Camping at Disney's Fort Wilderness

We decided to splurge a bit and make our first Orlando campground the Disney one...Fort Wilderness.  We talked about this campground a bit last winter but weren't able to get a reservation.  This time we booked in the shoulder season and found a site Sunday-Friday - we still couldn't find a site here for the weekend!

Our campsite at Fort Wilderness

Fort Wilderness was everything we hoped.  The campground had more of a feel of a state or county park than a private RV park.  There were lots of activities on site, including pools, outdoor movies, gem hunting, archery, horseback riding, bike and boat rental, and more.  Most of those you had to pay extra for of course...  The whole campground was bike friendly and we enjoyed taking our new-to-us bikes all around.

We're well into Halloween season of course, and our favorite nightly activity was to pick a new couple loops in the campground and walk or cycle around to view the outrageous Halloween decorations from our fellow campers.

These skeleton pirates were Aaron's favorite

Zombie Flamingos!  (Look closely at the eyes of the black
ones)

 Our decorations weren't nearly so impressive, but at least we had some!

Daytime view - Aaron decided all of his Baby Yoda 
decorations needed to join the pumpkin lights

Nighttime view

We visited each of the parks while we were at Fort Wilderness.  Sadly, only Magic Kingdom had special transportation - a boat that left from the back of the campground.  This was definitely the nicest way we've ever gotten to Magic Kingdom (normally you have to park and then take a crowded monorail or ferry).

Our transportation approaches

Going to amusement parks right now is a very different experiences, and I'd say in all ways except the sweaty masks a much better one.  Lines were shorter - rides that normally had 2-4 hour waits we could get on in less than an hour - and people stood farther apart in the ride lines, so I no longer had strangers leaning on my backpack while waiting for a ride...(yes that really happened multiple times last year).  They've also upgraded the security scanners so there's no longer a bag check line!  They've removed the fingerprint scanners and added hand sanitizer and handwash stations throughout the parks, so you can keep your hands cleaner.

Masks at Epcot

Social distancing at the manatee exhibit at Epcot

Social distancing in line for 
Smugglers' Run at Hollywood Studios

Masks at Magic Kingdom

All I have from Animal Kingdom are animal pictures...this
is from Kilimanjaro Safaris, which we basically walked
straight on due to the low park attendance (normally this is a
LOOONG wait)

Back at Fort Wilderness, our last morning we went on a trail ride around the remote areas of the campground.

Outside Tri Circle D Ranch at the front of the campground

Here I am atop Riley

The last pictures I'd like to share are of some random carriage sightings at the park - the carriage and hay rides weren't running due to COVID-19, but it seems that Disney is keeping the horses exercised and practicing.

We thoroughly enjoyed our stay and I hope we can make this an annual-ish tradition - just a few days a year.  We didn't get to enjoy many of the perks of staying on Disney property (mostly in terms of early access to dining and FastPass+ reservations) - hopefully next time we'll be able to!

On the Road Again!!

 The day finally came - October 16 - and we pulled out of the farm and headed back on the road!!

Pulling out of the farm

When Aaron pulled the RV down the driveway at the farm, it really struck me how much different it really looks after all the work we did on the exterior.  I almost feel like we have a brand new RV!

Quick refresher...this is what the 
front *used* to look like

Last year when we headed south we took our time, stayed places several days, and ended up in sub-freezing temperatures at several campsites before finally making it to Florida...this year we made a beeline to Florida.  We escaped West Virginia right before things started freezing overnight again, and those last few rushed days of work on the exterior were COLD.

We did decide to start out in the familiar Orlando area for now.  We're still wary of how things will go with the coronavirus, and Florida offers several advantages on this front...(1) we know the area and know how to find places to camp even if everything is crowded from everyone suddenly deciding to vacation in an RV; (2) annual passes to Disney and 'free' (already paid for in annual subscription) camping at Thousand Trails mean we can keep our expenditures low while we wait and see what happens to our savings in the stock market; (3) if things really head south and everything closes again, we can make it back to the farm in a hard day's drive.  If things are looking ok (i.e., not closed, life savings not tanked) by Christmas, we may head out along the Gulf Coast later in the winter, but for now we're playing it safe.

Our 'quick' trip south this time involved four 3 hour days.  We stayed at a Cracker Barrel on I-77 the first night, then New Green Acres in Walterboro, SC the second night, and finally our favorite Cary State Forest just outside of Jacksonville.

Not much to say about the Cracker Barrel, but I did snap a picture.  There are a lot of Cracker Barrels that accept RVs overnight with dedicated spaces to the rear of the restaurant, always convenient to an interstate, so it's a great overnight option.

Parking at the Cracker Barrel - there was a bit of a crowd!

New Green Acres was a lovely little RV park, I'd definitely go back there.  It was convenient to I-95, the pull-through sites were pretty spacious (for a private RV park), and everything seemed pretty clean.  Our neighbors for the night were a couple moving from Narrows, Virginia - a tiny town on the road from my childhood home to the family farm!  Small world.  AND they complimented us on how nice our RV looked without us telling them anything about the days and days we'd put into fixing the paint and clear coat, which was so rewarding!

Our campsite at New Green Acres RV Park

I've blogged about Cary State Forest before so I won't go on and on about it again - suffice it to say it is one of my favorites.  One thing made us scratch our heads a bit though...in my previous post I mentioned how very far the campsites are from each other, just 7 in the whole forest...but even so, they were practicing social distancing here and had every other site closed!  

The sign on the site 'next' to us -
not that anything was very close!

While we were parked there on a nice non-muddy concrete pad we washed and waxed the basement doors - something we ran out of time for before getting on the road.

Our campsite at Cary State Forest

Next stop: Orlando!

Repairs Complete-ish...

 Well, for better or worse our repairs are 'complete.'   Meaning...we ran out of time.  When we came back from our brief camping excursion in West Virginia, we decided despite what may or may not be closed due to COVID-19, we needed to get back on the road, and we started making reservations for a departure on October 16.

In keeping with our previous post, the neverending painting continued neverending.  And, realistically, in the end there are still a few more spots we would repaint if we had the time...but you have to draw the line somewhere!

So, after the previous post, we continued repainting various panels on the RV.  After reapplying clear coat, we had to wait for it to cure, sand it down, and polish it.

We even dragged my mom to Princeton for a
weekend to help sand!

Polishing with the polisher from 
Walmart - we do NOT recommend 
this method

MUCH better polishing with the 
attachment for the angle grinder - use
with care!!

Our initial polishing sessions were quite a disappointment.  We bought a $30 polisher from Walmart that did basically nothing.  It gave a rough matte finish, but nothing like the gloss we expected with videos we'd viewed online.  We finally went to Harbor Freight and bought an attachment for my dad's angle grinder and that made ALL the difference.  We paired this relatively cheap investment with some 7" wool pads and Meguiar's Ultimate Compound and voila! - GLOSS!  Still nothing like what the professionals have, but perfectly good for us amateurs.

Half new polish with angle grinder and half old
polish with Walmart polisher - see the difference!

A note of caution if you decide to follow the same route - the angle grinder is STRONG.  If you get it stuck, it WILL burn through the clear coat.  We had to re-clear coat a couple of areas as we learned how to use it.

Our second biggest discovery that is quite relevant to share....2K clear coat.  The '2K' stands for 2 component (K = c??).  Aaron likes to talk about this as basically spraying epoxy over the paint.  The 2K clear coat comes in two cans - a paint and a hardener.  You mix the two and then have an hour to hour and a half to spray the clear coat on whatever surface you desire.  This stuff is AMAZING.  Instead of spray cans, Aaron used a paint sprayer for his air compressor from Harbor Freight, and the difference in the thickness, evenness of application, and overall gloss of the resulting clear coat upon initial application was AMAZING.  Seriously.  We regret that we wasted so much time with the spray can stuff from Rustoleum that we bought at Walmart.  Now, of course, this 2K stuff is more expensive, but it works SO much better we feel it is 100% worth the cost.  Most importantly, we were still repainting/reapplying clear coat during our final week of repairs, and this stuff cures in 4-8 hours instead of 7 days!

Applying the clear coat with the air gun

We ended up buying this from what we could determine was the only 2K clear coat retailer in the New River Valley - James T Davis, which seems to have a small unmentioned branch in Christiansburg in addition to a main hub in Lynchburg based on the website and receipt.  He carries ShopLine brand 2K clear coat, which worked great for us.  In the future, if we have more time for delivery, we might try some other brands on Amazon and whatnot, but this local option was great for our immediate needs, and the person working at the shop was able to give us great information on the type of hardener to get and all (it depends on your working temperature).  We did manage to get clear coat on everything before we left the farm, but we didn't get to the waxing, which we'll have to do in Florida!

While this was going on, Aaron had a huge side project he worked on with my dad - upgrading the electric at the farm to fix the voltage problems we had at the new RV parking spot.  First, they ran a new neutral line out to the parking spot, because the old exposed line was leaking electricity to the ground.  Next, they prepared for a new 200A electrical connection at the farm.  AEP had advised us to do this a few weeks ago to help with our voltage problems at the RV parking spot AND to just modernize the electrical supply for the house (and remove a bunch of fire hazards!).  This was a long involved process that I didn't participate in much at all, but it involved relocating the meter so the incoming wire no longer draped over the garage and rerouting the power flow to the garage underground.  Here are some photos!

The subsoiler Dad used to dig a trench
for the new neutral line along with his
fabricated PVC tube to lay the line.

Dad and Aaron preparing to lay the 
new neutral line.

Adding the equipment for the new
meter location.

YET ANOTHER new trench my dad
dug to bury the line from the new meter
to the chicken coop.

After all these upgrades and the new line run from AEP, the 50 amp power supply for the RV is in great shape, and we've removed a bunch of electrical fire hazards from undersized and iffily-joined wires supplying electricity to the house and garage on the farm.  Win-win!

And one last thing...right before we headed out, Aaron cut up one of the old desks he made for our house in Christiansburg AGES ago and made me a new dining table for the RV.  This new rectangular table should be much more functional than the circular one that came with the RV.  Assuming we like it, we'll work on getting a cherry-colored one in the future!

Yay for rectangles!

This should be my last repair post - next up, our new adventures on the road in the times of coronavirus...stay tuned!