We did it! We loved it! WE want to do it again!
Our Skipper, Linda, assembled crew & passengers at 6:30 am, assigned positions and off we went! Our neighbor Renato at the wheel, Linda as co-pilot, Melissa, the helmsman"s wife and I as passengers. Destination Cedar Key, 150 mi North on Fl"s West coast. Trip up was "incident free'. delightful, and Linda"s cheeks got sore from grining. We took a turn around the key, and settled in at Sunset Isles RV park. Got a waterfront site w/50 amp, W/S,and Fire container,wood & a picnic table. Took down the bikes, and pedaled into town. A seafood lunch, and gawking took up the rest of the day. Pedaled, and walked (not used to bikes), and stopped for a tour of a clam hatchery, and farm. Camp fired, roasted marshmellows, and I crapped out. Spent a comfortable night in the Barth, met nice folks, and another "incident free" trip home. it was great. Campground cost $45 for the night,fuel spent 44 gal. 399 mi. covered.

Don,

...Sounds like we both used the same weekend for our new-to-us Barth shake-down trips.....although your activities sound a little bit "more sophisticated" than mine...

Like you, we piled friends & family aboard and, maybe like you, stuffed the fridge with high-cholesterol goodies & adult beverages. (iced-tea for the Capt!)

We headed-out from the Wash. DC area across the Chesapeake Bay to Delaware (140mi) for the National Punkin'-Chunkin' Championships.....Tens of thousands of folks converging on a giant corn field to watch catapults & air cannons heave & shoot orange gourds over 3000 feet...What a hoot!

The Barth-Party-of-Eight probably didn't quite fit-in 'cause none of us had tatoos, Harley-Davidison Tee shirts or Skoal hats, but nobody seemed to care and a fun time was had by all!....

For anyone with a mechanical interest, this is the motherload of innovation & creativity...I could have spent days just studying the "technology" used by Jim-Bob and Billy-Joe in their quest for veggie-hurling fame & fortune by building the Perfect Punkin' Chunkin' machine.........

One catapult had a misfire, with an 10 lb punkin launched straight up over the crowd...My 9th grade geometry immediately came into play, and we were able to avoid Ground-Zero, although a couple of us did go home with punkin'-shrapnel on our clothes....

The trip home across the 3-mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge required some hair splitting between two Jersey walls because of construction, leaving me with exactly a 1/4" on either side (My wife claims it was more like 2'+....The truth is probably somewhere in between....)

Punkin' Chunkin' is an annual event - same time, same place. Mid-Atlantic Barthites ought to check it out for plain-ole silly fun....Where else can you park for a buck, consume dine-o-mite crab cakes & BBQ, ride a mechanical bull for three bucks and take home a complimentary tin of Copehagen snuff?

Hundreds & hundreds of motorhomes at the event...but only ONE that was riveted together in Milford Indiana over a quarter century ago...Geeze, Ya just gotta love it !

If your house is like ours, you've got the maps & brochures out, lookin' for Where-To-Next?....!!

Punkin' Chunkin' info:
http://www.punkinchunkin.com/

Lee
'78/24'/P-30/454
The "Silver Bullet..."