Charles W. Moore

Hamcation 2018

This will be the first Hamcation we have attended, without W9LKI silent key, but we made reservations today and plan on attending but staying in a nearby Elks Lodge.  They do not take reservtion but wrote in tht we were coming.  All these tickets are directed towards First Assembly who have graciously said we could direct our mail to them: Thanks Pastor Register and Amanda.

We would love to stay at the EV Park at Hamcation but the policy is no cancellations and the lot can be really, really muddy. So instead we woll drive 45 minutes each day just to stay at the Elks Lodge 1973.

3 January: Clay County Fair RV Park

The park is currently underwater due to torrential rains, threatened snow and tonights hard freeze warning.  Schools are closing, TV’s warning of the need to stay home tonight as the ice builds up. SAM and I are holed up in the RV but SAM did take Abby outside for her morning constitutional, both dressed in rain suits, and both were happy to be back inside the cocoon of warmth and dryness.  Our travel tonight will be restricted and we are praying the power will not go down – otherwise it will be the generator if it starts OK. I am glad we filled up on propane.

This morning we signed up and paid for another 30 days of stay here at Clay County Fair RV Park.  We will see what happens after that.  Jess will be down in a week ± and we have a lot to see in just the one weekend she will be here and after that who knows when we will see her again.  We want to go to Whitey’s Fish Camp for lunch one of the days, Fernandina Beach town and St Augustine.  Within Jacksonville we want to see a few things too. This is a lot to do in two days.

We have been re-instated as card carrying members of the Clay County Library system.  We can now check out audio books on cd and have listened to one are on the second, The Third Wave is the one we are listening to right now. Below are the three on tap now but I may make the list expand over the winter:

–Killing Lincoln

–The Third Wave

–First Hostage

In a loosely related vein, I just read that Kaspersky antivirus software could be use to filter certain test strings and then possibly send these to the Kaspersky cloud servers for inclusion into filtering algorithms.  Here is the link to the whole article and trust me it is scary:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/technology/kaspersky-lab-antivirus.html?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

January 1, 2018: Clay County Fair RV Park

Monday dawned with the sound of rain on the roof and then wind and then high wind. I stayed up for a couple of hours after 0430 hrs but eventually went back to sleep and woke up at 0859 by the clock.  It was still raining and the temperature is 37° per the local weather. The forcast is for night time freezing temperatures all week.  I can see the sheets of light rain and mist flowing by the RV drivers screen.

Finished the audio book of “Killing of Lincoln”.  This was well worth listening to or reading. There are unanswered questions.

December 31: Clay County Fair RV Park

Sunday:  We arrived at First Assembly a little ahead of time to a half full parking lot.  Wow, we thought, people must be arriving all at once.  We went inside and picked out a seat in the right, center aisle about half way back as has become our custom. To make a long story short, the seats never did fill up and the crowd was sparse by FA standards.  The message was on “The Gospel according to Abraham” by Sr Pastor Bill Register.  This is one of his old messages that had been dusted off.  Since we did not remember hearing it before it was new and fresh.  The message centered around Galatians 3:8 and Hebrews 11:3-9?.

After,  we went to the Publix that is near the church and restocked our larder with $77 worth of food.  Their prices were a little high on some items and lower on others.  You have to watch closely. As the clerk was ringing up the items I spotted a $7.50 go by so at the end I ask here to confirm the price on the large olives – yep, it was $7.50 so we said we did not want that.  Later, SAM went to the shelf and sure enough the price was correct but in the wrong spot.

The sun was out in the morning but became overcast and then became sunny again and then overcast after a few hours.  The weatherman promises to have a week of below freezing temperatures – yuck.  Indiana is to have below zero temperatures.  In the evening we went to the Elks to a wedding dance to which we were invited.  It was fun and SAM dance a lot and me some.  At the dance we found out that Handlebar Nick had died on this boat.  This is one of the first people we had met after we bought Inspiration II. We sold him our old, heavy hard bottom dingy for $50 and he was happy to have it.

We arrived back at the RV about 11PM and ushered in the new year and I went to sleep right away and that finished the day of New Years Eve.

December 30: Clay County Fair RV Park

We spent the day running around Flemming Island, talking on the radio, lounging around and listening to barking dogs.  After several abortive trips we finally found just the right eye lags for the TV mount.  Now I think it is secure so we do not have to demount it when starting a move.  We will see on the next move.

We are now using the route 315 to 17 to Flemming Island and it takes 15 minutes less by avoiding Green Cove Springs stop lights.  I stopped in GCS at the library where they have us on file. The new library card was $1 so it was a bargain.  The first audio book I checked out was “Killing of Lincoln”.  It is sort of a recap of the last days of the Confederacy and how Grant/Lincoln allowed very generous surrender terms by not even taking Lee’s sword and telling confederacy  troops to just go home.  We shall see if the utopian surrender of Lincoln was justified.  Now comes 8 more cd’s of 8 hours length within a known outcome.

All this reminds me of the aggressive conservative nature of homo sapiens.  I have the view that higher thinking man does not have a conservative nature but an experimental, exploitative posture of positive disposition.  the conservative mans is basically afraid of everything and wants to cautions us to control too much experimental nature.

Nobility was an effort to subvert the masses by knowledge intimidation.  When education creeped upon the scene,  nobility no longer had a monopoly over knowledge. Yet, we revere the institution and this even more proves my point.  It all boils down to knowledge.  Those without it hate those that have it.  The knowledge balance of power has shifted so now Facebook and Twitter allow those with no knowledge but disagreeable disposition to shout down the more positive moderate elements of human nature. We are poorer for the experience of most internet media.

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29 December: Clay Co Fair

Today we spent some money – again.  Our Everpure water filter arrived from Amazon as did the silicon paste I have been waiting for.  After picking them up at First Assembly we went to the Walmart on 220/Hwy 17.  We located the RV section at the store and on the way back to that section I ran into a store employee talking to a lady about the Black Decker Lithium Battery Sweeper. Coincidently, SAM & I were looking online at that same sweeper for $77 on Amazon. The Walmart price was $59 so we bought the last one – yea a score.  We also bought a Camco water filter and its price was great – cheaper than Amazon.

When we got back to the RV I installed the Camco filter.  We will wait on the install for the Everpure 0.5 micron filter ( goes to a drinking water spigot and to the icemaker).  Now I am listening to amateur radio 27225 on my Allstar mobile node 43584 and getting tired.  I have to fight this tiredness!  If I take a nap I will not sleep all night tonight.

We are going to the Elks in Green Cove Springs tonight for Meatloaf.  I’ll let you know how it was in tomorrow’s blogline.  Cheers for now.

December 28: Clay County Fair RV Park

So far we like the CCFRP.  The price is good and the place  is nicely lit, good water, 50A electric, sewer, 43 TV stations and 5 bars of Verizon cellular.  A real plus is that the EOC is adjacent to there is police presence here continually.  We made the move yesterday 27 December and it was not eventful:  SAM drove the Civic and pulled the Tow Dolly while I drove the RV.  The manager helped us back in and we slowly set up without panic. The site is quite level but we added wood blocks to spread out the loads on the sand base.

Today is an overcast rainy day with fog and haze:  all-in-all sort of depressing but you do not feel bad about staying inside.  This gives me time to write the blog and do some little projects.  Our coffee maker has a hairline crack and I am going to try some Permatex flowable windshield sealer to overcoat the crack. That should be interesting.  The more I think about it the bigger the job becomes 🙁

The day after Christmas we went to Harbor Freight to get the free switchable LED lights.  I bought some XL Vinyl gloves and a metal Y valve for the RV.  Our old valve no longer turned so it is junk.  We use it to fill the onboard tanks and wash vehicles; however, here at the park they do not allow washing  vehicles and that is good considering the base is fine sand and it would get everywhere.

25 December 2017: Christmas Day

We awoke and greeted each other with Merry Christmas and I put SAM’s card into place on the chair where she would see it – it took until noon before she sat down and saw it. I had to use subterfuge to keep it hidden for several days. It was a surprise and she did enjoy the “Jesus is the Reason” card.

After that we went to a new Chinese Laundry that was open.  We filled three front loading but smaller machines and later used only two dryers.  The total cost was $10.25 for about 30+#.  After that was a pretty uneventful Christmas Day.  The highlight was talking with Marc, Beth and Jessica as the carried on with their busy lives.

The Christmas Letter 2017 only had about 5 bounces and I resolved three of them. I am now using Google to store the lists and contacts so hopefully, the bounces disappear. Love and Joy to everyone!

24 December: Elks Orange Park

Today dawned hot and humid here in Orange Park.  SAM made the comment that with these temperatures we could stay up here all winter. I met Tom in the next RV and we talked a bit before he departed. for a few days to return on Wednesday to the Elks here.  We bid him adieu as we plan to leave on that day if we can get into the Clay County Fair RV Park ( more on that later). The picture is our Christmas Letter picture and is of this year.

Today is Christmas Eve day and we went to “our” winter church down here in Flemming Island.  Wow, the Associate Pastor had a wonderful sermon “What Christmas Means”.  The message lead seamlessly into everyone saying a version of the sinners prayer and leading into everyone who has accepted Jesus into their heart is now saved. Most everyone came out of the church buoyed up and happy and full of brotherly love.  This evening we went to the candle light service where Pastor Bill Register PhD present the “The True Christmas Tree”.  the true Christmas tree is not the pine Christmas tree but the cross of Calvary.

After morning church we went down to Green Cove Springs to check out the Clay County Fair RV Park west of town on 16.  There appeared to be plenty of space and the periphery sites had sewer hookups.  There was at least one Class A in a spot so they should accommodate us reasonably well.  The lots are not real level and slope to the back for drainage.  We will have to get some pavers or more wood blocks to build up for our rear jacks.  Tuesday we will  call to see if we can get

Taken in October of 2016

into the park.

The days of 22 & 23 December were spent writing the Christmas Letter 2017 and misc stuff required of rv’ers like dumping, food, food shopping and a few dances at the Elks. The evening of the 23 td was the blow out Elks dance and locally famous band arrived and set up as we ate our burgers & fries at the Elks. More and more people arrived and a real dance came about and they were a good band.  We stayed until 10PM but I had to pry SAM away from the music and the dance floor. Some of the dancing couples were almost pro quality and it was a bit intimidating and we both wanted to lead.  Two good days leading up to the 24th.

21 December: Orange Park

We remain at the Elks in Orange Park and signed up for another week. I cannot tell you what we have done since the last blogline on the 19th. In general, we removed the aft stateroom old analog crt tv and installed a 24″ flatscreen with a Roku attached. The first pass through yielded 50 TV stations here in the Jacksonville area. We are quite pleased since it proves the antenna does really work and that the Roku attaches successfully to the Verizon hotspot. Next comes the forward TV and we will be set.

Last night was the Elks Christmas dinner and we attended and met several new couples. It was fun and we slept well sated. Today we went looking for a wireless mouse and a battery powered sweeper. We found a Logitech mouse and did not find the sweeper. It seems my onboard mouse is very sensitive and just takes off doing strange things so the external mouse is a Godsend.

It appears we signed up SAM successfully for Obamacare but we will find out more tomorrow it it was totally successful or if even more hoops are necessary for us to jump through. Then came the bills to pay and now we await going over to the Elks so say howdy. All in all we have been pretty busy. Tonight I want to finish the Christmas Letter 2017 and partially emailed out. However, I am a bit tired from all the stress so it may not get done.