The geyser!

Dunedin, FL – We have reached our destination! We’ve parked the RV on a lovely concrete pad in the Dunedin RV Park, had a nice supper and even had a friendly chat with some of our old friends from previous visits. It’s almost like coming home.

Our travel itinerary today was amended by a conversation we had in a Wal-Mart parking lot the other day. We learned that Interstate 4, the principal east-west corridor we’d planned on using, would be congested with traffic and construction much of the way, so we decided to cross from the Atlantic side to the Gulf side via State Route 50. We could follow most of the route on our paper map, but the spaghetti pile of highways around Orlando made it impossible to trace the 50 through to the other side. It looked like we could get through, so we set off with our GPS on “view map” and hoped for the best.

It was nice to get a glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean as we started southward on Highway 1 from Titusville. The scenery changed to stretches of country until we got closer to Orlando, where it was pure suburbia for miles. However, this gave us the opportunity to pull off at a mall to shop for collapsible lawn chairs at a sports store called Dick’s. We were amazed to find a pair of chairs on sale for $6.95 each!

A little further along, we found The Home Depot, where we picked up one of those lightweight garden hoses that shrink down to nothing, some batteries and a few removable hooks to increase the storage possibilities of the RV. It was satisfying to check those items off our list!

As we expected, Route 50 did take us through the Orlando spaghetti and out the other side. In addition, it gave us some lovely rural scenery to enjoy, complete with bucolic scenes of grazing cattle, splashes of pink wildflowers in the ditches and a distinct lack of 18-wheelers. Before long, we had turned south on Highway 19, tracing the west coast of Florida on a route that was very familiar to us.

It was great to see the US and Canada flags flapping at the entrance of the RV park when we finally arrived, and to be welcomed by familiar faces at the park office. We wanted to pick up some groceries, so we headed out once again to do that before settling in our site.

Back at the park, Val wanted to fill the holding tank with water, so we set up the hose, fed it into the inlet by the driver’s side door and turned on the shore water tap. We’d put a small amount of water yesterday, but now we wanted to fill the tank and see how the pump worked. I was inside sweeping out some accumulated grit on the floor when suddenly kapow! A geyser of water gushed out of the inlet hole all over the open driver’s door, driver’s seat and beyond! Guess the flow was more intense than we’d realized! Another item to chalk up to experience.

When we were finishing our supper on the picnic table outside, Anna and Willem dropped by to welcome us, so we pulled out our brand new chairs and set them up. That’s when I noticed the big white letters on each chair back: DICK’S Sporting Goods. Great! Our thrifty chairs are doing ad promotions on the side. I guess we can’t complain since they were quite the bargain.