Last night was the ultimate water test for the RV. Once it started raining around 7 pm, it rained, and rained hard, until about 5 am this am. I know this because I was up most of the night with a touch of something, not sure what. Doesn't matter; point is, it rained hard. It had two levels: 1) Extremely hard 2) Harder than extremely hard.
It's like when I bought my first Harley. The guy who had done the customization, when I asked about the pipes (exhaust), said the bike had two sounds 1) loud & 2) really loud. With motorcycles, theres a school of thought that runs "Loud pipes save lives". Most car/truck/bus drivers are on auto-pilot. The brain is looking for what it expects and mostly it expects another car/bus/truck, not motorcycles. Many times people hear a motorcycle long before they see it and that helps make motorcycles more visible.
Not so a loud, hard rain. Gentle rain, yes; helps you fall asleep into the promised land of slumber. Loud, hard rain makes you wonder if your RV was built on a Monday after a late football game or on a Friday when all someone had to do was say they had finished caulking the roof and they could leave work behind for another glorious weekend adventure.
In truth the wind was not nearly as bad as expected and the thunder/lightning only last for about three hours. But the rain lasted all night. Around 8:30 pm we lost power. I was telling someone about our losing powere during the storm and they said "Oh, that must have been terrible". Truth is, we didn't even know.
The RV automatically switched from 'shore power' (electricty coming into the RV just like your power at home) over to battery power just as pretty as you please. Only difference is the batteries cannot run the larger appliances simultaneously, so the washer/dryer stopped. If it hadn't been for the W/D stopping, we probably never would have known there was a power failure. The W/D started back up automatically when the power came back to the campground. Inside the RV we were nice and toasty even if the rain was power washing the outside of the RV.
Today, the magic of Florida came shining thru. By 7 am the sun was out and no clouds in the sky. By 8 am the water that had flooded some of the campground was gone. Ours did not flood because we are on high ground (at least 6 inches higher than our neighbor, whose site was flooded with four inches of water). Remember, Florida is the state where the sand dunes at the beach are referred to as, I kid you not, "The Mountains of Florida". Look closely at the sign in the picture above. Look closely. It says "Dunes, The Mountains of Florida" (You can't make this stuff up).
By 9 am most of the roads and grounds were dry, the sun was shining brightly and a fresh, clean smell was in the air as we took a brisk walk around the campground. Except for some debris around the drains you would never know the sky had opened up the night before.
Tomorrow we hit the road heading towards an RV park away from the coasts of Florida which is about halfway to Port St Lucie. That's where my Uncle Grason and his friend Janet spend the winter. We should arrive at a campground just north of them in Sabastian, hopefully Wednesday afternoon around 3 or 4 pm. I like to get to arrive at the campground while there's plenty of daylight to get set-up and then watch the other RV'ers arrive.
We'll spend about a week exploring that area and then move to just south of all the theme parks (Disney, Universal, SeaWorld, etc) for our driving lessons. Seems kind of appropriate to take our driving lessons where so much controlled mayhem takes place.
It's like when I bought my first Harley. The guy who had done the customization, when I asked about the pipes (exhaust), said the bike had two sounds 1) loud & 2) really loud. With motorcycles, theres a school of thought that runs "Loud pipes save lives". Most car/truck/bus drivers are on auto-pilot. The brain is looking for what it expects and mostly it expects another car/bus/truck, not motorcycles. Many times people hear a motorcycle long before they see it and that helps make motorcycles more visible.
Not so a loud, hard rain. Gentle rain, yes; helps you fall asleep into the promised land of slumber. Loud, hard rain makes you wonder if your RV was built on a Monday after a late football game or on a Friday when all someone had to do was say they had finished caulking the roof and they could leave work behind for another glorious weekend adventure.
In truth the wind was not nearly as bad as expected and the thunder/lightning only last for about three hours. But the rain lasted all night. Around 8:30 pm we lost power. I was telling someone about our losing powere during the storm and they said "Oh, that must have been terrible". Truth is, we didn't even know.
The RV automatically switched from 'shore power' (electricty coming into the RV just like your power at home) over to battery power just as pretty as you please. Only difference is the batteries cannot run the larger appliances simultaneously, so the washer/dryer stopped. If it hadn't been for the W/D stopping, we probably never would have known there was a power failure. The W/D started back up automatically when the power came back to the campground. Inside the RV we were nice and toasty even if the rain was power washing the outside of the RV.
Today, the magic of Florida came shining thru. By 7 am the sun was out and no clouds in the sky. By 8 am the water that had flooded some of the campground was gone. Ours did not flood because we are on high ground (at least 6 inches higher than our neighbor, whose site was flooded with four inches of water). Remember, Florida is the state where the sand dunes at the beach are referred to as, I kid you not, "The Mountains of Florida". Look closely at the sign in the picture above. Look closely. It says "Dunes, The Mountains of Florida" (You can't make this stuff up).
By 9 am most of the roads and grounds were dry, the sun was shining brightly and a fresh, clean smell was in the air as we took a brisk walk around the campground. Except for some debris around the drains you would never know the sky had opened up the night before.
Tomorrow we hit the road heading towards an RV park away from the coasts of Florida which is about halfway to Port St Lucie. That's where my Uncle Grason and his friend Janet spend the winter. We should arrive at a campground just north of them in Sabastian, hopefully Wednesday afternoon around 3 or 4 pm. I like to get to arrive at the campground while there's plenty of daylight to get set-up and then watch the other RV'ers arrive.
We'll spend about a week exploring that area and then move to just south of all the theme parks (Disney, Universal, SeaWorld, etc) for our driving lessons. Seems kind of appropriate to take our driving lessons where so much controlled mayhem takes place.
MLA's nervous about her lessons. Me I'm looking forward to learning how to pitch a 27,000 pound RV into a powerslide; should make parking a whole lot easier.
Love Ya All!
Love Ya All!
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