Vanchella Vagabonds

We've been back on the trek West again in order to spend the holiday season with Emily. Day One: Cape Coral, Florida to White Springs, Florida, 336 miles After saying our farewells to Jim and Billibob, we were off to CVS for our COVID test, then onward on our Western journey (well, Northern at this particular point). We received our results (negative, yay) electronically on the road. We were excited to celebrate by dining one last time at the Columbia (the Sarasota location). That turned out to be a total fiasco that cost us some drive time on day one, but I was still hopeful that we could make it to Tallahassee overnight.  Around 2 p.m., as is typical, I started getting on the hotel websites to make an evening reservation. Tallahassee: $250-$400 for a night! What?! I figured there must be a FSU game. Supply and demand! The next logical place, not quite as far along on our route, was Lake City. Unfortunately, any rooms in a reasonable range had terms in their reviews like "bed...

  In between recent cruises, we've lived in three tiny houses. It was only supposed to be two, but one of them was so unacceptable that we took a loss on 2/3 of the rental cost and moved to another for the remainder of the time. Tiny House 1: RV in Sebastian, Florida This is an RV in someone's yard. We didn't measure, but I'd estimate it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 200-250 sq. ft. The size of the unit was not the problem. It was all the 'restrictions' we learned about upon arrival, and also the general run-down condition (see photo below of sinking sofa), which was not reflected in the listing. The hosts also didn't seem to care a bit about how we were faring, which also was inconsistent with their reviews. When we pulled up and saw this, it was an omen of what was to come! (I'm not going to go into what hateful things I saw in the neighborhood; if we're friends on Facebook, you've seen it already.) Since the unit is a rental in a privat...