole snickerdoodle in one sitting.
Below is the park we hung out in while "homeless". Lots of walkers, joggers, dogs. Great place to people watch.  Notice the maroon dog crate on our bench? Our African Grey Parrot, Swayze is in there.  We couldn't leave her in the hot car.

Cedar Creek Rally

What a fabulous group of people are the CCRVOC (Cedar Creek RV Owners Club).  This is our 2nd rally, the first being in PA this past June and our maiden voyage in our 5th wheel.
Now that we feel more a part of the group, we were much more relaxed.
We enjoyed their company and hopefully they enjoyed ours.
AG was kind enough to dog sit for me while I snooped around his RV.

Someone else crawled under our RV to see if it REALLY was bent.

We ate & drank together.

You should never MIX drinks!

And a final a melancholy goodbye.

Daylight Savings...

When told the reason for Daylight Saving time the old Indian said, "Only a white man would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom of a blanket and have a longer blanket."  ~Author Unknown

LONGS, SC 29568 (Near Myrtle Beach)

Location: WILLOW TREE RV RESORT, Longs, SC 29568 (Day 3)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Get thee behind me satan aka NJ!!!!

I swear, NJ is following us...at least the weather! We arrived at beautiful WILLOW TREE RV RESORT on Wednesday, Nov. 2. And yes, THIS IS A RESORT! How Pine Cone RV "Resort" in NJ can call itself a resort is a sin. Pine Cone has a great swimming pool, & a couple of weathered tennis courts. That's as much of resort as there is there.  The roads are sandy dirt, you have to take your trash to the dumpster. Many of the sites don't have sewer. (The have a "honey pot" truck (as Scott calls it) that comes to your site to dump your tank.  Their electric absolutely sucks. They won't spend the $ to fix/upgrade.  30amp is fine for us, but we need it to WORK! Pine Cone should be called a campground, not an RV resort.  This is a very nice place to camp with a pop up or tent.  Fairly private sites with lots of trees around.

Nov. 2-Nov 16, 2011
WILLOW TREE RV RESORT  Longs, SC 29568
$28./day (group rate) Site #99
Our Rating 4.5 out of 5 Would revisit.
Cedar Creek RV Owners Club are having a Rally here. We met quite a few people at the 2011 Nat'l Rally earlier this year. Great group of people

Willow Tree is a joy (at least for an RV'r). All paved (clean) roads. No tracking sand continually into the RV. Beautiful lake with a 1 mile paved walk/bike/dog walk path around it. You can rent boats to use on the lake.  Large laundry room. Gym, banquet hall, huge store. Golf carts & bike to rent also.
Our evolution of camping:

Funny, how our tastes in "campgrounds" have changed.  

We started out motorcycle camping, with each of our bikes packed and bungeed high.  For our honeymoon, we slept in a 2 person tent, with a 1" foam roll up pad for comfort (not much comfort). We cooked on a single propane stove. We did not require electric. We rode in rain (Nor'easter in Oct), fog (on the Blue Ridge Pkwy) and sun.
We then graduated to a motorcycle pop-up camper. We did not use it much, but when we did, it was enjoyable. Our 800 Suzuki Intruder could pull it. When we would set up camp, this pop up would not only pop up, but also, fold out and out and out.  It opened high enough to stand up in and when open, the length was 14' long! We had a queen sized (off the floor) air mattress and were able to fit a table, chair and 2 dog crates in there! Ahhh, the dog crates...that was our motorcycle demise.
Once we started bringing the dogs camping with us, we decided to purchase a large tent. Many years camping  in a large tent.  Now that we were camping with a tent and a van, we packed it to the brim. We now required electric for our electric cooker and crock pot. We camped many years at Nickerson Family Campground in CT. They had a nice huge site near the creek that we had all to ourselves. Unfortunately, there was no grass, so it was very dirty. I tired of all the dirt and our tent camping subsided.
Retirement and 5th Wheel is not camping. This is our home and totally different attitude.  I was a clean, grassy or paved site. We still like trees but need to get satellite line of sky, and no branches in the way of roof or slide outs.  We may stay in the RV all day. So what? This is our home. We are not on vacation, we are not trying to cram the tourist attractions in.  We are finally relaxing and really enjoying life, free of a full time job (that was like a 32 yr prison sentence).

Weather:
What a pleasure arriving here near Myrtle Beach, with temps in the high 60's. Cooled to high 40's the first night, then...NJ FOUND US! Damn! Double Damn! The clouds smirked at us overhead, the temp dropped to 50, then 40 and hit a low during the night of 38! It was raining all day yesterday and chilly. Today, has been a NJ bitter cold wind. I have no desire to set foot outside. But the pups gotta "go", so I layer myself up and put on my knitted by me "howl" (a cowl & hat combo), and try to not let our setters know how much I'm hating walking them in this weather.  They still need their play time and sniffing all the visitors' spots around.
PETS: Who knew? Part of our travels is learning about the wildlife, plant life, and pests that are foreign to us being from NJ.
Poor Lyla, laying comfortably on the grass, moves her leg near a dirt pile and FIRE ANTS! We had no idea. We thought they were just ants (like in NJ), so we just casually brushed some off of her. Well if you read the link about fire ants, they swarm and sting. Unfortunately Lyla paid the price for our ignorance.

**Update: It took about THREE WEEKS for this to clear up.  She was licking and pulling out her hair there. We had to keep a close watch on it to keep from becoming raw and/or infected. She's all better now.