Wednesday, June 1, 2011

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

This 'news' is at the place where I feel comfortable making it public I suppose. I am no longer traveling with my family, but I am living in an RV of my own now. I have a 400 watt electric scooter that is unable to pull said 40 foot RV (at least not well) so I decided to settle down with it an get a job. So no more traveling for me for now.

My parents like to go some place warm each winter and 'settle down' for a bit. Usually this settling down means just staying in one state, but still traveling around that state. For from most peoples opinion of the meaning of settling down, to my parents its like being in jail. We all decided to try and get jobs while we were here in Florida for this winter. My mother and I got a job at the Thousand Trails Orlando park. The opportunity came around for me to buy an RV from a co-worker who decided to move back home and settle down for a semi-retirement of sorts. (Much more to his story, but I don't feel the right to publish it.) He gave me a knock out price and has been infinitely flexible and accommodating to my poor status.

This has been a weird and uncharted territory for me on many levels, buying something of worth, having a home of my own, entering a payment agreement (beyond a cell phone or rent) and many other things that I am experiencing for the first time. In a matter of months I feel I have grown in many ways I couldn't have predicted half a year ago.

Anyways, as this news comes, it may be obvious that the theme I have had for this blog is no longer appropriate. In was planning on dropping the blog all together, but decided I would just switch it from a travel themed blog to a more general blog.

So on that note I will start things off with a bang (wink wink). Last night, around 3 am, I'm sitting at home half asleep in my chair reading. When suddenly I hear a loud double boom like someone had fired both rounds of a double barrel shotgun inside my house. The whole RV shook and rattled fiercely. Adrenaline rushing through my system jerked me to full alertness. My mind quickly scrambled to make sense of what had happened, my immediate conclusion was someone ran into the side of my RV with a golf cart and then my water tanks or something fell off. (I've been having slight trouble with my water tanks leaking, so the idea came to my mind quickly.) Scared, I ran outside with a flashlight and examined the area. My neighbor was doing the same thing. Both our rigs were unscathed. All the animals and birds in the area seemed to be startled awake, the woods around me seemed to be alive with just about every one of them crying out in alarm. Someone had to have fired a gun, this was louder then fireworks or thunder. I thought to call 911 and report it, then decided I would instead look online at live 911 calls and see if anyone else had done the same. Nothing came up and I slowly calmed down and decided it wasn't important. Long story short, space shuttle Endeavor landed safely.... >.>

Oh, also, it is June 1st, the first day of hurricane session. So, nature having received the memo, sent a 'quasi-tropical-storm' (as the weather man says,) through today.... That was fun.

Aaaaanywaaays, See ya all around.

P.S.
My parents left me here with no way to get around or anything. Getting to the store is hard, send food please.



P.P.S.
I'm joking, had to make a jab at my parents somewhere in here, no need to really send food Grandma.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Williamsburg, to Memaws!

We're staying at the Outdoor World in Williamsburg, VA. Which is a beautiful woodsy campground. It's always kind of scary pulling into this campground because the trees are more present through out the actual camping area compare to most Thousand Trails; which basically translates into everyone except my Dad being scared of hitting one as we're pulling in. Once we do get pulled in it is nice being in a campground that actually feels like camping.

The first day after we pulled in me and my brother headed over to Busch Gardens. During this time of year they model the park after a Halloween theme. For those that have never been to the Busch Gardens here, it is made to resemble various areas through Europe, and is divided into such areas as Italy, Germany, France, England and Ireland. During this time of year they split the areas into different legends and monsters. For example, Germany has Vampires and Werewolves and France has Ghouls and Ghosts. In each section they had a haunted house based on that theme.

They did very well in my opinion on playing on these themes. I have never been in a haunted house before then, and it was a unique experience doing it with my brother. Him and I don't really respond to fear like most people around us did, In fact we look at it kind of humorously. I remember everyone glaring at me after watching Paranormal Activity because I couldn't stop laughing. And I'm sure the employees trying their hardest to scare us here didn't much appreciate us just laughing at them and making comments. For example, A guy jumped out of the bushes to scare Austin, and all he said was "Come on Dad, get out of the bushes." Though most scares were responded with something along the lines of "Why Hello there, how are you doing?"

Tomorrow we are heading over to my grandmothers house. We always love to visit her, and it will be nice to see her now both because its close to the family centered holidays, and because her birthday was very recent (also, it's not snowing yet, which makes things easier for us with the RV.) All in all I think its just about the perfect time for us to visit. As always I'm looking very much forwards to visiting her.

Williamsburg a a great city to visit, the historical activities are countless. Its raining a bit these last few days, but thats fine, I like rain. It was warm when we arrived, but luckily the rain has brought with it cooler weather. We haven't gotten around to visiting any of the historical sites so far this visit, but I'm sure we will. I'm trying to enjoy everything as much as possible seeing how these are probably the last few months I will be with my family, and the last few weeks we will be somewhere other then Florida. I hope everyone is enjoying the Halloween session, and I hope to see all my loved ones soon.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Quiet, quiet, He speaks...

Alright, updates since last post.

After we were in Michigan we headed over to Niagara, New York. The falls were simply amazing, but visiting Canada for the first time is where most of my memories lie. We only actually visited the falls themselves for one of the days we were there, which honestly was enough. I would have enjoyed staying in the area longer, but either way I'm glad we had the opportunity to stay.

After spending ~4 days at Niagara, we headed over to Holley, New York. The area was very beautiful, and while we were they're the leaves were changing colors. The Red Rock campground we visited there was very nice, and is at the top of my list for non-Thousand Trails campgrounds. (The one in Niagara was nice too, but we didn't stay there long enough for me to get attached to it.) It was nice to walk along the Erie Canal in the brisk Autumn chill that you don't really get to experience in Florida until mid to late winter.

After spending 2 weeks in Holley, we headed down to the Thousand Trails park in Hershey, PA. I've heard a ton of hype about this park, so I was expecting a lot; and it has lived up to all of it. The park is big, clean, and just generally nice. The facilities have all you can ask for from a park. My only two gripes are:
  1. The showers don't stay on for longer then ~12 seconds. There is a button you have to keep pushing 1000 times to keep the water running.
  2. The tennis courts arn't lit. (A small qualm that is easily settled by playing during the day.)
All in all though, the pros out weight those two small cons. We're going to be here a week which just doesn't feel long enough. Rene and Mira are here, which makes leaving difficult. Afterwards we should be headed to Williamsburg, VA [again] which I am looking forward to because of the chance to visit Busch Gardens again. So until my next blog post, see you later. You may now resume what you were previously doing.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Here you go grandma!

I know you've been dying for me to update [here, instead of small lazy posts on facebook]. I'm to lazy to start up X11 sometimes, and the internet is always slow enough to discourage me from using it. But where I am at has a decent connection, so here it is.

After my last post, we visited my grandmothers house. Me and my brother spent the week there and had a great time. We then headed south to North Carolina for my dad to do some job training. The park we stayed at had free coffee and a nice air conditioned and beautiful lounge, but I didn't end up spending much time in it, I was caught up in a book and Austin was still at my grandmas, and my parents were doing their job training, so I spend most of my time with Coco. While there we went over to the mountains that boarder NC and TN. Saw some awesome waterfalls and the highest mountain in the Appalachian Trail and Little Switzerland. We ate at some Mexican restaurant that looked shabby but the food was to die for, which seems to be a common theme amongst Mexican restaurants.

Afterwards we headed over to the Pidgin Forge area of Tennessee. The Smokey Mountains were cool, but it seems that they are not what they use to be because of smog and such; which is a shame. There are more attractions in Pidgin Forge then in Orlando which shocked me more then anything because its in the middle of Tennessee, similarly though everything is expensive. My Aunt and Uncle and their kids hung out with us here, and this was around me and my moms birthday because we celebrated that then.

Then we headed up to Mercersburg, Pennsylvania to do my dads first job. I went with him often and had a fun time helping him out. He did fairly well for his first job and I was very proud of him. Then we headed up to Springfield, Vermont and everything was dead as nails. We were unable to sell enough Ads there.

Next we headed to Jefferson, Ohio where we met up with Rene and Mira which was really cool. It was nice to be back in Thousand Trails playing pickleball with friends. We headed to Cortland, Ohio to play with a bunch of people that play over there. The people there were incredibly nice, and very fun to play with. We went out to eat one nice with Rene and Mira at a some lodge like restaurant there, and they had the best burgers I have ever had. Mira made some spaghetti one night for us all to eat, and the sauce was delightful, and my mom and dad made a turkey dinner another night to return the favor. Me and my brother played billiards often and everyone but my dad went around and viewed the covered bridges in the area. It was all very fun.

Next we went to Celina, Ohio for another job. It was a very nice area surrounding the Great Lake in the middle of Ohio. Unfortunately the whole area was suffering because the lake has some algae in it that disables the lake of use. I don't really know the full story, but my understanding is that it could paralyze you, so you can't even touch the water. The good news is that they think they have an effective algaecide that they were testing while we were they that they hope might work and be able to fix the problem. I have my fingers crossed for the area because it was a very nice place. The tap water tasted like rust, if you're in the area, buy bottled.

After that we headed north to Gaylord, Michigan were we are at now. The campground here is very nice and the weather is nicer. Great staff, nice facilities, and good Internet. I hope to post pictures soon.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Pass the catch up, please.

Alright, I suppose I have some 'splainin to do. We went to NC as I explained what feels like forever to do. The park there was really nice as far as scenery goes, the lake and surrounding woods was amazing. On the other hand, they had just gone through spring break so the staff was less then pleasant.

We cut our stay there short to about 3 days, and came up to Gloucester, VA. It is nice to be back in Virginia again, I have to admit. I always tell people that I'm going to live in the city when I grow up, but there is still a big part of me that wants to live in the middle of nowhere as well; on the weekends at least, and as long as I can get Fiber Optic in the middle of this nowhere.

We stayed the first weekend hanging out with out good friends Dean and Marge, and I had the pleasant opportunity to meet two new friends; Rene and Mira. Dean and his wife left after the first weekend, and thats when my Uncles family came for a weekend. They have a boat here and so we got to ride around on that (pictures of the Chesapeake Bay soon to come). They left and since then we have not done so much except sit around.

I will say that the library here is very nice, much nicer then even the new library in [west] Boca Raton. Lots of books, audio books, and fast free Internet. I would have, as promised, uploaded more pictures but due to a simple irreversible mistake I deleted my pictures folder in linux; no recycling bin. I did manually recover some files by having to do a full disk scan and blah blah blah tech stuff, but the program I used to do so wasn't that great and so mainly failed. If I had Steve Gibson's SpinRite I might have had more success. [www.grc.com for more info on that - its not shameless for me to plug in Steve here in this case.]

Welp, as I write this my Uncles family just came back, so I guess I have to leave. I intend to have pictures up soon, the net here is constantly going in and out so I might not be able to upload until we go back to the library...

Anyways thats all from me,
Speak to you soon.
-Love from Kenny.

P.S.
My thumb hurts. [Eddie Izzard fans delight.]

Monday, April 12, 2010

On the Road Again...

Finally, much to my mothers relief, we are on the road and heading out today. We're leaving Florida behind with only me shedding tears on that fact, and we're heading to Summerton, South Carolina. A name that is hard to live up to since we are coming from the sunshine state, but I'm sure its a nice enough place.


Auburn stole back Ace during the past weekend much to my displeasure. My mom is happy about that though [shakes fist], only because he was shedding his winter coat during the week he was here. I'm sure all the mothers are nodding in agreement with her though.

I have to sit next to this guy the whole way there. He wants you all to know he got his post up minutes before I did, therefore he wins, what do you think? ^^

Friday, April 9, 2010

Soon, my pretty.

We're back in Clermont and will be heading north some time next week. We're all getting excited... I guess. For the past week I've been taking care of my sister's dog, Ace, who I adore a lot.


Other then that there hasn't been much happening. Auburn should be coming over tomorrow which will be cool.