BIG Changes and Time to Update the Blog

Blairsville, Ga  (high 64, low 42)

There have been a LOT of changes and it's hard to know where to start.

After Hurricane Irma struck the Keys and destroyed our fifth wheel, we decided to hold off on putting another RV there.  There are some issues with the county and permanent rv's, so we're waiting to see how that all plays out.  With no rv there, we are able to rent the lot out when we are not there.  If anybody wants to spend Christmas in the Keys, let me know.

We decided to purchase a small trailer that we could easily tow and find campsites that we would fit.  We purchased a pre owned Forest River Rockwood Mini Lite.  It's only 21 ft.  It has one slide, a walk around bed, ducted AC,  a sofa instead of a booth, two door refrigerator and dual axle.  All the things that we had been looking for and all the things that are hard to find on a rig that size.

The new trailer fit just fine on our Keys lot.  We spent 3 weeks in the Keys in the little trailer, which we have named "The Dingy"   We were surprised at how comfy we were.  It turns out the layout was perfect and very liveable.  We now know that we could easily spend months in it.  It looks tiny outside, but is surprisingly roomy inside.

During our Keys trip in April, we finally got the boat in the water. It was the first time we had been able to take it out on the water after the hurricane, and we wanted to make sure everything was ok. We found a few issues with the trailer, but Progressive was great about adding a supplement to take care of the additional damages.  The motor ran fine and we got out to do some snorkeling.

Last January, we lost our live in caregiver for Mom, but we finally ended up finding someone else who is working out well (knock on wood).  Between her and the ones provided by her long term care insurance policy, we are covered which allows us to travel some.

While searching for a new caregiver, we stayed in Tampa for several months we took the opportunity to do some Florida camping in the new "Dingy."   We spent a few days at Rainbow Springs, where I picked up a few very tiny ticks.  Apparently, I missed one because a few weeks later I found one embedded in my skin with the bulls eye mark of Lyme Disease.  I went on antibiotics for 3 weeks for that.  Fortunately, I have had no further symptoms.

With the new caregiver in place and settled in, we headed back up to Blairsville, GA (where we had 2 rv lots).  The Dingy was parked at our rental rv lot and we moved back into the Cameo which we keep here.

This is Old Federal Campground which is a COE campground on Lake Lanier in Georgia. We stayed there on the way back to Georgia. We decided we really like the COE campgrounds, plus the 50% discount is nice.  We planned on doing some traveling during the summer but that didn't happen.

While in Blairsville, we decided to take a look at some houses for sale, just for kicks.  We love the north Georgia mountains the city of Blairsville and knew that we would end up here someday.  We especially love the area where our RV lots are because we have the nice country back roads where we can  ride our golf cart and "bear hunt".  Plus it is a great area for walking and there are wonderful hiking trails (Appalachian Trail is 3 miles away).  We didn't want the house to be up a long twisty road with a steep driveway,  no neighbors, or an area with no building restrictions and dumpy places next door.

It turned out that one came up for sale right next to the Rv park and ended up buying it.  It has a long driveway with a big parking space behind the house, which is perfect for us to park the little trailer.

The cats love their new house.  We still have our big boy Baxter and our old boy Chatty, who is going on 19 and has end stage kidney disease.  We never thought he'd be around this long, but he's doing ok.

During the summer, someone dumped a pretty little female cat and of course we ended up with her.  We didn't want another cat and didn't plan to keep her but she had a terrible skin condition, no one wanted her.  She had some sort of skin condition and was losing her fur.  With the help of our friends and neighbor who is a Veterinarian, and plenty of medications and care, she improved after a few months. She had to be kept isolated from the other cats so she lived in our cabin during the process. It was a process of elimination and we didn't know if she had ringworm or demodectic mange. We didn't expect our old guy would still be around so we figured we could take in another one. Which we did.

So, on Halloween, we closed on our new house.  The house backs up the the Nottley river which is  behind the RV park, making us  close to our friends there and have all the benefits of the the area we love.  It made it much easier to move all the STUFF we had in the fifth wheel and TWO cabins!

Here is our new house.  It has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and a double car garage, with rv parking in the back.  It is on 1 1/4 acre on the Nottley River.   We have a covered front and back porch and we will probably screen one of them for the cats.  We have an empty field in front of the house and an empty lot next door for privacy. We will be purchasing a riding mower soon.

It seemed strange at first living in a house again.  So much room.  A little clutter doesn't trash the entire place like in a Rv.  You don't know it's raining unless you look outside! It's easy to stay warm even with the cold weather we have now.  We never missed our house while living the last 8 years in our rv's, but now that we have one again, we really are enjoying it.  Of course, it's cold outside, the grass is brown now and there are no leaves on the trees.  We are anxious to get outside and plant a garden and some flowers.

The front porch looks out over Brasstown Bald which is the highest mountain in Georgia.

Our good friends and neighbors Heidi and Suzanne and their three sweet little dogs.  Heidi was our hero taking care of Nottley (the cat)  for us!

We had a very rare Piebald deer around this year.  Isn't she a beauty?  It's a genetic mutation but still beautiful.  I hope the hunters don't get her.

We had some bear sightings this year.  We expect we will have bears in our yard here in the house.  Our neighbors had one in their garage during the daytime.  

We are still here in Blairsville and have experienced snow a couple times already.  We really need to get back down to Tampa, but are dreading it.  We are so enjoying our new house.

 This is Brasstown Bald from our porch with the help of my camera zoom.

This is Nottley, our new kitty.  She had to live in the cabin for a few months until we cleared up her skin issues and make sure she wasn't contagious.  We didn't have much trouble introducing her to Baxter and Chatty, but she does like to pick on both of them.  It's ok if she picks on Baxter. He can take it and defend himself.  He weighs 18 pounds to her 6, but Chatty is too old and frail, so we don't like her attacking him.

She is young and agile, and likes to explore.  We caught her on top of the cabinets in the laundry room. Al had to help her get down.

This time she was on top of the door to the laundry room.  We made her find her own way down this time.

We were under a winter storm warning.  Nearby Clayton, Ga and Asheville NC got a 12-18 inches of snow but we only got a little which was mostly slush.  We were hoping for a nice thick fluffy snow like they had here last year.  

This is the view of our snow from our front window.

We have no snow shovel and Al was afraid the slush would freeze, so he used a plastic lid to scrape the thick slush off the upper part of the driveway.

Hey, we're Floridians, so snow is a big deal to us!  We took a drive up to Brasstown bald to see more snow.

It was a beautiful day, but freezing cold with the wind at the higher elevations.

The plan for now it so head back to Tampa before Christmas.  We will hang around there a while then take the dingy out for some local camping trips and then to the Keys mid March when our renters leave our lot in the  Keys.  We may make a trip back here to try and see some snow.  Despite the very cold weather here in Blairsville, it is very hard to want to leave this year.

So, that about catches us up.  I think it's time I find a new picture and delete the one of the destroyed RV after Hurricane Irma.  I can't seem to remember how to change the header photo. Any tips would be appreciated!

Hurricane Irma and Information on our Boat

We are trying to enjoy the fall activities, while still dealing with hurricane and insurance issues. Things are moving very slowly due to the massive amount of damage and the remote location.  We are being patient.

We know our fifth wheel is a total loss and are waiting for the insurance company to find a company capable of picking the pieces up and towing it away.

We are hoping to get more info on our boat today. It is stored on Venture Out property in a secured storage lot.  There are 100-150 boats in the lot, all in assigned spaces.  At least they were.  Now they are in a jumbled up mess. Some are some off their trailers, some on top of other boats and in all kinds of conditions.

It is a big mess and one boat can't be moved without the risk of damaging others.   It needed to be a coordinated well thought out operation.

With the extent of other damages, the boat lots were not the highest priority and we completely understood that.  There are still people without electricity to their lots.  Ours included since our Rv destroyed our power and water pedestals.  Many homes were destroyed or badly damaged.  I do not believe anyone escaped some sort of damage.

The other night, we got a message from the HOA president stating Sea Tow has been contracted to begin untangling the boats and that we would all be responsible to pay their fees.  Sea Tow is the company many of us use in case we breakdown offshore, they will tow you in. They were bringing in a crane and if your boat needed crane services, the cost would be $175 a FOOT!  Most boats would need some sort of crane service to right the boats or put them back on the trailers.  We weren't given any choices, or notice that this was being done and no further explanation was given.

Needless to say, we were extremely upset knowing this had all been decided for us without any input, or the opportunity to involve our insurance companies.  We were going to have  a $3000 bill to move our boat when we had insurance that would have taken care of it with no cost to us.

After a day of phone calls, and research, we found out that marine salvage was a whole new deal and could not be done by just anyone.  There was the possibility of spilled fuel and battery acid that needed to be considered.  Plus the liability of  possibility damaging another boat while trying to get your boat out.

We determined these charges were pretty much standard, and that most insurance companies would pay Sea Tow's outrageous fees. I think these charges are excessive but it was not my call and as long as Progressive pays the bill, we will not argue.  I'm sure it will be expensive picking up our trailer as well. I am sure there are boats with no insurance which would leave these ridiculous fees up to the boat owner.

We saw a post on Facebook the other day where a guy was looking for someone to pick up his car.  He had no insurance on it because he didn't use it during the summer and took the coverage off.  A lot of people do that but you always need to leave comprehensive coverage on it and this is a perfect example why.

I made a phone call to Progressive who insures both our boat and trailer and confirmed Sea Toy was one of their contractors and there should be no problem with them paying for their fees for our boat. I will feel better when I know that for sure.

I then contacted Sea Tow and Progressive and got an appraiser scheduled to inspect the boat today once it was moved away from the other boats.  They are not allowing anyone on the boat lots except employees of Sea Tow and Insurance adjusters.  We do not think our boat will be a total loss, but until the adjuster is able to inspect it, we won't know for sure.  We do not know what kind of water intrusion we got or if there was any damage to the motor.

This is an example of what Sea Tow has to deal with.

The small boat facing out in  the picture below is ours.  As it turns out, our boat had been shifted from our trailer a little bit, but our boat and trailer was on top of another trailer.  We will definitely need crane services.

 The Proline boat is ours. You can see how tight of a space it is in.  We were not able to view the motor at all.   You can see what was probably the waterline on our boat.

This is also part of our boat and the jumbled mess it is in.

This is a picture we took from above with our drone. Our boat is towards the left next to the white car with the yellow cushion and bait bucket in the front.

These were also  taken from our drone from above and a good example of what they have to deal with.

We knew it wasn't going to be an easy job to separate all these boats without damaging others.

I am also in the process of making a detailed list of every item that was in our trailer that we were not able to salvage. 

I am trying to document our Hurricane Irma adventures so I apologize for another boring disaster post.  We have been doing fun things and I have some pictures taken from our drone and of our adventures.   We are doing ok and dealing with this one step at a time.

Hurricane Irma and Damage to Our Rv

Blairsville, Ga (high 75, low 46)

In case you haven't been following my blog, you can catch up HERE

We are now back in Georgia after a very hot and tiring trip down to the Keys.  We felt we should go down to inspect our Fifth Wheel and boat, and to see if we could salvage anything. We left the beautiful mountains and the cool weather to go to the heat and destruction in the Florida Keys.

We (the cats included) were exhausted after our trip and were so glad to be back in Georgia. 

We stayed with my cousin and her wife who have a home in Key West. Thankfully they only had  minimal damage.  They had evacuated to North Carolina and just got back a day or two before we arrived.  They were generous enough to invite all of us (kitties too)  to stay with them, even though they were still trying to get their house and property back to normal after their evacuation.

The eye of the hurricane struck Cudjoe Key (where our lot is) and spared Key West from the worst damage, and was lucky to have been on the "good" side of the storm.  Key West  lost a LOT of trees and some were real heart breakers, but for the most part they did pretty well. There is a lot of clean up to be done, but they are doing their best to open back up for tourism.  Too many jobs depend on tourism and the people need to get back to work.  More and more restaurants and bars are opening up every day.  As of October 1st, Key West is officially open for tourism.  A little beaten and battered for sure, but open for business.  Cudjoe, Marathon, Big pine and the lower keys are NOT ready for tourism and it will be a while before anyone even wants to go to that part of the Keys.

We didn't do any sightseeing in Key West and only went to the places we needed to go. The heat was so overwhelming that it sapped every bit of your energy.  I remember why we don't go to the Keys in the summer.

On our drive  down from Tampa we didn't see too much damage until we left the mainland and got into the Keys. The further south in the Keys we drove, the more damage we saw.  It was bad in the upper Keys, but once you entered Marathon, it kept getting worse and worse. The hardest hit was Marathon, Big Pine, Ramrod, and Cudjoe Key.  The eye of Hurricane Irma made landfall on Cudjoe Key, but I think Big Pine Key had even worse damage than we did in Cudjoe Key.

The first days and weeks were bad for those who had not evacuated. They were not allowing anyone back into the Keys until they could inspect the bridges, and clear power lines, boats and debris off the roads. There was no power, no running water, no sewer, no hospitals, no fuel and no police, except the few that volunteered to stay.  There were a lot of emergency management folks from FEMA, the military, the insurance companies, Red Cross and many more. There were linemen from about every state in the country along with about as many tree companies from various states.  They were a huge blessing and without all their help, it would have never gotten done.  There was free water and ice being given out and even free meals. You could get medical help, tetanus shots and there were even free veterinary clinics, which of course I particularly liked.

The electric didn't come back on for days and then just a little bit at a time. The upper Keys got their power back fairly quickly, but  Cudjoe Key only got electric (and air conditioning) back yesterday, which was over three weeks after the storm!

We made a quick stop at our lot to survey the damage in person.  We needed to drop the cats off at Anne and Jan's so we couldn't stay long.  It was even more devastating than we thought to actually see it in person.  We had seen pictures, but nothing prepares you for the real thing.

This is Spanish Main Drive.  It is the road that leads into our community and the hurricane devastated the power grid.   You can tell why it took three weeks to restore the power.  

This is the underside of our fifth wheel.  The emergency responders go around to check for dead bodies and mark the homes with the orange paint. Fortunately, ours had a 0 in the bottom part of the X which indicated no one was found inside.   :)

When I first saw this picture, of the orange paint for some reason it really hit me hard and made me cry.   It made it really hit home, I guess. This is the bottom of our fifth wheel.

Since our trailer was so spread out, I guess they felt the need to paint ours twice, once on the bottom and once on the other side.  This is on the living room slide.  You can see the microwave sitting on the top. We never could figure out how it got up there, but two shell magnets were still stuck to the sides.  Those are two of the items we were able to salvage.  

You can see the travel trailer upright next to ours. It was moved a little and the hurricane anchors were pulled out of the ground, but it appears to have survived.  Of course we don't know if any water got inside.

We feel certain a tornado caused our damage because of the extensive damage to ours and not to the others around us.  Hurricanes always spin up tornadoes. One picture I took shows where our frame was actually bent apparently from the tornado.

This is the front of our fifth wheel.  It did not touch the trailer next door.  His car even seemed to be fine.

We dropped the kitties off and then Anne and Jan insisted on coming back with us to help us retrieve anything that we could. They had already spend half the day helping friends on Ramrod Key and I'm sure going back out in the heat was the last thing they wanted to do.  

One man in our community actually died from heat stroke and another was hospitalized for several days.  You could not drink enough water to make up for that heat. We all felt the effects of the heat and could easily have gotten heat stroke.

Our community is a mixed use resort with high rise homes on stilts like you see here.  Midrise, old trailers and rv lots.  There are 659 lots here and I didn't see even one without some sort of damage.  Some damage was obviously worse than others. 

We found some of our things in the debris, some water damaged, some broken and some stuff was actually good.  

If you look carefully, underneath the slide is our bent power pedestal.

This is one of the hurricane anchors Al installed before we left in June.  He rented an auger that drilled down into the very hard coral rock.  It was next to impossible to drill through and poor Al nearly killed himself doing it.   The winds pulled them right out of the ground.  The chains held though.

This post is long enough so I will stop here and come back soon with more of the story.  Yes, we did find the boat.  Sort of.

To end the post on a positive note:   Meet Mulligan.  She is Anne and Jan's pup.  She cheered us all up every day.  

Decisions to Make

Blairsville, Ga (high 80, low 58)

Things are a mess in the Keys.

Fortunately, Key West was spared the brunt of the storm, thank goodness.  Key West is such a beautiful and special town, full of history, large old trees and beautiful architecture and although there is damage, it could have been worse.  My cousins house is fine.  No flooding.  A tree or two and some fencing down.  They still do not have consistent power, water, or flushable toilets so they have no urgent need to rush back down.


Information is trickling in, little by little.  Things are not good.  Electricity and cell service is very very limited.   There is limited or no sewer service.  Running water is limited and needs to be boiled but with no electricity, that's an issue.  We did find out that our neighbor Randy who rode out the hurricane, was unharmed and had made his way to the mainland for much needed supplies.

Up until yesterday, most residents were  still being kept out to make room for first responders to remove downed power lines, trees across the roads, washed out roads and to make sure the 46 bridges were safe.  Residents were getting angry.   Many people have damaged property that needs to be secured from the elements and they are very anxious to return home. People are worried about looting. Some people have run out of money and have no food or gas.  Food, water and fuel is still very limited in the Keys.   The powers that be finally relented and as of today have opened up the Keys to residents only and a curfew is strictly enforced.   I have even heard that they are now allowing open carry,  which means you can carry a weapon and not conceal it.

We have two Aircraft carries offshore in Key West proving help, along with the National Guard.   I've seen pictures of Chinook helicopters landing in the grocery store parking lots.  Military is out in force cleaning up.  They are sleeping on cots wherever they can find a place.  God bless them all for helping.  The temperatures are stifling.  Much of the shade has been destroyed and of course there is no air conditioning.


We  already knew our RV had been destroyed from the aerial photos we had seen, but Friday we got some taken from the ground.

To say it was a shock was an understatement.

Most of us have seen news reports from different catastrophes where they paint the red "X"s on property after they check for bodies. These marks identify the agency that inspected, the date and time and on the bottom the number of fatalities. A big "0" means no fatalities.

Someone went around in a golf cart taking video of each street. It was pretty fast but we were able to identify our lot and rig.  Oh the video, you could hear them comment "oh my God" when they saw ours.

Sorry for the bad quality of these pictures.  They were screen shots from a video.  The white Wildwood that is still standing is not ours.   Ours is the pile of rubble to the right of it.

For some reason, seeing the orange marks on our RV hit me really hard. It's something you see on the news all the time, but man, it really hits home when it's on your home.  The furniture sitting outside got to Al more than me.  I never liked that furniture.  haha

The following picture shows it from another angle. This is the bottom of the RV.  More orange writing

We do not know why our RV came apart like it did, when others did ok.  We think it was mostly because ours was hit broadside with Cat 4 winds with nothing to buffer the wind.  Our lot is near the open water with a row of tall stilt houses as the only thing that is in front of us. The stilts allow all the open air to rush right onto ours broadside. The open air that always gave us such a nice afternoon breeze was our downfall.  We are guessing the broadside wind found an opening and tore it apart. Perhaps we buffered the Wildwood next door because it looks to be in pretty good shape.   The stilt houses did fine, but those stilts did not block any wind from hitting us.  Perhaps it was a small tornado, but whatever it was, it did a good job on our RV

We have filed a claim with Progressive. I am so thankful we have Progressive because as a former claim adjuster, I know them to be fair and professional.   We even got a call from USAA since they referred us to Progressive since they don't write full coverage on rv's in Florida. They offered their assistance if we had any issues with Progressive.   A team of CAT adjusters will be in the Keys as soon as they are allowed.   We have $15,000 in additional coverage for contents. We should be ok there but I don't think they won't cover anything outside the rv. Unfortunately the contents will be depreciated depending on the age.  Now, we need to start making a list of everything in the RV.

We have no more info on the boat other than a picture of the storage lot where it was located.  We do not know which is our boat.  Hopefully it is not a total loss.  Fortunately, it is also insured with Progressive.

So what do we do now?  Go down and try to salvage some of our things?  Deal with no power or air conditioning, no water, sewer, cell service?   We don't think much from inside the RV will be salvageable, but who knows. We are hoping to find our scuba tanks, bikes and stuff like that.

The thought of going down with no AC is not something we want to do. We would prefer power was restored so that our one night we have to spend there will not be miserable. Will it be worth the trouble for the amount  we are able to salvage?  We just don't know.

 There will be no hotels available but fortunately my cousin offered us the use of their home in Key West. I think they are inclined to wait for the AC to be restored before they go back.  They were nice enough to offer us the use of their home even before they get back, but I doubt we will do that.

To add another problem, there is a new potential hurricane heading along the same path as Irma. The models are showing it as a Cat 3 and heading towards the same islands that were decimated the last time.  No one knows where she will go, but we sure do not want to be in the Keys trying to evacuate for another storm.

So, that is our dilemma.  Since people are heading back today, I'm sure a lot more information will be coming out.  We will give it a few days and make a decision.

We have been watching videos of the destruction in the Keys. It's heartbreaking.

Here are a few pictures of our beloved Florida Keys from the past. The Keys will recover and be the beautiful place we love again.  Many people assume we won't be going back to the Keys anymore.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  It is our winter home, we love it there and we will be back.

Would you believe, this tiki hut survived?  A little windblown I'm sure.

Happier days on our patio.

Some the decorations we had that we hope we can find.

I really want to find my wonderful bike.

It's Not the Outcome We Wanted - Hurricane Irma

Blairsville, Ga (high 72, low 58)

We have been enjoying the very fall like temperatures here in north Georgia with a cooler than normal September.  We have had several mornings with temps as low as 42 degrees!  That is about to change soon, as we get ready to head to they Keys and the heat and humidity.

As I posted on the past few blogs, we have been trying to figure the status of the Fifth Wheel.  Last winter we  had it towed down as a permanent winter home in the Florida Keys. Irma made landfall (ground zero) as a Cat 4 hurricane with winds of 140 mph, right on our little island paradise of Cudjoe Key.

Most everyone in the Keys heeded the mandatory evacuation.  A few people stayed, some even rode it out on boats.    I can't imagine why anyone would want to ride out a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane on a small island in the Keys, but some surely did.

The hurricane knocked out all the power, cell service, sewer, water and of course communications.  For days we have all been forming Facebook groups for each area with the goal of locating "missing" people who stayed, finding out how our property fared, and when we can go back. It has been a frantic search for information.

I was asked why we can't just call the owners of our community for the status.  We are the "owners" and none of us know anything except the few people who stayed and they have no way to communicate.  Most of the police and first responders even evacuated. This was a BIG deal for the Keys and people took it very, very seriously, as they should have.  No one that knows anything has any way to notify anyone about damages or missing people.   People are frantically trying to check on missing friends and family who stayed for the hurricane.

Something I didn't know but now assume it is available for any disaster like this, is that NOAA flies planes overhead filming the area of the disaster afterwards, giving people and governments information about damages.  They filmed the entire 100 + miles of the Florida Keys,  starting in  Key West and all the way up to Key Largo.  It took three days and of course, our section was last for some reason.    There were many news teams coming in and filming areas.  Cudjoe Key (the island) and Venture Out (our resort community) was filmed many times, but they never quite got to our house, so we really didn't know  the status or our boat and fifth wheel.

Not knowing turned out to be very stressful.  We spent hours each day perusing all the FB groups, news organizations looking for video, tv channels and word of mouth.  I found a lot of info and pictures of Venture Out, just nothing definitive on our property.

Last night while on our nightly golf cart ride searching for bears, we found our answer and it wasn't good.


We initially had been sure the fifth wheel was completely destroyed,  but then we started seeing pictures of rv's that were still standing and looked to be fine.  It allowed us to get a bit of hope.

Here is the link for the NOAA after hurricane pictures. It really is kind of interesting

NOAA Florida Keys after Irma  You click on the area in black, zoom and make sure it's set to Map Box Street under layers.

Here is what our lot and Rv looked like pre Irma

Here is what it looks like after Irma

The fifth wheel is in the middle, sitting at an angle.  The problem with the location of our lot is that the only thing between us and the open water is a single row of high rises houses (on stilts) and an empty rv lot on the water.  There was absolutely NO wind block.  It was nice on those hot afternoons because we almost always had a wonderful breeze.

We store our boat at the Venture Out lot.  We aren't even sure where the boat is from this photo.  It looks like the storm surge moved them all around. There were some large boats here.

Last winter, we discovered the coolest place from the past. It was called Perky's Bat tower.  We had no idea how old or what it was when we found it.  After researching it, we discovered it was built in 1929 and was to house bats for mosquito control. The only problem is once released, the bats flew off never to be seen again.

Here is what it used to look like

You can see here how large it is

This is what is looks like now.  You can see it toppled down. It's a shame.

So, now that we know for certain our Rv is a total loss, we need to decide what to do next.  I reported the claim a few days ago and I'm sure the Catastrophe insurance adjusters are going to be arriving as soon as it's safe for them to enter the Keys.

They had to make sure the 46 or so bridges are safe, remove power lines, repair washed out roads (remember, these are a string of islands connected by roads so you want to make sure the roads are good) and attempt to restore water, sewage, electricity and cell service.

They are making progress but only allowing property owners and renters back into the upper Keys right now and curfews are being strictly enforced.

We think we should head to the Keys once we are allowed back in. There will be things from the Fifth Wheel and trailer, that hopefully we can salvage.  It will not be a pleasant trip.  It will be hot, we won't have a place to stay, hotels will be scarce, and supplies will be limited to what you can bring.

The good news is that at least some of the endangered Key Deer survived.  Their food sources have been ravaged though and I saw a video in which they were definitely freaked out.  This guy seems to be doing fine though, don't you think?