Stayed the night at the ballfield. Nice and quiet. On our way the last 45 miles this morning. Arrived at our site with no more trouble from the turd fairy.

Our street and site are pretty good but the damage was severe in the adjacent park. Junk piled 15 ft high on both sides of the road coming in. (pictures later)

Other than being on roadside a couple hours, not too bad a trip. Now I will have until spring to overhaul the air system.

Sunny and 75 here. Shorts and sandals. Life is good.

Have Barth, did travel

Just a note on drivers and our RVs. With our MHs it seemed that drivers always tried to get around us. It is common belief that RVs are slow. I did a bus conversion back in the 90s and it was totally different with the bus. For example a car at a stop sign never waited for us to pass and with the bus they did. I think it is the conception that buses drive fast.

Maybe I should paint "Greyhound" on the side of the Barth.

As we turned down the road to our park, this is what we saw:
Our park (Oakhaven) is ahead on the left. Sister park, Lettuce Lake, on the right.

Further down:

Lettuce Lake park flooded. Oakhaven did not. We had mostly wind damage to carports, screen porches and some roofs. Most of the debris is gone. We were lucky, our site and street had minimal damage. My car lost the cover but only one small scratch in the roof.

About half the units in Lettuce Lake were destroyed by flood. Four weeks later there is a dumptruck load of junk leaving the park every 20 minutes. They still have 10 left to break down to scrap and several others to tow away.

Park pictures to follow:

As hard as it is to believe, these pictures are what about every street from Venice to Ft. Myers [about 90 miles], looks like right now. Many trailer parks are 70 % destroyed, and many neighborhoods have blue tarp roofs everywhere. The thing that is different from past hurricanes is that it's not getting better. There is just too much devastation.

It will be years before things are normal, especially Fort Myers Beach area. Wow. We haven't had time to drive around much but after a month they are still piling up the debris, let alone disposing of it. It will take a long time to get rid of it. We came in on Highway 72. The corner where 769 joins had been 8 ft under water, not storm surge but 18 inches of rain covered the central plains, all draining down the Myakka and Peace river. Arcadia was under water. I will see if there is anything left of Navigators, probably nothing there.

Our park residents worked like dogs to help clean up our park. Mostly done and the pool is back open. My 85 yr old neighbors from MI lost half their skirting around their park model. Much of it was saved by another neighbor. I will reinstall what he saved. I may have to scrounge a few pieces to finish but there is plenty of material around! A little more yard cleanup and we'll be done.

Last death toll I saw was 118 people. Truly a bad, bad storm.

Navigators is closed with no word on re-opening, but they sound hopeful. Luckily the storm surge stayed south or Englewood would have been much worse, but there was still a lot of rain flooding everywhere. I had a customer that was ordered to evacuate because he was in B, so they went to a friends house in C and their house just had some exterior ceiling and pool cage damage, but the house they went to had water up to the car windows. I was in a neighborhood of really nice homes that were under 3 feet of water for 4 days. It's everywhere.

Oakhaven park got the pool open and we had a pool party on Sunday. Good to see some of our winter neighbors again. We had sunny and upper 80's all week.

We left Monday morning in the trusty 09 Prius for the long ride home. We drove through Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. Stopped for some sleep at the KY Welcome Center. Later, we continued through Kentucky. About 3AM we saw flashing lights of police car and wrecker up ahead on the right. We slowed down and merged left as we approached. Only other traffic was a large truck ahead of us. We merged left (3 lanes here)
Just as we near the cars and wrecker, we see a deer carcass appear from under the truck, right in the middle of the lane. Too late to avoid, we ran right over it. Some damage to the lower front skirt and lots of skin and hair under the whole car. Minimal damage, could have been much worse.

In retrospect it is obvious what happend. The car being loaded on the wrecker had hit the deer. In the time it took to summon a police car, a wrecker, and get the car half onto the wrecker nobody thought to drag the deer off the road? Thanks a lot guys...

Made it back to Kalkaska Tuesday morning without further incident. The brakes on the Prius got badly rusted over the summer in Florida, so I replaced rotors and pads Friday. I can get 2 rotors and a set of ceramic pads for $80, so not much to pay for letting the car sit idle. The same thing happened to my Mercury when it sat. I have not seen stainless steel rotors, that would be handy. I guess $80 for new brakes each year is not too bad.

On Wednesday through Thursday morning our tree trimmer guy came to remove 11 trees. A 3ft oak, 8 pines from 10" to 24" and a couple 16" maples. Kept them and us busy cleaning up. They took all the pine, left me the hardwood for firewood. I have much cutting and stacking to do.

We will return to Florida in mid December. Meanwhile I will not be doing Barth projects for a while!

So, in all my almost 80 years on this ole Earth, never heard of a single soul that ever hit and damaged their car with a dead deer!! Leave it to Steve to make a name for himself as a one of a kind!!!

Actually, Liz was driving at the time.

I was disappointed the driver, the police officer or the tow driver did not bother to drag it off the road. The car being towed was halfway on the truck. They must have been there for a while. I'm sure they heard it when we got it. The semi cleared it but we did not.

It was a clean second kill... 18 gauge bottom skirt, point blank range, center of mass, about 80 feet per second.

We made it back home and I repaired the skirt. The old 09 Prius rides again. It has been a really good car. 197,000 miles now. Overall average 46 mpg. Other than brakes and tires, it had no service needs until around 190,000 miles. Oxygen sensor and water pump replaced. It has saved me around $15,000 in fuel costs so far. I put on new rotors and pads for $80. They got rusty sitting around in Florida.

Back to yard work. I will work on the coach air system when I return to Florida in December. Meanwhile, it is fully winterized.

That is weird the cops did not remove the carcass. Well just happy you, Liz or the car were not hurt.

Sounds like the car even though it is a Toyota has been a good ride for you and Liz. It was not that long ago if a car made it to 100K one felt that it was a good thing. I expect my old Mercedes to get to at least 500k!! Nowhere near as good of gas milage as your Prius though. last year it did need $3000 in Maintenace, nothing serious replaced it is just a high cost to keep on the road and I cannot even get it up in the air to change the oil, thing sits too low to even get a jack or ramps under it.

Hey Steve, hope you closed all your windows, looks like we're in for another blow!

Well, I've had enough. First week of November was mild and sunny. Since then cold and snow. Several mornings in 20's and upper teens. Not a lot of snow but it stayed a while. Days are short and overcast. Yeah, I ran the snowblower a couple times....

21 this morning, the lake froze over during the night.

Time to go back to Florida. The old Prius is almost packed and we will leave Saturday morning for sunshine and warmth. It will turn over 200,000 miles this trip. The Monarch awaits us for our comfortable winter home.