Today was supposed to be a fun day rather than a work day but Connie’s knee is still hurting a bit so we decided to forego an actual hike and just scout out some areas for potential hikes and kayaking down the line. So about 1100 after reading the paper, catching up on emails, and the like we headed west on Bayshore Road right outside our campground headed for Little Pine Island and Big Pine Island. It’s about a 10 mile drive over to them and they sit right on the west coast of Florida north and west of Fort Myers itself. LIttle Pine Island is a nature preserve but it looks like the whole island is pretty much some sort of restoration area and it doesn’t look like there is anything really worth seeing there.

Continuing onwards onto Big Pine Island we drove to both the north and south ends of the island. We found a couple of sections of the Florida Birding Trail that look like they’ll make decent hikes and birdwatching and also scouted out a couple of places we can launch the kayak for some paddling.

Besides the Pine Islands there are a whole group of other mangrove islands, narrow waterways, and the like that will provide some really decent paddling…protected from the open Gulf of Mexico so it will be calm but still open enough and large enough to allow decent birdwatching.

The highlight of the day was lunch though. We stopped at this place called the Ragged Ass Saloon and had a couple of beers along with Fish and Chips (Connie) and a Fish Sandwich (Neil). We took advantage of the ability to get cornmeal fried instead of beer battered and fried and it turned out to be a pretty decent lunch. After that we headed home for a siesta; then ate some chicken and potatoes for dinner and Connie headed off to Bingo Nite at the park.

We discovered yesterday morning that the batteries on BAT were completely dead despite only sitting parked for 2 weeks since we last drove it. After a jump start under the Ford Roadside Assistance program we dropped it off at the dealer yesterday afternoon. We got a call back today that the batteries and alternator are fine but that the power connections for our air hitch, camera system, and tire pressure monitoring system were incorrectly hooked up by the people at the New Horizons factory resulting in excessive battery drain. It will all be fixed tomorrow but will cost us most of $500 to get things all back to the way they should be.

Our final bit of news is a bit of a kerfuffle with the New Horizons folks over some warranty items on our rig. Nothing major; but we discovered our gray tank level indicator is faulty and we’ll have to coordinate a repair job at an RV dealer in the area. In addition; we’ve discovered that our mattress is (a) not what we ordered and (b) way too hard. While we think that New Horizons should handle this under warranty as it was their screwup…I can tell already that it’s going to be hard. We’ve already been referred from the Service/Warranty Manager back to our Sales Rep so Neil put in an email to Cole today to see what the deal is. Next step will be a complaint to Phil the owner if no action is forthcoming.

Sorry no pictures today…since it was just a scouting expedition and it was overcast most of the day anyway there just wasn’t anything worthwhile to take a picture of.

Cyas.