The End

Well not really the end, just the beginning, but the end of our beginning if that makes any sense. We made it back to Tampa, parked in front of moms house, and proceeded to load everything that was ours into the trailer. We spent the second night in an abandoned parking lot, where we slept a lot more comfortably. The next morning, I spent about an hour calling around to find a place to set it until we moved on. We found a cheap park called McCormick's, and once we were loaded back up, is when we found out our battery didn't hold a charge. We had to call my sister and jump the trailer to close it up. We made it to the rv park, which turns out the rv aspect of the park was more of an after thought, their main business was being a water ski and motor sports arena, which was cool to watch, but was really terrible as a park. There was nothing there to do out in the middle of no where( which was nice), but was perfect for our needs. All we need at that point was a place to get organized and settled while we scourged the Internet for traveling opportunities.

While we were getting settled, Kurt got an electrical job at the base. Life carried on as normal, then in June, we got our first volunteer position at the local State Park, Hillsborough River in fact. Which was great, during the interview, I was asked if I could do interpretive signs, "Sure" I said, "I would love to do it", I had no idea what it really was, turned out, It was my job to change all informational signs, which was fun and easy. Then got changed to cleaning bathrooms, which was just easy. Kurt continued to work while I continued to look for opportunities and a larger truck, remember we only had the 1500. I found one at the Apalachicola Nation Forest and we left in the end of August.

We made the trip with someone else towing our trailer, Kurt didn't trust the truck now that everything was loaded into it, and went to Northern Florida. We got to the park and set up shop. Kurt continued to work in Tampa and was staying down there during the week and coming home on weekends, which only went on for 2 weeks then they laid him off, which was one of the only times I was glad for the lay off. Unfortunately, by the time they laid him off, the National Forest decided they didn't want us, we were there for 1 1/2 weeks, when I was informed that they didn't think I could clean bathrooms alone, with 3 kids to watch. Which was bull, come to find out the other couple there didn't like kids. I had 3 days to vacate. So again, I began looking for a place to go and a way to tow the trailer. As we were looking at renting a uhaul to move us, we meet a great family who lived across the street. The husband was a mechanic and gave Kurt some needed advice and conformed that the truck could handle our load. We just needed to upgrade the leaf springs.

When we arrived in Campbellsville.

I found us a little campground called Parker Farms in the middle of nowhere, which was pretty much every where in that part of Florida, and loved it. We stayed for a month, replaced the leaf springs with 3500 ones and replaced the shocks, now, we have the ass end to haul of load. We got our first workamping gig with Amazon and was scheduled to start the beginning of Oct. With him out of work and his unemployment not yet approved, I had to sell my van to get the gas money to get up there. It was either that or living in Wewahitchka, Fl. So I sold the van and that day we left for Kentucky, I was scheduled to start the next day. Talk about pushing it. We were almost into Alabama when the brakes on the truck went out. Being on a tight schedule and low on cash, we stopped to get LOTS of brake fluid and continued on, it was dark and he couldn't even see to determine what was wrong. So we traveled 10 hours and 600 miles on trailer brakes and down shifting talk about white knuckling it. We arrived in Campbellsville just in time for orientation and I began working the next day. Meanwhile, Kurt got new brake lines, replaced then, and we were as good as new. This concludes the End of the Beginning. Next up, The Adventure! continues.

The ridge at the Campground.