Where are the Kohuts?

We are camped at what we consider one of the prettiest places in the world. It is a little island off the beaten path in the Florida Keys. We are right on the water and have our own private dock and campsite. The name of this magical place is Big Torch Key. Yes, that is the island we live on and yes we are still at home.

We finally got the air conditioning on the motorhome fixed on Wednesday and then had to have some work done to our wiring harness on Thursday. When they finished Thursday and started to take the coach out for a test drive the brakes failed. It failed in their yard and no damage was done. As it turns out a brake line had corroded and leaked out all of the brake fluid. It if it had not happened there, it would probably have happened the first time that we tried to make an emergency stop. If that had happened, we probably would not be sitting here telling you a pleasant story. One of the mechanics at the garage said that the air conditioning problem, probably just saved our lives. Thanks to all of you that have sent good thought and prayers our way. They are working.

Friday evening we picked up the coach with new brake lines. We are happy to report the brakes work well, the air conditioning mediocre. We started to load and make ready the coach for departure. We hope to finish this morning and get on the road this afternoon if all goes well. If all does not go well, Sunday morning. Our first stop will be Apalachicola which will take us a day and half to get to. From there it is on to Colorado, which we expect to make by next Friday.

We hope that you enjoy riding with us this summer as much as we enjoy having you. Write when you can, but please take us off your joke list as we will be picking up e-mails infrequently and do not want to over load our mailbox. And please, minimize the attachments. Our cell phone is in the coach and we normally do not carry it, so you might have to leave a message. We have an AT&T phone, so for those of you with AT&T it is a free call. We also have free nights and weekends for you others.

We hope that you all have a great summer, we think that we will.
Take care, Love


Linda, Jake and the Fat Man

On the Road Again

Well we are pretty excited about this year’s summer adventure. We decided instead of boating this summer we are going to take the motorhome and head towards Alaska. We say head towards, not to Alaska, because we do not know if we are going to get there or not. We are going to tow our Jeep Wrangler this year and plan to do some “off roading” in the Rocky Mountains to start with. You all are probably saying, “we didn’t know you were into 4 wheeling”. Well, we are not. We have never done it before, but we thought that we would give it a shot. If all goes well, we will spend the whole summer out west doing it. If it does not go well, we will then point the coach north and head up the Alaskan Highway. Either way, we should have a wonderful summer and have many stories to tell. We set the departure date for this wonderful adventure as May 30th.

The Jeep is ready and Trail Rated, we don't know if we are.

Each year we start out our summer with a tale of woe of something going wrong on the motorhome; the brakes locking up (4 times), the water leaking out of the coach (3 times), the sewer leaking (3 times) and the air conditioning failing (4 times). This year? Well we did not even get a chance to leave. In fact we still have not left. Our air conditioner failed at the end of last year and we elected to wait until spring to have it repaired. We took it in for service on May 10th and told the mechanic that there was no rush (big mistake). He let it set for over a week before even starting on it. We told him it was just a Freon leak. That turned out not to be the case and he said the compressor was leaking and shot. It took a while to order a new one and to get it replaced. That was all done last week, just in time for our planned departure. Everything tested out perfect, no leaks, perfect pressures, everything. We just had one small problem; it would not cool. After working again all week on it replacing more parts, the mechanic thinks one of the new parts he replaced is wrong. It is too small and he ordered a new one. But, it will not be here until Tuesday. So our new departure date is sometime next week, who knows when. To those of you that we said we were going to meet along the way this or next week, we are sorry, but we are not going to make it.

On the plus side we are home. We have everything ready to go, so there is no work to do. We are just relaxing and waiting. The sunsets have been beautiful and our Royal Poinsettia tree is in full bloom. It is the first time we have seen it like that as it normally blooms after we leave. If we have to be broke down, this is the best place to have it happen.

We hope that you all had a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend. We will get back in touch when we get on the road, hopefully this week. Our first planned stop is Apalachicola in the Florida Panhandle. We want to eat some oysters before the oil spill spoils them. Speaking of eating; Mike’s goal each summer is to not come back home over 300 pounds. This year his goal is to get down under 300 pounds before he gets back. Jake has also put on some weight, so we do have to ask, if we visit, please do not feed, Jake or the Fat Man.

Take care, Love,

Linda, Jake and the Fat Man