Big Bend sausage soup

Victoria came up with this soup a couple days ago here in Big Bend. We had been planning to make white chicken chili but the chicken was spoiled, so instead she went freestyle. This is much better than any white chicken chili I ever had.

If you enjoy spicy food then you have to give this soup a try. It was spicy enough that I didn’t put hot sauce in it! The mixture of the jalapenos and serrano peppers really provides both heat and flavor to the soup. The sour cream really mixes well with the heat and personally I think some cheese would go good on the top (habanero jack!). If you like Tex-Mex but can’t handle too much heat you can seed all of the peppers along with the ribs or even leave a few of the peppers out altogether. Shoot us a comment if you try it out. Buen provecho!!

Big Bend sausage soup

2 cans white beans (one small white and one navy or pinto, rinse and drain can juice)
2 corn ears grilled
4 jalapenos diced (remove seeds and ribs)
2 serrano peppers sliced (keep seeds and ribs)
1 can green chilis diced
3 garlic cloves minced
1 box chicken broth
1 lime
8 ounces of smoked sausage (chopped after grilling)
olive oil
salt

Generously apply butter to corn and grill until browned all over. Grill sausage with corn. Put oil in skillet and cook peppers and garlic until soft (3 minutes) add salt to cooking peppers (helps release juice). Add green chilis. Pour in chicken stock and beans. Bring to boil and then simmer. Once sausage and corn is done, roughly chop sausage and remove kernals from corn with a chefs knife and put all into soup. Juice lime into soup (watch out for seeds). Simmer another 10 min or so and it’s done. Serve with a dollop of sour cream and chopped cilantro (optional). Soup is spicy, to make it milder remove seeds and ribs from serrano peppers.

Torreya State Park

Torreya State Park
Bristol, Florida

Five star scale rating
Scenery – ****
Campground – ****
Campsite – ***
Recreation – ***

Torreya State Park is named after the Torreya tree, an endangered pine species. Only 200 are remaining, some of which you can find, barely holding onto life, roped off at the park. However, most people don’t come to Torreya State Park for the Torreya trees, they come to hike. Being at the highest elevation in the state at 300 feet, you feel like you are in NC at times while hiking the trail. A mixture of Oak, Pine, and Cyprus trees fill the forest. Total amount of trail mileage is about 14 miles. The hike is pretty challenging with all the ups and downs all the while scanning the land for copperheads. We were forewarned about the prevalence of the high land moccasins. Considering we saw two dead and one alive, I also recommend keeping a constant vigilance for them. After all, we are in their house. Don’t fret, the bite is poisonous but won’t kill you or your dog. In fact the ranger told us his cat has survived being bitten twice!

The campground itself if one of the most quiet and serene I’ve visited. Originally built and maintained by the CCC, the park has a rustic feel to it with an awing overlook of the Apalachicola River. There are 18 campsites with water and electric hookups for $17.20/night. The sites are narrow but there is a thin section of trees dividing the sites, providing a little privacy. Tim’s first time backing up the RV was successful, twice… Since the camp host gave Tim the wrong spot the first time he had to do it twice. If rving isn’t your thing and you don’t have a tent then try to get a reservation for the Yurt! It looked really cool but unfortunately we didn’t get to see the inside. I highly recommend bringing mosquito repellent and tick repellent for hiking. Also make sure you bring all the food and supplies you need as the nearest store is twenty minutes away. The only other thing to do at Torreya State Park is touring the Gregory house, a colonial mansion. The tours are daily at 10 am EST for $3.

Time flies when you are Torreya State Park, literally. Don’t rely on your cellular device for accurate time. Because the park is located close to the division of the EST and CST zones, the hour will switch back and forth depending on where you are standing.

 

 

What is “Boondocking” and what do you need?

Two roof mounted panels
My Two 100 Watt solar panels mounted on the roof of our fifth wheel.

So before we left I had some additional equipment installed to allow us to boondock fairly comfortably. Your probably wondering what boondocking is. It basically camping without the usual hookups you get if you stay in a developed camp (Water, Electric, Sewer). Boondocking opens up where you can stay tremendously including National Parks, National Forests, BLM Land, and even Walmart parking lots if necessary. In most National Forests and BLM lands and many other types of wilderness you are allowed to camp any where as long as you are off the road. This allows you to not only save money(it’s usually free) but also gets you out of the sometimes crowded and loud campgrounds. There are also many “Primitive” campgrounds in these parks that allow RV’s but don’t have hookups. Being able to stay in those can be a real boon when the regular campgrounds are booked up.

The first items I had installed were two 200 watt solar panels along with a MPPT solar charge controller. This allows us to charge our batteries while camping without an electric hookup. This is important if you enjoy such things as lights. Another option for this that a lot of people go with is a generator. However they are loud, need regular maintenance, and have to be watched while running. The solar panels on the other hand need almost no maintenance (A wipe down periodically), are completely silent, and are fully automatic. The disadvantage is of course that they only work while the sun is up and to match the capacity of a large generator you would need a LOT of solar. Instead we plan to ration our electric “budget.” I do have a very small generator my dad gave me for backup if we have several days of overcast but we are not relying on it.

The panels I had installed were purchased as a kit from Amazon(there is a link below if your interested). The reason I chose to go with two 100 watt panels was because we currently have room for two batteries. A rule of thumb is to have one watt per amp hour of battery storage. The price on solar panels has come down drastically in the past few years, they are as much as a quarter the price now. This makes it so anyone who has an RV or a sailboat ought to have at least a panel or two.

I also choose to go with an MPPT charge controller versus a PWM because although it is slightly more expensive it is also quite a bit more efficient (as much a 25% in cool weather). They have kits with both types available on Amazon.

Solar panels are the number one item people add to their RV to prepare to boondock. Without them you would be limited to your battery capacity, usually only a day or two, or you could just forgo electrics all together. Considering we have slides that require electricity going without wouldn’t be fun and we want to have the ability to spend up to a week out enjoying solitude. We won’t be doing much boondocking till this summer as we are only spending a day or two in each spot so we can make it out west in a reasonable amount of time. Anyways, if you have any questions about our solar panels, fire away.

Check back in a week or so for part two where I’ll discuss what two other items we had to have before we left to be ready to spend some time outside of developed campgrounds.

[amazon asin=B00F865DS0&template=iframe image]

First night camping with the RV

Cooking our first dinner: Chicken Enchiladas
Cooking our first dinner:
Chicken Enchiladas

Location: Hanna Park Jacksonville, FL

Tim and I have tent camped at Hanna Park before, however this is the first time we have come here with a 31 foot behemoth in tow. In fact, as many of you already know this is our first of many nights we will be living, breathing, cooking, showering, number one-ing and two-ing in the RV. Which is why we decided to camp a couple nights in Jacksonville- to test out all the systems before leaving town.

It didn’t take long for us to make our first mistake. Driving down the shaded forest road to park at our site we quickly realized we had drove down the wrong row. It was geometrically impossible for us to maneuver our rig into the diagonal site. When we backed the rig up to correct, her ass went right into the bushes. I felt a slight panic come over me as I had no clue how to instruct Tim. It was at that moment two friendly neighbors came to our rescue. The veteran rv-er knew exactly how Tim needed to turn to get us out of the bushes, the other held the foliage away from the RV. I was impressed, hoping that we would one day acquire such sagacity. After getting out of the bush we repeated the process down the correct row with success. Instant relief. Next time, we will ask the park ranger the best way to approach the site.

So far everything is functional. Nothing broke on the drive here (knock on wood). Everything inside is clean and organized. The AC is blowing nicely and not too loud. I highly recommend the juice for the toilet (will post more on this in the future). Wish us luck, as we embark for Blackwater State Forest on Monday!

Click on picture below to load gallery! Inside and outside shots of the RV!

Itinerary: Florida to California

 

Check out the map above of our itinerary from Florida to California. You can click on each point to get the name and a bit of info.   Our trip is not set in stone as we don’t do reservations.  Some people feel more comfortable with a set plan, but we prefer a loose itinerary.  We don’t want to be obligated to leave a certain place if it’s really nice nor do we want to have to stay in a place if it’s super lame.  We plan on staying at each destination between 1 and 3 nights.  The reason why I stopped at the Mojave National Preserve is because from there the decision to go North or South depends upon where I take my first nursing assignment.

As far as our departure goes, we thought we were ready until we tried to turn the TV on in the RV and nothing happened….as you guys know this is a HUGE problem.  What is the heck are we going to do without a dang TV??  It turns out it is a simple fix with the electrical wiring.  It works out though because yesterday it occurred to me that for crossing borders we needed to obtain Marilyn’s proof that she is a clean, rabies-free, vaccinated American citizen!  So we took her to the vet today to get her shot, health certificate and bought a little extra flea medication for the road.

Thanks for reading friends, hopefully next time I post we will officially be full-timers!

Shooting for Wednesday!

"What to bring what to give away?"
“What to bring what to give away?”

I wish I could click my heels and magically find myself driving to our next destination. Unfortunately we still have tasks to complete before we can leave. After giving away half of our worldly possessions to Goodwill, we are now in the process of packing some items away into storage and moving other items into the RV.  Despite the fact that I’ve been inhaling dust all week and sound like Brainy from Hey Arnold, I must say it feels refreshing to purge. We are also getting some upgrades installed into the RV- solar panels and what not to prepare us for boondocking. After we get everything loaded up we are going to Savannah on Sunday to say goodbye to our family and close friends (que sad violin).  Then we will take a mini trip to Hannah Park in Jacksonville Beach to test out all the systems, including the “waste” system (ohh lawddd). If everything is functioning properly we will leave next week- shooting for Wednesday. Wish us luck!

The Excitement

Hello World!
Hello World!

Victoria and I are preparing to travel to Seattle within the next week or two as many of you are aware. Victoria quit her job and I have setup my business so I can take care of it on the road.

I have been on some pretty exciting trips in my life, many of them with Victoria, but this is stepping it up a notch. On many of our travels Victoria kept a written travelogue and I always told her she need to make it a blog. So, now I’m building one for both of us. Victoria will probably post more about the actual travels and her assignments while I’ll post about more technical things related to the truck, RV, fifth wheel and the blog itself. At the bottom of each post it’ll show who wrote it, as if you couldn’t tell, lol.

I haven’t built anything other than canned websites in probably ten or fifteen years so the site will probably come together slowly. I’ll be fleshing out the articles about us, the truck, and the camper over the next few weeks. Comment if you have any suggestions. I’m hoping between the two of us we’ll post at least twice a week. I’m sure it’ll vary wildly depending on what we’re doing and where we are at.

I am also planning on having pages dedicated to the planning of each section of our journey. Please comment away on what we should or shouldn’t see. These pages will be updated as our plans come together more and more.

We’re excited about the trip and excited about this blog. I hope you all enjoy.

Tim and Victoria in Thailand
Thailand by ferry