A journal of our full-time
travel around the USA in our motorhome.
We’ve been hunkered down in
our motorhome at Willow Lakes RV & Golf Resort for two-weeks today. It’s
located on the north edge of Titusville, Florida which is near the Kennedy
Space Center and Cape Canaveral.
Although our days are normally
uneventful now, we’ve tried to take nice, long walks every day. The first week
we were here we visited friends Ron and Kathy who live here in the park. It was
fun catching up with them.
On Friday that first week,
we decided to get out and drove up to Daytona Beach to see how the construction
was coming along on the Latitude Margaritaville Beach Club. It is for residents
of the Latitude Margaritaville community to use and was supposed to open this
summer, but now it’s doubtful. It’s on the Atlantic Ocean, about 10-miles
northeast of the community.
Easter Sunday, our friend
Leesa, stopped by to say hello. We got to know Leesa when we were stationed in
England back in 1986-1988. She and her husband Bernie just bought a home up the
coast between here and Daytona Beach. This’ll be the fourth time we’ve lived
near Leesa (England, Germany, Colorado and now Florida).
We stopped by to see Leesa
and their new home this past Wednesday. While there, Leesa made hand sanitizer
for us, since we can’t find any to buy.
We had an appointment at
Latitude Margaritaville last Friday to look again at the model homes. It’s
about a 40-mile drive from here straight up I-95. We wanted to take a closer
look at the Coconut model to see where our AC outlets were installed outside
and in the garage.
We have an appointment in the design center this coming Thursday
to pick out our cabinets, countertops, flooring, plumbing fixtures, interior
paint colors, etc.
Today we drove up to
Daytona Beach to go see our lot # 916 for the first time. Our salesman
suggested going to look at it on a Saturday or Sunday because during the week
it’s a really busy construction zone. The street in front of our lot is finally
paved and utilities are installed. The small lake behind our house is starting
to fill up. Construction on our new home is slated to begin in June.
We plan to continue to
maintain “social distancing” and hunker down in our motorhome until
early-August.
Stay healthy and be safe
out there!
Steve & Julie
Cornelius
A journal of our full-time
travel around the USA in our motorhome.
We left Camp Pendleton in
Oceanside, California a week ago last Thursday, March 26th, and
headed east on our 2,500-mile trip to Florida: Oceanside-Yuma-Benson-Las
Cruces-Fort Stockton-Kerrville-Beaumont-Biloxi-Tallahassee-Titusville. There
wasn’t much traffic on I-10 as many states along our route had enacted
“shelter-in-place” guidelines. We only stopped for diesel fuel. The Buc-ee’s in
Alabama had the least expensive diesel fuel we’d seen along our route.
After we left, we decided
to accelerate our trip from 14-days down to an 11-day trip as it seemed the
coronavirus pandemic was getting worse along our route. We were very concerned
that Florida was going to close its borders.
Florida did set up COVID-19
“check-points” on eastbound I-10 and southbound I-95 on March 30th. We crossed
the Florida state-line on Saturday and went through the checkpoint. They only
asked one question: “Have you stayed the night in New York, New Jersey,
Connecticut or Louisiana in the past two-weeks?” We answer “No”, and they told
us to have a nice day. Luckily there was no traffic backup and the whole check
took less than a minute.
We overnighted in
Tallahassee last Saturday and drove to the 55-plus RV resort near Titusville,
FL on Sunday where we’d arranged for a space to park with the owner of the particular
RV lot. We’ll continue to maintain “social distancing”, hunker down and
“shelter-in-place” in our motorhome until early-August.
Last week, after talking
with my sisters Janet and Marcia and their spouses, we’ve all collectively decided
to cancel our planned road trip to Alaska next summer. Due to the coronavirus
pandemic, the border to Canada is closed. If we could cross, we’d have a 14-day
quarantine. Also, Alaska currently has a 14-day quarantine. Alaska also
currently forbids travel between any of its towns and cities. We all spent a
lot of effort planning and making reservations for this 2 ½-month road trip. Now
we’re all busy cancelling our reservations.
Stay healthy and be safe
out there!
Steve & Julie
Cornelius
A journal of our full-time
travel around the USA in our motorhome.
We got back to Camp
Pendleton in Oceanside, California two weeks ago on Wednesday, March 11th.
We didn’t have a good internet connection in Mexico so we were somewhat oblivious
to how crazy things had gotten back here in the USA with coronavirus.
On Thursday we went to a
nearby Costco to look for some patio lights I’d seen weeks before. The parking
lot was completely full and there were only a few shopping carts left. After
asking a store employee what was going on, she said they had sold 37 pallets of
toilet paper in 30 minutes! Of course, there was no hand sanitizer, wipes or
paper towels left either.
We hunkered down at the
campground and continued practicing social distancing, coughing in our elbow, not
touching our face, washing our hands often for at least 20-seconds, and
sheltering in place.
We had planned to leave
here in early-April and go to Seal Beach for a month and work our way up to
Sacramento to see my sister Janet and her wife Nancy in mid-May.
My hometown newspaper, the
Denison (Iowa) Bulletin & Review wrote an excellent article about my sister Janet who
was on the Grand Princess cruise ship and her lengthy coronavirus quarantines.
https://www.dbrnews.com/news/former-denison-resident-spends-time-in-quarantine-after-grand-princess/article_17cd4b4e-6e22-11ea-82f3-d3d0295db032.html
Two Navy
campgrounds called me last week and told me they were closing and they
cancelled my reservations. The campground at Vandenberg wasn’t taking any new
reservations.
The campground we’re in is
still open, but they’ve closed all their facilities, the beach and the ocean
(to surfers, kayakers, etc.) on Saturday.
We were supposed to fly
from L.A. back to Orlando next month for appointments in Daytona Beach where
we’re having our new house built. We decided flying was too risky with the
coronavirus pandemic and have decided to drive back to Florida from here. We’ve
planned a two-week trip to cover the 2,500 miles and leave tomorrow morning. We
found an available RV lot in a 55-plus RV resort near Titusville, FL where
we’ll hunker down for a few months.
Stay safe out there and help flatten the curve!
Steve & Julie
Cornelius
A journal of our full-time
travel around the USA in our motorhome.
We left Coronado on
Friday, February 28th and drove back to Yuma for an overnight stay.
Then on Saturday we drove to Ajo, Arizona and met up with our friends Kris and
Jan from Albuquerque for the weekend. We hadn’t seen them since September at
Lake Powel and enjoyed catching up.
On Sunday we explored the
small town of Ajo; viewed its nearby open-pit copper mine; and visited the
local museum.
We drove to nearby Why, AZ
on Monday morning and a busy campground to meet up with our Fantasy RV Tours
group that was headed to Puerto Penasco, Mexico on an “8-Day Taste of Mexico”
trip. There were 26 motorhomes and one 5th-wheel RV on the trip with
about 50 people total. The people in the group were from all over the U.S.
We left Tuesday morning and
drove in a convoy about 27-miles to the border town of Lukeville, AZ. After an
uneventful border crossing, we drove 63-miles down Highway 8 and arrived in
Puerto Penasco, a Sea of Cortez coastal town of about 65,000. Everyone in our
tour group had a Reef RV Park front-row, full hookup campsite on the beach.
It was a busy week with
several tour van trips into town. First was our welcome dinner at the El
Capitan Restaurant, located high on a hill above town with a great view of the
water. At sunset you could see the 10,500-foot-high mountains, 62-miles to the
west on the Baja Peninsula.
On Wednesday morning
another group trip into town to a hotel where we enjoyed a breakfast buffet and
my favorite, chilaquiles. We had a guided tour of town after breakfast.
We enjoyed a group lunch
at Flavio’s on Thursday, followed by a stroll along the Malecon shopping area.
One couple in our group from
Stewart, Florida dressed as a pirate and mermaid for the sunset cruise on
Friday night. The waves were flat, the weather was perfect, and later on the
cruise we could see our campground and motorhome on the beach.
We rode into town with
Kris and Jan on Saturday morning. We went to the Tequila Factory store and learned
how they harvest and cook agave and then distill the sugars to make tequila. We
also tasted several different kinds of tequila.
We asked the Tequila
Factory guy to recommend a place for lunch and we weren’t disappointed in the
nearby La Curva Restaurant. We tried the dish he recommended, the Molcajete. It
was a dish of shrimp, chicken and beef cooked in a tomatillo sauce with onions
and cheese.
After lunch we went back
to the Malecon to do a little shopping and we bought some fresh off-the-boat
shrimp and sea scallops to take home.
We enjoyed a nice farewell
dinner on Sunday just a short walk from our campsite. The Mare Bleu Restaurant prepared an awesome Italian dinner for us.
We left Puerto Penasco at 9AM
this morning and headed north back to Arizona. No problems crossing the border
and we’re back in Ajo for an overnight stay, on our way back to Yuma tomorrow,
and then California on Wednesday.
Steve & Julie
Cornelius
