First Night

The plan has always been to stay in our coach for the first night on Saturday June 1st. Following sage advice, we made reservations not far down the road at Creekside RV Resort in Punta Gorda. (Stay local and learn what you don’t know, then hit the road) By 3:00 in the afternoon and we weren’t finished loading yet, and we were fading fast, we decided to just go with what we had onboard and come back next week to finish taking our things out of our borrowed house. That little voice in my head kept telling me, if you are so tired you can’t think straight, how are you going to follow your checklist and connect everything properly like Chuck taught you? So we headed down I-75.

We called ahead to let Ann and John know we were in route. We were greeted at the gate and led right to our site. Absolutely beautiful!! For the photos, head over to the Post Cards From The Road page. We spoiled ourselves when we booked this first two weeks of our trip, by booking a site with a lake view. I mean right on the lake!

I dutifully followed my well prepared check list with Kathryn double checking my moves. We were ready for the night, or so we thought. We have water, are connected to the sewer, the microwave had power, the fridge was working, but the surge protector showed no power and the AC would not run. Hello Ann? Remember me, the new guy staying for the first time in the motor home? Turns out, our site has two “posts,” (where you connect to power and water) and the breaker for both is on only one, NOT the one I am connected to. With a flip of the switch, all fixed. Well, all connected that is.

Get used to the phrase, “Honey do you know where the button for this is? Or what does this button work?” There must be fifty buttons and switches and redundant systems in a motor home. We have four TV’s and I could only get one to work, and that one would only get six stations, two of them in Spanish. But we were HOME at last. Our new long awaited home! After a trip to the hot tub and pool I was looking forward to the first night on the King Sleep Number Bed. What number do I like? How do I know?

UPDATE ONE: We’ve been back to Venice several times to take the rest of our things to either to the donation center, our storage unit, or with us in the coach. I am now a graduate of the Driver’s School at Lazy Days in Tampa, and we have a much better understand of the systems in our home and how to use them. And we spent a whole day relaxing and doing nothing!