Welcome to our

Fall 2019

Shorter Trips

It's the Tweener Season! We're done with our big trip, and now it's time for refining Ernie and making our next trip even mo' betta!

Part of that refinement is traveling without Ernie, to see what we're missing living in a van and its limitations. Is there luxury that we're missing, that we should consider embracing? I don't expect to tent camp again, even with our very nice setup of REI cots and Thermarest mattress: it's too painful to duck down getting in and out of the tent!

It's difficult, but I can fold my legs up enough to fit in an airplane coach seat. For the past several years we've spent one or two weeks in Mexico in November. This year, we thought some variety was called for. In September 2017 Puerto Rico was besieged by Hurricane Maria. Two years later, the damage is still evident. The hotel we chose to stay at used to have a beach, but the hurricane wiped out the beach along that section of coast. The waves now crash on the edge of the patio. The roads around the island were in surprisingly good shape, with many freshly repaved. Overall the road quality was better than most anyplace we've been.

The plan was to relax in the Sun, snorkel, mountain bike, hike, and paddle. The reality was pretty close. Hanging out at the Coconut Palms on the beach didn't happen, though we did enjoy the patio most afternoons. And we got a feel for that unique place that is Puerto Rico, where English and Spanish intermix, where flavors are distinctive and spicy, and where the drivers aren't nearly as crazy as I expected.

The plan after our one flyaway trip is to use Ernie. So we went to Palatka, White Springs (many times), South Florida (8 nights), Huguenot Park (along with Hannah Park, Jacksonville has very impressive City Parks for camping). Lots of time to refine our ride, see what we don't have, what we don't use, what we are missing or what we'd like to have while we're on the road.

The Plan.

Rincon PR

The plan was to spend a week in Puerto Rico. We didn't want to stay in San Juan, as we're not city folk. We poked around on Google, and came across the Coconut Palms Inn in Rincon, on the Western coast of the island. It is a popular surfing spot, so there was infrastructure for tourism - restaurants and the like. The price seemed reasonable, so we booked a room for a week.


It's also a big island, and we decided to rent a car for the week. We rented from a local company that was a shuttle from the airport. Waiting for the shuttle, the line at the office and the paperwork, and then the wait for a car, took way longer than we expected, over two hours. To be fair, the checkin process went much faster, and the shuttle ride back to the airport was efficient. Flying in mid-day we hoped to get out of San Juan before traffic became onerous; the 3 hour drive to Rincon took over 4 because of traffic getting through San Juan.
Our plans were pretty open. Trailforks.com had an impressive trailsystem a few miles north of where we were staying, with a mountain bike shop nearby, so we planned to rent and ride. There were various hikes and beaches and snorkeling sites we found online and earmarked, and some waterfalls to visit. But beyond that, we planned to make it up each day.

Palatka

The Palatka trip was simpler, drive Ernie an hour plus South, find a level place to park, and enjoy a weekend of partying with friends. We discovered that my sealing of the hole left by the air conditioner didn't completely keep out the torrential rain the night before the trip, so we pulled our wet bed and went with the inflatable mattress we once used to camp with. It was less than comfortable, but it worked. One of the wires to the inverter was loose, and for various reasons (rain and light and bad back mostly) rather than turn off the power and fix it properly, we went without AC power overnight. But the DC current was sufficient to keep us warm and comfortable.

Blogging about our experience.

My thoughts as we progress through this adventure. The list below is my lame attempt to keep this simple. Entries are in doc format to make my life simpler.

Pictures!

Click on the links below to our photo albums. We photograph with our phones primarily (Pixel 2 and 4 XL), my Canon EOS 5D Mark III for a few, and underwater shots with our Olympus TG4 and TG5.