RV Navigator

Ending our April cruise in Maui (Hawaii), we headed home to Chicago for the duration of the spring. We did take a short flight to Orlando to close on our new (to us) house at the Great Outdoors (TGO) that will be our winter home starting in 2026. This house has a nice RV port which will give our aging MH a covered parking space during the off months. We chat about many RVing topics as our attention turns to RVing in the summer. Cooling your RV and fridge topics as well as the latest tech issues are discussed in this episode.

We never intended to buy a house in FL, but this month we ended up with a new home for the motorhome at our RV resort in Titusville, FL. We explain the decision and details in this month’s episode as move ahead on buying this new abode in FL. The sale is not final until mid-May, so we headed North to Chicago just in time to leave on our next adventure, a cruise in Tahiti and Hawaii. The weather being what it is, the MH needed to be winterized while it sits in the cold in Chicago., We’ll not be taking it to its new home until November (2025) due to our upcoming Alaska adventure which starts in July.

Lots of RV activity for us this month. As with many of you, we had to hunker down early in the month due to extensive cold and snow in many parts of the country - including FL. Titusville was spared frozen precipitation, but it was cold. Our nearly annual trip to the Tampa RV Super show was a management disaster, but a display success. We explain this in full on the podcast. We managed to buy a few things at the vendor area, including a new Starlink Gen3 antenna (is it a dish, antenna or table?). I waited 3 days for it to be delivered from Starlink. Set-up was very easy and I had it working within minutes. We customized the installation as we explain in the episode. Beyond this we headed to Sebring FL for a refurbishment of 2 of our fogged windows. The end of the month brought us to Jetty park to watch others cruise from Port Canaveral. This campground has a great view of the ships entering and leaving on the weekly cruises to all parts of the caribbean.

This month finds us at sea for the entire month. Sail the med and ending in Fort Lauderdale, we skip the long transatlantic flight for 9 days of sailing the open ocean. If have the time, it is very relaxing trip. We want to wish al our listeners a great holiday season as we look forward to the new year. We’ve attached some RV gift lists for your consideration. We wonder if the almost total band on new MH sales in CA will take effect in 2025. CA pllus 5 other states have put strick pollution standards in place that will prohibit most motorized RVs from being sold in those states. Obviously RV dealers will be out of business if they cannot sell their products legally.

Finally back on the road in the RV, we travel to FL on a round about itinerary that included stops in Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina and Georgia before our final stop in Titusville, FL. September is a great weather month in these northerly states so we took advantage of fall (before the colors) to slowly drive south. A major stop along the way was in Gaffney. Not a tourist stop but an important MH stop for this is the home of Freightliner - the maker of our chassis. We found the important of letting the pros work on the MH as they performed our annual check-up and found several major problems - and solved them before they became issues. Expensive, yes, but worth it if it keeps from being stranded on the side of the road. We are getting ready for our Alaska adventure next summer so reliability of our Rig is very much on our mind. With a 12 year old MH, we never know what will go wrong, so we try to do as much preventative maintenance as possible. Florida proved to be its usual hot an humid with a hurricane thrown in for good measure. Our area was not impacted by the storm so we are feeling lucky this year. This months episode features a new cooking segment done by the copilot. She shares some ideas for maximizing the kitchen space in an RV.

This month's big project was upgrading our battery bank to lithium batteries. We added about 1000 amps of battery power to our rig in the conversion process. After a couple of days for the install, we headed to annual Indiana Dunes mid summer trip. New this month is the Starlink mini as a standalone unit.

On the road this month on a 2400 mile trip north over 2 weeks. We visited some bucket list and out of the way destinations such as Crater of Diamonds State Park and Crystal Bridges Art Museum in Arkansas. These plus a couple of old favorite camping spots kept us busy for the month. Of course, the month started with a 5 night family cruise (with 22 participants) cruise aboard the Independence of the Seas sailing from Miami. We had a great time even though the ship was at capacity (4500) and packed with under 1440 under 18 year olds. This reminded us that different ships have very different vibes, so cruisers should choose their ship carefully. We drove back to our Florida headquarters (TGO), prepared the MH for the trip home and left on a longer than normal trip north. We spent time at Gulf State park as well as the aforementioned buck list stops. This month we share ideas about internet on the road as well as a couple of products that you may find useful.