Wednesday, February 10, 2016

We are at John Prince Park Campground in Palm Beach County, Florida.  This is my view as I type this post.

These ducks just floated past.

We spent 2 nights at Trail Lakes Campground in the Everglades.  We enjoyed lunch in Everglades City, sitting out on a covered deck watching airboat tours come and go.

And Steve enjoying a milkshake.

Then we were going to spend 2 nights at Long Pine Key Campground in the Everglades National Park before heading for the Keys.  They don’t take reservations at Long Pine Key, but since there are no utilities at your site, they rarely fill up.  We’ve stayed there on our two other trips to the Everglades and had our choice of spots.  However, this time they were full.  We could have gone on to the Flamingo campground, but it’s an hour further into the park and usually sites with utilities are booked up.  So after some hunting on the Internet and a few telephone calls, we found a spot in Florida City for two nights.  It had a laundry and was close to both a Walmart and a Sonny’s BBQ place.

It’s always hard to tell the nature of the RV parks before hand.  We check reviews on line and don’t go any place not fairly well rated.  But you still don’t know what you are going to get.  The vegetation at this place was a little overrun, but it had been raining a lot lately.  The parking spots were grass, which can be nice, with cement pads for the picnic tables at each site.  Sometimes you get the reverse.

I’m usually behind the wheel when we park, as Steve gives much better directions and I’ve trained myself to do what he tells me (when parking).  So he went in to register at the park and I got in the driver’s seat.  As we got closer to our site, he got out to direct me.  We passed a group enjoying some beverages and I was cheered for driving.  “You go girl!” and “Way to go!” were heard!  I suspect alcohol was involved.  I’ve gotten several compliments lately for driving and backing up.  But backing up is usually a two-person job and you have to find the combination that works for you.

When I first started reading RV blogs and comments on forums, there were a number of comments about two ladies who were traveling together.  If they had to back into a site, they walked around the campground until they found someone who would do it for them!  I haven’t read about them lately, so either they are no longer traveling, or have figured out how to park.

But we got backed in, although we had to use our 4-wheel drive due to the ruts in the grass/mud from previous occupants.  The park turned out to be a friendly one, with a few long-term, year-round residents, a number of seasonal residents, and a fair number of transients, like us.  With 10 washers and dryers, getting the laundry done worked out well and we were able to get stocked up at Walmart. 

The night before we were to leave and head for the Keys, a big storm came through.  It rained hard all night with lots of wind.  We happened to be parked under a tree with some kind of berries that squished when you stepped on them.  But they had a hard enough shell that it sounded like acorns hitting our roof all night.  Steve of course had taken out his hearing aids and slept like a baby.

The next morning the wind was still strong.  Strong enough that Steve was a bit worried about being on the 7-mile bridge with the trailer.  Since I hadn’t slept much, I was all for staying another night if we could.  Steve checked, we could stay, so I went back to bed.  I think all the berries had been blown off the tree by that point.

So we were one day late heading for the Florida Keys, but it was a good decision.  There wasn’t much wind and we had blue skies.

This is what much of the drive along the Keys looked like:

Sometimes you could see the ocean, which seemed to have several colors.  It was hard to capture in a photo, but maybe you can see it here.

Most of the time, the view was more like this.

Or just like driving through a small beach town, with lots of souvenir shops.

For much of the way, there was a second bridge paralleling the road bridge.

Frequently, these had been made into fishing bridges, but not always.  I suspect these are the previous bridge and the supports might be used again when the current bridge needs replaced.

Camping spaces are notoriously hard to come by on the Keys and since we hadn’t booked 6 months out, I wasn’t sure what our RV park would be like.  We were pleasantly surprised.  While we didn’t have an ocean view, it was a nice wide site, and a pull thru (drive in/drive out) with no backing up required.  The weather made it even nicer.  After we got parked, we walked over to the pool side café and had lunch. 

The pool:

The café:

The resort also has dock space for your boat!  It’s not a luxury resort; no spa and not manicured, landscape sites, but seems very nice.  It was also about the most expensive park we’ve stayed in, but we expected that on the Keys.

And while it’s expensive on a nightly basis, it’s not bad on a yearly basis.  The yearly rent for an internal site is just over $11,000, utilities included.  (Ocean sites are about $20,000).  Which is why many of the sites have had improvements.

This site had a large class A motor home, a thatched roof deck almost as large and a paver patio.  If they don’t stay here all year, I bet they still rent it year round.

The Keys don’t all have beaches.  The shores look more like a lake shore or have mangrove trees with their roots in the water.  There is a small beach at the resort, but for a good beach, you’d need to drive to the state park about 5 miles away.

Walking is a common sport among RVers.  Early morning is the preferred time and you’ll see lots of people out walking.  But any time of day you’ll find walkers and especially dog walkers, out and about.

This is already long and I haven’t yet talked about Key West.  I think I’ll close now and try and get a Key West post done tomorrow.

Deb

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

We are at the Big Cypress National Preserve, which borders on the Everglades National Park.  We’re parked at Trail Lakes Campground, which reminds me of old Florida.  Here’s a shot out our back window, as dusk settled in.

Our side window looks right into the Everglades landscape.  It’s basically a prairie growing in water.

We stopped at one of my favorite restaurants on our way, Joanie’s Blue Crab Café.  Nothing fancy, but if they have blue crabs, it’s the best.

Steve says the crab cakes are great, too!

Birds are plentiful down here and one of the reasons we came back.  This egret (I think) was at the rear of our campsite this morning.

Steve went on a photo safari this morning and came back with some good shots.  The water was quite high, so heading under this bridge was an experience!

There are orchids in the everglades, but this is the only one in bloom that he saw:

A little fog created a great picture:

We remember these birds from our first trip to the Everglades: the anhinga.

And I think this is the female:

And the mighty osprey, once on the endangered species list with the bald eagle:

And the last wildlife sighting – a turtle (we haven’t figured out what he’s doing with his leg).

We left Plano January 5, after celebrating Maria’s third birthday.

We stopped several places on our way to Orlando, including Meaher State Park on Mobile Bay, where we caught this great sunset:

We were at Disney for over a week, helping Olga with Maria while Natasha attended a conference.  It’s always fun to watch Maria interact with the characters.

After Disney, we spent a few days near the Villages, visiting with Steve’s Uncle Eep and our friends Joy and Sam.

We stayed on a horse farm that’s quite an operation.  The centerpiece of the farm was a carriage museum.  They do horse training and boarding and hold many various competitions and shows.  I think they specialized in training carriage horses.  They had a nice restaurant on site where we had lunch one day.  The place changed hand in 2011 and I think the new owner is working on maximizing profits.  They have a wedding venue and have recently installed RV spaces to accommodate event attendees.  Since there were no events that weekend, we were able to get a place there.  It’s sometimes difficult to get a place near the Villages.

From there, we headed for the LazyDays RV Park, near Tampa.  The leader of the Alaska tour, Spike, holds a rally there each year for past and future tour attendees.  About 12 people from our tour where there and it was fun to see them again.

LazyDays is a huge place, incorporating not only an RV park, but a large RV dealership.  Luckily, they didn’t have anything that tempted us.  They have 123 service bays and couldn’t fit us in until the end of February!  We got the work done elsewhere.

I’ll close with two pictures I haven’t had a chance to post.
Like grandfather, like granddaughter.  My two nerds:

And one of sweet Maria,

So long for now. 

Deb

Friday, January 1, 2016

We are still in Plano, TX, and wanted to let everyone know we survived the recent bad weather.  We did spend a few minutes in the closet under the stairs while the sirens went off, but there was no local damage and the trailer, which is parked in a storage lot, survived, too.

Rich and Steve arrived in Plano on December 17.  They had a nice, uneventful trip and discovered some interesting restaurants along the way.  They came in on a Thursday and Rich wasn’t flying out until Saturday, so Steve, Rich and I went sightseeing on Friday.   Although I think this is our fifth trip to the Dallas area, we haven’t done any sightseeing.  

For people of our generation, Dallas will always be the sight of the assassination of President Kennedy.  So off we went to the Sixth Floor Museum.  The shots that killed Kennedy were fired from the sixth floor of the building that was being used as the Texas School Book Depository.  The sixth and seventh floors of the building have been turned into a museum and the rest of the building is used for civic offices.

Here’s Rich smelling the roses on the way to the museum.  (It was December 18th.)

In some ways it was a painful visit, stirring up memories from the past.  I was eleven when Kennedy was shot and still have some vivid memories of that time.  But even at eleven, I realized that the peaceful transition of power we experienced was an amazing thing.  Our president had been killed, his assassin murdered, but there were no armies in the streets, trying to keep peace.  Even though we were in the middle of the cold war, there was no attempting to invade; no power struggle.

I read and watched some of the conspiracy theories over the years.  As someone was quoted in the exhibit at the museum, it’s hard to accept that someone as “insignificant” as Oswald managed to assassinate the president.  But I watched a show that interviewed Oswald’s brother sometime in the past decade and he was certain that his brother had indeed done it.  He said he was certain as soon as he heard Oswald’s name as a suspect that it was something he would do.

The museum is certainly worth a visit.  You can look out the windows and watch all the tourists dodge traffic to stand on the x on the street, which I assume marks the spot of the fatal shot.  Dealey Plaza, which the motorcade was driving through, is a parklike place with several roads running through it.  It has several terraces and architectural features built by the WPA (Works Progress Administration) during the depression.  I caught Rich hugging one of the old trees.

We next trooped over to Reunion Tower, where Steve took this picture of Dealey Plaza.

The Reunion Tower offers stunning views of Dallas.  It was named after the Reunion district it sits in, which itself was the location of a 19th century commune, La Reunion.  We managed not to take any pictures of the tower itself.

Christmas in Dallas is certainly not like Christmas in the Midwest.  Besides the roses Rich found, pansies are popular and it’s not unusual to see pansies along side Christmas decorations.  Maria really likes the yard decorations and wants to “pet” them all.

2015 was an amazing year for us.  We saw so much of the country (and Canada) that I hadn’t seen.  From the desert of west Texas to the beautiful coast of California, to the mountains, valleys, glaciers and waterfalls of Canada and Alaska, it was a trip of a lifetime.  And we’d love to do it again.

We had our sad times, as my mother passed away in April, and our dog in August.  But we celebrated Steve’s niece’s wedding in September and I welcomed a great-nephew in November.  Two more babies joined our Indiana family.  And Natasha became an American citizen in April.

Just a few statistics for the nerds following the blog:  Since Thanksgiving 2014, we put 24,000 miles on the truck.  The trailer went on most but not all of those miles.  We visited 19 states and 7 Canadian provinces.  In all we took 13,652 pictures (and I need to delete most of them).

We visited family and friends in Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, Washington, Michigan and North Carolina (that was by plane).

It was an amazing year.  I can’t wait to see what we’ll discover in 2016.  We leave Plano on Tuesday, January 5. (Or at least that’s the current plan.)

Deb

Monday, December 14, 2015

As Natasha reminded me, it’s been months since I’ve blogged.  So here’s an update of the last several months and what we think we’re doing in the near future.

The last time I blogged we were in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.  The next night we parked at Caliper Lake for one night, which normally wouldn’t get a mention, but it was the closest park job we did.  Here’s two pictures to show how close to the trees we got:

 

Steve did a great job and we were able to open all the slides.  And we didn’t even hit a tree on the way out!

We spent a few days in Duluth (back in the USA at last) and then moved on to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, which is on the northern side of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, on Lake Superior.  To really see the Pictured Rocks, you need to take a boat trip.  This is representative of the rock formations and layers you’ll see.  Note the kayakers at the bottom of the picture for scale.

We then moved on to Mackinaw City, Michigan, and, of course, visited Mackinac Island.  No motor vehicles are allowed on the island (except emergency vehicles) so everything moves by horse or bicycle.  This was the first time I’ve ever seen luggage on a bike.

This wagon was making deliveries to the stores.

It was a charming place, and the fort on the island has an interesting history.  The fort (and island) were captured by the British in the War of 1812.  I always forget that war was fought on both the east coast and the Canadian border.  But on the whole, the island felt too perfect.  I felt more like I was in Disney World than in a real town.

After that we headed for Detroit, Michigan, and the wedding of Steve’s niece, Kelly.  It was a fun weekend with all of Steve’s family, including his 92 year old dad.  This is a picture of the bride and her dad, Steve’s brother, Terry.

Our trip home included a stop in Elkhart, Indiana, to get an estimate and materials ordered for some work to be done on the trailer.  Elkhart is the RV capital of the US so it’s easy to find experienced people to work on RVs.  We wanted to have the carpet replaced with solid flooring in the living area and one of the grey tanks had developed a leak last spring, so that needed replaced.  Luckily, the leak was near the top, so we didn’t have much trouble with it unless the tank got full.  Then we emptied it.

So, one night in Elkhart and then it was back home to West Lafayette!  I think we arrived home on Thursday, September 10, in time for the first home game on the 12th.  We had been on the road for 9 months and it was good to get home.

Steve had scheduled some home maintenance work for when we got home and getting ready for that meant organizing areas of the house that had been neglected.  We plowed through that, with Steve making multiple trips to Goodwill and a trip to the dog rescue with the rest of our dog paraphernalia. (Sniff.) We also had to take the trailer back to Elkhart to get the work done that we wanted.

And then it was off to Disney World (yes, again) with the Stewart family.  After years of doing all the planning, I find I really enjoy just going with the flow with someone else doing the planning, down to costumes for the Halloween Party.

Then, on October 29, we got the news that Natasha’s mother, Olga, staying with Natasha in Plano, TX, had fallen and broken both wrists.  Natasha was able to take two weeks leave, so I flew down on November 12 to start helping as she went back to work.  That meant I had to pack my stuff in the trailer before I left, as Steve would drive the trailer down after Thanksgiving.  It might have been smarter to drive the trailer down at that time, but Steve wanted to have the wheel bearings repacked and new tires put on the trailer.  Having to replace a wheel bearing is about the only damage the trip to Alaska and back did to the trailer. 

On November 13, my great nephew, Benjamin, arrived to my niece, Jessica, and her husband Bryan.  Then, sometime that week, we got news that Steve’s dad had fallen and broken his elbow.  He lives in assisted living and Steve’s sister Nancy is nearby, so it wasn’t urgent that he get there immediately, but since his sister had bought plane tickets for a trip in December, we expected he might have to be there when the cast was removed.

Then, November 22, we got word that little Ben had been airlifted to Greenville, NC.  After many anxious hours it was determined that he had a kink in his aorta, something that affects one in a hundred births.  They operated on him on the 24th and he went home on December 3rd.  He seems to be recovering well and is receiving lots of love!

I flew back to Indiana for Thanksgiving and then returned to Plano.  Olga was progressing nicely, but still couldn’t lift Maria.  Steve flew to Maryland to be with his dad Dec. 8 -11.  He and our friend, Rich, will be driving the trailer to Texas this week.

All in all, it’s been a much more hectic fall than we imagined, but we’re hoping for calmer days ahead.  When Steve arrives here, we’ll mostly be back on the schedule we had anticipated, staying with Natasha until after Maria’s birthday celebration (Jan. 4th) and then heading for Florida.  We’ll be at Disney with Natasha for a conference and then there’s a reunion for our Alaska tour in Florida at the end of January.  We’ll visit with family and friends until it gets warm enough to head north, swinging by to visit my family and friends along the way.  We expect to be home for Easter.

Always assuming nothing else comes up!

Deb