Our Road Trips: June 2015

Sunday, June 14, 2015

6/14/2015

June has arrived and we are still home, unlike the last 2 years. But we will be on the road soon. We finally got our Motor Home out of the shop the other day...43 days and a nice pile of money later. Turns out, there was an internal leak in the radiator so it was only cooling with about 1/2 its capacity. And the thing being 15 years old, no replacement was available, so a new one had to be built from scratch. So, we have a brand new radiator, and the dash air works again, the oil is changed and other fluids topped off, and we should be ready for the road, right? Wrong. When we got home, the a/c and everything else worked fine while on the generator. But as soon as I put it in the garage and plugged it in, none of the 12 volt systems worked. So we ended up having to replace the coach batteries and get the inverter checked out and I did some re-wiring while I was at it. All is working as designed, at this point. We had issues in NYC in 2013 and that led to one repair, now this.

We tried to get Jimmy Fallon tickets and that didn't work...the whole month of July was taken in the 1st 10 minutes. We are trying to get Jon Stewart tickets (not available yet) and we did get tickets to see U2 at Madison Square Garden. The Foo Fighters at CITI Field in NYC & Blackberry Smoke is playing 30 miles from our camp ground in NJ, so we are doing that. We also arranged to spend 11 nights at a State Park on the ocean north of Flagler Beach an hour north of here next May...we are getting things organized.

6/12, the Rolling Stones came to town. We had bought tickets months ago for us and our son, Mark. Then our daughter won 2 tickets which she gave to our grandson, so we had 3 generations at a Rolling Stones concert 50 years after I heard them for the 1st time when I was 14 y/o. very cool!! They played for a little under 2 hours and played a lot of old & new favorites...very fun evening. They really do have a lot of energy for being in their 70s...pretty amazing. Mick Jagger never stops.

We are leaving here on Thursday, 6/18 for a little over 2 1/2 months and we have a lot planned. So stay tuned, I will doing some reporting on our adventures as we go...looks like a fun time.

Steve & Barbara Larson

Nothing beats a fun time with your best friend

Enjoying the day with our son

The Temperance Movement

The crowd filing in

Mick mesmerizing the crowd

That famous logo

The Stones are in the House

The UCF choir have a moment they will never forget

GREAT show!!

Saturday, June 13, 2015

6/13/2015

May was a completely different story from April. We did stuff around the house, Barb went to lunch with her friends from the Credit Union and we planned the rest of our summer, We are going to have a blast in a far different way than last year...lots of music & catch up all the stuff we missed in 2013.

On the 9th, we drove to St Augustine to see our friends Tom & Lynne Marine. It was lunch time when we arrived so they took us to a cool little restaurant...love those out of the way places. Then it was time to get ready for a ZZ Top & Jeff beck concert at the St Augustine Amphitheater. We haven't heard ZZ Top for several years and never for Jeff Beck, so it was a fun evening. Both are still very fine musicians, Dusty mentioned at the same time as BB King. We drove back home on Sunday after breakfast, following A1A all the way to Daytona, hadn't done that in a lot of years.

Monday was time to book for 2016 Keys time, got our same site for another 2 week stint. Tuesday was a pre-sale for Zac Brown Band in Sept. in Tampa. Saturday was a drive to Melbourne and Classic Albums Live doing Pink Floyd again...this time they did The Wall, took a break and came back and, unannounced, played the whole 'Echoes' album...incredible!! Very cool!!

On Monday, it was booking day for the 2016 Keeping the Blues Alive cruise with Joe Bonamassa and others. On Sat., it was The Plaza Live and Steve Earle and his band, another very fun evening.

We also attended 2 Community Meetings regarding development out this way...we sort of like it the way it is. They are talking about plopping 5000 houses out here...BOOOO!! It has been a slow month, but we got a lot of other things done in preparation for another road trip.

Here comes June already!

Steve & Barbara Larson

Jeff Beck

ZZ Top[

Jeff Beck & ZZ Top

The Wall kids choir..essential part of the song

The Man...Rob Phillips

Echoes...amazing!!

Part of the Steve Earle Band

Steve Earl

Friday, June 12, 2015

6/12/2015

April is my favorite month in Florida...it hasn't gotten real hot yet, the snowbirds are gone so we can actually get into campgrounds & restaurants, and the southerly breezes blow day & night. We love the Florida Keys for all those reasons, plus it is a great place to see stuff and just relax...being on 'Keys Time' is way more than a myth, it is a way of life in South Florida.

We started the month off in Jacksonville attending a movie shooting at the Historic Florida Theater and 2 consecutive nights of Lynyrd Skynyrd performing the 2 first albums released back in the 70s, before the plane crash that wiped out a good portion of the band and caused the band to go into hiatus for 10 years. The place was packed both nights and everyone had a great time listening to music released 40 years ago. During the day between performances, Barb and I sat on Jacksonville Beach and watched the world go by...nice way to spend an April day. After the 2nd show, it was back home and get ready for the Keys drive.

April 4th we drove to Long Key State Park and settled in on Site 30 for 2 weeks. We had this reservation since May 4, 2014, made at 5 in the morning in Billings Montana...early bird gets the best sites. 11 months is a long time to wait for a camp site, but you have to do that to get a site in the State Parks in the Keys...they stay full. We are less than 15 feet from the water at high tide and the park is a very nice park, so it is understandable. We spent the next 2 weeks visiting every State Park in the Keys (7) and also taking a ferry to Ft Jefferson at The Dry Tortugas National Park, 70 miles west of Key West. We really enjoyed getting to visit places we had never been...beautiful spots. While in Key West for the Dry Tortugas trip, we spent a night in a hotel in Key West and did some of the things Key West has to offer, including a 'Taste of Key West' event on the Truman Annex, lots of tents set up to get a sample of local fair. It was a fun 3 hours. Then we met some friends at Capt. Tony's for a few of what Key West is most famous for...It was a very enjoyable 2 weeks of partying, being a tourist and relaxing. I never went fishing once, but we ate fish about 6 times...fresh fish. I celebrated my birthday too...fun two weeks. Last year, we spent these days in the middle of Iowa, quite a difference! But Iowa was part of a much bigger picture, so it was OK.

After 2 weeks in the Keys, we drove west across the Everglades to the Ft Myers area and 5 nights at an Army Corps campground on the Caloosahatchee River...beautiful spot. It was our first try at this site and it did not disappoint. We spent a day visiting Muscle Car City, a museum in an old Wal-mart in Punta Gorda full of 1960s era muscle cars...what a great use of a Wal-mart. We also visited several of the State Parks in the area and spent the better part of a day touring the Henry Ford/Thomas Edison winter estates in Ft Myers. We had never really spent too much time in Ft Myers, so it was some fun days. We even drove out to Captiva Island and watched the craziness of too many people trying to squeeze into a restaurant called the Mucky Duck. We drove back to the mainland and had a nice leisurely dinner on Ft Myers Beach...much more sane. We also celebrated our 46th Anniversary while there too. We had a great 5 days in a sort of 'new' part of Florida. It is a very pretty area.

Then we drove home doing our 'avoid Interstates' tour...an hour longer but way prettier and less stressful...this retired life is agreeing with us both. We dropped off the motor home after emptying it and doing some laundry and drove our car to Sandy Shoes, a cool little hotel on the ocean in Melbourne Beach, where we spent the next 3 nights unwinding, with our friends, The Harrells.

Then it was back home. We took the MH to a Cummins dealer to get our overheating issue from Utah & Colorado figured out, along with some preventive maintenance.. We have to be ready for the summer trip...lots coming up. Then it was more Dr & Dentist visits...part of life, we reckon. May is next, time to get ready for the summer trip...stand by, lots more to come.

Steve & Barbara Larson