Our winter in Fort Myers will come to an end on May 31 when we pack all the outdoor furniture into the “coach house” (aka, the 10 x 12 structure we use for my art studio / guest house / storage shed), pull up the jacks and hit the road for the summer.
But before we leave the already sweltering heat and humidity of Florida, we thought we would shake the cobwebs off the coach and take her on a short 3+ – hour drive across the state to spend a couple of days with our son, Dylan, and his wife, Abi. After being parked for seven months, it seemed like a good idea to take her for a test drive before embarking on the 6000-mile journey we have planned.
The first obstacle we encountered, after pulling the rig out into the road to ready it for hooking up our Jeep, was that the car would not shift to neutral to allow us to flat tow it. We recently had service done on the Jeep to put on an “anti-wobble” thingy to avoid future death wobble experiences while towing this year. Last year’s death wobble experiences were not fun. But we neglected to test the “fix” before now and low and behold, the car would not shift to the position it needed to be in so we can take it with us when we travel. (A good thing to find out now, rather than right before we leave for the summer, at least.)
Because we were just going to be staying a couple of nights, and our son was nearby, we opted to unhook the Jeep and leave it behind. Problem solved.
More bugs to work out
The drive was pretty uneventful for the first few miles until we noticed more and more black bugs hitting the windshield – and sticking.
May, we know, is prime mating season for lovebugs, and we have been warned about how ridiculous (and dangerous) they can be when you’re traveling. It got so bad at one point that it sounded like hail was pelting the windshield.
With bug carcasses piling up three deep on the glass, we pulled off at a gas station just to clear enough of them off the windshield so we could see where we were going. It was so gross. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.
When we arrived in Melbourne at our campsite, it took us more than an hour to get all the bugs off the front of our coach. If you don’t remove them as soon as possible, the acid from their tiny carcasses can cause damage to the paint on your car.
These disgusting little creatures definitely left an impact — both on our vehicle and on our future travel planning.
