Tag Archive for 'Florida Panhandle'

Night falls around The Streaming Daemon

Living in the deepfreeze that is Minnesota, we are always looking forward to a beach vacation. We were about to travel 3100 miles to get some sun and saltwater in our faces when the nose-biting cold bit us hard. It is difficult to think at -6 degrees Fahrenheit, especially when it comes to connecting a trailer after a six-month travel break. I got our DWR Airstream and Volvo all packed and hooked up and was ready to roll south, but I couldn’t get power to our trailer.  After taking the fuse boxes apart, inspecting electrical panels, cables and connections, and tearing my hair out, it turned out that I simply had plugged in the trailer plug upside down. This will never happen to me again. My wife was already on the Internet looking for a last-minute Hawaiian get-away, so I knew that I had to figure out my lost power issue or we were going to be flying to Aloha-land instead of driving to Florida.

I love to troubleshoot, it is a huge part of my job as a Macintosh computer consultant, but not at 5 AM when my extremities are frozen.  I had to hot tub just to thaw my brain and come to my senses and look at the plug again. It is most often the simplest element in the chain the gets overlooked.

We finally got going and I drove 17 hours (950 miles)  the first day to make up for lost time and and to avoid the blizzard that was coming our way.

Travel path of our Florida trip in spring of 2009

The next day I drove another 400 miles, and when we rolled into Saint Joseph Peninsula State Park, I parked and didn’t even disconnect the car from the trailer for 5 days.  Saint Joseph Peninsula State Park is a beautiful camping spot and we enjoyed every day – even when the temp dropped from 73F to 35F with 35 mile winds. Here are some pictures of this stunning Florida State Park.