Milestone and Year End Recap

 

Wesley Chapel, Florida (high 72, low 54)

 

It occurred to me that we recently reached a milestone.  On December 11th, we have been living in our motorhome full-time for three years. 

We left southern Georgia on that date and never lived in our home again.  When we left, the house was up for sale.  We spent the winter in Florida as snowbirds, hoping for the house to sell while we were gone.  My wish was for it to sell in April so that it wouldn’t ruin our winter vacation.  I didn’t quite get my wish, as it sold in March!  

Once we had a contract on the house, we headed back to Georgia, finished purging stuff and closed on the house in June.  We still think of December as our anniversary date for being full timers, even though we still owned a home.

 

So, on to 2013 and a recap of our year.

Although we haven’t yet been able to travel as much as we would like, we have enjoyed every place we’ve been and always find plenty to entertain us.   I am not comfortable getting too far away from the Tampa area, due to the health issues that my Mom has.

January found us here at Quail Run Rv Park in the Tampa Bay area.  This is our Tampa area home base and we keep the site there so that we can come and go when we like.  Getting a campground reservation in Florida in the winter can be tricky, and we need to be able to be here when needed.

We got to meet fellow bloggers Pam and Vic  from Traveling in the Big EZ, on New Years Day.  

We stayed in the Tampa area for a while and made it to the big Tampa Rv Supershow, where we discovered that Al was a “celebrity.”

One of my pictures was being used by Thousand Trails and was plastered around the show in quite a few places.

Here is the celebrity, posing in front of a picture of himself.

I had entered one of the quarterly photo contests from Thousand Trails, so they used the picture extensively in the show.   If you go to any Rv shows this year, be sure to look for Al.  I’ll bet they will be using that photo again.

 

Late January, we managed to get back down to one of our all time favorite places,  Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park.

We love all the wildlife there and of course I took tons of pictures.

We also met fellow bloggers Tricia and Dan and enjoyed getting to know them during a few happy hours.

We stayed in the prairie a couple weeks and then headed back to Tampa.  My Mom was having some medical issues, so we came back to try and help her.

We weren’t able to get back down to the Keys until mid March.   We had last been there before Christmas.  Al finally got his wish (after much whining and online shopping) and got another boat.

We had always owned boats and the agreement was that when we started fulltiming, we would be out of the boat business.

Wrong.  Here is our wonderful used Proline boat.   The price was right, the hull was right and I loved it too.

We spent our days offshore,  snorkeling, cruising, and relaxing in the boat and admiring all the beautiful clear water.

We had a wonderful month in the beautiful Florida Keys but too soon, it was time to head back towards Tampa.

Due to some more health issues with Mom, we didn’t get back out of Tampa until early June, when we ended up at the very beautiful Lake Greenwood Rv Resort, in Cross Hill, South Carolina.

It was truly a resort, unlike many rv parks that claim to be resorts.

We stayed 8 days at Lake Greenwood, but it was getting pretty warm and we were dreaming of the mountains.

We finally ended up in Cleveland, Georgia and spent our 40th anniversary in the north Georgia  mountains.

Soon after, we were the proud owners of a beautiful RV lot in Blairsville, Georgia at Rivers Edge Rv Park.

We stayed in Georgia a few weeks, but soon it was time to get back to Tampa so that Al could complete the sale of his pest control business.   He had still been working the pest control business part time, but July 25th was his last day of work.

We didn’t make it back up to Georgia until late August, when we closed on the RV lot and moved in.

Soon after we arrived, a hot tub followed us home.

 

We spent the rest of the summer in the Georgia mountains, enjoying the cooler mountain temperatures.  It was SO nice to be away from the heat and humidity of Florida summers.

There are so  many things to do in the area and we spent many days sightseeing. 

Lots of waterfalls and whitewater.

 

 

beautiful trails.

beautiful lakes

 

Our hope was to be able to stay in the mountains through the fall so that we could see the beautiful fall foliage.

We did!

The foliage wasn’t quite as impressive as some years, due to the heavy rain they had during the early summer (before we got there).

Some of the trees in our campground, never really changed colors, but the two Bradford Pears on each side of our site, were gorgeous.

 

We managed to live through some very cold weather with temperatures going down to 17 degrees a few nights.  We finally drug ourselves away from the mountains and reluctantly headed back to Florida.   We can’t wait to get back up there next summer.   If any of you plan a trip to that area, come see us.  We purchased a second RV lot that we will be renting out!   It’s a lovely area with so much to do.

On the way back to Florida, we stopped at Rainbow Springs State Park in Florida for a few days.   It was nice to see the beautiful spring fed Florida rivers again.

 

We ended the year with a nice paddle at Three Sisters Springs in Crystal River.

So, although we didn’t cover much ground over the past year, we did have a lot of fun and saw some amazing places.  We met several other RV’ers over the year, and had quite a few visitors at our place in Georgia.  

We hope 2014 will be much the same, starting with a trip to the Keys this month.  (hopefully)

It’s a Very Small World

 

Wesley Chapel, Florida  (high 72, low 63) Rain

I hope everyone had a nice New Years Eve.  We actually stayed awake past midnight, for the first time in a while.

We spent our New Years eve next door at Pat and Ron’s, and sat outside with several other couples and a few dogs.  We had two identical gas campfires going and it kept us nice and warm…..until the rain started.   There was a slight chance of rain last night and just as we all got settled around the campfire, it started to rain.  We all pulled out our phone apps and checked the radar which showed some patchy rain showers coming from the gulf.  It was kind of funny seeing all these phones coming out at the same time.  :)

We moved the chairs and fire pits under the awning and sat there for a few minutes until the rain stopped. We pulled out our weather apps again to see if any more rain was coming, so that we could move back out from under the awning, as it was a little crowded.  We took a chance and moved and no more rain fell on us the rest of the evening. It was chilly for us southerners, but the Canadians came in shorts.  

Several couples didn’t make it to the midnight hour, but 6 of us diehards actually stayed awake and brought in the new year.   Actually, the Canadians, and other northerners were the first to bail, leaving us southerners to hold down the fort!

 

In a blog post a few weeks ago I mentioned how Al noticed a tag axle Holiday Rambler with a Florida plate, come into the campground we were at and park right next door.  Al thought it could be an old friend of ours.   I dismissed that thinking there just might be more than one Holiday Rambler with Florida plates in the state.   I teased him about that for a few days, however, I was wrong and it did turn out to be our old friends, but we didn’t realize it until we were all leaving.  

So, now when Al tells me something like that I give him his due respect.  :)

 

So, yesterday, he noticed a Tiffin tag axle pull in which had a Louisiana plate and stuffed animals indicating they might be here for the Outback Bowl,  which is being played today at our stadium.

When we bought our motor home from Lazy Days Rv here in Tampa, we found out who the previous owner was and checked with him to make sure there were no surprised.  We have always done that whenever we’ve bought a used boat, rv, or car and it’s worked out well for us.  

We ended up speaking to the previous owner twice and we discovered the only thing they used the coach for was to go to LSU football games.  Al learned that they traded our coach in for a larger Tiffin tag axle and that they were big LSU fans.  

When Al told me he suspected those with the Louisiana plates and Tiffin tag axel, could be the people who previously owned our motor home, we decided to check it out.  I wasn’t going to doubt him again.  :)

They were gone most of the day, but last night we saw signs of life outside so we decided to walk over and introduce ourselves, and see if Al was right yet again.  I was a little afraid they would think we were nuts, but I figured that was okay, because they wouldn’t be here long anyway!

It turns our they were indeed the previous owners of our coach and remembered us too.   They had worried thinking this was our first RV and that we had made a decision to start full-timing without ever having owned an RV.  He also remembered how I got onto the phone with Al and asked questions on my own, and apparently I either came on too strong, or that is not how things are done in his family.  In our family, I figure it’s my money too, and I might think of a question that Al doesn’t think of, so we both like to be involved in the discussions.   I guess he thought I should have let the man ask the questions.  Oh well…….  

 

It just shows once again how small of a world this is.  What’s the chance these same people would end up in our campground with all the other campgrounds in this area.  What’s the chance Al would have spotted them and figured it out?

The coincidence didn’t end there though.  Last night during our fireside chat a Canadian couple mentioned they spent some time in the Keys last winter.   It turns our they were in “our” site number 160 right before we were and remembered all of our neighbors.   It’s a small world.  They didn’t like the Keys much but their criteria is more of who has a nice pool and ours is a little different.  No problem, more room for us.

 

I’m really starting to worry that Florida will sink into the ocean.  Our campground is just about full, and the few remaining sites are reserved for the next few months.  The owner says they are getting calls all day long wanting sites and there are a lot of them on a waiting list.   I wish I could find some statistics that would show the number of snowbirds coming to Florida.    I would think it would have to be at least a million, and of course that doesn’t even count the tourists that come for shorter periods of time.  Really, one of these winters Florida might just sink.   :)    Of course if it does, we’ll have ocean front property in Georgia.

 

It looks like we won’t be seeing any sun the next few days with rain predicted today and tomorrow.  I guess we’ll be lazy today, and I’m sure Al will watch some football. 

Happy New Year!