Full Time RV Park Living: Trailboss

I titled this post to reflect that although we've been living in the RV for over 3 years now, we have never really lived in an RV park month to month as so many people do (at least snowbirds that we see down here!).  Month to month RVers pay their own electricity and might actually get involved with their local community and such, and this is our first time venturing into that realm.  For those who maybe haven't read my recent posts, we made an offer on some land in central Florida, and we have stopped our nomad life to settle down close to this property to start work on building a house.

There are a few RV spots across the street from where we plan to build a house, but those spots were not available in late February when we needed to start this more permanent lifestyle.  So we rented a spot for a month at Trailboss RV & Marina in nearby Welaka.  This was an interesting stay for us - the park itself is not much to look at, with mostly permanent guests.  It's under new management and they're working on improvements.  However, the lady who manages the park is absolutely delightful, and because of her I would gladly recommend this park to anyone looking for a monthly stay in the region.  When we first arrived we had some power problems at our pole, and she and her husband spent all evening working with Aaron to get them sorted out.  She greeted us cheerfully every time we passed and even chatted with us when we saw her at work at Lowe's.

Our spot at Trailboss - front view - note the retaining wall; 
the manager called this her "bus" spot because it was too
difficult for trailers to pull into.

Rear view of the spot.  We're pretty close to those neighbors!

Aside from the awesome property manager, the definite highlight of this park was its location on the St. John's River.  The marina is currently closed, but we could walk down to the water and the sunsets there were gorgeous.

The non-functioning marina.  It suffered some damage during the 
hurricanes in the fall.

Sunset over the river!  We wandered down to the river several 
evenings during our stay to watch the sunset.

We went on two cruises while the RV was parked at Trailboss.  Both were with other people, which was fun, and the timing of each was determined by those other people's schedules, which is why they were only two weeks apart!  Our first cruise was with our friends Mary and Mark from St. Louis, aboard the Carnival Sunrise.  We went to Nassau and Grand Turk - our first time in Grand Turk, which was very fun!  The second was with my sister and her whole family, which mean we had kids in our stateroom for the first time ever!  This was aboard the Carnival Elation and included our first ever trip to Freeport, Bahamas.

Formal night in the main dining room

Near the Mercury space program monument in Grand Turk - 
John Glenn's capsule splashed down in Grand Turk's waters in 1962 

In Freeport at Pinders Point Lighthouse,
about 1 mile walk from the cruise port - pictured
with my sister and her oldest son (the only
one who could make the walk)

In Nassau we took a semi-submersible tour of the coral reef - 
here we are with my sister's whole family

So...the whole point of stopping the nomad lifestyle was to start working on a house, right?  Right...  Shortly after we arrived at Trailboss, the title company contacted us to let us know that there was an error with the legal description of the property on the deed, which prevented them from writing title insurance for the property.  We already had a survey scheduled (after the original closing date), so we waited for that survey and provided the official updated boundaries to the title company.  Their next step was to contact all the people who had previously held a deed on the property (the error on the legal description dates back 50 years to when the property was first carved out of a larger parcel) so that they could sign off on the revised description and confirm that the error did not give them legal right to the property.  However, in the middle of this whole process the first owner of the property passed away, so now we are waiting for probate on her estate to determine her legal heir who can sign off on the deed.  So no progress on this front!  We have decided we like the property well enough that it is worth waiting for, so we're proceeding with our house plans and scouting out boundaries and whatnot to create a site plan.

The potential house location outline

The front of the property, with our planned driveway flagged

Baby sandhill cranes across the street!!

Our first foray into long-term RV park living turned out quite well.  We enjoyed interacting more with our neighbors, and I was a lot less nervous about going on cruises knowing we weren't days away from moving the RV once we got back.  The lovely park manager even picked our packages up for us while we were away!  So I think this stage of our lives will be fun as well!

Family time and Cruising

As I mentioned earlier, we have left the Orlando area!  Our first stop on our trek north was a two week stint at Sunshine Holiday Daytona, a Thousand Trails resort where we stayed in the fall to be close to my sister while we helped with the kids.  As with the last time we were here, we parked in the rear of the park with all the full-time residents.  I have mixed feelings on this resort, as the parking situation is not great - again it was difficult to navigate around the permanent residents' lawns that held vehicles, lawn decorations, and outright anti-RV posts to the edge of the lots.  However, the staff here are quite friendly and accommodating, they have the cheapest laundry I've seen since we started RVing, and *most* of the residents are very friendly.  I say *most*...for the first time basically ever since we started all this, we encountered a hostile neighbor.  We're thinking he was grumpy because he was going through a divorce - when we arrived, there were two kayaks and two bikes at the site, but by the time we left there was only one of each, and in the couple days we were there before we moved we only saw one man.  We promptly asked the office to be moved and they were able to accommodate us a day later, relocating us between two friendly new neighbors.  Somehow in all of this we didn't manage to take a picture of either site, so instead of our typical campsite photo here I'll show you a picture of poor Beamer, who we still had for the first day we were there, wondering why his house shrunk and why it was moving!!

Stressed out pup!

We chose this campground due to its proximity to my sister, and we went over to her place both weekends.  We enjoyed playing games, eating good food, and trading cruise stories.

Playing Carcassonne

Playing the card version of Pictionary - a rare event when my
brother-in-law and our eldest nephew actually joined the game!

As anyone who knows Aaron would guess, he constantly has his eye on cruises and discounts on cruises.  As luck would have it, Carnival cruise line was running a spring/50th anniversary sale when we arrived at Daytona.  Aaron found a great deal on a cruise that ran during the week, leaving us our weekends free to spend time with my sister.  It was going to two islands we hadn't visited before on a ship we hadn't been on - perfect!  So with a few days' notice we booked the cruise and headed down to Port Canaveral to board the Carnival Elation.  We cruised in our first-ever inside cabin...I have mixed feelings, on the one hand it was a LOT cheaper and had basically the same space as the outside cabins on the ship, but on the other hand not having any natural light actually made it harder for me to sleep, and the lack of natural ventilation made it a little musty (though that might have been the age of the ship - 20+ years old).  The ship, being old, was much smaller than they build cruise ships nowadays, had basically no specialty dining, and had quite small entertainment lounges.  We had trouble finding seats at the evening theater productions and at the comedy shows.  On the flip side, the entertainers were very talented, and the ship had more character than the more modern ones did, with artistic architectural and decorative touches everywhere.  The one hiccup in this cruise was that someone had a medical emergency on route to our first port (which should have been Grand Turk) - right at the beginning of a sea day - so we had to divert to Nassau, which became our first port instead (we skipped Grand Turk and headed to the Dominican Republic on schedule).  As far as we know the person recovered well after getting to Nassau.  Here are the highlights of the cruise!

A dolphin swam around the port area before we departed!

Our daily breakfast spot at the buffet restaurant

One of the best things you can expect on a Carnival cruise
is a towel animal zoo!

A first for us - this ship offered tea time
on sea days, which consisted of tea,
sandwiches, and light desserts - yum!

A nighttime view of "Tiffany's" buffet - I loved all the stained
glass peacocks!  Hopefully you can kind of see what I mean
about the artistry of the ship

An outside view of the ship from the port at Amber Cove

The view atop Loma Isabel de Torres - amazing!

The Christ the Redeemer statue atop 
Loma Isabel de Torres

A heart shaped photo opportunity in the park
surrounding the peak

A young man was driving these cattle in the middle of the road!

We had a few days after we returned to visit my sister again and do laundry before beginning our trek north through public parks (read: no sewer in my future!).  We also discovered we were down to just 18% left on our propane tanks - a problem since I use propane for cooking all the time!  Unlike the last time we rushed to fill the tank when we misread the gauge, this time we were legitimately low on gas, so we needed to fill up.  Finding a place to fill the tank permanently attached to our RV has always been a challenge, but much to my delight I discovered this time that truck stops can sometimes provide propane!  A Flying J on our route on 95 offered reasonably priced propane, so we didn't even have to divert from our travel plans.

Aaron likes to see what's going on and 
ask the guys about what they're doing
when we get the tank filled

With that we were headed to our last stop in Florida on the way north.