Winding Down....And the Nose That Knows

Sarasota, FL      High:  90     Low:  68

The park has really emptied out.....

Activities are slowing down and some are ending...

It's getting harder and harder to find people to play pickleball with...But Sparky got in five games this morning...The rest of the day was spent moving a little bit more slowly and fitting in a nap in the afternoon!

We've still got a week and a half to go, and we hope keep fairly busy. Sparky wants to visit Tree Umph! An Adventure Course in Bradenton..."The ground is overrated..." "Climb, swing, zip, jump all while 15-60 feet in the air"...Hanging nets, wobbly bridges, tarzan ropes--YEAH! Sparky's idea of fun, Eldo's not so much...  :-)  Fun doesn't come cheap, but it sure sounds like fun. An adult ticket is 49.95. Whewee! If you go early at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, the ticket drops to 34.95. Sparky may not be doing that after all. She really likes different stuff like that...

Remember Sparky wanted to do the water balls at Sun 'n' Fun? Well, it's too late...too close to the end of the season, Sun 'n Fun is not having those any more...darn! So that's why Sparky wanted to try the Tree Umph place...But it's pretty expensive!

Sparky wants to go see the Robinson Preserve...We'll be doing that soon, on a day that's not so hot. The weather guys are saying this is Florida's summer weather a little early...Whew! The next few days are supposed to cool down, so that will be a good time to go.....

Later Sparky worked on her breast cancer people pins for Relay for Life in Elkhart, IN. Then part of the day was spent investigating smells....Uh, when you live full time in an RV, you become more acutely aware of smells..."Do you smell something like a burning smell, hon?" "Um-m-m-m, no, do you?" "Well, I think I do, I think it's coming from the back." A couple of months ago, that's how Sparky discovered the ceiling fan capacitor had gone bad,  had overheated and caused the smell. Sparky used her nose to locate it and smell problem solved! Today there were a couple of weird smells...

"Gosh! What is that SMELL???" Sparky exclaimed, coming inside the door this morning. "

"I dunno, but you can sure smell it! Geez, that's really bad!"  said E. It was a strong rotten eggs, sulphur smell. We looked everywhere, and finally, we decided it was the black tank needing to be emptied. In this hot weather, the contents were really cookin'. Ewwwwwww!  No bathroom jokes here, thank you very much! We're on a two week cycle usually for dumping, after our gauges quit working a couple of months ago. They lasted two years before conking out, which is better than a lot of people's gauges on their RVs. Guess we  just got lucky with them. At any rate, it was time to do the dumping thing again. This time we used a sprayer to thoroughly clean the black tank. That's Eldy's specialty, although Sparky knows how to do it, too. After dumping the tanks, the smell went away...WHEW! How do we know when it's time to dump? Two weeks is usually when the sound of the water in the toilet changes as it is getting more full. About three days before the two weeks is up, Eldy closes the gray water tank to fill it for flushing the black tank, and we're good to go.

Later today...another smell...a burning smell...Eldy said it was an electrical smell, Sparky said it smelled like burning paper. Immediately, we started checking. We checked all around the rig, inside and out in the compartments, then Sparky decided it was coming from a source other than our place. She hopped on her bike, noticed that two sets of neighbors had grills going, and figured the wind was wafting some questionable smells our way. Not sure whether they were burning their dinner, or burning some papers in the grill, but that smell went away very quickly as well. You never know, with an RV, where and what is going on with regards to smells, but Sparky's nose is pretty reliable! (Sparky has fine tuned her nasal expertise from years of fine dining, laughs E.) Sparky is always on high alert when a new smell occurs in the rig....You never know what it might be and it's important to check it out, even if it is usually nothing! Which is a reminder to regularly check your monitor systems in your rigs. We test our smoke alarm detector on a regular basis. All Eldy has to do is make popcorn, or Sparky gets the frying pan going on high heat, or a lot of cooking steam goes into the air, and the alarm goes off!

And that's it for today.....We'll see you later....