Day 6 of the Journey - First day out! - Clermont / Orlando, FL

This day was certainly full of challenges!!!  Let's see, where do I begin?

We were hoping to hit the road no later than 11 am.  We finally pulled out of the driveway at 5 pm....

First, we discovered the reason the bull wouldn't start was not only were the 2 batteries bad, but so was the alternator.  Pretty normal for sitting unused for 2 years in the Florida heat.  The bull took enough of a charge to drive to the nearest auto center, where they installed the new batteries.  Mitch and Kevin purchased an alternator which Kevin was going to install (he knows a little bit about trucks).  Turns out that he either really didn't know what he was doing or he didn't have the right tools, but they couldn't get the belt on.  I think it was hilarious that here are these 2 men standing over a huge truck with a laptop on the back, watching Youtube videos on how to replace an alternator!!!  Finally, Kevin called in the troops - a friend who is a retired mechanic, who came over and fixed it within 10 minutes.  So problem # 1 resolved and it is now 2:00 pm.

Next, Kevin went over all the instructions again with Mitch on closing up (I already had everything ready inside the CoW.  I'm leaving the stuff like the sewer hookups to the men).  Finally, finally, it's 4:30 and we're ready to leave.  And then the sky opened and the winds were roaring.  Rather than drive in that, we were invited into the house, given hot tea and a change of clothes and some snacks (we hadn't eaten much breakfast and no lunch) and waited out the storm.  Have I mentioned before what incredibly wonderful people they are?

Finally, 5:00 and we left the driveway, taking our home on wheels out for the very first time alone.

The ride itself wasn't too bad, although I would have felt better if Mitch wasn't reading all the signs (passing thru Disney territory).  Then we came to the campground, which was not what we were hoping for at all.  There are over 900 sites, most of which are  permanent trailer homes.  There are lots of streets which are very narrow and winding.  There's NO WAY we would have gotten into any other site.  We were given a spot which is perpendicular to another street so we should have been able to back straight in.  Unfortunately that perpendicular street was curved so it was difficult to get really straight.  Not having experience backing up this beast, knowing that turns don't respond until 5-10 seconds later, made it extremely difficult.

We started out with Mitch driving and me giving directions, but I was having a lot of trouble communicating.  Usually I'm much better at following directions, so we traded places.

About that time, a friendly neighbor, Dick, an elderly gentleman, came over to offer his assistance.  He commented "I haven't done this in a long time" (clearly he lives in one of the trailer homes).  So he's giving me one set of directions, which mostly were wrong (almost identical to the ones I was giving Mitch -- go this way, no go that way, no stop, go the other way again, wait, straighten up.....).  Meanwhile Mitch is giving me another set of directions over the walkie-talkie.  This kept up for about 1/2 hr until my legs started cramping and I had to give Mitch the wheel, and let Dick guide him.  It took maybe another 15 minutes but we finally did it!!!

Let's just say we landed at the campground around 6:00 and finally got it just right at 8:00.   Phew.

Next came having to unhitch the beast (we're calling the trailer the CoW, castle on wheels; the truck- the bull which pulls it, and combined they are the beast.  If you see them up close and personal, you'll understand).  There is a master lock in place and Mitch couldn't find the keys.  We had to call Kevin to find out if he gave them to us.  He recalled that he told Mitch to leave them in the underbelly (Mitch forgot).  We opened the lock and then started to proceed with dumping the air in the truck in order to lower it so we could unhitch the pin.  After attempting for about 20 mins, a pin broke off the hitch.  Mitch was able to find something to replace it, but we still couldn't get it quite right.  Meanwhile, it's now about 8:45, and although we witnessed a pretty sunset (picture below -- view from our back window), we knew we only had about 15 more minutes of light.  We decided to ditch the unhitch and try again in the morning.  In fact, the guy doing the roofing is an RV mechanic so perhaps he can give us a hand.

So Mitch proceeded to set up the sewer, water and electric.  He did an excellent job of that.  After about 1/2 hr, the a/c went on and the first thing I did was jump into a cold shower.  That felt awesome!  It was now 9:30 and I made some veggie burgers on a toasted  bagel with melted cheese.

Here's the sunset.  There's a little canal that runs behind the house.

At least the silver lining is that we didn't have to park or set up in the rain!