Bob and Linda's RV Travels

Labelle FL to Punta Gorda FL 2/1/12-2/16/12

2012-02-16T14:30:00.000-05:00

       We left the Midway campground on Wednesday the 1st of Feb. for a easy 90 mile drive to Labelle FL. We arrived at Whisper Creek RV Resort before noon. We got settled into our spot and took a ride to visit friends Ed and Vivian and Betty and Lon staying at "The Glades RV and Golf Resort". We will move to "The Glades" on Sunday.
    The six of us took a ride into Fort Myers to the flea market. Then we went to the Bass Pro store and had lunch at Millers Sports bar. A few other stops then it was back to the RV. On Saturday friends Dianne and Marvin from Cape Coral came out for visit with us in LaBelle. We had a great day.
      On Sunday we moved about 15 miles to The Glades RV Resort. We just hung out for a week with our friends. I did get in two days of fishing with Lon on Lake Okeechobee. Fishing was slow, we only boated about 8 or 9 small bass. We did go to the fishing tournament to view the weigh in at the Roland Martin Tiki Bar. They caught the fish we didn't. Lucky them.
     Sunday the 12th we move to Gulf View RV Resort in Punta Gorda for a Carriage Rally. We will be there till the 19th. Next we will go to Thousand Trails Peace River to the 28th then to the Thousand Trails in Orlando/Clermont for two weeks. We will then start slowly heading north to be in TN for April and May. We will be working at Dollywood the months of April and May.
    Beautiful Florida sunset

Fishing tournament

Friends at the Tiki Bar, the greatest hamburgers in town.

Friends at the Carriage Rally in Punta Gorda FL

Biscayne National Park

2012-02-05T16:35:00.000-05:00

We decided to drive 65 miles one way to visit this park and go kayaking. The park is locaded just south of Miami. The park is 90% water. The water is crystal clear. We were hoping to see some colorful fish while paddling along the mangrove shoreline. The park is about the reefs, coral and fish. When we got there the wind was blowing at about 20-25 mph. So no kayaking and no glass bottom boat rides. There are some Keys(islands), but the boats weren't running. We had lunch overlooking the Biscayne Bay. We walked out on the boardwalk and jetty. Saw a movie about the park at the visitor center. Then it was back to the RV. It was a nice drive and a great day. But at least its another national park crossed off the list. See www.nps.gov/bisc

See the palms blowing in the wind.

Biscayne Bay

See how Linda's hair is blowing, mine already blew off.

The jetty walk.

The vistor center.

Everglades photo's

2012-02-05T16:28:00.000-05:00

Some more photo's from the Everglades and Big Cypress Nat Park's

We were told this is a Red Shoulder Hawk.

A Wood Stork standing guard in a tree.

Baby alligators, less then a foot long, with mother standing guard.

An airplant blooming.

Cypress swamp.

Refection

This little guy was about as big as my thumb nail. He was on our fender.

The big cypress. Most were logged out before this became a National/State Park.

See it below.

Babies with mommy standing guard.

One of the so called Indian Villages. This one was commerical.

Southern Florida

2012-02-05T16:24:00.000-05:00

Goodland Mullet festival.

Bob waiting to try the smoked mullet.

A mural going into Goodland

The condo's, one after another in Marco Island

Sign and dredge at Collier Seminole State Park

Everglades/Big Cypress-Oasis visitor center-Midway campground

2012-01-31T09:49:00.001-05:00

Six first photo's taken near the Oasis visitors center.

Looking at our camp site across the small lake, we are the last RV

Approching our site.

Looking down the road from the front of our site.

Taken from the Road in front of our site.

Looking across the small lake at the eveing sky from our site.

Everglades/Big Cypress tour - Shark Valley

2012-01-31T09:49:00.000-05:00

Getting ready for the 15 mile bike trail.

Smile, your picture is being taken.

I can balance on a branch.

Just one more picture.

Hey this is my fishing hole.

Purple gallinule. Event turtles need a little sunshine.

See the miles of sawgrass

A gathering of friends, Ibis

The Tram at Shark Valley

Soaking up the sum

The loop road

The tower at the midway point.

Just hanging out, Wood Stork

Air dry, Anhinga

What are you looking at Bob?

Lunch in one hand, camara in the other.

From the top of the tower.

Everglades/Big Cypress Nat Pks, 10,000 Islands

2012-01-31T09:48:00.000-05:00

The Mangrove trees

Tourist

Just hanging out

Who's that little guy?

Some of the 10,000 islands

We do have video's of these guys

More tourist

Everglades/Big Cypress National Parks

2012-01-31T09:47:00.001-05:00

Main entrance to park.

Along the Anhinga Trail.

Purple Gallinule

Along the Gumgo Limbo Trail. looks like a face on this tree.

A gumbo limbo tree, see the smooth red bark, who's that?

Many air plants along the Mahogany trail

At the Mrazek Pond

Yes Panthers in the Everglades

Check out my feet.

My mother thinks I'm cute, black vulture

Hey you I'm coming that way.

See how fine my feathers are, great white heron

Everglades/Big Cypress, alone the road and smallest Post Office

2012-01-31T09:43:00.000-05:00

Osprey check out his telons

Looking over the menu

Many signs to protect the endangered Panther

The Smallest Post Office in the U.S.

Everglades/Big Cypress Nat Pks "Robert is here" on the way

2012-01-31T09:42:00.001-05:00

Great fruit and vegtable stamd

The signs tell it all

Linda's favorite.

One of about 10 unusual fruit

The milk shake list.

Everglades/Big Cypress Nat Pks The Smallwood's Store

2012-01-31T09:42:00.000-05:00

Lunch on the deck at the Seafood Depot.

Big Cypress National Preserve & Everglades National Park.

2012-01-29T20:46:00.003-05:00

It was an easy 115 miles drive from Punta Gorda to Midway Campground in Big Cypress National Preserve. This big Cypress swamp is 2,400 square miles in subtropical Florida. See www.nps.gov/bicy The RV campground is super for a public park. We have a 50 amp electric hookup. This is the only hookup at this campground. They only have electric hook ups here. There is a water fill to fill our 100 gallon water tank. There is a dump station so we can dump when we leave. All the roads and sites are paved. There are 26 RV sites and 6 tent sites. This is a great base to tour the Preserve and the Everglades. There is a very nice welcome center coming from the west along RT41. This road is know as "Alligator Alley". We did see many gators along the way. We got parked after filling our water tank. We were anxious to start touring the area. We went to the Oasis visitors center to get some information. A very nice center. There is a deep water area in front of the center with many gators present.This is the dry season here and the gators seek out deeper water hole, or so we were told by the Ranger on the boardwalk overlook. Armed with pamphlets we went back to the RV. The area is pitch black at night. It's made for seeing a super night sky. Haven't seen that many stars in a very long time. There were more then we could count, and I'm a pretty good counter.
   Monday morning we were up early. We were on our way to Shark Valley by 8:30, folks that's early for us. Funny thing is, there are no sharks in Shark Valley. But there are gators. It is a 15 mile loop road. Only traffic is a tram, other bikers and people on foot. We loaded our bikes the night before. Linda made us a super lunch of PB and J. Haven't had one of those for years. We also took plenty of water. Our Golden Age Pass got us into Shark Valley for free. The pass also got us camping at Midway for half price, $10.00 a night. We got a map, hard to get lossed on a loop road. We hit the blacktop at a deadly pace. That lasted about 5 minutes. Then we started to see wildlife right along the road. The guide tells you to stay 15 feet from the alligators. Well the road is maybe 12 feet wide. The gators are right along the road. Pretty hard to stay 15 feet distant. We saw many gators and a lot of wading birds, also some wild flowers. We had a very strong head wind and peddling got a little tough. Linda's hat blow off 3 times. There is no shade. It was a super 80 degrees. By the time we got to the observation tower we were getting tired. The tower is the half way point, and the road turns back to the starting point. We stopped for lunch and a walk up the tower. We felt well rested and thought the wind would now be at our backs. Wrong. It was hitting us from the side and occasionally from our backs. A little better. At about mile 12 we were really getting tired. We stoped for a rest and walked our bikes a short distant. Then we mounted up and petal the rest of the way to the parking lot. The car never looked so good. But we did it. We got back to the RV and crashed for about an hour. Then after hot showers Linda made us dinner. What a great day. We will sleep good tonight thinking of tomorrows adventure.
    Tuesday we dove to Everglades City. We toured a small exhibit at the National Park. Then we got tickets for a boat tour of the 10,000 Islands of the National Park. It was another great day, about 80 degrees and sunny. A good day for a boat ride. This bay is very shallow at low tide. Much of it is only 1-3 feet deep. There are many sand bars. It is a must to follow the navigation markers. We did see many different wading birds. The highlight of the tour was a pod of dolphins. 5 or 6 followed us for about 5 minutes. What a thrill. At first they were under the bow of the boat then moved to the rear to just the wake of the boat. I was so close I could almost touch them. I did get some videos of the pod. After the boat trip we toured The Smallwood Store. This is a Historic Ole Indian Trading Post and Museum. See www.smallwoodstore.com   .This is a must see if in the area. We spent several hours at the store. The highlight was the aurthor Rick Magers came into the store. He has many signed copies of his books in the store. We then had a nice late lunch at the Seafood Depot. This was a old train depot. We stopped at a few trails, but it was to late for a hike. It was almost dark by the time we got back to the RV. Along the way to Everglades City we stoped at the smallest US Postoffice. Its about 8 feet X 8feet. see the photo's.
      Wednesday was a day of rest. We have been on the go for quite a while. We didn't do much, just relaxed. On Thursday we headed east for the main entrance of Everglades National Park. About five miles to the entrance we came to "Robert Is Here". A great fruit and vegetable stand. See the story here www.robertishere.com .   A great story. We were told about this place by several friends. They also have many fresh fruit milk shakes. We were told try the key lime shake. We did, and it was like eating a Key lime pie. We did purchase a papaya, fresh picked tomatoes, you could smell the freshness of them, sweet potato's, lemons, orangesand Linda's favorite, kumquats. If in the area this is a must stop place. Next we stopped at the main visitor center. Then thru the entrance for a short ride to the  Anhinga Trail. This is a half mile boardwalk. We joined a Ranger walk and found out many interesting things about the glades. We came to one spot where there were about 20 alligators. They started to bellow. WOW this was great. The bellowing went on for at least a half hour. Some of the bellows were very loud. It must have been a territorial dispute as one gator lunge at another. Next we did the Gumbo Limbo Trail, another half mile loop trail. Next was the Pa-hy-okee overlook. A 1/4 mile boardwalk. Them if was off to the Mahogany Hammock, another half mile boardwalk. Then it was off to the Eco Pond. We did see many wading birds and ducks here. We also visited the two RV/tent campgrounds. We headed back to our RV with a stop at a Pizza Hut in Homestead along the way. It was a very long day from 8AM to about 9 PM. In all it was about 200 miles. If you go to www.nps.gov/ever you can find a lot of information about the park. We have 100's and 100's of photo's to go through. We will upload some of the better one's when we get a better wifi connection.
        On Saturday morning we headed west to the Big Cypress Bend and Fakahatchee Strand Preserve. It is a place to see some old growth cypress trees. It is an easy 3/4 mile boardwalk hike. There we saw some great birdlife and some baby alligators, about 8-10 inches with the mother standing guard not to far away. Then we went to Goodland for the Mullet Festival. After the festival we didn't know how close we were to Marco Island. So we drove the 8-10 miles to see the town. We drove around and then headed back to the RV. We stoped along the way for one more hike. It was an easy half mile board walk. We saw a lot of birds and a few gators. I promise we will uplaod pictures when we get a better connection and go thru 100' of photo's.

Florida- Punta Gorda, FT Myers, Naples 1/15-1/22/12

2012-01-21T19:53:00.000-05:00

Left the Tampa Rally on Sunday and traveled 105 miles to Encore Gulf View Resort in Punta Gorda. Four other members of our Carriage Club also came here. Didn't know we were all coming to the same park until we were packing up to leave Tampa.

Monday we went to visit friends Diane and Marvin who live in Cape Coral, not to far from here. Diane has been Linda's friend since elementary school. Our kids went to school together. We went to Manatee Park. There were at least 100+ manatee's in the warm water pool below the power plant. We saw several babies. The weather was perfect, about 70 degrees. We had a great time seeing all the manatee's, and visiting with Diane and Marvin. We had a nice dinner at Mel's dinner. At Mel's we had a visitor at our table, he was quite the talker.

The next day we went to Bonita Springs to friends Abby and Nancy. We had a great tour of both Bonita Springs and Naples. Nancy is a great tour guide and driver. We had a great lunch at Doc's in Bonita springs and a super dinner at Kelly's in Naples. We spent the night at their great condo. The next morning we had a good breakfast Dot's and another great tour out to Ave Maria University. A very unusual church building. Quit nice, see photo's. A very interesting story about the development of the planned town and university. Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza is one of the major partners. Sadly we had to say goodbye.

On Thursday we called our daughter in laws sister Fran who lives in Punta Gorda. She was at the beauty parlor a few minutes from the RV Park where we were staying .. She stopped in to say hello. We made planes to meet on Saturday. We went to see her condo that she moved into a few months earlier. Its was on the second floor with a super view over looking the bay. We went into town to the art and craft festival. Walked and walked and had lunch at an outside restaurant. Then we walked some more. Finally we came to the end and walked some more back to the car. Said goodbye to Fran and went back to the RV. We need a rest. BUT, no, we are off tomorrow for a trip to Everglades National Park.

See the backs of the many manatee's in the pool out of the current. The power plant in the background, the source of the warn water outlet attracting the manatee's.

Larger air plant(possible Lilly) growing in the tree branches.

Marvin,Diane, Linda and Bob.

Our table visitor.

Doc's beach restaurant. Above the upstairs dinning area. Below, looking out at the beach seating.

Bob, Linda, Nancy and Abby.

On the pier, Nancy, Linda, Bob and Abby.

Kelly's restaurant, the oldest seafood eatery in Naples.

A closeup of the beams and columns.

We always see some interesting signs were ever we travel.

The Inn On Fifth in Naples. Very neat old Inn.

Ava Maria Church at the Ava Maria Catholic university, just outside of Naples. See www.avemaria.com .

Linda with Fran at the Ponce De Leon statue, on the water front.

A really big tree dwarf Bob and Fran

2012 Florida RV Super Show Rally

2012-01-15T21:54:00.000-05:00

     A very busy time at the Super show. We arrived on Tuesday and left on Sunday. Busy, busy. Coffee and donuts from 8 to 9:30, show opens at 9:00, tour 100's of  RVs, and all the gadgets we can't live without, back for lunch, back to the show, back by 3:00 for "happy hour", get dinner, get to the evening show at 7:00. Wow I'm tired just thinking about all we did in a day. From where we were parked, the show was about a 1/4 mile walk thru the fairgrounds. There were a lot of shuttles to take you into the show. This was great for the people parked way in the far corners of the FL State Fairgrounds. The 3 evening show we saw were great. But what was also great was being there with friends, and 788 other RV rigs park side by side. We caravaned to the show with 20 other Carriage RVs. It was a fun group of friends. We also met up with 6 couples we worked with at Disney. Fran and Larry, George and Linda, Nancy and Harve who were at the Rally and Pam and Larry, Bert and Rosie and Butch and Evelyn who were day visitors. This is one of the best things about RVing, reconnecting with friends. The show opened each day 9:00 to 6:00 for the general public. Each day there were 1000's and 1000's of show visitors.
     The three evening shows we saw were "The Malt Shoppe", Doo-Wop and oldies. The "Rick Arnold" one man show, oldies, country, rock n' roll. "Ron and Kay Rivoli", song written by them to popular tunes with lyrics for rv'ing. A super show.
      On Tuesday a large group from our club went to the Spaghetti Warehouse in Ybor City for a super dinner. It is a neat restaurant in an old cigar warehouse.
    Wednesday we took a trip to Largo to visit friends Dave and Liz from our old camping club in PA. They now have a winter home in Largo.
      On Saturday we met our friends Tom and Paula halfway between Tampa and Wildwood. They were with us in Wildwood when we put Blazer to sleep. They picked up his ashes from the vet and brought them to us. We met at a Crackle Barrel and had breakfast and a nice visit.

We met up in a road side rest.

The caravan to the Tampa Super Show and Rally, see Linda's car refection in my rear window.

At the Rally, a line of Carriage RV and a gathering of friends.

Our spot in the group.

Looking over the top of the roof of our RV. We had good sites, on the edge, not in the middle.

Wildwood FL 1-2012

2012-01-09T21:30:00.001-05:00

After a late start we took a ride to Crystal City. Found a nice city park in Inverness, called Cooter Pond Park. Here are a few photo's.
A weed cutting boat. In every part of the country we find many different specially type equipment.

The boardwalk and a water hyacinth blooming.

This group of ducks had red beaks. We saw others just like these but they had white beaks(at least they looked alike). We are not good at bird and duck identification.

The old city hall at Inverness.

     Saw our first gator this trip to FL, and the first of the year. Also saw a few big turtles and many ducks.
     Checked out Rock Crusher Canyon RV Park in Crystal River. A very nice large park with many rates. We have friends who stay here and they like it very much. See here www.rockcrushercanyon.com
Found a fruit stand and got some fresh Florida tangerines.
      Wow did it get cold. The low last night was 35 degrees. Whats that, isn't this sunny FL.? Tonight is expected to be colder.
      The above was written before Blazers passing. We will try to get back to blogging as we know it helps us take our mind of things. We are trying to look forward. We can do nothing about the passed. He will be missed but not forgotten. Thank you everyone for your kind emails.
        Our friends Tom and Paula came into the RV park we were staying at. It was good to get together with them. On Friday we left for Bushnell Fl about 20 miles away for a Carriage Rally. That is the company that made our RV. There were 24 rigs in attendance. We are at Blueberry Hill RV Park. There were several dinners, breakfasts and happy hours planned. Much time was spent just sitting around talking about rv'ing, places to see and places we've been to. We did join their chapter called the Florida Roadrunners. They are a nice group of people with a lot of information to share. This rally was especially good for us as it got us out of the RV and helped to get our minds off the passing of Blazer. It did help.
     On Monday we went to the Webster flea Market. It is a huge market. It is about 10 miles from where we are staying. We met our friends Tom and Paula there. The are staying at Three Flags in Wildwood about 30 miles from the market. We had lunch together and just walk around with them for a while. Then it was back to the RV for happy hour. Tomorrow we leave for the "Super RV Show" in Tampa. About 15 rigs from our group are going. We will caravan in groups of 3 to the show. Our club is allowed to get in a day early. We will camp at the fair grounds were we will have electric hook ups only.
     Pictures from the Rally at Blueberry Hill RV Resort.

The neat courthouse in Bushnell.

Not sure of this big guys purpose, but Linda had to get a picture.

Mostly Carriage RVs part of our club.

Tribute to Blazer 3/3/2001-1/4/2012

2012-01-05T09:35:00.002-05:00

His favorite spot was hiding between the pillows,after he rearranged them.

Super alert, looking for someone to play with.

Happy 2012, Wildwood FL, Htchitch.com

2012-01-02T11:27:00.003-05:00

Hi everybody and HAPPY NEW YEAR. After 2 great months at Anastasia State Park as volunteers, in ST Augustine Fl we hit the road for Three Flags RV Resort in Wildwood Fl. It was a easy trip of 120 miles. See our review of this park in our archives under RV Parks Fl. Here is a little update. The park is about 3/4 full. Activities planned for the week. We have a back in site in the rear of the park. Its is a little more private. Its is about 150 feet long and backs up to some woods. Now we have a nice view out our big back windows. In the front is a small intersection, so no RVs in front of us. Side to side it is a little close. We are on Site 97.

But first let me diverse a bit. Checked our blog this morning and saw we had 98 hits (I know its not like Twitter where a million hits make the news), from www.hitchitch.com . So went to their sight and saw we are listed as a new listing to their web site. Hitch Itch is a website for Rvers. Their sites states "We connect people sharing their RV lifestyle". There are many blogs on this site that we follow. Thank you Hitch Itch. We had their web site in our favorites for years. It is a great site for rver's and great information. We go to their site almost ever day.
We spent the last week at Anastasia winding down. The park was full. Started to say our good- byes to the friends we made there, Rodger and Sue, Jim and Joyce, Phil, Bob and Diana and Vern and Pat. We had a couple of great campfires, and all told tales of their passed adventures, and talked about future planes. What a hot colorful fire. Jim places a small copper pipe with a hose inside of it for a super colorful fire. The picture doesn't do it justice.

New years eve we parked in the large parking lot at the beach and took the shuttle to ST Augustine Beach. St Augustine Beach is a small town bodering Anastasia St Pk., and just south of St Augustine. They were having "Beach Blast". A big carnival type event for New Years eve, with little parking, hence the shuttles from 4 or 5 places around the area. We went with two other couples, Sue and Rodger who we volunteered with this year and Paul and Sandy who we volunteered with last year. They are taking our spot starting Jan 1st. We had a "blast", a day that ended about 1AM for us. Much, much later then we are use to. AND...... we had to get up early to leave and make room for Paul and Sandy who were moving into our spot. We were up by 7AM, but didn't get on the road to 9:45. We didn't see Paul and Sandy before we left. They were in a park about 10 miles away. I guess they slept in to give us time to vacate their spot. But Rodger and Sue were there to see us off.
New Years eve we had dinner at the Sunset Grill. We had dinner up on the roof over looking the event and the beach. They had a special menu for New Years eve. The food was super. After dinner we walked back along the beach to our park. At 8:30 they had a great fire works show. We sat at the beach and watched the fire works then headed to a pub to finish out the night. It was a fun time that lasted much later then we are use to. Even Blazer got into the act.

We are looking forward to a year of travel and fun seeing new places and making new friends. Haven't made plans passed the 22nd of this month, but we are planning on going to the Everglades. We are going to a Carriage rally in Bushnell, then the Tampa RV show to the 15th. Then to the FT Myers area to visit with friends along the gulf coast. If anyone is in the area, let us know so we can get together.

Blazer is Bob's constant companion. When Bob sits at the desk, he is at his side. We believe comforting him helps him cope with his cancer, which he doesn't understand but must sense something is going on.

Florida-ST Augustine

2011-12-26T15:39:00.020-05:00

The pictures of the boat parade. It was a very cold and windy night, but there were still 100' and 100' of viewers. We had a great place to watch the parade. We were right aside of the judges stand. After the parade we had a late night smack at the White Lion.
We had another great campfire with all the volunteers. Dogs on the grill, it doesn't get much better.

Christmas Eve we attended church service at The Cathedral Basilica of ST Augustine. Its is America's first Parish, founded Sept 8 1565. This is were the first mass was celebrated in America. The area of the first mass and altar is several blocks from were the church was built. It is a beautiful church. See more at www.thefirstparish.org Below is a picture of the manger display

Christmas day we had dinner outside our RV with fellow volunteers Rodger and Sue. It was a nice 74 degrees.

We visited a Hydroponic pick your own produce garden. It is located at the ST Johns flea market. According to the folks running it they can grow the same amount of produce on 1/5 the amount of land it usually takes. The strawberries were delicious. We first saw this type of farming at Disney Epcot in the "Lands tour". Disney's supplies some of the produce they use in their restaurants from their exhibit.

2011, the year in review

2011-12-24T10:03:00.004-05:00

Linda asked me what I'm doing, I said "nothing", she said "that's what you did all day yesterday", I said "I wasn't finish". Oh well-- that's how the year went.
       Another year coming to an end. The older we are the faster the years go by. We need to slow this down and enjoy everyday. We need to be thankful for each and every day. So remember when you wake up to a cool rainy day, be thankful you woke up. That's enough wisdom for now. On with the review of 2011.
      We started the year with a visit from our son Mark and his wife Tracey for Christmas and New years. It was the first holiday season in 6 years we spent with family. It was wonderful, both Linda and Tracy had colds, and Bob got a very bad cold and had to go to the doctor. He only sat out a day. While they were here we met Bob's Cousin Jane and her husband Nick, who have a winter home in Cocoa. We spent Jan thru most of Mar in Florida. We reconnected with many friends. We did meet many friends we worked with at Walt Disney World.
     After we took Mark and Tracy to the airport we left the Orlando area. We went to the Thousand Trails Peace River Resort in Zolfo Springs. We pull in and Linda spots friends Tom and Paula who we volunteered with at the Escapees CARE center in Texas the previous year. We spent 2 weeks there visiting the area.
      Next we move to Arcadia for about 3 weeks. We visited Linda's cousin Carl and his wife Dot. We hadn't seen them for about 10 years and had a great visit. We toured Mayakka State Park and had a few great hikes and some bike rides. We saw many gators birds and turtles. We went to Punta Gorda and Lake Placid to see all the murals. Next was the Ringling museum, The Edison and Ford estates in Sarasota. Friends Dave and Liz came for a visit from their winter home in Largo. We visited our long time friends Diane and her husband Marvin (Linda's girlfriend from elementary school day) in Cape Coral. We met friends Dave and Penne who read our blog and saw they were close by. So we got together for lunch half way between. I had some great fishing at Toby's RV park in Arcadia. We also had a great private tour of the "Clown Museum" in Lake Placid from Toby the Clown. We toured "Solomons Castle" and saw the "Lipizzon Stallion" show at their winter training grounds.
      Wow. We need a brake. That was all in about 3 weeks. From Acardia we traveled further south to The Glades RV Park to visit friends Ed and Vivian and new friends Lon and Betty for some fishing at the Big"O', Lake Okeechobee. While here we did a tour of a sugar cane factory and an orange juice  plant. Next we move to LaBelle where we almost bought a RV lot. While there they were having their "Swamp cabbage" festival. We had a good time with friends Dianne and Marvin from Cape Coral who came to visit.
    While in Arcadia Linda got her new ride, a 2011 HHR. We needed some more economical transportation to tour around in. We were wearing out our truck. This proved to be a very good move for us. We already have over 22,000 miles on it.
      We them started to head north. We made planes to meet friends Barry and Donna from Georgia that we volunteered with in Texas. They live in GA and we met in Tifton GA. We had dinner and swapped stories of the passed year. That's when we got a call about Linda's brother and Sister in law. They were both in the hospital. The next morning we said good bye to our friends and hit the road for a fast trip back to PA.
    The next six months were very tough for us. While there we found out Linda had melanoma. Thank God that worked out ok after two operations. The same week we found out about Linda's cancer we also found out Blazer has bone cancer. The same week our sister in law went back into the hospital. A short time later we lost our sister in law after she was making a great recovery. We did get Linda's brother placed in assistance living were he is doing well. Even though this was a very tough time for us, we were grateful we were able to help. We know as time goes on we will look back at this time and be thankful we could help. We had more family time this year with sons and their wives Cy and Dawn, Mark and Tracey and Erik and Lori .We also thank them for all their help and being there when we needed them. We did make some wonderful friends while there, Abbie, Nancy, Teddie, Helen, Ester, Carolin, Char and Don, that all pitched in and helped, many thanks to them also.
       While at the Thousand Trails park in Hershey we had friends Ed and Cathy from Florida pull in aside of us. There are over 300 sites and they pick one aside of us. We weren't there at the time. They called us and said we think we just pulled in aside of you. We later had a great visit, and of course we went out to dinner. We also got a call from friends Dave and Penne we met in FL this winter. They were in the area, so we got together for dinner. We met them at one of our favorite restaurants, Shady Maple. I'll bet they are still talking about it. They really enjoyed the food. I got Penne to try apple butter and cottage cheese. She really like it.
      September had a bright spot for us, we started our 7th year on the road as modern day Gypsies. We were looking forward to October as we had to be in Fort Lauderdale Fl for a cruise with our son Cyril and his wife Dawn.
     October 1st we hit the road like the devil himself was chasing us. We didn't slow down till South Carolina. We had a super cruise with our son and his wife for their 20th anniversary. After the cruise we finally had a chance to relax for a few days.
      While resting at the Thousand Trails park in Orlando we did get to go to Walt Disney World two times with friends Jim and Linda who still work there. Then it was off to ST Augustine. We will be in ST Augustine till the end of the year. You can read more about our passed year in the archives on the right side of our blog page.
     We tried to limit this year end review, but it did get longer then expected. Even though we had some tough times this year we are thankful for another year. We look at the year, the whole is better then the parts.
   MAY YOU ALL HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

We skiped a few things. First we met our friends Ed and Johanne in Orlando in March. Also in Nov we net our friends Barb and Jack in ST Augustine. Sorry if skiped anybody else.

Florida-ST Augustine update and photo's

2011-12-08T22:30:00.000-05:00

     Future plans. Leave ST Augustine on the 1st of Jan. Go to Wildwood FL till the 6th. Then to Bushnell FL for a Carriage Rally. Then to the Tampa RV show for a rally till the 15th of Jan. These plans have been made. We are working on the rest of Jan. Some time soon after that we are heading further south to the Everglades. We are planning several stops along the way.
      As the year comes to an end we are looking back at some of our stats. We have traveled to and spent at least one night in 42 states. Since 2008 we have stayed at 138 different RV parks or overnight stops. About 18 of those stops were in repeat places. We hope to fill in a few of those missing states in 2012.
     Our blog had over 7900 previews or "hits".We made over 290 post to our blog. We enjoy writing about our travels and your comments and email about our post.
      Monday was a beautiful beach day. High near 80 with very light wind. we spent about four hours on the beach. Some of "us" volunteers got to go on a horse and buggy ride through the Winter Wonderland at the Amphitheater. see www.winterwonderlandflordia.com . It was ok, glad we didn't have to pay for it.
       On Tuesday we went to the Limelight Theatre. We saw a funny play called "Duck Hunter Shoots Angel". We had quite a few good laughs. see www.limelight-theatre.org  We got in on their special "Terrific Tuesday" which was two tickets for $25. A great deal as senior tickets are usually $22. each. Don't you just hate that word "seniors". Why not "Classic", like a car, or a bottle of wine. "How about a classic discount? Sounds much better then senior.
       On Wednesday we went to see Luminary Night At The ST Augustine Lighthouse". We got to see the glow of 100's of luminaries. I (Bob) climb to the top of the lighthouse, all 219 steps. What a super view of ST Augustine at night. see www.staugustinelighthouse.org .
          Blazer is having some more problems. He had several bad coughing spells, and coughed up some blood. We took him to a great Vet and he did start him on some different meds. He is also checking with Florida U. oncology department. We will update you. He was very firm in saying he is not ready to be put to sleep. WOW, as long as he remains ok, and himself. He said you will know when. We will keep you posted.

The Lightner Museum.

Sand painting, super detail in colored sand in bottle
Super porcelain items

Tiffany items

The Ballroom

Looking down at was the largest indoor pool, now with the Alcazar Cafe

At pool level

At night

Our ride

Palm trees with Christmas lights, just not right

The light and luminaries

Looking down inside the lighthouse.

Florida-ST Augustine

2011-12-04T15:13:00.000-05:00

     We had our first chimichanga at the Beachcomber in ST Augustine Beach. Wow was it good and big. Linda and I split one. It's their Tuesday special. We will be back next week. After leaving the restaurant our "low tire pressure warning light" came on. It said our right front tire pressure was down to 19 psi. We kept an eye on it till we got back to our RV. Checked the tire and it was ok. Checked the other tires and saw a screw sticking out of our right back tire sidewall. It was at 19psi. So I filled it to 30psi and headed to the GM dealer since the display gave the warning for the wrong location. Well I knew a hole in the sidewall meant a new tire,ok, but what about the wrong read out on the dash. Well "did you have the tires rotated"?, yes I did. The sensor is in the tire valve. Dummy, I should have know this. So while getting a new tire, oil change, etc, they reprogrammed the tire sensors.
          The next day we went to the Lightner Museum. What a fantastic museum. For more info see their web site www.lightnermuseum.org It is a museum that highlights many items from the splendor of the gilded age. We did get in on the musical demonstration of many of the old musical self play instruments. Super is all we can say. We did try to have lunch at the Cafe Alcazar, but they were closing in about 5 minutes after we go there. We may try another day, just to say we ate at the famous hotel Alcazar. The cafe is located in what was the largest indoor swimming pool of its time. see www.thecafealcazar.com We looked it up on www.urbanspoon.com and it has an 88% approval rating.
      Friday night a group of us volunteers went to the San Sebastian winery. On Friday and Saturday nights they have entertainment "up on the roof". The roof is the outside third floor on the roof. They had a great band playing, and of course serve their wine by the glass or bottle. We all had a good time.
   Saturday we went to see "The Grande Illumination Parade". It was a march by reenactors in customs of the British troop and peasants etc. through the streets of St Augustine. Fife and drums and bagpipes(1). see more at www.britishnightwatch.org It was really nice to see. Then we have a late night dinner/snack at the White Lion. Good food at a reasonable price.
      See Bob and Linda's holiday dance. Click on it and let it play out. It starts like a add for office Max, but let it play. see here http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/HuHk730F3VAr0M2uPBKf
      Remember this season it is better to give then receive, that's why I'm giving Linda a new fishing rod and reel.

ST Augustine FL

2011-11-28T19:35:00.000-05:00

      Hi, just a short update. Not to much going on for us. We had some beach time since Thanksgiving. Friends Paul and Sandy who volunteered with us last year stoped by several days for a visit. They will be back on the 28th of Dec to volunteer here in Jan and Feb. Of course we had to go out to eat a few times. We went to Sunset grill and Woody's Bar B Que.
      On Saturaday we went to the 46th Fall Art and Craft Festival. There were over a 150 juried artist. There were many many beautiful items for sale. Wish we had room for some of them.
       Across the parking lot from us is the "Winter Wonderland At St Augustine Amphitheater". They have a real ice skating rink, ice slide and it snows every hour. There is a elf village and horse drawn buggy rides.
                                               Guess what blazer is watching.

He's watching them unload the horses.

In this picture you can see the swelling on his face (left side of picture, his right side) and how its affecting his eye. He still has not slowed down. He is still being "Blazer" wanting to play all the time.

Our site at Anastasia State Park, we are in the middle.

How to haul a christmas tree in Florida. It was 80 degrees this day. Being from the north it just dosen't seem right shopping for a tree in this weather.

A storm moving in. Going over the bridge of Lions and at the bay here in the park. Over the sand dunes in the background is the ocean.

Wind swept trees in the park

We toured the Villa Zorayda Museum. A small super museum modeled after the Alhambra Palace in Spain. We couldn't take any pictures inside. Check out their web site. www.villazorayda.com . The website dosen't show the most famous piece in the museum, the Cat Rug over 2400 years old.

History of the Villa Zorayda

Closed for the past eight years the Villa Zorayda Museum has undergone an extensive renovation and is once again open to the public as a museum. On the National Register of Historic Places it was built in 1883 as the winter residence of Franklin Smith utilizing his method of construction of poured concrete and crushed coquina shell. It is built 1/10th the scale of a section of the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain. This building set a precedence for St. Augustine and began the Moorish Spanish revival of architecture that is seen throughout the city today. In 1904 it became the Zorayda Club. On display for the first time ever is the custom made bone china made exclusively for the Zorayda Club. In 1913 it was purchased by Abraham S. Mussallem, an authority on Oriental rugs, fine arts and Egyptian artifacts. In 1922 it became one of the most fashionable places for casino gambling. In the mid 1930's it was opened as a museum featuring the priceless antique collections of both Franklin Smith and A.S. Mussallem which are still on display today. The 45-60 minute tour gives an in depth look at the historical significance of the building to the City of St. Augustine, the magnificent architecture as well as descriptions of the many exquisite pieces you will see. On display is the "Sacred Cat Rug" over 2400 years old and made from the hairs of ancient cats that roamed the Nile River. Taken from a pyramid in Egypt it is said to possess a curse for anyone that walks on it! Washington Irving wrote of the original Alhambra in Spain in his famous "Tales of the Alhambra".
If you are interested in more information on the most interesting Franklin W. Smith you can read more here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_W._Smith

Villa Zorayda Time Line

1883-Franklin Smith builds his winter home, Villa Zorayda, the first poured concrete and crushed coquina building in St. Augustine
1903-Franklin Smith leases the Villa Zorayda. It soon becomes the "Zorayda Club"
1913-Abraham S. Mussallem purchases the Villa Zorayda
1922-Gambling becomes fashionable at the Zorayda Club
1930s-Villa Zorayda becomes private residence of Mr. and Mrs. A.S.Mussallem and family and a show case of oriental rugs, furniture and fine arts.
1934-Opens to the public as Villa Zorayda Museum
1941-October 21, 1941 death of Abraham S. Mussallem
1942-Museum closes during World War II
1940s (late)-Villa Zorayda reopens as a museum
1954-With the death of Mrs. Olga Mussallem, museum closes
1964-Eddy and Wally Mussallem reopen the museum, rename it Zorayda Castle
1965-Wally Mussallem oversees daily operations of Zorayda Castle
2000-Zorayda Castle closes
2003-Major renovations begin and continue through present time
2005-Eddy Mussallem's daughter Marcia, and son-in-law, James Byles take over overseeing of renovations and the future operations of the museum
2007-December 15th Grand Reopening Celebration
2008-Villa Zorayda Museum reopens to the public.
2009-Villa Zorayda introduces audio tours and opens for wedding ceremonies.

Thanksgiving on the beach

2011-11-24T20:51:00.000-05:00

Hi,hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Here is were we had our Thanksgiving dinner.

Florida-ST Augustine

2011-11-20T21:42:00.000-05:00

     Hi, just another week in at Anastasia State Park. We had free passes for the Ripely Museum, so we did a tour. I'ts just ok, but glad we didn't have to pay for the visit. After that we had a great lunch at Aunt Kate's. Aunt Kate's sits on the intercostal waterway about 3 miles north of downtown ST Augustine and had some great food. The best coleslaw we ever had. Linda ask the waitress what the secret ingredient was. She check with the chef and told us it was pineapple and lime juice. It was super. They have a nice deck overlooking the river as well as inside setting.
     We went to camping world to get a new water filter system. We have a built in filter by 3M, but we always have a very hard time finding the replacement cartridges. So we set up a new system with easy to find cartridges.
    We went to the turning on of the Christmas lights in town, called the "Nights of Lights". According to the newspaper the event was named by AAA as one of the "12 Favorit Places to Catch the Holiday Spirit in the US and Canada". Also named on the top 100 list by the American Bus Association list.
     We went with fellow camp host to an early lunch to Woody's B-B-Q. Then into town to see the festival lighting. About an hour before the lighting it started to rain. The rain lasted through the countdown and stoped raining about 5 minutes after the lighting. But there were still crowns of 1000's of on lookers.
     We were on ther beach several times this passed week. The water is in the low 60's to cold for us. But the beach is great.
     Blazer is still holding his own. No changes. His is eating great since we changed his food. He still wants to play.

Connecting with friends in FL 11/2011

2011-11-13T21:22:00.000-05:00

     Wow its almost 2 weeks we have been in St. Augustine. Friends Barb and Jack, and readers of our blog saw they were only 20 miles from us and gave us a call. We got together for a great visit. They are fellow Escapee members and our parents in our Escapees chapter 36. We toured some of St. Augustine and had a great dinner. Hopefully we will catch up with them this winter as they are spending the winter in FL.    While here at the park we also ran into Art and Beth, friends from Disney. He heads up the "Friends Of Mickey" BOF, and Escapees get together held once a month. It is great how our life style lets us meet up with friends.
    Last Saturday we went to the Palm Coast Seafood festival with fellow camp host Rodger and Sue. It was a short 20 mile trip, that took us 60 miles to get there via a short cut. Don't say anything, we have all been on these short cuts.
    This passed week the weather has been on a roller coaster ride. We had a record low on Thursday and now we are expecting a record high. The beach has been great, but the water is getting cold. The water temperature is down into the 60's.
   Welcome new blog followers Mark and Chris.
     We are back into the routine here at Anastasia State Park, our camp hosting job till the end of the year. There are a total of 10 host couples. We are on 3 days then off 3 days. We are suppose to work 20 hours a week for our full hook up site. That's 10 hours each. Not a bad deal. A weeks stay here coast $196. plus tax. And that's not for a full hook up site. Its water and electric only. The bonus is the 4 miles of beach and St Augustine. Also we are across the parking lot from the Anastasia Amphitheater. Last night we got to listen to John Fogerty the lead singer from CCR. Its was a great concert with the highlight being his "Proud Mary. All the other host meet here by our site for a get together and campfire to listen to the concert.
    Blazer has been having some eating problems. We switch him to a can dog food and he seems to be eating better. He still wants to play and run as if nothing is wrong. We are keeping a close watch on him and enjoying his loving friendship.

A couple of week in FL

2011-11-05T11:57:00.000-04:00

       Wow, hard to believe its been two week since our cruise ended. We rested a few days and are getting back to our normal RV life. Through the generosity of friends Jim and Linda we went to Walt Disney World on their guest pass. Once we went on our own and once we went with them. We did get to see many friends we worked with at Disney. It is great reconnecting with friends. We did get to go "Sourin" twice, one of our favorite things at Epcot. We ate at the German buffet, Linda's favorite. We got to try some of the foods from around the world, as it is the "Food and Wine Festival" Even though we were at WDW 100's of times, we still enjoy walking around.
    We arrived at Anastasia State Park on Nov. 1st. We are looking forward to our two months at Anastasia State Park. We are Volunteer campground host. The St. Augustine area is a great area to spend some time at. We had a great time here last year and hope this year is as much fun.
      Blazer is beginning to show signs that he may be having some pain and or swolling problems. We did get him started on a pain regiment program. We will watch him closely.
     A couple of photo's from our Cukka Dune Buggy ride, one of the tours we did on our cruise. First is our son Cy and wife Dawn. See the smile on Linda's face and you can guess what see is saying.

Photo's of Cruise 10-2011

2011-10-28T21:20:00.003-04:00

First look at the ship, Oasis of the Sea, and we said"holy ship" look at the size of that ship.

Docked in Labadee, a private island on the north coast of Haiti..

Docked in Cozumel Mexico, our ship in the middle. Note how it dwarfts the other cruise ship.

Looking at our ship docked in Falmonth Jamaica. Looking at it from the outback on our way back to the ship after our dune buggy tour.

A picture of our room looking out at the balcony.

Looking down at Central Park in the middle of the ship.

Looking at fountain on the Royal Promenade

Looking down at the boardwalk deck with the Aqua theater in the back.

Looking at the Entertainment deck.

Looking at the Aqua Theater

Looking at The rock climbing walls.

That's our daughter in law Dawn climbing the wall.

Looking at Royal Promenade deck with the bar on the left that raisers and lowers between 3 decks.

This is the ice skateing rink, also used for the ice show and a club.

Our ship docked in Labadee, and the beach on the island.

A history of the ruins at Tulum in Mexico

Some of the many ruins. The heat index the day we toured was 105.

Tourist, our son Cyril with Linda and his wife Dawn. That's a radio around their necks to listen to the tour guide.

More tourist, or who is that good looking couple.

Same couple on the ship before we left port in FL.

Bob and Dawn are always trying to make new friends.

After our dune buggy ride, waiting for the bus. some had to eat.

A sun rise at Labradee.

What is this cute little animal? We saw him in Cosmel Mexico.

One of many, many iguanas.

Yucatan Jays, behind a fence.

Three eager tourist getting ready for their dune buggy ride.

Glad Cyril and Dawn got together and signed us up for all tours and shows on line. There were only about 20 couples got to do the dune buggy tour. Thats a few out of 5,400 passengers.

Back from our cruise

2011-10-23T17:34:00.000-04:00

Hi, just a short note to let you all know we are back at the Thousand trails RV Resort in Orlando/Clermont. We had a super Cruise. It was great to spend a weeks vacation with our son Cyril and his wife Dawn. It came to an end to quick. We all had a great time, and need another week to rest. The ship "Oasis of the Seas" was magnificent. It is the largest cruise ship in the world. It is hard to believe your are on a ship with all the space and all the different neighborhoods. We will add photo's and more information in the future. We just want to let you all know we are back safe and sound, as well as our son and his wife.
Blazer made out fine on his vacation. It is the first time he was ever boarded, and he did well. He is still doing "ok".
A video of one of our shore tours. The ATV in front of us is our son and daughter-in-law. We will add more photo's in the near future. We have many many photo's to sort thur. Also some fun facts about the ship. The one fact I found interesting is fuel consumption, "31 feet per gallon".

Three Flags RV PK,

2011-10-10T14:24:00.000-04:00

Date; 10/6-10/10/2011
Location; 1755 E State Road 44, Wildwood FL 34785 Three flags is a Mid Atlantic park, part of Thousand Trails.
Coast; $0.00 as members of TT. I believe for non members it was $35. a night.
Site; We had a level grass pull Thur 50 amp full hook up. Only problem with the hook up was the sewer connection was about 12 inches high. We had a small, 8x10 cement patio. Some sites had larger patios, but most didn't have patio's. There is no privacy between sites. Site were a good size, normal commerical, size. We were in the front of the park, with very little shade. In the back of the park there are some nice back ins that are bigger and have some shade. The roads are all paved.
Laundry; There is a nice laundry with 6 washers and dryers. $2. a load each.
Phone,Wifi,TV. Verizon cell phone worked well. Wifi is Thur Tengo-$4.95 day with weekly and monthly rate-$20 and $40. The first 4 hours are free. The signal was good. TV over the air, we only got 3 channels, NBC and two odd channels. No cable.
Dog Friendly; Yes a good size fenced in dog run in the back of the park. Lot of walking area.
Night; Lighting was good. Some light road noise. Distance train noise.
Book Exchange; Small book exchange
Amenities; A small pool. A very nice clubhouse. No planned activities at this time, only about 15 RV's in the park. A mini golf.
Summary; We would stay here again. Park seemed to be very well maintained, mowed grass, no leaves laying around etc. We would recommend this park. When full it may seem a bit crowed. This is why I would choose a back in on the perimeter in the back, not in the back center. Even though it rained almost the whole time we were here it did not get muddy or swampy. It is a nice park.

We are in Flordia

2011-10-09T16:59:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note to let you all know we are in FL. Arrived at Three Flags RV Park in Wildwood, a Thousand Trails Park. We arrived on Thursday mid afternoon. It started to rain for a short time. Then on Friday afternoon it started to rain, and is still raining late Sunday afternoon. We will be leaving here Monday morning going to Thousand Trails Orlando/Clermont. We will be there for 3 weeks (or at least our RV will Be). On Saturday we will be leaving for a cruise for a week. Nov and Dec we will be volunteering at Anastasia State Park in ST Augustine. Blazer made the trip with no problems. He is still doing OK, wanting to play all the time.

Fort Chiswell RV Park Wytheville VA

2011-10-07T18:17:00.000-04:00

Date of Stay;10/1/2011

Location;312 Fort Chiswell Road Mad Meadows VA 24360, phone 276 637 6868. About ½ mile off I81., and about 1.5 miles off I77. Near Wytheville
Site; Full hook up pull thur. Site was level gravel. 50 amp electric. Picnic table at site. Site was gravel. Most sites are pull Thurs.
Laundry; Nice clean laundry w/4 washers and dryers.

TV Phone Wifi; Cable TV, Good Verizon service,not sure about wifi
Dog Friendly; A lot of area to walk a dog.
Amenities; just used for an overnight so didn’t check out, but did note they had a pool and two small ponds for fishing.
Summary; A good overnight stop off I81. With Good Sam discount $38.68, a bit pricey for an overnight. Only discount is good Sam. We only hooked up electric and cable. Flying J at exit. 3-4 fast food restaurants at exit
Big Rig Friendly; Yes, but roads are a little narrow between rows.
Price, discounts, clubs; $31.68 with Good Sam discount. Only discount accept.
Opinion: Good overnight stop. We would probably look for a different less expensive park
Photo's sorry no pictures.

The Oaks at Point South Yemassee SC, date 10/1/2011

2011-10-07T18:16:00.001-04:00

Location; 1292 Campground Road, Yemassee SC 29945 Phone 843 726 5728 About a mile off I95.
Site; Full hook up 50 amp electric, pull thru level packed sand. Roads and sites can use some gravel and patching. Grass what little there was needs mowing and trimming. Trees can use trimming. With a little work this could be a much better park. Picnic table at site in poor condition. 92 sites, most are pull Thurs.
Laundry; there is a laundry, but we didn’t check it out.
TV, Wi-fi, Phone; Cable TV, about 15 channels, $2.70 night extra . Wifi, $4.95 night, Verizon good service.
Dog Friendly; Yes, lots of area to walk a dog.
Amenities; Swimming pool (close)over grown play area, ponds for fishing.
Summary; This could be a much better park with a little work . Good location right off interstate. Good location to visit Beauford SC.
Big Rig Friendly; Yes , but be careful of some tight turns.
Price, Discounts,Clubs; our coast $0.00, part of Thousand Trails. They do take Passport America with reservations only. Also Good Sam discount.
Opinion; We would stay here again. Its a good stop if traveling I95. Its is not a destination type park for us. The price for us at $0.00 makes it acceptable.
Photo's; taken on our last visit

Roamers Retreat RV Resort Kinzer PA

2011-10-07T18:16:00.000-04:00

Date; June to Sept 2011
Location; Route 30(Business) Kinzer PA.
Site; While here we were on three different sites. Sites 4 and 9 under pine trees, site 91 in lower loop on grass, no trees. Even though we were on long term site, because of special events and letting weekenders reserve specific sites, we had to move three times. Long term and seasonal site are different. They let people reserve sites a year in advance. We had full hookups with 30 amp electric. There are some 50 amp sites, but they are not long term. Site 4 and 9 were back ins, and site 91 was pull thru. All sites have a picnic table. About half the sites have fire rings. There is no privacy on the lower loop.
Laundry; There is a clean laundry with 4 washers and dryers. Each is $2.50 a load.
TV,Wifi,Phone; Cable TV w/25 channels. Verizon phone was good, 3 to 4 bars. Wi-Fi was good to very good on all here sites.
Dog Friendly; A lot of areas to walk a dog.
Amenities; no planed activities, nice playground, a few video games.
Summary; We did enjoy this park other then the site changes. Under the pine trees was very dirty. The stuff was friendly and helpful. Roads are gravel and sites are gravel or grass. Low level lighting at night. There is a small book exchange. There is road noise from a very busy route 30.
Comments; Located in the beautiful Lancaster County, surrounded by Amish farms. A super location for touring the area. Reasonably priced. We paid $575. Month

Big Rig Friendly; Yes but be careful if in the upper section between the trees, some very tight turns
Price,Discounts, Clubs; Rate $30-47(special events). They accept Passport America, Good Sam
Opinion: We would stay here again.
Photo's: first 4 are site #9, next 3 photo's our site #4, last four are from site #91, nice view from our site.

Some pictures from Lancaster PA, Aug/Sept 2011

2011-10-04T19:40:00.000-04:00

Note the young boy.

Note the gas powered cutter. There were five teams and wagons.

The light color green is tobacco, a big cash crop for the Amish.

Floridians note the size of the oranges we grow in PA.

Tobacco drying in a barn.

An Amish school.

Playing tourist in SC

2011-10-04T16:44:00.001-04:00

Playing tourist is tough work. We get up by 7AM and hit the road running by 8:30. Many tourist places don't open before 9. When viewing wildlife or hiking we get an even earlier start. Imagine that. Days touring means we usually miss our afternoon nap. But we make sacrifices. The first four pictures are The Marsh Boardwalk trail at Hunting State Park.

The following pictures are from Port Royal. The tower is the "Boardwalk Observation Tower" and gives you a great view of the surrounding area. That's Linda on the boardwalk, taken from the top of the tower. There are 68 steps to the top. The last picture is looking at Paris Island Marine training base.

Shrimp boat being unloaded. A live shrimp, note how long the antenna are. A retired fishing boat.

Pictures of some of the great views of downtown Beaufort

St Helena's church and graveyard. Some of the grave stones, the ones like square boxes were used for operating tables during the Civil War. There are both Union and Confederated soldiers buried in the graveyard. For some reason it is called a graveyard, rather them cemetery. Maybe because of the age.

Can you believe the price. This was at almost all the stations.

Our own low country "boil". We steamed fresh shrimp, crabs, corn and potatoes.

On the way down to SC Linda's car averaged 38.1 mpg, and the truck averaged 10.1 mpg. Hopefully it will get a little better here in the flat lands.
Today we toured Hilton Head and were disappointed. The homes and area is beautiful. But many of the roads are private and to get to some of the beaches, restaurants and shops, etc you have to pay a toll of $5. Now that's pay to shop or eat, besides the price of the food etc. ! Not for us. We did get to one of the public beaches and it was super.

"On The Road Again", to quote Willy Nelson

2011-10-03T20:51:00.000-04:00

   WOW we are finally on the road again. After several delayed starts we left the Lancaster area of PA. After two days of very hard travel, covering about 800 miles we are now in South Carolina low country. We usually only travel about 2-250 miles a day, but we took off as if something was chasing us. We spent 6 long months in PA. We did make some good friends while there. We did have more family time then we had in the passed 6 years. So now we are looking forward.
       An unsuspected surprise, friends Glenn and Carol from our old camping club came to the RV Park for a weekend. It was great getting together with them. We did go to a great all you can eat chicken pot pie dinner at a Mennonite church with them. As usual, we ate to much.
     The passed week a camping club from Oregon came into the RV Park. There were about 20 rigs in the group. They were on a around the country trip.
      We are now at a RV Park in Yemassee SC. The park is part of Thousand Trails and about a mile off I95. Today we toured the town of Beaufort. A pretty southern town. It is home to Pat Conroy, author of "The Boo", "The water Is Wide", "The great Santini", and others. The town was also host to several silver screen movies, like "The Great Santini", "The Big Chill", "The Prince of Tides" and many parts of "Forrest Gump". This is also shrimp country. We did go down to the docks and purchased some fresh shrimp. As we got there they were loading up fresh shrimp in the store. A few hours before they were swimming. Can't get much freshier. We are ready for a shrimp low country boil.
     We also toured Port Royal and some of The Sea Islands. There are more then 200 islands in Beaufort county. We toured Hunting Island State Park and walked on the boardwalk out into the marsh.
     We enjoyed the area so much we decided to stay a total of 3 extra days. We are back in travel/tourist mood. We took many pictures and will upload some when we get a better wifi connection.
     We will be touring Hilton Head while here. Look for updates and photo's.

Though for the day; we spent most of our money traveling.....just wasted the rest

Hanging out in PA, Sept 2011

2011-09-16T10:50:00.001-04:00

This passed week we have been enjoying 1000's of old photo's and 35mm sides our son Cy put on a CD for us. He has some type of device that he can copy slides and photo's. He said it took many many many hours. Did we really look like that? Picture is our first anniversary spent in Bermuda. Hard to believe that little 4 inch disk can hold so many photo's and memories. We put it on slide show and just let it run. Thank you Cy.

     In July we got an e reader. We purchased a Nook. Linda is a ravenous reader. She will read a couple of books a week, sometimes more. I don't read near as many, but between us we had a little over a 100 books we carried in our RV. So since we got the Nook we dispose of about 80 books. We each kept about 10 books. This way if one of us is using the Nook the other one has something to read, should we both want to read at the same time.
      Our home town library just started an e book loan site. We can get current books via email and download them onto our Nook. We can also reserve books. Works just like going to the Library, and the books go away after the 2 week lending period. Pretty neat if we can get it to work. So far we are having some problems. UPDATE: after several hours and about 6 long phone calls to the Bethlehem Public Library and finally taking my laptop in, Jennifer in tech support at the Library got the program to work. Its a new program at the library and they are still working out soon bugs.
      Received an email that a lot of our older pictures from our blog are not there. We checked and sure enough, a lot of pictures from sometime in 2009 and back disappeared. Don't know what happened. We will try to get the pictures restored. . This may be a major job. We'll see what we can do.
     This week I saw on another blog, call our life style called "wheelestate", instead of owning real estate we own wheelestate. I like that. It's a good acronym we can add to others we use, like, our RV is our "cow", condo on wheels.
     We have been spending the week at our son Marks home dog sitting. Mark and his wife Tracey are on vacation. While here we have been busy seeing our other sons and their wives as well as seeing friends. Blazer had a visit with his hometown vet in her new practice. He is doing well, but did loose a good amount of weight. Got a few prescriptions for on the road. Other them the weight loss, and a lump on the side of his face about the size of a golf ball, he hasn't slowed down. The surgent said upon initial diagnoses he may only have a month or two, or possibly more. We keep hoping he has many more months ahead.

    Thought for the day; I want to die in my sleep like my Grandfather... Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.”

Making memories,Starting our 7th year of full time RVing

2011-09-05T10:38:00.000-04:00

      Wow, hard to believe we been on the road as modern day gypsies for 6 full years. How long will we continue our out of the box adventure? As long as the good Lord and good heath let us. There are still places to go, things to see, and new friends to meet. We have been blessed the passed 6 years with so many new adventures. If we had to stop today we had made enough memories to last us the rest of our lives. We occasionally look back and say to one another do you remember that road side stop in Alaska were we had that 9 inch cinnamon bun, or the crayfish in Louisiana, or that fresh lobster in Maine. The list could go on and on. Many folks have told us how lucky we are to be doing what we are doing. These are some of the same people who thought we must be nuts to sell our home and move into an RV with a little over 300 square feet of living space. We are especially thankful our family understands our decision to do what we are doing. If there is one thing we miss, it is not being able to spend as much time with our kids and their wives, as we would like. But and that's a big but, we hope when our adventure ends we are still in good health and we will be able to spend the twilight of our years with them.
     Now for the good stuff. The most asked question we get is there any thing you regret. Yes, missing family time, and not starting this adventure when we were younger. Next, what is the place you like best? That's a tough one. Would it be standing on the rocky coast of Maine or Oregon, the Atlantic beaches or the Pacific beaches, The Grand Canyon or Bryce canyon, Death Valley or Big Bend, Texas Hill country or the Florida Panhandle, get the picture. It is so hard to decide. Until you stand on a glacier in Alaska or in the shadow of Mount Rushmore or the rim of the Grand Canyon its hard to describe the wonderful feeling we get while exploring this great county of ours call The USA. I guess the answer to that question would be the United States of America.
          As a child I guess I developed wanderlust by reading Outdoor Life, Field and Streams and Boys Life, the Boy Scout magazine, along with as many adventure magazines and books I could get my hands on. I guess the summer reading program at the libery did more for me then I realized. As a child the only vacation I had was going to boy scout camp and spending one day at the Jersey shore. But it was the reading of those magazines and western novels that I became a armchair traveler and dreamed about fishing in the Yellowstone river or seeing the Rocky mountains that set the subconscious plan in my brain.
           For Linda, it was a little different. She got to spend summers in her early youth in Boston with her aunt and uncle. Then when they moved to Philadelphia and then Atlantic City, she got to spend summers in those places. How did she develop her wanderlust. She married Bob, and so the story goes..
          We can't tell you how blessed we are to be able to do what we are doing. And oh yes Mark (our middle son) keeper of the box of CD's containing 1000's of photo's that are memories. Just think how many boxes it would be if they were photo's in albums. So guard it carefully as they are our memories.

More memories;.we saw this lab riding in a miniture horse trailer behind a motorcycle in Hellertown PA.

We went to the Chicken Ranch with Mark and Tracey. See one of many rotisseries. See at www.kauffmamsbbq.com

While hear we felt a earthquake and sat thur a harricane. See all the pine neeles stuck to the side of our RV and car. Our site.

While in Lancaster we saw this site, I wonder if they us high test or regular.

GOOD NEWS FROM PA

2011-09-01T21:10:00.000-04:00

WOW, finally some good news from Pa. Linda's biopsies came back clear, they got it all. Thanks to all that prayed for her. She still has a bunch of stitches, but they will come out in another week. We'll keep you posted.

Update-Still in PA, soon bad news

2011-08-28T10:11:00.000-04:00

      Hi, I know its been along time. Thanks to all that have emailed and called. We are sorry if we didn't get back to you as life has been a little rough the passed couple of weeks. Our sister in law Sue passed away on the 19th. We had just got her settled in her apartment in assistance living about 2 weeks prior.
     Linda had a ugly moll removed from her back and the biopsies came back as melonoa. She had a second surgery, a much larger area removed. The surgent feels confided he got it all, but we have to wait about 10 days for the finial biopsies. Things just keep happening. We will post and update as soon as we get the results back.
       Tom Linda's brother is still in rehab and doing a lot better. We hope within the next couple of weeks he can get into a apartment in assistance living/personal care. We hope we can get him settled before we leave.
      Blazer is doing fine. He is still as playful as ever. The doctor said his bone cancer was very aggressive and he may only have a month or two. Its been about two months and he is still going strong. I just wish we had some of his energy, as we are about burned out. This has been the worst six months of our married life, 46 years, except when our son went through his bout with cancer.
       We are planning on leaving here on the 21st of Sept. We will head to FL, as we have a cruise planned with our oldest son and his wife for their 20 anniversary leaving from FL.

Some pictures I skipped

2011-07-21T20:37:00.004-04:00

Here is our oldest son's new outdoor kitchen with the pizza oven, construction and finished product. He and his wife Dawn did all the work. Bob having the first pizza. Inside the oven, Cy making a pizza.

While at Shady Maple our favorite Smorgasboug we saw these cycles.

Next blog we will post some pictures of our others to sons homes.

March to July in PA

2011-07-21T13:01:00.000-04:00

While in Pa we did get to tour around a little. We went to Hershery to tour the Antique Auto Club of America museum. There is a display of buses, cars and motor cycles. When we were there they did have a traveling display of Indy officical pase cars.

The bus used in the Forest Gump movie.

The type motor scooter Linda crashed in Bermuda on Jan of 1966.

Ratan seats in a restored bus.

From here we went to the Hershey Chocolate factory.

White chocolate Reese's, a must try, how about a 5 pound box.

Bob is always trying to make new friends.

Next we went to Hershey Gardens. Not to much blooming as we were there after most of the springs flowers were done blooming and the summer flowers were in buds.

Next photo's are of beautiful Lancaster county. The first one is looking out the back of the RV park we are staying at. The next is looking at the RV park from a country road, the park is in the trees. This is Roamers Retreat in Kinzer PA

The next photo's are of my(Bob's) aunts 90th birthday party. She is my only living aunt.

The following photo's are of beautiful Lancaster county. Did you ever wonder were marshmallows come from. Here is a secret marshmallow farm.

Circle M Outdoor World Lancaster PA 5-2011, 6-2011

2011-07-15T17:17:00.008-04:00

Site: We had a back in full hookup 50 amp site. No privacy between sites. Few trees. Another RV about 10 feet behind us. Good space between sites. Some sites were very close. Site was gravel. All roads were paved. Big rig friendly and most roads were wide for easy back in.
Laundry:There is a laundry, but we didn't use it or check it out.
TV,WIFI,Phone: There are 3 free cable channels, ABC, NBC, CBS. Then there is pay cable for many additional channels. Not sure of the coast. Over the air about 10-12 channels. Wifi in adult lounge. Our Verizon phone worked well.
Amenities: Many, many, indoor pool; outdoor pool. Indoor water park. Covered mini golf. Chip and putt course. This is a family oriented park. Many activities.
Location: On route 741 in Millersville/Lancaster.
Summary: A very very busy park in season. Many, many kids. Not the type park we are use to. There are many rental cabins. The renters are not Rver's and behave a lot different, like cutting thru sites. Also they do not seem as friendly as Rver's. This is our second stay here and the time before school let out was not as busy. But it was busy with a lot of kids. Sorry no photo's.
Bonus: In Lancaster county, one of the pettiest areas in the US

Still in PA

2011-07-15T17:17:00.002-04:00

   Hi, and thank you to each and everyone who have sent their best wishes and prayers for Blazer. I am sorry I didn't get to email each and every one of you, and thank you, but we are still very busy. Blazer is doing fine. He still wants to play 24/7 like always. No side effects yet. We did get a call from the University of Pennsylvania to possibly include Blazer in a experimental program, as he is a good candidate for this experiment. We are still deciding and have to August 1st, the date of our appointment in Philly with the vets doing the study/experiment. It almost sounds more invasive then the surgery we declined not to do. So after we made our decision we have to make another one. Things just aren't going easy for us this year.
     We have been super busy getting things in order here in Downingtown. Linda's brother is doing great. He still has a long way to go to get out of rehab, but each day he is getting stronger. Susan in doing much better and we hope within the next week she can get into their apartment in assisted living. They are in two different rehab facilities which makes things tough. All of the furniture is at the auction house going up for auction on the 21st. of this month. The house is going on the auction block on the 3rd of August. We still have a lot of stuff in both attics and the basement and garage to go to the auction house which we hope will all go this week. As if this is not enough, I have been summons to jury duty this passed week. We ask each day, What next?
    In spite of all, we can see the open road ahead. This is what keeps us going. We are planning on leaving here on the 16th of August. It will have been almost 5 months we spent here. We are glad we could have done this, but are looking to hit the road. It has been very trying and tiring. Having to make decisions for other peoples lives is very hard on us mentally.We did and are doing the best we can, but it is not easy.
   Our only firm planes are to be in Florida by sometime in October. We plan on spending the winter in FL, and staying on the east coast just in case we are needed in PA. The best thing about being in PA, is being close to our sons and their wifes. We just wish we we could spend more time with them. We have things on our bucket list, and hope to get back to them soon. We are thankful for what we have done and hope and pray our health keeps us on the road.

BLAZER our wonder dog needs your prayers

2011-06-21T22:10:00.005-04:00

Hi, just a short update. Our beloved Blazer has bone cancer. We are writing this with tears in our eyes. We noticed a lump on his face and thought he had some type of a bit. But it was very hard and got a little bigger. We took him to a vet we used to get his shots and yearly check up about a month earlier. Both she and her partner didn't think it was a bit or an abscess. They suggested an oral surgery in town. We made an appointment and after minor surgery for bone samples we got the bad news. We can do a very ,very extensive surgery, removing part of his jaw and 3 teeth. But because of all involved and no guarantee, we are passing on surgery. He will be 10 on our oldest sons birthday and the heart mummer is also a problem. He may have a month or two, or a year or more. No one can predict the future for him. So we will love him and be with him. He is still himself, playing as long as your are willing to play with him. He is a very special companion and we will not let him suffer. For now he is still Blazer our super dog. If you have a few spare prayers, keep him in them.

Blazer on the right with 2 of his friends in Fl this passed winter.

Thousand Trails Hershey Apr 2011

2011-05-27T21:10:00.003-04:00

Site: We had a pull thru in the "H" section. I believe it was H26. It was gravel fairly level. Some roads are paved. It was 50 amp full hook up. No shade and on our patio side we faced the south for full afternoon sun. No shade, could be very hot in the summer. Because of fairly steep hillside sun was below our awning most of the afternoon. No privacy between sites.Site was long enough for our rig, car and truck. Big rig friendly.
Laundry:Each restroom building has a small clean laundry.
TV WIFI PHONE: No cable. Over the air TV was fair, we could not always get the major networks. We did not use the wifi. Our Verizon cell phone was fair to good. We did use our Wilson antenna and amplifier with our Droid phone and our signal was good to very good.
Amenities:Like most Thousand Trails they have a very active list of planned activities. There is a large outdoor pool(not opened at this time). There is a small lake for fishing and kayaking. Very active with families.
Location:About 5 miles from Hershey and about 8-10 miles from the major attractions in Hershey. Nearest large grocery is about 8 miles. There is a small grocery about 3 miles, but it was closed on a Saturday afternoon when we stopped. It is about 8-9 miles from the PA Turnpike. About 15 miles from I81. It is a country setting.
Summary:A nice very active fairly large RV Park. It could use a little upgrading and more paved roads. The Canada goose population could be reduced, as there are way too many dropping in the park from them. They could better spend their money on improvements rather them radar guns for the rangers. The manager is very nice and all the staff very very friendly.

Bonus:The city of Hershey and all its attraction. The Amish country about 30 miles. Hollywood Casino about 20 miles.

May 15th 2001 Still in Downingtown PA

2011-05-16T10:32:00.002-04:00

Hi everyone. We are still in Downingtown PA staying at Linda's brothers house. We are back and forth to our RV every now and then. We miss our home and can't wait to get back to it permanetly. At present our RV is at Circle M in Lancaster PA. We will be moving it on Friday to Thousand Trails Hershey for 3 weeks. We have someone taking their dog Milo for the weekend. The cats can maintain themselves for the 4 days we will be gone. We are hoping this will become a permanent home for Milo.
Tom, Linda's brother is in ICU for about 10 days. He has been in the hospital for over 2 months. He is doing a little better, but not out of the woods. Sue his wife is now in rehab at Tel Hie. She is doing better, but did have a set back and was back in the hospital for about 5 days. We are back and forth to the Hospital and rehab almost every day. We did start to clean out some of their stuff from the house, but are meeting a lot of resistance from Sue on getting rid of "stuff". We did have a auctioneer come to the house and we are ready to go, but....... It have been a very trying 10 weeks.
On the bright side, we are only about 60 miles from our son's and their wives. They have been down for visits to the hospital and rehab and been a big support for us. We are so glad they are close at hand. Also I have been luckie enough to be selected for jury duty in July. We will also do our doctor things while here. We will be back on the road as soon as possible. And thanks to all of you that emailed and called with best wishes.

Lazy Days Seffner/Tampaa FL 3-2011

2011-04-14T20:14:00.001-04:00

Site: We had 3 sites here. The first was a back in with full hook ups, with cable TV. The site and the roads are all paved. A newspaper is delivered to each occupied site. The sites are big rig friendly with little or no privacy between sites. This site was a little short, as our truck was half on the road when parked in front of the RV side ways. The next site was in a repair bay. We stayed in our rig at night, then we left during the day while they worked on it. We did have a full hook up. Our next site was a lot longer. We were in one of the ends with a large circle turn around. A lot more room to back into it. The reason we went to this site was repairs weren't complete till about 4:30 and we didn't want to hit the road that late. Mosts sites were level.
Laundry: There was a very nice laundry. The laundry was clean and bright. They had about 10-12 washers and dryers.
TV,phone,Wifi:We had good cable TV. Over the air TV was good as you are in the metro area of Tampa. Great Verizon phone service. Parks wifi was slow.
Dog friendly:Lot of room to walk your pet. There is a fenced in area to let them run off leash, not to large. They have dogie treats at the check in area.
Amenities:A large screened in pool and club house.
Location: Located right off I4 and about 1 mile from I75 . Easy in and out.
Summary: This is a large RV park at a very large dealership. We were here for warrenty repairs. They have about 150 repair bays. Because of its size we did not get personalized service. You are just a number. Most repairs will have to be redone. We talked to people that had been here for weeks. Good thing we went to the RV park after repairs were complete as we still had a leak that needed re-repair, if there is such a word.
Bonus:Very large dealership to shop or just look at 100s of new and used RV's. They are all left open for your casual inspection with no pressure. Free light breakfast and lunch Monday to Saturday. There are all types of free seminars each day at the dealership. They can rebuild your RV if you have the time to spend there. When we were there the RV park was near full, so best to have reservations in the winter season. All staff was very friendly. There is a Cracker Barrel and Flying J on the property. This is a great place to shop for an Rv, but we would not go here for repairs unless there was no other place near by. Our coast was $0.00 for our stay. First time visitors get two free nights. Also there was coupon on line for two free nights. Also at any RV show they are at you can sign up for two free nights. While in repairs you stay for free while in the bays. Sorry only picture of last site.

Cracker Barrel Inwood WV March 2011

2011-04-14T20:13:00.007-04:00

Not an RV Park but a good overnight stop along I81 in WV. Good food as most Cracker Barrels. We didn't put out all slides. There is highway noise, but for the price----on well.

Thousand Trails Carolina Landing Fair Play SC March 2011

2011-04-14T20:13:00.006-04:00

Site: Our site was a paved full hook with 30 amp electric. There was a locked 50 amp plug that was 2 or 3 dollars a day extra. The site was very unlevel. Many of the sites were unlevel. It was just long enough for our rig, but no parking for the truck. We did have room to park the car at our site.
Laundry: Yes but didn't check it out.
TV,Phone,Wifi: TV over the air was ok, we got all major networks. Our Verizon cell phone worked well. Didn't try the wifi.
Dog Friendly: Yes, lots of room to walk a dog.
Amenities: Many like all TT's.There is a indoor and outdoor pool. and planned activities.
Location;About one mile off exit 4 of I77 ,along Lake Hartwell, just 4 miles from GA
Summary:We stayed only one night as we were just passing through the area. It is a very very hilly park. This is big rig friendly, BUT you must choose you site and the loction to get to the site very carefully. Since we stayed here for free as TT Members, we may stay here again. But we would drive through and check out what sites where available and we could get into before staying here agin. There is a great Corp of Engeeries Park we stayed at on Lake Hartwell about 5-10 miles from here. To be fair to the park, we only spend one night here and really didn't get to check out the park very well. We got in late and it was pouring rain.
Bonus:On large Lake Hartwell. Only one mile off the interstate.

GA Museum of Agriculture -short review-we didn't stay here

2011-04-14T20:13:00.005-04:00

At exit 62 on I75 in Tifton GA. There is a small RV Park in the parking lot. It is a paved parking lot with hook ups for about 20 RV. It is right along I75 at the exit, about 1/4 mile off exit to entrance. Good for an overnight if just passing through the area. They have full hook ups for $20. a night, but do offer some discounts like Good Sam. See their web site for picture of the RV Parking at GA Museum of Agriculture.

Paradise Lake RV Park- Brookfield GA Mar 2011

2011-04-14T20:13:00.004-04:00

Site: Pull thru site with full hook up on level grass. Very large site, with 30 amp electric. They do have a few 50 amp sites for an additional fee of $2. per night. Roads are dirt/sand that are deeply rutted. This is a small park with about 35 sites.
Laundry:There is one washer and dryer, in a very dated rest room building.
Dog friendly: Yes with lots of room to walk a dog.
Amenities: A small washroom and laundry is all.
Location: About 8 miles off I75 along Route 82
Summary: This is a small no frills RV park. Its is a member of Passport America. The rate w/PA was $12.00 a night. Very friendly owner and camp host. There are about 6-7 permanent residence and two were very clutterd and take away from the whole park. We met friends here to tour Tifton GA.
Bonus: About 30 small lakes not far from campground. Also the town of Tifton and the Agrirama center at the GA Museum of Agriculture and Historic Village. There is a restored village with many working exhibits.

Pine Hill RV Park- Kutztown PA 3-2011

2011-04-14T20:12:00.001-04:00

Site: We had a pull thru full hook up 50 amp site. Fairly level gravel. Most sites and all roads are gravel. There are many trees, but no privecy between sites.
Laundry:Yes in bath house. One washer and dryer in the mens and ladies room. Very clean, but not adequit when the park in 1/4 or more full.
TV, Phone, Wifi:They have cable TV but it is $2.00 a day. Our Verizone phone worked well. The wifi was much better than last year, but then the park was almost empty.
Dog Friendly: Yes and lots of room to walk your dog.
Amenities: A large hall for special events. A very small store in office. A small playground. Some planned activities in season.
Location: About 3 miles off I78, and 10 miles to Allentow/Bethlehem area. About 10 miles from downtown Kutztown. About 15 miles from Cabelas.

Summary: We call this our home park when in this part of PA. It is a very nice park with very friendly owners. It is the nicest park close to our family. Its about $40. daily and $575. a month plus electric and cable. There is road noise. The new owners have made many inprovements and are working to better improve the park.

FL to PA for medical emergency

2011-04-11T08:35:00.000-04:00

      Hi to all, just to let you all know we are doing ok. Thanks to all that emailed with kind words and prayers. We got a call, that Linda's brother and sister in law were in the hospital and not doing to well. So we hot footed it back to PA. When we got the call we were with friends Barry and Donna in GA. We were touring the area around Tifton GA. The next day we left bright and early even though there was bad weather predicted. We did run in to very heavy rains. We ended the day in Fair Play SC. We needed a break from the heavy rain that made driving very tireing. We spend the very cool night there. The next day we got up to light rain, but with bright sky's. So we took off. Not many RV parks open the farther north we went. We know of a flying J in VA on the WV border that allows over night RV parking. So that was our destination. But when we got there, it was packed. I guess a lot of other Rver's heading north, had the same idea. Filled up with fuel and off we went looking for a Walmart for an overnight. For you non Rver's most Walmarts allow overnight RV parking. Driving on I81 we saw a Crackle Barrel with a RV parked there. Got off the next exit and went to the Crackle Barrel. Checked with the manager if it was ok to park overnight. He said any Cracker Barrel, anytime. So we spend the night. Got up to a very cold 27 degrees. We went into the Crackle Barrel for breakfast and again thanked them for letting us stay overnight. They opened at 6 and we were in having breakfast by 6:15. After breakfast we walked Blazer and headed out. We called Pine Hill RV Park, the park we usually stay at when in PA(we call it our home park), to see if we could get in, as they weren't open till April 1st about 5 days later. They said come on in. That was the trip home, now for an update.
      Linda's brother Tom is still in the hospital. His wife Susan was released to a nursing care facility for rehab on Thursday the 7th. They are both doing better. We are working on getting them placed somewhere in a assisted/nursing home. This is a major problem. A very long story, that started 3 years ago when we tried then to get them in a retirement/assistant living place then. We won't bore you with all the details.
       So it looks like we will be spending the spring and summer here in Downingtown. For now we did not put the RV in storage. We need things like clothing etc that are in our rv, our home. Not sure what we are going to do with the RV in the future. If we can get them placed somewhere and find homes for the pets, one dog and two cats, we will spend time in the RV just to get away from here. They have a very large home full of two generations of stuff. This will be a very big project.
    We will update every now and then, but won't be bloging about our travels till we can get back on the road.

Clermont/Orlando FL 3-2011

2011-03-19T10:49:00.000-04:00

    Hi, here we are back at the Orlando Thousand Trails Resort. We will be here till the 20th then go to Lazy days for some work on the RV. We were only back a day when we got to have lunch with good friends Jim and Linda. They are still working at Disney and had some extra passes they gave to us to use. We will use them to go to Epcot to see the Flower and Garden exhibits. We have never seen the Flower and Garden exhibit, so looking forward to it, and seeing other friends that may be working when we get there.
      We also got to meet up with my cousin Jane and her husband Nick. We met them at the Catfish House in St. Cloud. A great place to eat. We must have ate there with them about four or five times this year. The food is super and the prices great.
            At thousand Trails we are backed up to a big field in the back of the park.  There are two Sand Cranes with babies. Neat to see, two different age groups. Linda did get a few pictures. Little did I know when I married her 45 years ago that she had a camera attracted to her arm. She goes everywhere with it. I'm sure glad I have a delete button on the computer. But as long as she enjoys taking pictures, I enjoy looking at them. While here we also saw a rocket lunch, or the vapor trail from it. The rocket could been seen while looking at it., but did not show up in the photo's. It was just ahead of the vapor trail and appeared as a silver spect in the sky. We did go to the Webster flea market, and it is bigger then ever. You do need a couple of days to see it all, without just walking by rows and rows of you name it.

It's one thing when we meet old friends, but Blazer meeting old friends! Well it happened. Banjo came to visit and a new friend Molly. Both his friends are from Canada. So I guess he has international friends. While talking about Blazer, we have some bad news. While at the vet getting his shots updated they found he has a heart mummer. They said don't run him. Keep him calm. Oh yell! They don't know Blazer. We will just walk him and not run him when we bike ride. We will try to limit play time. You that know Blazer know this is going to be a challenge. We will get a second opinion, when we get back to PA. His vet is opening a new practice in Bethlehem.

We did The Flower and Garden show at Disney's Epcot. When we thoughy they couldn't beat the Christmas displays, we were wrong. WOW! Wow says it all. It was fantastic. Below you will find just a sampling of pictures Linda took. The topiary Disney characters were super. We had a super day, and the weather was great. Sunny and about 85. We could tell the people who came from the north as they were so "white" they looked "bleached". The sun tan location was flowing. One of the highlights was eating at the German Biergarten restaurant. Linda's favorite. Another highlight was seeing Chubby Checker. He looked great and had boundless energy. It was a great day. Thanks Linda and Jim.

South Bay FL 3/3-3/10/11

2011-03-12T08:54:00.000-05:00

     Welcome new followers Diane and Andy, they are fellow Escapees. We had met them in Alaska in 2009. Safe travel and hope to meet you on the road soon.
     We had planed to go to the Everglades and stay in the Park. BUT, we were having trouble with our water pump in the RV. I added a little extra water to our fresh water holding tank and tried the pump. Couldn't get it to work at all. We do have an appointment to get it fixed, later this month.   It was working but kept loosing it prime. It would have been ok, but now it won't work at all. So we detoured a little and are staying at a super county park in South Bay. So we will have to do the Everglades another time.
    We are having a ball with our wii. Linda beats me in bowling almost ever game. Once she had seven strikes in a row, in two different games, but that is impressive. We tried a lot of the other games,but keep coming back to the bowling.
      We were not to far from Palm Beach so went over for a visit. Very busy, not our cup of tea.  The next day we went to Fort Lauderdale. Also very busy . Friends Ed and Vivian, Lonnie and Betty who are staying in Moore Haven about 30 miles away stopped over for a visit. Other then that, we just hung out at the RV Park. Did a little fishing at the park, but didn't do any good. It was good to just relax for a few days. See the pictures in our reveiw of this park.
       On the 11th we left South Bay and camet to the Orlando Thousand Trails Park. We did decide to save the Everglades for another time. We will be here till the 20th. Then we are going to Lazy Days for some work on the RV. After that we will head north . We have to be in Pigeon forge TN on the 28th.
       The reason for going to Pigeon Forge is to start work at Dollywood. We had applied in 2008 for  Oct and Nov. But at that time they said they didn't need us and would keep are application on file. Well guess what, they did keep our applications on file. They called and email us about coming to work this spring. So we said yes. We will spend spring in the Rocky mountains.  Had a few friends work there and they said it was a fun time. Friends Paul and Sandy who volunteer with us at Anastasia State Park in Fl are also going to work there also. They are staying in the same RV Park. That will be fun to be with them again. We are looking forward to the experience.

South Bay RV Campground-South Bay FL 3/3-3/10/11

2011-03-12T08:52:00.001-05:00

Site: We had site 148. It was a double wide very level paved site. There was a very large grass area on both sides of our paved area. Behind us was a small canal. There were small gators in the cannel. Site was very spacious. In front was a double wide paved road. It was a full hook up with 50 amp electric. There was a picnic table and a grill. We did have a few large trees on our site. Not all sites have trees. There are 72 sites, about 10 are double wide paved. About 25 are 50 amp, others are 30 amp.
Laundry; There are 2 washers and dryers in each of the 2 restrooms. Washer $1.25, dryers .75. Very clean. Partily opened and screened in area in entry to restrooms .
TV,Phone,Wifi; Cable TV with about 70 channels. Verizon phone worked well, 3-4 bars. Wifi worked great.
Dog friendly; Very large area to walk your dog. No fenced in area. There is a large area like a tennis court without lines and a 10 foot high fence. I did see some people letting their dogs run in there.
Amenities; There is a small club house/game room. Limited planned activities. A few swings for the kids.
Location; South Bay is on US 27, in South centural FL. The park is about 1/4 mile from Lake Okeechobee.
Summary; This is one of the nicest public parks we ever stayed in. This is a super park with a very friendly staff. The rates are: for out of County residents $27.75 -day;$166.50-week; $693.50 month;extra vehicle(not sure if this would include a boat) $4.25,$25.44,$106. We were in the back loop. The front loop is along route US27 and there is a lot of road noise.
We would consider spending a month or more here if it wouldn't be for the $4.25 a day extra charge for an extra car. First time I ever saw this type charge. There is a gate that is locked at night. There is a pond and a canal/channel around the the campground. There is a boat launch on Lake Okeechobee about 1/4 mile away. There is a street light about every 4 sites. Good lighting at night. Good bike riding in park. About 6 miles to a Winn Dixie and 16 to a super Walmart. Few resturants in the area. This is a small town with not a lot of amenities. Very poor signage to park. Very easy to miss if coming from the north.
Bonus; Lake Okeechobee right aside of park. On top of the Dike surrounding the lake, 140+ miles, is a hiking/biking trail. About half of it is paved. Great birding area.

Our site is behind the big tree on the right.

These last 3 pictures taken from the top of the Dike behind our site.

Our site is on the left, behind the tree, you can see our truck.

New look of our RV Park reviews-our take on RV Parks

2011-03-06T13:02:00.000-05:00

Hope you like the new look of our park reviews. Rather then having it just run in long paragraphs, we are trying to categorize it. We will not rate it by some numbering system. We will try to tell it like we see it and try to include some pictures. If you need more information, just email us and we will try to answer your questions. As full timers we look at the cost of RV Parks a little different them weekenders/part timers. One of the cost we can control in were we stay. When paying 365 days a year for a site, discounts are very important to us. No one like paying the full rack rate(as they call it in the hotel business). Any discount is better then none. We look for the best value for our dollar. We will not sacrifice safety or stay in a very poor quality park just for a better price. Things like playground equipment is not important to us, and the fact it's not there is a plus for us. Also showers and restrooms are not important to us, as we use our own. We will report on them if we check them out. Laundries are important to us, as we use them. Dog friendly is important to us. Also big rig friendly-very important. We try to do a search on the parks we go to, but can't always find out to much. We rely on other rver's info, on their blogs, and in sites like http://www.rvparkreviews.com/ We do look at the parks website if they have one for information. However when did you see a RV park show a picture of something and say this is our worst site etc. Many websites do not show the sites, only the pool, game room etc..Show us whats important. This is why we are adding reviews to our blog- to maybe help some one else. We will try to include photos for each park. It is also a reminder to us, as our blog is our journal. The most important thing, is this is our opinion, yours may vary or other things may be more important to you. Things like price, specials, ownerships, club affiliation, etc change. We are not trying to replace any directories. So if you find somthing different or a better park in the area let us know. If we return to a park we will update it. Please bear with us as we try to critique our RV park review.

Whisper Creek RV Resort LaBelle FL 2/21-3/3/2011

2011-03-06T11:05:00.002-05:00

    We are here on two specials. First, 3 free days no strings attacked, special from Tampa RV Show. Second a $99. "Stay and Play" for 4 days. This for a sales presentation for lots they are selling in their new section of the resort. A new section in a old park. The new section will be a HOA. Very clean and well maintained..   So far we had a very nice boat ride on the Caloosahatchie. We also had a two great lunches. All parts of the sales presentation, Very very nice. The older section is about 75% park models and 25% RVs. A couple of hundred sites. Very, very, very well maintained.
Facilities: Lots are 50 X 60, back in site, large for a private park. Site is very level grass. No picnic table. No shade. No privacy between sites. FHU w/50 amp electric. Double wide paved roads. Very well laid out. Very well lit at night. Some road noise. As stated above sites are very large for a private park.
Laundry: There is a very clean laundry.
TV, Phone, Wifi: There is cable in the new sections, but not all lots are activated. We had a lot where it worked very well, about 60-70 channels.   Over the air TV is good.   Our Verizon cell phone worked very well. There is also wifi which worked well.
Dog Friendly: Dog friendly. No large open areas to walk or run your pet, but plenty of roads to walk around the park.
Amenities: There is a heated pool. There are 2 club houses. Shuffle board courts. A small library. A exercise area. A small pond for fishing. Many, many scheduled activities.
Location: South central FL. About 30 miles from downtown Fort Myers. About 1 mile from public boat launch on the Caloosahatie River, part of the intercostal waterway. About 30 miles to Lake Okeechobee.   Two groceries stores in town, about 1 mile to a Save a Lot and about 3 miles to a Winn Dixie. A few restaurants in town and 4 or 5 fast food places. Nearest hospital is in Fort Myers. Only mention this as we were here looking at lots and that is important to us if staying put for 5-6 months.
Summary: Miles of roads in park to ride your bike or walk. Very very friendly staff and workers.

Comment: We would stay here again if we could get some type of a discount. The $40 daily rate and $240 weekly is a little to high. Monthly is $930 + electric. We did get to stay 3 extra days for free because we were considering a lot. Forgot- they only accept cash or checks, no credit cards.

LaBelle FL 2/21-2/28/2011

2011-03-02T10:11:00.000-05:00

While at Labelle we went back to The glades RV Resort to a fish fry. Our friends Ed and Lon caught enough fish to have a fish fry. After the great fish fry we went to play Bingo at the park. In our group of six, Linda and I are the only ones who haven't won.
The reason we came to LaBelle is for the "Swamp Cabbage Festival". There is such a thing as swamp cabbage. It is made from the sabal palm. This is the state tree of FL. Swamp cabbage is the heart of the palm that is boiled and season. It was a food source that supplemented the early settles.

Friends Dianne and Marvin from Cape Coral came over to go to the festival with us. Well we tried the 'swamp cabbage" and all decided we only needed one taste and that was enough. It was very bland tasting. We did talk to several folks that said it was what they were raised on it, and it was great. I guess it must be a acquired taste.

Before we tried the "cabbage" we watched the "Swamp Cabbage" parade. A nice small parade with three small school bands from town. Two of the bands didn't have uniforms. They just wore white shirts and jeans. But they were dedicated to playing and marching. This is a small town and I guess uniforms are not part of the school budget. I remember all the fund raisers we helped with for uniforms when our kids were in the band. Don't want to do that again. The look may be different but if you close your eyes the music sounds the same. The most unusual thing in the parade was a few "swamp Buggies". A few had tires on them that must have been 10-12 foot tall. They do have swamp buggy rides and races. We are still amazed at how there is a uniqueness of each area of the county. People adopt to their different areas and climates with so many interesting ways of life. There are probably thousands of different festivals in this great county of ours, celebrating different areas and cultures. It is great finding some of these in our travels.

Did you ever bet on a Armadillo race? Well we did. The local Jaycees use armadillo races as a fund raiser for scholarships. Oh what the heck, "petea" wasn't around so we placed a bet on number three, "Belle" . Well she/he lost. But Dianne bet on number five and he/she won. She won a hat. Well it was for a good cause. In fairness to the Jaycees, they captured 17 armadillos and switch them through out the day. After the races they are given a big helping of crickets and turned loose in the area they where caught in.
There were other things like lawn mower races, a bass fishing tournament and a rodeo. They had a swamp cabbage queen and princess, several bands and lots of food. It was a warn sunny day of about 85 degrees. Not to hard to take for February. It was fun and we got to see a lot of different thinks.

The fish fry. Friends Ed and Vivian and Betty and Lon.

Friends Diane and Marvin

Our guy came in Last. But Linda said he/she is cute!

Flordia-Lake Okeechobee area

2011-02-24T21:56:00.003-05:00

       We arrived at the Glades RV Resort in Moore Haven on Monday the 14th. See our review of this park in an earlier blog. We came here to meet friends Ed and Vivian from York PA. They were in the 5th wheel aside of us in the pictures in the Glades reveiw. Their friends Lonny and Betty were aside of them. We became fast friends. We had a great time talking about old times. That evening we had a great Valentines dinner followed by a great show.
      We did a road trip touring the City of Moore Haven. Not to much here. We did view the 500 year old crpress tree along the Caloosahatchee river. There is a nice river walk. Toured the locks there on the river. They have a nice RV Park right by the locks. Some sites along the river. Under new ownership. Its is "The Okeechobee Waterway RV Resort". They are a Passport America park and you can find out more info at PAs website.
      The towns we are visiting are around the southern side of Lake Okeechobee Lake.   see http://www.lakeobigwater.com/   also http://www.saj.usace.army.mil/      Great info at both these sites. There is a 143 mile dike-"The Herbert Hoover Dike" encircleing the lake. There is a major rehabilitation of the "Dike" in process. It's only estimated to cost $856 million with completion date of 2030 for the entire project. Think New Orleans had a problem. This lake is the second largest lake wholely in the US. It covers 730 square miles. The high risk areas are to be completed by 2020. That said it is fishermen/boaters paradise.
      The next towns we visited were South Bay and Belle Glade. Both small towns with the "Big O" the draw. Found one nice RV Parks in each town. In South Bay it was the county Park called South Bay, about 1/4 mile from the rim canal that circles the lake and is part of the Intercoastal waterway. In Belle Glade there is Torry Island RV Park under new ownership. It sits next to the lake.
        The big town in the area is Clewiston. You can tell they made the big time because they have a Super Wal Mart. In Clewiston we did the "Sugarland Tours". Clewiston is the sweetest town in the US, or so they claim. Thats because sugar cane is king there. see www.clewiston.org/tourflyer.pdf    We got to see sugar cane fields burning along many of the roads. On the tour we got to see how they harvest the cane, ship it to the refinery, drove through the refinery, and tasted the raw cane. It's different seeing backhoes moving sugar, when we are used to seeing it moved with a teaspoon. Just mind boggleing to see a building 700 foot long and very tall with backhoes and dump trucks, the large ones like used in open pit minning stock piling sugar that is 96 % pure. Oh! it's further refined when sold to a buyer, it's 99.9% pure at that point. But at 96% pure it is being handle with heavy diesel equipment. Does your sugar have a diesel odor? It takes 1100 train cars a day to keep the rifinery going. see http://www.ussugar.com/   The company operation farms 187,000 acreas. US Sugar is the largest fully intergrated cane sugar processing mill and refinery in the world.
           Next on the tour was a drive through the Southern Gardens Citrus Processing plant and some orchards. The company farmes 32,000 acres. Every part on the orange is used. Fl produces most of the OJ we drink while CA supplies most the fruit we eat. Didn't know that. see http://www.southerngardens.com/
      After these two tours we had a buffet lunch at the Historic Clewiston Inn. A great lunch then back on the bus. We toured some of the historic areas of the town. Next we drove to the top of the Dike. We got a lot of info on the lake and learned about the commerical fishing that still goes on in the lake . Catfish is the main fish harvested. We learned about the history of the lake and the building of the dike. If in the area we recomend the tour. The cost is $40. per person. Included is a tour of the small museum.
       The next day we did another small road trip and had lunch at Roland Martins Tiki Bar. You fisher folks will recognize the name. He is on the National Bass Masters Tour. Its a in/outdoors type bar and grill. They advertise the best hambergers in town. So we tried one. Its about a half pounder, good but not great. It was fun just to say we ate there.
       The next day I got to go fishing on the big "O". Lonney has a bass boat, and took me out fishing. We launched the boat in the rim canal. We travel at full trottle for about a half hour to get to the main lake. The lake is a shallow lake. We fished in mostly 2 to 4 foot of water. Fishing was a little slow. Lonney caught 5 bass and I got 2. The biggest was about 3 pounds caught by Lonney.   We did have a great time on beautiful day of about 80 degrees under full sun. On the way out and back through the canal we saw a least 50+ alligators,traveling at top speed of the boat. Probably if we were just putting along we would have seen twice as many.

Sugar cane burning.

Loading cut "cane" on rail cars.

Cutting "cane", Bob tasting raw sugar.

Rows of sugar cane.

Unloading oranges.

The Historic Clewiston Inn.

On top of the Dike, the commerical fishing boats.

Bob sitting on the outside of the Tiki Bar.

lookin in the Tiki Bar

The Glades RV Resort-Moore Haven FL 2/14-2/21/11

2011-02-21T20:44:00.001-05:00

The staff was very friendly. The price works out to $32.70 a night, weekly rate plus tax. They offer no discounts of any kind, other then a weekly and monthly rate. That said this is a very nice Resort. Its is maybe 50% full.
SITE: our site is a back in about 70-80 foot long, very wide. We are in a site that is along the perimeter of the park. No one behind us, just a small pond, and future sites, see the hookups in place, in the photo's. In front of us across the wide park road is a 9 hole golf coarse, part of the RV Resort complex, along with a marina on the Caloosahatchee River, part of the intercostal waterway. The site is grass. There is a cement patio about 8x16. We had full hook up with 50 amp electric. There are very few trees and no privacy between sites. All roads in the park are paved and wide and great for maneuvering a large RV. Plenty of parking at our site for the car and truck.
Laundry: There are two laundries in the park, each with four washers and dryers. Very clean in a open screened in room.
Amenities: As mentioned a Marine, 9 hole golf coarse, heated pool, club house with scheduled activities, fishing, exercise room and wide open space. They are on about 500 acres. There are about 250 sites. The sites along the perimeter are a better choice in our opinion.
TV-Phone: Our Verizon cell service was good, between 3-4 bars. There is no cable TV. Over the air TV, got all major networks and about 40 other channels. There is wifi in the park for a fee. We didn't use it as we use our Droid X to connect to the Internet.
Dog Friendly: Very dog friendly. Lots and lots of room to walk your pet. There is a large area in front of park away from RVs to let them run off leash. It is not fenced.
Comments:There is no road noise. Night lighting is very good, very well lite, a bit to lite for night sky viewing. No picnic table, but go to office to request one. There is a small book exchange in the clubhouse. Bike riding is good in the park, as well as long walks. Boat lunch and kayaking on the river. About 40 miles from the heart of Ft. Myers. Nearest grocery store about 15 miles, Winn Dixie, in La Belle. Lake Okeechobee about 10 miles to the nearest boat launch. Closest restaurant about 15 miles in La Belle. This is sugar cane harvesting season and there is some very minor smoke and fly ash in the air at times. We would return to this park in the future but hope for a discount.

Flordia- Friends- Edison & Ford Winter Homes- Fort Myers

2011-02-20T13:07:00.000-05:00

       Friends-Friends-Friends- We got together with a number of friends while at Toby's RV Resort in Arcadia. First we went to see Linda's cousin Carl and wife Dot. They live in Arcadia for about 10 years. Very nice to reconnect with them. Next friends Dave and Liz who have a home in Largo took a ride down to visit us for the day. They are friends from PA. We retoured Lake Placid with them. We had a great visit. Then full time RV friends Penne and Dave who were in Moore Haven gave us a call. We met them in Lake Placid for lunch which was midway between us. Great to see them as we haven't seen them since the Rose Parade in CA 1/1/10. In the passed we had met them in OH, TX, and several times in Alaska. Then in OR. and CA. What a great life we have being able to connect with friends. Then we met friends Dianne and Marvin who now live in Cape Coral. Linda and Dianne have been friends since elementry school.  Our kids went to the same schools together. They said bring Blazer, that way you can spend more time. We did and they brought him some toys and sat on the floor playing with him. They really enjoyed Blazer. Then we went to Sanibal and Captiva Islands and took Blazer with us. They have a mini van and Blazer made himself at home in the back seat. We walked the beaches and Dianne and Linda picked up shells and Blazer picked up each one they threw down and set it at their feet to make sure they didn't want it. While writing this update we are now with friends Ed and Vivian, at the Glades RV Resort in Moore Haven FL.. We had met them in Flagstaff AZ in 2003 and have been friends since. They are from York PA., and new friends Lonnie and Betty. More on were we are now in our next update. We are back tracking as we are behind on our blog. We have been very very busy and will back up a week or two to update our blog.
           We went to Fort Myers to tour the Edison and Ford Winter Estates and Gardens. What a super tour. See at http://www.efwefla.org/   We spent about 6 hours touring the house, gardens and museum. The Banyan and Mysore Fig trees were really neat. If in the area we would consider doing the tour again. We did the audio tour.  This is great as we could take as long as we wanted. You get a audio recorder and follow a map to number post and click on that number and listen to the recorded discrpition of what you are viewing.
           After the six hours we needed a break and had lunch. After lunch we headed for the Shell Factory/Museum/store. This is combination of a small shell museun, store, great mounted animal display(like at Cabella's display), etc, etc. Very touristy, but fun. http://www.shellfactory.com/.

First 3 photo's are of the Edison house.

The next 3 are of the Ford house.

A red powerpuff flower,a Mysore fig tree, gardens in bloom and a Banan Tree.

The Shell Factory/Museum with 100's of shells on display from around the world and the animal displays.

      We will be here till Monday the 21st. We are going to La Belle about 18 miles from this park. We are going there because of a great special we have for six days. Keep the emails and comments coming, we love hearing from you all. Some one asked about the placemarks on our map. The blue is 2009, red 2010 and green 2011. Thanks for traveling along with us.

Toby's RV Resort Arcadia FL 1/17-2/14/11

2011-02-17T08:04:00.001-05:00

Very friendly staff. We stayed here with a Thousand Trails special. Price was $16.93 a night. We had a pull thru site on grass. We had FHU 50 amp electric. Site had a small 8X10 cement patio. No privacy between sites. All roads are paved but a bit to narrow for big rigs. Our site was in the back row, so behind us was a huge field with cattle roaming around. The park is surround with fields on 3 sides. There is a very clean laundry. Very active park for 55+ community. There is a heated pool. There is a small 3-4 acae lake in back of park for fishing. Our Verizon phone worked well. Over the air TV got about 30 channels. Wifi through Tango- spotty. Dog friendly. Big grass field in front of park, not fenced. Night lighting is good. There is some road noise. There is a small book exchange. There is only one dumpster in the park and it was a very long walk from our site, about a half mile. Biking is good through out park. You can ride into town on a paved road for walking/biking off the main road and very safe. Goes into town for several miles. Super Walmart less then a mile. Two other major grocery stores in 2-3 miles. The park is about half permanent park models and seasonal sites. The front has 30 sites for transients. Very very well kept park. we would stay here again.

Port Charolette, Punta Gorda, Sarasota FL 1-2011

2011-01-31T23:17:00.000-05:00

First let me welcome our new followers, friends Ed and Johanne, and Paul and Sandy. We returned to Mayakka River State Park with our bikes. We wanted to ride some of the trails. We spotted a few gators and about ten osprays. That's Linda getting ahead of me. She dosen't know I'm using her to scare the gators, no not gator bait. Caught this ospray building his nest. We rode in a couple of miles till the road which was packed sand got to soft to ride on.

We took a ride to Port Charolette and Punta Gorda. We stoped at the Chamber of Commerence for some information. Guess what! they have a book on mural that are around town. So we had some fun hunting them down. Below are a few of them.

The next day we went to Sarrasota to visit the Ringling Museum. What a super tour. We visited the mansion called Ca d Zan-"House of John".It is a Venetian Gothic design. What a super place. It was hard to decide what pictures to use when we took hundreds.

One building houses the Howard Tibbals miniature circus. Its a replica of the Ringling Bros. and Bailey Circus from 1919 to 1938. It is the world's largest miniature circus in the world. There are 8 main tents, 152 wagons, 1300 circus performers and workers, over 800 animals, and 59 train cars. The first 2 pictures are from above looking down at the 3800 square foot display. Mr Tibbals took 50 years to build the display. To put the display together at the museum it took over a year. The next picture is looking in at the 3 ring circus. The next picture shows the detail of the mess hall, down to the plates and cups, etc. The next two pictures shows the Midway. We only got to spend about a half hour at the Ringlings Museum of Art. This is a huge building with 21 galleries. We were told you need about 4 hours to tour it all. Boy were they wrong. We spent about 6 and a half hours, and could only rush through the art museum

The fish gods blessed Bob with a eight pound bass. This was caught in the small lake(large pond) at Toby's RV Resort in Arcadia.

This last picture is Linda's new ride. We bought a 2011 HHR. Linda is the primary driver. We are trying to save the truck for a few more years of towing. It's a 2007 and a half, and we got 65,000 miles on it already. We have been checking our milage with the truck and found that for every 1000 miles of towing we put on 4-5000 miles touring. We decided to get something less expensive to operate to tour around in.

Lake Placid FL 1-2011

2011-01-26T22:00:00.000-05:00

Wow! what a great little town. We went to see the murals and found a lot more. We came to the circle and saw a neat building. It was Toby's Clown School and Museum. Well, we had to check this out. Oh no, its Saturday and it"s closed. But wait there someone in the parking lot besides us. Its a nice old gentlemen who asked us if we wanted to see the museum, Oh yes we said. Then another car pulls in and it's the President of the club(clown clubs are called clown alley). We didn't know this, but it was explained to us. Well they are closed on Saturaday but, we got invited in. The old gentlemen we met was Toby the Clown. Between the two men we got a super tour of the museum and the whole story of Toby'd Clown School. It was a super hour we spent there in the "closed" museum and school. So far they graduated over 600 clowns. We really learned there is a lot more to clowning then we realized. See www.tobysclownfoundations.org .Thats Linda With Toby the Clown.

The reason we went to Lake Placid was to see the murals. There are 44 murals around the town. Plus many of the trash cans are painted in scenes. We purchased the mural book for $3. that tells were and all about the murals. We had fun walking around town looking for the murals. We saw many other people doing the same. see http://www.muralsoflakeplacid.com/ also http://www.visitlakeplacidflordia.com/

See when looking down the rows of flowers from both ends of the building how the rows seem to be straight in front of you.

Arcadia FL 1/17-1/31/11 part 1

2011-01-22T20:54:00.000-05:00

We moved about 25 miles to Toby's RV Resort in Arcadia. So far the weather has been great. We had a couple of days in the high 70's, low 80's. This is wonderful for January, but this is why we are here, for the great weather. We have spent winters in CA, AZ, TX and FL, and FL does seem to have the best weather. We want to explore more of the area hence our 25 mile move. This is a great park and we will do a review of it in the future.

We went to Markka River State Park, see http://www.myakkariver.org/ and www.flordiastateparks.org/myakkariver . We spent a day there but will return in a couple of days. There is a lot to do there. We did the boardwalk trail and saw a lot of wild life. Most was through a spotting scope set up by one of the volunteers at the end of the boardwalk. The wildlife was on the other side of the upper lake and to far to photograph. We did do a tram tour and had a super guide that was very informative about the park. The tour lasted about one hour. We did see alligators, turtles, many different type birds including several Osprey. The park is about 45 square miles and the biggest of FA State Parks. We did another hike to the dam and saw about 12 alligators sunning themselves. We then did the "Canopy Walkway and Tower. A walkway through the treetops, or above the treetops. Very very neat. You climb a small tower and walk across a suspension walkway, 25 feet above the ground, to a taller tower. then you climb to the top, 70 feet in the air. Well about the treetops.

The suspension walkway.

A big gator.

Sunbathing gators, I wonder if they use location.

Osprey in nest.

Looking down at the walkway.

The suspension walkway.A big gator in a small water hole.

Above the treetops.

A good looking couple.

The stairway down.

A low branchTurtle appetizer for a gator.

We came upon the Peace River Citrus processing plant. The odor of fresh squeezed orange juice wolfed across the road. We pulled in to see if we could get a tour, but guard at the gate said no tours. So we turned around in their lot and got a few photo,s. I wonder how many oranges are in one of those trailers. Note they lift up the whole trailer to dump it. I'm sure this would be a great tour. The guard told us every part of the fruit is used. She said the rind and other parts are use for livestock feed. Orange beef anyone?

Thousand Trails Peace River Preserve-Wauchula FL 1/4-1/17/2011

2011-01-20T15:38:00.001-05:00

Very friendly staff. $0. price reflects club price. We had 30amp electric and water. About half the sites are FHU. We had a back in site on grass.with a few trees. Water pressure was low at times, electric was low, our autoformer kept lighting up, meaning it was boosting electric. Many improvements are on the way, and they are working on some now. No picnic table. They are getting 200 new tables. About half the roads are paved, rest are packed sand. Our site was down near the river and a little roomier them the sites near the road that were full hook up. There is a laundry w/6 washers and dryers. Could use more for a park this size, it was always very busy. There is wifi in the clubhouse. Our Verizon cell phone and air card worked well. Major TV networks over the air + about 15 other channels. There is a small fenced in dog run and many roads and trails in park to walk them. Very quite at night. Night lighting is low and very nice. There is a very tiny book exchange. Many roads in park for bike riding. The Peace river is in back of park. There is a steep kayak/canoe lunch. Slow low flowing river. Fossil digging is popular. You can rent fossil digging tools and float for digging in the river, or bring your own. Many activities. There is a heated pool and spa. It is schedule to get a make over. A few good restaurant's in town and groceries about 3 miles. Super Walmart about 5 miles.

Wauchula FL Part 2

2011-01-16T14:10:00.000-05:00

A few emails about our pictures at the top of our blog - it was taken at Salmon Glacier. It was a 20 mile white knuckle drive up the side of a mountain, but well worth it. It is a glacier you are above and looking down at. It backs up about 3 miles in two directions. It is about 15 miles (in a straight line) from Hyder AK just on the Canadian side of the border in British Columbia. Hyder AK is just across the border from Stewart BC.

On Wednesday we drove about 60 miles to the great Tampa RV show. It is billed as the biggest RV show in the US. If you go, you better wear your walking shoes. It is big, with many RV's on display. I would say 1000's, but that would be excruciating. There are two large buildings with all types of RV supplies for sale. We had a good time walking around and seeing 1000's of rver's looking at all the new RV's and supplies. The economy looks good at the show, but don't know what the dealers will say about sales. But it sure looks like there is a lot of interest.

We went to the town of Myakka City FL to see the training of the Lipizzan Stallions. see http://www.hlipizzans.co/ It was a cold day of about 50 degrees, so there was a small group of about 100-125spectators. There were two buses and about 25-30 cars in the parking lot. We went with our friends Tom and Paula. We had seats right up aside of the fence separating us from the horses. It was a super show. Myakka City is in the middle of nowhere. It is about 30 miles from Wauchula and 20 miles from Arcadia.

While here Blazer found a twin. See picture's can you pick out Blazer. The other dog is Banjo, he is from Canada. They played together at the rv park and at the county park about 1/2 mile from here. Two other dogs, both Australian Healers also came to visit Blazer, not us. He became popular with the other two owners. They wanted to know how we trained him to bring the ball back and put at your feet, or on your shoe. Well we gave demonstrations and told them he is just a "natural" at retrieving. We are felling hurt, more people came to visit Blazer then us. So we had to polish him up and he got a bath today. He's still walking like a hero. He is, that is, he is our hero.

Saturday night we went to bed and heard a lot of noise and saw a lot of bright lights. We looked out the window to see five fire trucks on the next road in the rv park. We went out to see a brand new motor home on fire. The fire started in the refrigerator. Almost every one of the many people standing around said they had a recall on their refrigerator, including us. This is a very serious problem. Lucky no one was hurt. The owner was up and got help right away. The motor home across from us and behind the burning one pulled forward up against our truck. This is what we first heard. He unhook his electric and hose and pulled forward with his awning and slides still our. Very scary. A couple of people got their hose and may have helped slow the fire down till the fire department got there.

Rember our new email address-- korbin.lilly@gmail.com