RV Parks Near the Beach

Having lived in Florida most of our lives, we have a hard time going anywhere unless its close to a beach.  A little over a year ago we bought our first RV and our search began for RV parks and campgrounds near the beach.  There are only a few scattered around the Sunshine state and I think we have stayed in most of them already, until this weekend. There is a little known secret place in paradise in the Jensen Beach area out on Hutchinson Island where you can rent or own an RV lot, and some of them are waterfront lots.

Beachfront at Shuckers Island Beach Resort and Restaurant

Hutchinson Island is a barrier island on the Atlantic Ocean lying East of Stuart, Jensen Beach and Port St. Lucie that is accessible by two big causeways from the mainland. This stretch of oceanfront is filled with condos and restaurants with access to some of the most beautiful beaches on the East coast of Florida.

South Hutchinson Island

The area along the back side of the island overlooking the Intra Coastal Waterway was developed many years ago with waterfront mobile home parks that have now been converted to ownership communities as modular home condominiums, and some are still occupied with older mobile homes but many of them are being replaced with fancy modular homes while some are converted to RV lots with full hookups.  There are several parks to choose from, Holiday Out, Nettles Island and several other smaller parks that offer rental sites.  These aren't the traditional RV parks everyone is use to finding in a Google search.  You can find them mostly in the real estate listings for sale or rent since these parks are condominium or coop ownership parks.  Here is a site I found that shows some of the available rentals in Venture III:

https://www.vrbo.com/vacation-rentals/usa/florida/central-east/hutchinson-island/venture-3

We are fortunate to have a friend who owns an RV lot in Venture III and he had a vacancy the last 2 weeks in July, so we decided to park our Discovery there and enjoy a couple of extended weekends there.  I drove the RV up from West Palm Friday afternoon and setup on the site.

Dockage for Knot At Sea

We have good friends who live in nearby Stuart, just 15 minutes away and Debbie drove up after work.  We all settled in and went out for a bite to eat at a beachfront restaurant nearby, called Shuckers.  Everything you need is located nearby on the island, from convenience stores, grocery, pubs and lots of public beach access.






More about Venture III, Venture Out and Holiday Out, a combined residential mobile home community, where we were parked.  These sites are only available for monthly or seasonal rental, and not the traditional daily or weekly occupancy found in most RV parks.  So if you're looking for and extended stay near the beach or even a waterfront site to dock your boat right out the back door, I highly recommend this park for anyone who loves the island and beachfront lifestyle.  This community is very friendly, everyone waves as they go by with a nice mixture of young and old.  The community pool is a great place to relax and stay cool in the hot summer months and also meet some of the owners in this community.  Here's an aerial photo of where we are parked, and a few more photos of our first weekend on Hutchinson Island.

Dockage behind our Lot

Tuna Drive - the Street we are on

Several RV Lots looking out over Intracoastal Waterway

The View from Shuckers Beachfront Bar

Update - Monitoring the Diesel Engine with a ScanGauge

My new ScanGauge Advanceed Diesel Engine Monitor and Performance Gauge arrived the other day and I was anxious to hook it up and see what gauges my Caterpillar C7 engine would output. The installation was very simple and straight forward. The J1939 9 pin socket was located just below the instrument panel and to the left of the steering column. After plugging the ScanGauge adapter into the socket, I started the engine and the ScanGauge came to life after a few seconds and I did the setup per the instruction manual and began toggling through all the various gauges that my Caterpillar engine was reporting. Here's a list of what it displayed:

• Miles Per Gallon
• Miles Per Hour
• RPM
• Throttle Position
• Coolant Temp
• Average Fuel Economy
• Trip Fuel Cost
• Cost Per Mile
• Turbo Boost Pressure
• Battery Voltage
• Intake Air Temp
• Transmission Fluid Temp
• Gallons Per Hour
• Oil Pressure
• Engine Loading
• Horsepower

There are other gauges available, according to ScanGauge if you follow their instructions shipped with the unit.  You have to record the input from your particular engine and write down a bunch of codes and submit them to the ScanGauge technician and they will provide whatever additional info can be programmed into the memory.  I took the time to write down 50+ codes and have submitted them to the company.  We'll see what other info I might be able to monitor.

I found a convenient place to mount the ScanGauge on the Freightliner instrument panel, right below the tach/speedometer.  It's easily visible through the steering wheel and in line of sight of the road ahead while driving so as not be be a distraction.  Here's a couple of pictures:

I took it out for a test drive after it was mounted, and all functions are operating as advertised.  I'm glad to have this information about my diesel engine at my fingertips.  The ScanGauge is much easier than the factory installed engine monitoring system that's so hard to read and complicated to operate.

I would recommend the ScanGauge for anyone who is technically minded and needs to keep track of the health of the engine in their Diesel Pusher.

Our Round Trip Tour of America - Summer 2017

We've been doing some detailed planning for our Summer 2017 Tour of America.  We're planning on leaving right around this time next year.  Debbie and I came up with a list of all the people and places we want to visit, so I did some research online and found a trip planning site that's free and capable of detailed trip information.  For now, we put together a complete round trip online showing dates, times and points of interest on a website called Furkot.com.

Here's a summary of our intended route and highlights on where we plan to visit:

• Leaving Florida in mid to late July, 2017 on our first destination to visit with my brother in Greenville, SC.
• Greenville to Allentown, PA via the Blue Ridge Parkway with a stop through Washington, DC.
• Allentown to the Pocono Mountains for a few days camping
• Poconos to Duluth, MN to visit friends with a stop in Chicago.
• Duluth to Rapid City, SD to pick up friends from West Palm Beach, then camping in the Black Hills to see Mount Rushmore and surrounding area.
• Black Hills to Yellowstone National Park camping and sightseeing.
• Yellowstone to Helena, MT with West Palm friends to their family ranch.
• Helena, MT to Seattle area to visit long time Miami friends.
• Seattle to Portland, OR to visit family.  
• Portland to Las Vegas, NV with our son/wife via Pacific Coast Highway, San Francisco and sightseeing along the way.
• Las Vegas to Grand Canyon and surrounding area with daughter and family.
• Grand Canyon to Denver, CO to visit with friends and family.
• Denver to Harper, KS to visit with friends and family.
• Kansas to Florida with various stops along the way to visit friends and family.

Right now, this trip covers more than 10,000 miles and 3 to 4 months out on the road.  We will post a more detailed itinerary as our trip approaches.  Here is an overall view of our proposed route:

Monitoring the Caterpillar Diesel Engine in our Fleetwood Discovery

With my past experiences in maintaining diesel engines, I realized that the diesel in our motohome needs just as much attention as boat engines do.  I did some research for engine monitoring systems that are designed specifically for motorhomes and there aren't too many choices.  Modern diesel motorhomes are built on a couple of different chassis manufactures that have been around for quite awhile and our Fleetwood Discovery 39S rolls on a Freightliner chassis specifically for recreational vehicles.

Freightliner did a good job configuring the rolling chassis with the very popular Caterpillar 330hp 7 liter turbocharged C7 engine that provides many digital sensors that can be monitored via a standard J1939 plug found under the instrument panel at the drivers seat.  When I did a Google search for what was available for the J1939 interface, there were two products that popped up:

• SilverLeaf VMSpc that runs on a Microsoft Windows PC system.  There are advantages to this system in that all parameters can be viewed simultaneously and easily customized through the software interface, but it DOES require a laptop or Windows tablet mounted near the drivers seat.  It can get a bit crazy with the wires running to the engine interface plug and various power cords to keep the PC running, but this system is very robust.  The software is free, but you need to purchase the hardware interface that costs $395.

• ScanGauge, by Linear Logic is a much simpler system that provides the same information about the engine, in a small proprietary display unit that shows various engine data, four readings at a time. This system is a lot less expensive at only $159. 

I decided on the ScanGauge because it is much smaller and much less of a distraction while driving and the price fit my budget.  There is only one wire that provides the data and power and will mount very nicely above the instrument panel of our Discovery, just below and on center with my line of sight looking down the road.

As soon as it arrives and I get it installed, I'll provide a review and report on it's operation.  We're looking forward to a little cooler weather and heading out to our next adventure out on the road, with our new ScanGauge to keep track of our diesel engine performance and health.

Overheating and Radiator Issues - Camping at Jetty Park, Cape Canaveral, FL

Well, we finally resolved our overheating issues after a week in the shop.  The mechanic spent about 8 hours removing the rear bumper, lots of bolts, the hydraulic tank and shrouding to get the old radiator out, including the after cooler that's sandwiched together right behind the engine driven fan.  What he discovered was a completely clogged radiator and after cooler, that wasn't allowing enough air flow through the cooling fins, causing the coolant temperature to go well above normal operating temperatures.

Here's a few pictures showing the clogged condition:

Radiator and After Cooler Removed

After Cooler

After Cooler

Radiator

The installation of the new radiator went quicker than the removal process and a test drive showed normal coolant temperatures (max 192°) running at 65mph.

So we packed up Friday night and early Saturday morning headed up the coast for a week's stay at Jetty Park located right on the inlet and beach at Port Canaveral.  Everything went well on the 2 1/2 hour drive up I-95 with coolant temps never going above 192°.

This was our first lengthy stay in the Discovery and everything performed flawlessly.  Lots of friends and family coming and going and plenty of beach and pool time to relax and enjoy an old fashioned Florida East Coast vacation.

 Ahhhhh, cool drinks on the beach.  It doesn't get any better than this, huh?

Our campsite nestled in under the seagrape trees. It sure made things cooler in the mid-day sun.

We gathered for all the June Birthdays at a local restaurant located right on the waterfront at Port Canaveral.

One evening, just before sunset, it was a perfect evening for a family portrait on the beach.