RV and other travels around the World
I hope that everyone had a great Christmas season with family and preparing for another new year. My wife Pat and I just finished celebrating our 49th wedding anniversary and Christmas with some family south of Tampa. This new year also brings in our 50th anniversary. Very hard for me to comprehend that. I remember my grandparents golden anniversary and they were old! Anyway, we have started to plan a huge year…
We are now at our destination for the winter months in the small city of New Port Richey (NPV). It has a population of 17,000 people and is about an hour north of Tampa and includes our RV park – Orchid Lake RV Resort (OLRVR). I’ll post something on the park at a later date. This year we stay at one place for almost four months instead of park hopping every month. We’ll see how that works having a base of operations instead of many areas of exploration.
We are back to our usual route south to Florida down through South Carolina and eastern Georgia then into Florida. This route has been heavily traveled over the years even before the RV travels. Interstate 95 is the major pipeline for snowbirds from the eastern part of the US and Canada. We had an enjoyable three day stopover in one of our favorites: Savannah, Ga.
And we’re off! It does feel good to get back on the road again to Florida. Especially as the Virginia weather forecast has some wintery reminders on the way. Retirement is good to have the time to spend three plus months in Florida instead of the week or two at Christmas back when I was working. Hard to imagine that it is coming up five years now since retirement.
They say that the second time is a charm. I certainly hope that is correct as we are loading the RV up for another attempt at the migration south. We have a few more things to load and then we are off!
Thanksgiving has to be my second favorite holiday right behind Christmas. All of the abundant traditional foods to be shared with some quality family time. Thanksgiving is also not all commercialized, if you don’t count the Black Friday thing. It has always been very enjoyable to catch up with family and friends, have a feast that lasts for days, and then watching college football on TV.
While we were in the planning stages for the big Thanksgiving dinner and the arrival of our family, I noticed the large water puddle in the street in front of our house. Suspicious, since it had not rained for several days. Upon closer inspection there were five very small water geysers sprouting up from the blacktop. Not good…the water main springs a leak!
We have enjoyed some downtime after our ill-fated attempt to get in some RV travel prior to our wintering in Florida. It has not all been resting up and trying to recover from the nasty Covid virus. Actually, it has been somewhat of a busy four weeks since arriving back at our Virginia home. Relaxing in Virginia….
It has been over a month since my last blog update which has been somewhat of a challenging blur and then a generous portion of downtime. But alas, that can be life sometimes. But, all is now good and we feel thankful for our blessings. So, our plan was to make a wide loop from our Virginia home to see family and friends and then settle at our Florida RV park on November 1st. And then in the first leg of this tour we both tested positive for Covid…crud!
We are now winding down the summer season in our Virginia home. Packing up to take a month long RV trip before arriving at our Florida destination. Over the summer we have made many updates to our vintage 1956 home. Back in the spring we finished the kitchen remodel. Then it was buying furniture for the screened in back patio. Finally, I have made some progress on two more dedicated rooms.
Continue reading “More Home Updates (Ham Shack & Art Studio)”