WInter Travel November 2020 to April 2021

 

Sunset on the Pasquotank River, North Carolina

 I have neglected this blog for quite awhile.  Our travel during the late-Fall and Winter of 2021 was pretty much confined to Florida with very little touristy type of travel.  We went south after Thanksgiving stopping for a brief visit with my sister and brother-in-law near Elizabeth City, NC.  Enroute to Florida we also stopped for a week at the Foster Creek campground on Joint Base Charleston.  Due to covid we limited our activities to shopping and an occasional restaurant dinner.

After Charleston, we spent most of the Winter season staying two weeks at a time in various campgrounds included with our Thousand Trails membership.  These included the Thousand Trails parks in Orlando; Peace River at Zolfo Springs; Sherwood Forest at Kissemee, Sunshine Travel at Vero Beach; Winter Garden; and Southern Palms at Eustis.  There were also stays the Clearwater Lake National Forest campground and at the Coast Guard Camp Blanding park.

In January we crossed paths with our friends Andy and Chris Jones, friends who we had spent New Years with at Benson, AZ back in December 2019. 

We had a nice time visiting and sharing meals At Orlando and Peace River.  We saw them again before our trip north at Clear Water Lake and at Southern Palms.

At Vero Beach our son Daniel visited us a couple to times.  We went fishing near Sebastian Inlet, and had fun but no fish.  Also while at Vero Beach our propane refrigerator failed.  Troubleshooting indicated a coolant leak (e.g., a non-repairable cooling unit failure).  Due to the time and high-cost (about $4600) of  a propane replacement unit, I opted for a standard residential electric refrigerator ($750).

Removing the failed Refrigerator

After very careful measurements we selected a new refrigerator from Lowes which would fit the space used by the old propane unit.  Unfortunately, the new unit could not be delivered for a week.  We were forced to purchase a small bar refrigerator to use in the meantime. The bar refrigerator proved to be almost useless - barely keeping food from spoiling and completely unable to even make ice cubes. We returned it for a refund after the new unit was delivered.

Old unit ready for the dumpster

After removing the old propane unit, the cabinetry needed some minor modifications for the new unit to fit.  The propane line was capped and the 12volt wires taped off.

Since the new unit did not require a vent stack, I sealed the vents and insulated the walls with 3/4inch closed cell foam boards.

 The new unit fit nicely into the cabinet, bu required some L brackets to anchor it in place.  After returning home, I re-engineered the anchoring and installed more cosmetically pleasing moldoing around the refrigerator.

Thanks to the four lithium batteries I had installed the previous year, the new refrigerator ran nicely with our solar setup.  While boondocking, we needed to run the generator only about an hour each day.

Because of the risk of covid and since as non-Florida residents, we could not get vaccinated; we hunkered down and limited our exposure for the Winter season.  We returned home to Woodbridge during the last week in March 2021.  We were able to get the J&J vaccine during the first week of April.