February 28, 2008 by steve.

For years the CurbCrusher family has been traveling through Ocala on I-75 and off on the east side of the interstate around Exit 354 there are always a bunch of fire trucks sitting there. The reason is that E-One, a fire truck manufacturer is based on Ocala. So on the way to Paynes Prairie we decided to stop and take the factory tour. E-One offers factory tours Monday - Friday at 0900 and 1100. The tour cost $8.00 per adult and $6.00 for kids, last about an hour and a half, and involves walking around the factory campus located right off I-75. One thing to note is that there is really not any RV parking at the place. We ended up parking the Itasca in the parking lot of a Florida Department of Revenue building (it appeared to be converted from a grocery store, so it had a big empty parking lot) and unhooking the Saturn and driving the mile or two to E-One. There are no pictures, as the E-One web site says “No cameras or cell phones.” As we started the tour, our guide told us that we were welcome to take pictures of anything outside the buildings, but could not use our cameras inside the buildings. Wish I’d known that.

CurbCrusher enjoyed the tour. Lady CurbCrusher and Little CurbCrusher both said it was “OK.” I was amazed that very little of the manufacturing process was automated. There is a lot of manual processes and labor that goes into building the fire engines. E-One produces about 400 engines a year at the Ocala location, and they build them from the ground up. I had figured that fire engines were probably like RVs to some extent, that a chassis was acquired from a manufacturer and then the fire engine built around it. Nope. They bring in the steel beams, a guy with a template and a drill puts some holes in them, then they start welding and building the frame. After they get it together, the move it along and take either a Cummins or Detroit Diesel engine out of a crate, put it together and add it to the frame. Another shop builds cabs and after a while they bring the things together. Another line puts together custom bodies built to the fire department’s specifications. At various points the fire trucks are inspected by representatives from the ordering department.

One of the nice things about the tour is that you are walking on the manufacturing floor. You’re not behind a glass wall, or walking over everything on a catwalk. At one or two points, you need to watch your step to make sure that you don’t trip over some poor guy up under a chassis bolting on parts. In my experience this is unusual, as most manufacturers seem to put some kind of barriers between the tours and the work going on. In addition there are a couple of chances for you to sit in a fire truck if you wish, and of course you get a chance to climb on one too. Overall, there is not a lot to not like about this tour.

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February 28, 2008 by steve.

The CurbCrusher gang hit the road this past weekend for a couple of nights in our second home. We headed north out of Orlando, up Florida’s Turnpike and I-75 to Payne’s Prairie State Preserve, located just south of Gainesville near Micanopy. We first visited this park in 2004 in the 5th wheel over Thanksgiving. Little CurbCrusher had a bike accident, and we ended up at the Shands Emergency Room ruining some poor resident’s Thanksgiving dinner. For that reason, Little CurbCrusher has been against visiting this park again, but we finally talked her into it.

This campground has about 50 sites, of which about 15 are tent only. The road through the campground is paved, but the sites are dirt (or in the case of this last Saturday, mud). If you go during a time that is very rainy, you probably should try and stay in the sites on the outside of the loop. It seemed that the sites on the inside of the loop were big puddles after it rained. I think it was site number 1 that had a small 15 – 20 ft trailer on it, and the trailer was in the middle of a lake. I don’t know what time the folks woke up, but if they tried to leave their rig before about 11 AM this last Saturday, they had a short swim. The sites and campground road are wide enough that it’s fairly easy to back into your campsite. 30 amp service and water account for your hookups. There is a single dump station as you exit the camping loop. We didn’t experience any problems, but I imagine if more than one rig is waiting to use the dump station, the campground road will be impassable. The bathhouses were clean and functional, nothing great, but nothing bad either.

The park itself is fairly large. There are a number of trails for walking and they allow bikes also. It is about a mile and a half from the campground to the Visitor’s Center. The Visitor’s Center is located right on the prairie, and has all the anticipated features; bathrooms, some exhibits and a short film. The film gives the history of the prairie from the time it was “discovered” by Colonial Americans in 1774. At one time the prairie’s drainage was clogged and for a number of years it was a big lake, with steamboats crossing it. Then the drainage was restored and it reverted to prairie status, and took on the appearance of today. The animals found on the prairie included buffalo, wild horses and scrub cattle. Today there is a small herd of each that is maintained in the free-range area.

A short walk from the Visitor’s Center is an observation tower that puts you about 40 feet above the prairie. According to the brochure, from the tower you can see bison, wild horses and scrub cattle, along with a large variety of birds. We didn’t see the bison from the tower, although that was Lady CurbCrusher’s goal in making the trip to Payne’s Prairie. We had not seen any bison on our last trip, and she really wanted to see some on this trip. From the tower you can see part of the Cones Dike trail which runs for about four miles into the free-range area. A couple was up on the tower at the same time as the CurbCrusher family. Lady CurbCrusher and the other lady had their binoculars out looking for wildlife. The other lady calls out that she sees something moving out in the prairie and suggests that it is a horse or a buffalo. Lady CurbCrusher looks over and tries to find it, finally seeing it and saying, “That looks like a bicyclist.” The guy, with the lady looks through his binoculars and finally finds the moving object, and agrees, it is a bicyclist by saying “By golly Angie, I think what you’ve found you a man.”

We took a couple of hours and left the park to wander to Micanopy (pronounced mika-noo-pee). This is a small town with a “business” district that is probably about a quarter of a mile long. There are a couple of nice older homes in the town, one appears to be a bed and breakfast, and most of the stores are “antique” stores. These are actually the kind of antique stores that I like, not a lot of polished fancy stuff, but mostly old stuff that sometimes hasn’t been dusted or cleaned. This is mixed in with some shops that are more polished, or have “art,” but there are not enough of those to ruin the atmosphere. The stores do not open until 10 or 11, and sometimes not even then. There were a couple of stores that had “We’re Open” signs out, but when we tried the enter some one would holler from the back “We’re not open yet.” It would appear that operating hours are more of ‘From when we get here ‘till when we leave.”

Later Saturday afternoon, Little CurbCrusher was busy at the playground, and Lady CurbCrusher was sitting out having a read. CurbCrusher decided he needed a bike trip, so it was back up to the Visitor’s Center and out onto Cones Dike trail. Because of the rain, there was a lot of standing water on the trail, some of the biking was through the mud. If you plan on using a bike on this trail, you need to be able to lift your bike over the gate that blocks the path, as the chute you walk through to access the trail by foot is narrow and has two ninety degree turns in it. Once on the trail, the ride was nice. After about a mile and half a couple of people were standing with their bikes in the middle of the trail so I slowed down and approached them. About 50 yards ahead, a group of five or six buffalo where gathered on the dike. Pretty cool. The other folks left, and I stood and watched the bison for a while, then got on the bike and rode back to the campsite, having accomplished the goal of seeing the buffalo.

Pictures of the campsite and park are here.

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February 5, 2008 by steve.

Well to celebrate the last weekend of January, the CurbCrusher clan loaded up the RV and headed south: to the Everglades, the River of Grass, the Southernmost tip of mainland Florida. We headed to the Everglades National Park for a four day trip, Thursday through Sunday. The park has two campgrounds, actually I should say two RV campgrounds, there are a number of places that you can camp on the canoe trails and in the swamp, Long Pine Key near the entrance, and Flamingo at the end of the road.

You get to the Everglades by traveling down Florida’s Turnpike until mile 0, where it ends and dumps you out on US 1 headed toward the Keys. Instead of going south, you make a quick right hand turn and head due west for a couple of miles and pass the last gas stations before heading southwest. After about 10 miles of farmland, and a couple of airboat ride signs, you come to the Coe Visitor Center. This is the National Park Services way of welcoming you to the Everglades. The Visitor Center is a very nice facility that has a number of exhibits about the park, a film, and helpful rangers that will tell you anything you want to know about the park.

Following your stop at the Coe Visitors Center, you start your journey into the park. You first come to the ranger station that collects your $10 for visiting the park, then start down an approximately 40 mile road that leads to Flamingo on Florida Bay, the end of mainland Florida. Along the way you’ll pass a number of trails, ponds, overlooks and the Long Pine Key camping area. For most of the road the speed limit is 55, so you reach the end of the road in about an hour.

Unlike every campground the CurbCrushers have stayed into date, the National Park Service (NPS) campground at Flamingo does not have any hookups. It has a dump station, potable water, and bath houses that have cold water only. So this was our first attempt at “boondocking.” The campground at Flamingo is broken into four loops, A-C, and T. The A-C loops are for the tents, truck campers, pop-ups and small van campers. The T loop is for larger rigs, and is all pull-through sites that are at least 60 feet long. When we were there the B and C loops were closed, the A loop was probably about 75% full and the T loop probably approached 50% before we left. Needless to say, parking and hooking up was very easy. The sites are also spaced fairly far apart, so you are not right next to your neighbor when are here. As a matter of fact, this is one of the first public campgrounds we’ve been to where we sit around and chat with folks in the campground. People were pretty much gone all day, and then stayed inside at night. The bath house was kept clean, and did have electricity. As a matter of fact I walked in one night and found someone’s digital camera battery plugged into the outlet over the sinks, they were charging it up after a day of use in the only plug to be found around.

To prepare for this trip, we had loaded the fresh water talk about 3/4 full, and taken our little Honda EU200i generator. We ended up running the generator about three hours each day, and didn’t run out of water during the time we were there. In addition to the fresh water tank, we took about five gallons of tap water from home to use for cooking and drinking. We set up our quick-up shade and screening, as we had heard that the bugs were bad here. The first two nights the wind was very brisk (weather reports said 15 - 20 MPH), and quick-up tent was flapping and making noise. We staked the tent down, but were very surprised that the stakes only went about 2 to 2.5 inches into the ground before becoming very hard to hammer in. It appears that the ground under the campsite is not swamp, but a fairly tough limestone.

Flamingo was a small fishing village back around 1900, and today has the feel of a partially abandon town. While there are no original buildings from when it was a fishing village, there are a number of structures that the NPS has built over the years that are now abandon and forlorn looking. At one time there was a gift shop, cottages, restaurant, lodge and marina here overlooking Florida Bay. Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma in 2005 did a number on most of the buildings. One ranger told us that the mud in the bottom of the bay came into most buildings and coated the floors and walls when the 10 foot storm surge moved through. The marina and a gift shop have been re-built and are operating, along with a Visitor’s Center. There is also a gas station next to the marina, but you pay for the privilege of buying gas in the Everglades, the price was about 50 cents more than the stations right before the park entrance. The other amenities have remained closed, and the NPS is currently working on a master plan to replace them with a new set of amenities in the future.

The big thing that seems to be going on in the Everglades is fishing and birding. There were a lot of folks in the tent area and the small loop that had boats with them. There were also an untold number of people walking around with those really big cameras that need a tri-pod to support the lens. We aren’t really big into either of these hobbies, but we did wander around the trails a bit. The Eco Pond trail is close to the campground, and takes about 20 minutes to walk. There were a good number of wading birds to watch, and small crocodile that seemed to have a favorite spot picked out. There is also a bay front trail that winds in front of the old lodges and cabins, between the campground and the Visitor Center. The longest trail that we went on was Snake Bight trail, a couple of miles long, it runs from the park road to the bay a few miles north of the Visitor Center. CurbCrusher ventured on a couple of trails by himself one morning, the Bear Lake and the Christian Point trails. We didn’t really see any wildlife or anything too exciting on the trails. Although Lady CurbCrusher did see the back end of a snake on the Snake Bight trail. The biggest crocodiles were located behind the marina and seemed to be consistently present each day.

The concession at the marina runs a couple of cruises every day. One is aboard a sailing ship in the bay, and the other is back-country pontoon boat trip. We took the pontoon boat trip, which is a couple of hours running up a man made canal that runs up to Coots Bay. A naturalist narrates the trip, and it is informative. We saw a number of wading birds, a few hawks, and a couple of more crocodiles on the trip. From listening to people that went on the trip earlier and later it seems that it is a real gamble whether or not you’ll see anything.

One of the greatest things about the trip was the night sky. We took the portable CurbCrusher astrolab (ok, its a telescope) and got great views of the night sky. Of our three nights, the first and third were clear enough to drag out the telescope, and the middle night was pretty cloudy. The first night was also a bit buggy, I ended up going inside and putting on a long-sleeve shirt and pants even though it was fairly warm. The last night was cooler, and the bugs were not an issue.

The whole CurbCrusher gang enjoyed the Everglades. In some ways camping without water or electricity was not that much of an issue. I was surprised that the house batteries never seemed to be loosing there charge, even after sixty-minutes of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader? on Thursday night. We took the Honda generator because we know it uses very little gas (a lesson from Hurricane Season 2004) and we figured that would be better than running the generator in the motorhome all the time. The park prohibits generator usage from 8 PM - 8 AM, and sure enough at 8:01 AM every morning, you can hear them start up, and they shut down promptly at 8 PM. Most people didn’t run their generators when they were away from their rigs though. I was also surprised that we never ran out of water. We rationed it a bit, but never spent a lot of time worrying about how much we were using.

Pictures of the trip are here. And since I bought gas a couple of times, the gas mileage chart has been updated here.

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