Tuesday March 5th 2013 - Fort Lauderdale or bust

Tuesday March 5th - we get dropped off at the dealership by our friend, Tim. We re-arrange the boxes we dropped off last night. Next comes the one-hour training, which seemed like it was sufficient, as we don't really know what to ask. This is our first RV, after all.
I had anticipated a lengthy inspection at the border, but we were only asked the following questions:

Where are you from? (Toronto)

Where are you going? (Fort Lauderdale)

Is there a campsite there? (Yes)

Do you have any money over $10,000.00? (No)

Do you have any meats? pork / lamb (No)

Do you have any fruits and vegetables? (No)

How long are you planning to be away? (Until April 30th)

What do you do for a living? (retired)

What did you do at your last job? 

We stop at a Rest Area in Angola IN for the night as it started snowing.

We experienced problems with the propane powered heater, then the generator powered heater, so we nearly froze.

Moving Day - a very long day.

Monday March 4th was a day of being behind schedule all day long; from renting the U-Haul truck, to running overtime with the elevator, delivering the mirror in Kitchener, loading the RV (at the dealership) after hours, delivering the rest of our stuff that didn't sell at our friend's place, and crashing at our other friend's place for the night. We left the car behind at the Woodstock campsite so that we could leave from the RV dealership on Tuesday, after the training.

The apartment looks quite empty now as stuff has been sold, boxed up, or put in storage. This is the living room with the wall unit (still not sold at $300.00), but the dresser just sold for $260.00 to a neighbour on the 5th floor, and the tv has also been sold and will be delivered in London on Monday.

A lonely chair is all we have to use as a dining area. The mirror has been sold and will be delivered n Kitchener on Monday as well.

The spare bedroom is now a storage area for boxes (and my bike) that will go in the RV.

The walk-in storage closet is practically empty. There used to be a shelving unit packed with stuff. No more. The racking is now at our friend's storage locker in the lower level of his condo.

The Toronto International RV Show http://www.torontointernationalrvshow.ca/ - today we went there (near the airport) to check it out. There was a fairly good selection of campers, trailers, fifth wheel, but not very many motorhomes. The ones that were there were too big, but it was nice to compare. Rick was somewhat disappointed with the number of motorhomes, but I thought it was a good time, regardless. The entry fee for yesterday and today was $6.00 (half price). We made the right choice with the RV that we bought - size, make, model, price. We're happy and can't wait to load it up on Monday and leave for Florida on Tuesday.

Up until this morning, we still had 4 pieces of (large) furniture that we hadn't sold yet and would have dropped off in London at Rick's friend (Harry's) place for him to sell for us. This would have meant the 10' U-Haul would have been pretty tight with our stuff. As of this afternoon, someone bought Rick's old dresser for $50.00.

A neighbour in our building had seen my dresser a few weeks back and was interested in buying it, but the price was too high for her. I texted her this afternoon and asked her how much she was able to afford, and we settled on a price. She also expressed interest in looking at the sofa and wall unit. Boy, talk about last minute sales!!

Ok - so I've got a route all mapped out for the big trip on Tuesday. We'll leave the RV campsite in Woodstock, once we drop off the car for storage while we're in Fort Lauderdale until April 30th. We'll cross at the Sarnia / Port Huron border crossing and head Westward, then South towards Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville, Burmingham and Montgomery before we head into Florida. This route will assure that we'll miss most of the mountains and hills of the Appalachians. When you have a vehicle that only gets 8 miles to the gallon, every hill counts. I also planned where we would park the rv at rest areas so that we can get a few hours of sleep. This is not written in stone, and can change, but at least we have some sort of backup plan. For all we know, we may end up staying in a WalMart parking lot on one of those nights.

These past 2 or so weeks, we have been bored as we packed so much stuff without leaving us sans the day-to-day necessities. Now that we're getting down to the wire, we have a few things to do from our list that's keeping us busier. I have been volunteering at Hassle Free Clinic for the past 4 months or so, and tomorrow is my last shift (10am - 3pm). I'm going to miss the people there and also helping out people as best as I can.
We have some poly filler to plug the holes in the walls - they will paint once we're gone.
We've already made a couple of trips to our storage locker (our friend's' condo locker), and will need to make at least one more trip with Rick's Summer tires. He will change them once we get back in May. There's a bunch of small items that haven't sold that we think might sell at a yard sale this Summer.
On Sunday, we plan to cook the turkey we have in the big freezer - that way, we'll be able to make quick meals while we're on the road to Florida Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday.
On Monday, we have 4 drop-offs to make: Kitchener - we sold the large mirror and promised to deliver it; next is the camp site to drop off the gym equipment; then the RV dealer to put all of our belongings inside to get ready for Tuesday's trip, and finally at Harry's place (Rick's friend) to drop off Rick's tv, bed frame, the big freezer, a plant he once gave us and a few smaller items. We'll drop off the U-Haul at a location in London, stay at friends' place (Tim & Ejaz) on Monday night, then first thing Tuesday, we get our training on the RV, then on the road we go - hopefully by noon.

Well here we are, getting closer to the date - we've had a couple of 'open house' sales, but we still have 4 large items to sell: 2 dressers, a wall unit and the couch. We've reduced the prices on everything as low as we can go; I guess it's a bad time of year to try to sell stuff. We'll bring what doesn't sell to our friend, Harry's place in London, and he'll try to sell this from there. There is a bit of small items that we'll put in storage until we get back - I'm sure we can sell these items at a yard sale this Summer.
We have been to the banks a few times working out our finances for the RV. Thankfully, we started this early enough and gave the RV dealer lots of time to get our motorhome ready when we pick it up.
We found ourselves being bored lately as most of our belongings have been packed for a while now. It has been too cold to venture out for long walks up until a couple of days ago. Another large storm is upon us tonight, tomorrow and Thursday morning: rain, heavy snow and wind, so we'll likely be housebound again until it's' over. Hopefully there won't be any storms the day we leave.
We have mapped out our trip to try to avoid the Apalachians this time, going through: Indianapolis, Nashville, Birmingham, Montgomery, then through some local roads to cut through to I75 in GA, then in FL across I10 to Jacksonville, and finally to I95 all the way South to Fort Lauderdale.

The kitchen was our target today: sort through (and clean) the cupboards - what do we keep, what do we sell, what do we give away, what goes in the RV? Decisions, decisions! We found some glassware and bakeware that we can try to sell tomorrow. 5 boxes got packed and the cupboards are half empty.

Looking forward to our open house content sale tomorrow. Hopefully it will be more fruitful than last Saturday.

Now that we have secured a place to stay in Fort Lauderdale (Sunshine Holiday MHCC Resort) for 7 weeks (March 11th - April 30th); I am still comparing other places in the area. Our friends from Toronto and Kentucky who are currently still visiting in Fort Lauderdale have dropped by 3 places that are nearby their place, and have told me that Sunshine Holiday is the best choice of the 3. Last night, I found another one, which is further South, near the airport. When I called them to inquire about the 'seasonal rate' (mid November to end of April) I was told $7000.00. I nearly fell off the couch! That's more than double what they charge at Sunshine Holiday for the same dates. The RV pads there must be made of marble or something!!

On Tuesday this past week, we drove out to Woodstock to: check out the Post Office and fill out a 'mail redirection' form (our apartment to the campsite North of Woodstock) to start delivery on March 4th; then they directed us to the mail sorting plant there to see about obtaining a physical PO box at the campground. We had seen the old green style mailboxes at the campsite when we went to check out the place a few weeks ago. We also went to Canadian Tire, No Frills, Food Basics and brought some empty boxes back home so that we can do some more packing. All packed boxes are labelled with the contents, and indicated whether they are for 'storage' or 'RV'.
We have already packed several boxes as there are lots of things that we don't use because they are 'seasonal', or because we bought large quantities when it was on sale (cereal, salad dressing, etc).