Big Mike's Horse Ranch and RV Park

After finishing up in Columbia, SC, we decided it was time to start heading south. It had been below freezing at night for a few nights in a row. We were ready for some t-shirt weather.

After a stop in Charleston and Vidalia (see Travel Update 10), we stumbled upon Big Mike's Horse Ranch and RV Park on Allstays. It was listed as a private campground that was free, which was an oddity, but it did have highly positive reviews on Allstays as well as Google. So, we decided to go check it out!

Mike is a retired veteran who owns a ranch, with his wife Alice, just outside of Homerville, GA. He keeps all sorts of animals including horses, donkeys, goats and chickens. He decided to open up an RV park in his grazing field. He pays for any upkeep by renting out a few spots with full hookups for $20 / night and has the rest of the field open, for free, to boondockers like us. We got there on Tuesday and liked it so much that we stayed until Saturday!

 

The horses and donkeys would come graze on the field where we were staying from early morning to late afternoon. During that time we had to keep a close eye on the kids because the donkeys did not like unfamiliar dogs on their turf. So, a lot of the times, we had to keep the kids inside until the afternoon.

  

On Thursday, we decided finally use our bikes and head into the small town of Homerville to do some internet related things at the library. We made it back just in time for sunset.

It was warm enough in southern Georgia that we even decided to set up our solar shower on Friday. We had been looking for an opportunity to use it but it had been too cold. The water was a nice comfortable temperature after a few hours in the sunshine.

On Friday we also decided to get out of our comfort zone and make some friends. We decided to make a big fire in a fire pit that Big Mike had made in the middle of all of the camp sites. We were inspired when a new guest, Christopher arrived in the morning and came to start conversation. We chatted with him for a while and he asked about the other guests. We realized that we had only met one of them, a lady with three german shepherds but whose name we didn't know.

We were a little nervous initiating the fire, but it was nice because since it was in a neutral zone in the middle, other guest could choose whether to attend or not. Most people did end up coming out and we met some cool people living the RV life style.

Dog Lady came, but we still don't know her name. She is in her late 50s or early 60s, Originally from the New York. She is divorced and has two kids, 28 and 31. She travels in a midsize class A motorhome with three dogs and three cats. She had some ideas that we thought were a little crazy (she starting telling us about chem-trails) but she was nice enough. She had been staying there for two weeks and was still there when we left.

Ross had been stay with Big Mike for three weeks, and was also still there when we left. He had been on the road for several years in a trailer that he built and was closer to our age, maybe in his 30s? He was also very quite, listening to the conversation, but not adding much.

Glen pulled in his large class A motorhome earlier in the day with his wife, who didn't come to the fire. They are snowbirds from Ontario who live up there in the Summer but are staying with family in Florida all winter. Glen is a retired truck driver in his 70s and he had all sorts of stories.

We got to know Christopher the best, he is in his late 50s, early 60s. He told us he decided to live this life style because people in his family die young and everyone in his family was dead, which was depressing. He lives in the back of his pick up truck, which is quite small. But the perk is that he blends in perfectly and can park almost anywhere. He loves kids and was telling us all about several kids that he watches when their parents are in trouble. He is also hoping to write a book some day about all the people he has met on his travels, which is definitely a book we would love to read.

We got some great recommendations from all of these people, since we they had all been living this life style longer than we have. It was fun swapping stories and hearing about their lives, both currently and before their trips. In the end we were very glad that we had broken out of our shells and had the fire. The next morning Christopher thanked us for it as well.

Before leaving on Saturday, we went with Christopher over to see the goats and chickens. Alice was kind enough to show us around and introduce us to Daisy, a kid that she had to take care of personally because her mother did not want her.

Alice with Daisy

Kathleen with Daisy and Christopher 

To top it all off, Alice offered us some farm fresh eggs that her hens had laid!

It was an amazing place to stay. We all had a ton of fun. We would definitely recommend checking this place out if you're passing through Southern Georgia. Just be prepared to be self sufficient. Big Mike is super friendly expects a certain level of competence and common sense from his guests. He is a special ops vet after all.

Fuel pump and M.A.G. towing

After visiting Assateague Island, our plan was to go to Salisbury for the night. We'd sent our first Amazon purchase while on the road to a locker there for pickup. That plan changed when the gas pedal all of the sudden stopped working. So, we did what we always do: call Goodsam. They wanted to send out a mobile mechanic. A state trooper stopped by while they were looking to make sure everything was okay. Goodsam failed to find a mobile mechanic and eventually failed to find a place that would tow us. Since we indicated that we were safe, they asked if we could spend the night where we were. I probably should have said no, because at 10 PM another trooper came by and told us we needed to call a tow company. Apparently after checking with dispatch, he changed his mind and we spent the night on the side of the road. Not the best sleep ever. 

The RV, at night, on the side of the road on MD 367.

In the morning we finally got our mechanic. He was pretty sure we needed a new fuel pump which would involve a tow to the shop. After calling GoodSam again to get towing covered, we were prepared to be spending a few days at their shop in Roxana, DE. 

 

Roxana is a tiny, tiny place. We’re not even sure that there is really a town there. We looked to see if we could find motels in the area and couldn’t find anything. Although our biggest worry was how would we catch the Oregon Ducks game. Given that there wasn’t a sports bar in the area either… 

 

Joe, the tow truck driver and mechanic worked his butt off for us to make sure we wouldn’t have to worry. He worked hard and made sure we were comfortable. He got a new fuel pump rush delivered, installed it, and epoxied a tiny crack in our fuel tank by 7 PM that same night. 

While he worked, we spent the day in the backyard of the house on the same property as the shop. They had a “bar” room that had a bathroom with its own shower they said we could use. When he was done, Joe offered that we spend the night in the lot since it was dark. We took him up on the offer as we felt comfortable there. Now we're sitting in the Wicomico County library in Salisbury thinking about how lucky we've been with the friendly people who have helped us.

Travel Update 5

Our second week of hurrying quickly across the country we didn't make any particularly interesting stops. However, we did stay at some really nice campgrounds. We wanted to do a very short, photo filled, travel update to show off a couple of places.

Waverly Lake, Illinois was gorgeous. We got into camp fairly early and stayed to hang out for a while the next morning. We even made a morning campfire to cook up a deluxe potato breakfast.

  

 

This section had some beautiful scenery but we didn't do anything very exciting as we were driving pretty quickly to make it to DC.

We did have an exciting incident happen with the RV. A few hours after leaving Lane Farm campground, driving through West Virginia we heard a popping sound. Shortly thereafter another, quieter one. At this point the RV became tricky to control. When going around corners it would make another muffled little pop and the steering wheel would shift in such a way that I needed to hold it at a different angle to keep it going straight. Luckily we were close enough to a small town that had a mechanic. We had broken a bolt in the upper control arm on the passenger side. Dave, the mechanic in Harmon, SC, was able to get it stable to the point of driving safely, but we would need to go get it fixed properly and re-aligned. While he was working on it, we noticed something else had gone wrong. Somewhere in our travels that day, we had lost our spare tire!

 

We got our RV fixed up at SOS repair in Winchester, VA the next day and continue on our way to D.C

We bought our RV

Yesterday, we took a huge step towards our dream of an extended trip around the country. Ever since we came up with this crazy idea, we've been eyeing every RV on the road, considering what we liked and disliked about each one. 

To break it down, RVs come in different classes. The A class RVs are your big, bus types. These were never part of the conversation for us. Class Bs are the van style. We liked the smaller, car-like nature of those, but found them a little small for a trip that should last us about a year. What you see here i s a Class C. Class C's built on pickup truck frames and usually feature the above the cab look. These have been our favorite ever since we started ogling RVs on the road. Other options are either travel trailers, fifth wheels (like a trailer but the front end sits in the truck bed), or truck campers. All of which would have required us to purchase a truck as well.

Our RV: 

Our new RV is a 1991 Itasca Spirit. It runs on a V6 Toyota engine. While it may lack a little in the power department, it should make up for in fuel efficiency. It's coming with over 200,000 miles on it already, but a new engine was put into it about 60,000 miles ago. The interior and exterior were recently redone as well.

Next Steps:

For now, the RV is staying in the driveway at Andreas's mom's house in Bellevue. (Thanks Jutta!) We will eventually be looking for other places to store it. There a few upgrades that we want to make this summer, but mostly we are just looking forward to take it out on a few short trips to see how it goes.

The first thing that we are thinking about, is the fact that the previous owner took out the generator. This isn't a huge deal because the only thing that that is really used for is powering the AC. Which we might want, but it really depends on where we are. Everything else can either be used off of a 12 V battery that charges when the RV is plugged into campground power or when driving, or they run off of liquid propane. However we are really looking forward to trying to outfit the RV with some solar panels. We are actually watching videos on solar upgrades at this very moment. We've been looking into a lot of different options and thinking about what the best option is for us. Definitely expect a future post about how that goes.

Eventually we would also like to upgrade the sound system. The current system has a cassette player and a radio, but the speakers are terrible. The music gets really choppy when the volume gets turned up even to a reasonable volume. We don't need to have a fancy stereo system but Kathleen loves Audiobooks and it would be nice to be able to listen some books and a look of music over the year.

Everything else we have in mind at the moment is pretty minor. At the moment there is a twin sized sleeping space in the overhead loft, so that there is more headspace in the cab. I'm having a hard time explaining that in words. But there is room to have a bigger mattress in that space. We're thinking we might try to get two twin mattresses to put side by side so that we can stack them to still have the space while driving.

There are also a few maintenance things we need to take care of, like the fact that the right back blinker just went out. But they are all very minor. And we're looking forward to figuring out how to fix all these sorts of problems on the road. We spent a while yesterday going more into depth about all of the parts of the RV and learning our way around it. In addition to all the YouTube videos we've been watching. Thank goodness for YouTube.

I think that's about all we have to say for now. Friday was officially our negative first wedding anniversary, which puts yesterday at one year before we plan to take off and start our adventure! We are incredibly excited for it, and it's great to be able to do some tangible preparations!