Good Life RV Resort

We’re back… We arrived on October 31st at our winter home at Good Life RV Resort near Bartow, FL. It’s good to see friends again and participate in the park events, cards, bingo, donut/coffee Mondays, etc.. It’s the friends and activities that bring us back. This is our eighth year, Five years at Humendall RV Park in Winter Haven, FL, and now three years at Good Life. We switched parks for better amenities. Humendall sites are small, mostly sand, weeds, and seashells. Wiring is all overhead and in many spots to low for an RV to pass without then being lifted. The people were great and we have many friends there. But our 42′ 5th wheel just did not fit their congested park. Good Life on the other hand provides very large open sites where we park on the grass next to a large concrete patio for parking and outdoor lounging. Additionally, the site rent and electric costs are significantly less. The only negative at Good Life is they do not provide cable TV or WiFi. One big plus at Good Life is as sessional occupants we keep the same site every year.

WiFi internet service is a high priority for Sandy and I. Our first year at Good Life we purchased a Verizon MiFi on eBay with unlimited service for $135/month. Our second year we had switched out phones to T-Mobile with unlimited data so just used our hot spots. While the Verizon LTE unlimited was good, the T-Mobile unlimited 3G service was just OK. This year we went with ViaSat satellite internet. So far the service is good. We are able to watch NetFlix, Hulu movies, along with games, etc.

This year we intended on taking a side trip to visit family in Oklahoma. Now we pull a 42′ Cardinal 5th Wheel RV from our home in Chandler, AZ to Good Life in Florida along I-10. Having done this for 8 years we have found specials parks to visit along the way. Usually, we only travel 250 – 300 miles a day. The plan was to deviate from our normal course at Junction City, TX, and head north to Oklahoma. While comfortably parked at Junction City we were rudely interrupted and told to evacuate to higher ground as the nearby river was flooding. We spent that night at a nearby I-10 rest stop at a much higher elevation. Flooding in TX north of our location was really bad. Many roads and bridges were submerged and the rain was continuous. I ended up spending a week at Buckhorn Lake Ranch RV Resort until the rain stopped. While there we did enjoy a visit to Fredericksburg a nearby old German town. I had some great beer and BBQ. Once the rain passed, our trip was uneventful until we blew a tire on the RV just outside of Pensacola, FL. We sat alongside busy I-10 for 3 hours before a service truck arrived to replace our tire. Fortunately, we had a good spare, or so we thought. We got within 50 miles of Good Life when the spare tire blew. It took two hours for a service truck to arrive with a new tire. So lots of excitement this trip. When a tire blows on our RV we experience no issues with control. In both cases, we were able to pull off the road in full control. Before we leave for home next April, all 4 RV tires will need to be replaced. The existing tires are 4 years old, which is the limit for RV tires.