RE: Price on Tropical Palms
Call and ask about their promotions. We stayed there a year ago, for a week, and in the past two months they have called me 3-4 times, offering all types of promotions to return.
Guess they're feeling the pinch if they have to resort to this to drum up business. The Kissimmee KOA staff told us that they're hearing a lot of complaints about what has happened at Tropical Palms.
RE: Price on Tropical Palms
Yup, we too stayed there for 4 or 5 years running but noticed the deplorable maintenance in Jan and Mar 07 and the huge price increases for 2008. Plus they now want the total camping fee paid at the time of reservation. So stayed down the road at the KOA in Jan and Mar 08 and will be doing the same thing in 2009.
RE: How did population clusters occur in Canada?
......With 10 provinces, 3 territories, why have 2/3 of the population chosen to live in 2 of the provinces?......
The two Provinces in question (Ontario and Quebec) got a big head start historically (French settlement in Quebec and the later American Loyalists in Ontario) and started to industrialized along with the US northeast before the move to populate the west occurred. Easy market access to the large US northeast and Midwest populations, relatively good transportation, available energy resources, raw materials and a source of labor fostered the industrialization (even today Ontario is the largest producer of light motor vehicles in North America) in these two provinces. All this economic opportunity attracted (and still attracts) the vast majority of the immigrants to Canada.
Southern Ontario is also gifted with what very well may be the best farmland in Canada as well as a comparatively favorable climate (it's well south of the 49th parallel). The first settlers in Ontario were the American Loyalists (many of whose families had lived in the American colonies for generations and the main reason today why native-born Canadians don't speak with a British accent. And notwithstanding their loyalty to Britain, they precipitated a much more representative form of government in Canada) who settled on land just across the new border, which happened to be along the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River (my ancestors came directly north overland from the Albany area of New York State). Of course, the rivers and lakes also furnished transportation and water power which further fostered the industrialization mentioned above.
These historic events continue to account for the nature of Canada's population today. Quebec, and particularly Ontario, remain the economic giants although the waxing and waning energy industry has caused some shifts in recent years. Job opportunities in Ontario and other points west have encouraged people in the eastern Atlantic Provinces to move away from there. The prairie provinces remain mainly agrarian with concurrent low population densities (in fact, I believe there was some loss of population in at least one of them in recent times, although that may have changed now). British Columbia (and parts of Alberta i.e. the mountains, but I love the wheat fields of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba too) is a spectacularly beautiful Province, but due to its topography, its population is mainly concentrated in the coastal areas around Vancouver and Vancouver Island.
RE: How did population clusters occur in Canada?
What is now Quebec and the eastern provinces (The Maritimes and Newfoundland) were settled first which gave them a start. The first major mass immigration occurred with the movement of American Loyalists north after the Revolution. Some moved to the Maritimes and Quebec and many to what is now Ontario (it's significant that, although Ontario is not a coastal province, it is directly north of the large US northeastern population centers. North of Boston the continent starts to jut out significantly to the east. Interestingly, many Ontarians, including myself, will often describe ourselves as coming from Eastern Canada, when in fact we are central Canadians. Perhaps a throw back to our origins). The American loyalists brought their concepts of industrialization and capitalism with them (scale wise and culturally this was a change point from the status quo). Over time, especially with the transition from a rural agrarian society to an urbanized industrialized one, the cities of Montreal and Toronto, in particular, and the immediate surrounding areas in general became significant financial, corporate and manufacturing centers. The resulting many economic opportunities attracted much immigration, including from rural areas and the more easterly coastal provinces (which to a large extent held populations in check there). As in the US, settlement of the western part of Canada to the Rocky mountains did not occur until much after the east/central Provinces were well established and, except for a few centralized urban areas in each province, remains mainly rural agricultural with low population densities. Each individual city, town, and hamlet, has it's own specific story, of course, (whether on water, a rail or old stage coach line, old fur trade post, access to markets, power, natural resources, labor force, recreational amenities, climate, political beneficiary or victim etc etc).
RE: Garmin, Tom Tom or Magellan which would you prefer
But what I like best about Garmin, is the Mapsource program that runs on your computer,.......
Is Mapsource now free from Garmin? I paid about one hundred dollars for mine.
Upon request, Garmin sent me a DVD with MapSource (and a copy of the map that was already on my GPS) at no charge, but you would have to pay for updated or other maps. Preparing custom routes on my Garmin Nuvi 750 GPS is relatively easy but using MapSource on the computer and uploading to the GPS is easier still and it's great for preplanning and saving many routes for long trips. I find having concurrent access to Streets and Trips, Google Earth and various other web sites (Woodall’s directory etc etc etc) really helps with pre-planning and saving routes (and, of course, waypoints) in MapSource. Many GPS units have limited ability to create and save customized routes (ie to modify the routes provided by the GPS) and among my Nuvi's many features, I like and use that one the most. Garmin's literature implies that their 700 series GPS units can accommodate up to 10 saved routes (which can have multiple waypoints). Although, this is often very adequate, in fact, one can have many more than 10 routes stored in the GPS's memory. The 10 route limitation only applies to the number of routes one can have “active” at any one time on the GPS unit and one can easily remove one or more routes from the active area (these will still be saved on the GPS for later reactivation if one wishes) and activate other stored routes (or create new routes) on the GPS at any time without requiring access to a computer.
RE: 14 days max at Florida SP
.........can a person spend two weeks at one SP then move to a different SP?
Yes, after two weeks, you can then move to a different SP and the clock starts over again at day one for that second park.
RE: The Border: for that matter, why....
Having traveled extensively in the US and Canada both for work and pleasure, I agree with you totally. However, I fear that there are far too many vested interests (on both sides and very often opposing each other) preying upon the ignorance of our respective populations for a significantly better rationalization to come about in the near future. And, of course, our politicians, if they want to continue to hold office, must cater to this. Just think of the economic benefit alone we would realize if we would eliminate the huge ransom the banks and the other money changers suck out of our society on a daily basis. We pay a price for our illusion of sovereignty. I’d start by beefing up continental perimeter security and doing away with the charade at our internal borders. But I won’t be holding my breath.
RE: 12v TV converter box?
"A small cigarette lighter inverter might work."
Works fine with my Insignia. Plugged into the auxiliary 12 v port on the antenna amplifier switch.
RE: Ever been a prisoner in a campground??
I have... I was a prisoner last week! Between the hours of 10pm and 6am the campground gate was closed and pad-locked!
I have stayed in whole bunch of different campgrounds over the years both public and private. Some did have secure gates that were closed after hours, but in every instance the campers were provided a code to allow us after hours access.
Not this time, simply put we were expected to be in by 10pm and stay put until 6am. They did say that if we had an emergency they would let us out! ;)
The offending campground was a COE park in Collinsville, MS. Twiltley Branch campground. Now this is a truly wonderful park with lake side camping and the staff was very friendly and helpful. However, I won't be back though as long as I have to give up my right to freedom.
Just curious... anyone else running into this kind of thing? I was very surprised to see this and hope that it was just an isolated case.
Have fun!
Jeff
Yes, over the years and 100's of campgrounds, we inadvertently camped in two such campgrounds (gates, no code or card, no vehicles getting in after gates closed, outbound only in emergency). Although we intensely disliked it (aside from the inconvenience there's just something fundamentally abhorrent to being locked up like that), we stayed several days in the first park because we were visiting nearby friends and didn’t want the hassle and to spend time relocating. The next time we were in that area we choose a different option even though we had to drive much further. We left the second campground after only one night when we became aware of their policy. We do like the facilities that have gates and give you the code (or pass card) and we have stayed at a great many parks like that.
Converter Box - Install under cabinet
I just purchased the Insignia digital to analog converter box from Best Buy and because of the tight spaces in my small camper I want to install (hang) it tucked up under an existing cabinet (with some air space for ventilation). The TV is a flat screen and there is no other convenient place to set down the box. Would appreciate any suggestions on a simple approach (an off the shelf bracket of some sort etc?).
RE: RV "break-ins" at state parks and campgrounds????
In the early 80's, our camper was broken into when parked in the Mount Vernon Estate parking lot. Entry was gained by by prying open the little wing window that the old Ford van chassis had. But we faired better than the neighboring vehicles. The culprit simple broke their windows to gain access. He took a few small items (had many fewer electronic toys in those days) but just dumped on the floor the Canadian paper money our kids had stashed in their drawers. A few years later, we "interrupted" an attempted break-in on the same camper while parked in a beach lot along Lake Ponchertrain in New Orleans. Just got a few scratches on the driver's door that time. In campgrounds, we usually leave our electric cable, water hose etc at the site when we are away with the Class B for the day (we take the risk rather than go through the hassle of packing everything up every day). Several times over the years, including just a few months back in Markham Park in Sunrise, FL, we have lost cords, lawn chairs, picnic table cloths etc. Annoying, but small stuff in the over all scheme of things.
RE: Nuvi 760 routes
Actually you can transfer more than 10 routes to the 700 series. You just can't have more than 10 imported at one time. If you are at the maximum of 10 routes in the active area (either imported routes or routes you made there directly) you would have to delete a route before importing another one. The deleted route will still be available for re-importation later subject to the 10 active limit. This is a great feature because you can load many routes on your Nuvi and import them later without having to connect to your computer. The non-active route file (active routes are not affected) is overwritten each time you transfer routes from MapSource, so if you want to keep previously transferred routes available for importation, make sure you transfer them again next time along with any other routes you wish to add.
RE: WiFi in Miami area?
We were in Pod 1 for just a few nights in mid-Feb 07 on our way passing through the area. The WIFI signal was quite good. I don't recall paying for this one and I'm pretty sure the signal was from Larry and Penny Park. I think we were told about when we registered. They may not advertise it because it reaches such a small percentage of their sites. It was either at that time or via a later comment I read somewhere (maybe on this Forum) that the signal did not reach deep into the park. A quick call to them should confirm. I haven't carried a dial-up cord in years now. The WIFI is nice too because you have access to it after the office closes.
RE: WiFi in Miami area?
Last year we were able to get WIFI at Larry and Penny but we were in the closest loop to the entrance. I think I heard that it doesn't reach very far back into the park. However, if you went up the store, or nearby, it would be better than dial-up.
RE: GPS questions
Got the friction mount for my Nuvi 750 at Best Buy. Around $40.00. Way better than the window suction cup and "permanent" disc mount for my purposes.
RE: Miami just broke a five year low temp
Was in Miami with the family about 20-25 years ago when the high temp for the day was 57 F. We were just passing through but the kids wanted to swim in the ocean at Miami Beach anyway. I tried to discourage them, but they were still game and so we went. We sure attracted some attention from the locals! One nice little old lady tried to enlighten me by stating "this is our winter you know"! The water temp, of course, doesn't change with the air temp over such a short period of time, but when you got out...... I suppose people looked at the license plates on our camper and drew some interesting conclusions, most of which probably contained various synonyms for the word "daft".
It may have been on the same trip that we placed the thermometer on the picnic table at our site in the Long Key campground in Everglades NP and it read 32 F at midnight!
RE: Florida campgrounds in January?
We camped at Flamingo in Everglades NP last winter for a few days. No hook-ups but a dump station and water spigot. Good place to overnight or spend a day or two if seeing the sights thru Everglades NP. We've stayed at the Long Pine Key campground just a few miles inside the NP many times. Again no hook-ups but dump station and water availability. The nearby Anhinga Trail is a real highlight in winter if you have never been to the park before. Lots of wildlife, including numerous gators, congregated together for the dry season. The vast agricultural area on the way into the park is an interesting sight as well. Long Pine Key is a first-come first-served campground now. If you want hook-ups relatively nearby, you could stay at Miami Everglades campground (mixed reviews now, but adequate with quite a few amenities). You likely can still get reservations there. Larry and Penny Thompson, a county campground, is nearby as well and very reasonably priced, but they might not have any space left at this time, although I would check.
