Roadkeeping

There comes a time on every extended road trip where some housekeeping (or ​Roadkeeping​) is necessary. This is more than just a trip to the grocery store for more food supplies. This is the time when you run out of socks or clean towels and a trip to a laundromat becomes necessary.

Today was such a day.  The socks would have lasted a couple days yet, but the overcast day and spending two nights in the same place made today a good day for roadkeeping.

After a walk in the woods near our camp site, we headed into Wesley Chapel where the closest laundromat was located.  We took the entire wash cycle and half the dry cycle to eat lunch in the parking lot and spent some time remaking the bed and putting the small mountain of clothing away.  I also spent some time looking into auto glass places.

There’s not a lot of those either.  And the ones that do exist are all mobile.  I couldn’t get the first one I tried to call me back, in spite of promises of same day services, and the second one responded asking for an address.  ​*My address is the coin laundry for the next ten minutes, then Walmart for 15 minutes, then Costco for 30 minutes, then the gas station for 10 minutes.*​  I could see this was not going to work out.  We’ll have to have the windshield chip repaired when we get home.

Since we were running errands anyway we stopped at Walmart since we were out of ice cream and Costco just because it was on the way and they usually have lots of samples to try.

We then stopped at a nearby RV park to dump the tanks.  It has been several days and it will be a few more before the next state park with a dump facility.  I left the engine running while I checked in at the office.  I should have shut it off.  The woman in the office tried to ring it up but was getting some error.  She tried on two different computers and enlisted the help of two other office gals.  Then the phone started ringing.  She finally just told me to forget about the payment and go ahead and dump.  This is the second time this has happened on this trip.  Saved us twenty bucks so far.

After filling up with diesel, we drove back to our campsite.

This may not seem like much but this all took several hours.  A lot of this is due to Florida traffic.  At least around here, the entire area is pockets of bedroom communities all feeding into the greater Tampa area and connected by divided boulevards with three lanes in each direction.  And the traffic is heavy and the lights are long.  So it takes forever to get anywhere.

We were happy to get back to this little oasis in the middle of Tampa madness.

Just took a look at our route so far.  It is our typical wandering once we got here, but not all who wander are lost.