Not loving the love bugs

May 5, 2019—It is May. And Floridians—at least those who have lived in South Florida—know what that means: love bugs.

For those who are not familiar with love bugs, individually, they look similar to lightning bugs. The female is larger than the male. Every year in May and again in September they mate, in the air. How they manage to do this is an athletic feat.

When love bugs emerge, they emerge in large numbers. This year, they seem to be especially prolific. We met up with them just south of Daytona, as we were making our way to Sebastian Inlet State Park, just south of Melbourne, in South Florida, about three and half hours from Jacksonville. It didn’t take long for our windshield to become a graveyard for thousands (literally) of unfortunate love bugs. My photos do not do justice to the carnage.

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We decided to take our new Porta-bote with us to Sebastian Inlet. To the uninitiated, a Porta-bote is a fold-up boat. Ours is 14 feet long and can carry four people and up to 850 pounds. We purchased a 5 hp outboard to propel us, and we have an electric trolling motor in addition to the big engine.

This type of boat is ideal for RVers who want to have a boat but cannot tow one. The only trick, though, is to get the boat to the water. Theoretically, you can put it together, use it, then fold it up. But when you are camping and want to fish every day, that process would be time-consuming.

The boat comes with wheels (which come off) so that you can hand-tow it to the water. Jim not only designed a rack to carry the boat on top of the truck, he also designed a way to tow it (very carefully and slowly) to the boat ramp within the campgrounds. My husband is an engineering genius.

Tomorrow we will have our maiden launch. (Well, technically, we launched it in our pond to make sure it floated, but we didn’t go out in it.) Let’s hope the fish are biting!

Until later,

Your Reluctant RoVer,

Linda