Sunny, Waaarrrmmm Florida?

At the end of January we arrived in Bushnell, Florida to temperatures in the 80s and finally had tee-shirt, shorts and flip-flop weather – for 12 hours. The next five weeks was a weather rollercoaster of freezing nights and semi-tepid days with a few rain showers thrown in. Mind you we were well aware of the sub-zero temps and freezing rain and snow the rest of the country had been experiencing. It’s just that it wasn’t what we’d envisioned our winter in Florida would be. But the adaptable creatures that we are, we rose to the challenge and adjusted our schedules of home-based projects and visiting friends, making an already short month vanish in a blur of activities.

Unfortunately our first week was marred with news of the passing of Bill Meininger, a dear friend of Jay’s from his Coast Guard days at Cape May, NJ. His death was completely unexpected and cast a shroud of disbelief over our entire week’s activities. Not thinking he would need a suit on the trip, Jay flew home to retrieve one and attended the funeral in Virginia.

During the two days that Jay was away, Chris was ecstatic to discover a sewing machine in the RV park activities center. She set about creating taupe colored covers for her photo scanner and printer and the stark white TV trays to better blend them into the trailer décor. Upon his return, Jay upgraded the water system with an accumulator tank to keep the chattering of the water pump to a less discernable dull roar. We discovered that our wax-on/wax-off muscles were at an advanced state of atrophy. After washing and waxing the truck we had to take off a week to heal and decided to schedule alternating work and play days of visiting friends.

We decided to stay at an RV park in Bushnell because it is centrally located to friends who live in The Villages, Sarasota, Tavares and Dunnellon. The month was spent traversing the area to visit them all.

The Villages is a planned community of over 70,000 people, 35,000 homes and 32 golf courses, (providing enough facilities for the most popular pass-time of retirees), and is located about an hour northwest of Orlando. We visited several of our friends who live in the community and all of them say they absolutely love it. The list of activities offered each week is immense and each housing section has its own recreational center complete with swimming pool, shuffle board, lawn bowling, pickle ball and tennis courts. Shopping centers complete with movie theatres, boutique shops, restaurants and needed services abound both inside and outside the immaculately manicured community. Some call it Disneyland for old people.

Chris with her friend, Donna Evans at a lake in one of the shopping areas at The Villages.

The primary mode of transportation is golf carts that the residents use not only on the golf courses but you find them at the shopping centers inside and outside the community! These are no ordinary golf carts. Some are powered by small gasoline engines and are licensed to drive on county roads, some are powered by electricity. Carts of every shape, size and color you can imagine zip by on the specially made paved paths that run adjacent to the roads. We really got a kick out of the diversity we saw from 4-seater models with fronts like Rolls Royces to sporty little numbers styled after Chevys from the 60s.

A few samples of the types of golf carts to be found in The Villages.

Egrets are found in landscaping around the large, shopping center buildings where ponds are nearby.

In mid-February we filled larger bowls with water and food for Little Miss, loaded Max and an overnight bag into Ole Blue and headed to Sarasota, about an hour south of Tampa, to visit a high school friend of Jay’s, Darrel Wade and his wife Alberta. Sarasota is the former winter home of the Ringling Brothers circus and currently the home of The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art (http://www.ringling.org/) which houses an art museum, the Ringling home, two circus museums and the Historic Asolo Theater. While visiting the city we found Max’s Dog Bakery and just had to take a photo of Max in front of it.

Max and Jay at Max's Dog Bakery in Sarasota, FL.

We then visited mutual friends from our separate boating days, Dave and Ruth Taisch, who live in Tavares. The town is situated south of Ocala National Forest amidst 5 huge, fresh water lakes. Dave and Ruth lived on a sailboat and cruised the Caribbean for several years in the early 90s. They then traded their boat in for a land yacht and travelled the U.S. until they settled in a beautiful home on Lake Harris a few years ago. We travelled across the lake in their beautiful, completely restored, 1960s vintage, 20’ inboard power boat to have lunch at a lakeside restaurant. Gator bites was a new, culinary experience for us in the form of fried, alligator tail. One might say they tasted like chicken - - the new-new white meat!!

The Taischs engage in a most unique hobby and have devoted the last two years working on a backyard project associated with it. They are creating a train garden. It covers an area at least 30’ x 30’ and, when completed, will contain four separate train tracks that wind inside, around and over each other. The trains are housed in a one-car garage size structure adjacent to the tracks and they will exit and enter the building via a small doggie door. The ties and hand-bent, 3” wide tracks rest on foundations of poured concrete. They have most of the concrete foundations in place and are beginning to position the ties and tracks. The final phase will be the landscaping. We thought it was such a unique project. We’ve seen many indoor model trains with buildings, landscaping and lighting but never one of this scale out of doors.

A week after visiting the Taisches we headed northwest to Dunnellon. Art and Edda Ross, whom Jay knew from when he was stationed in Puerto Rico, live near the Rainbow Springs State Park (http://www.floridastateparks.org/rainbowsprings/default.cfm or http://www.floridastateparks.org/rainbowsprings/docs/brochure.pdf ) which was holding a Cracker Festival. This gorgeously landscaped park is the only two-time winner of the National Gold Medal Award for State parks in the country. It contains the headwaters of the fourth largest freshwater spring in the state, producing over 400,000 gallons of spring water per day which creates the Rainbow Spring River. Paved paths, lined with azaleas and other cultivated plants, wind through the park, skirting the edges of the spring waters, passing waterfalls and open areas used for the festival and other events. Vendors at the festival sold hand woven, wool clothing, hand carved wooden bowls, and other items indicative of the Cracker era.

Photos of the headwaters of Rainbow Springs and waterfall at Rainbow Springs State Park.

Shallow pool at headwaters of Rainbow Springs with small fish. Sandy round areas are where springwater is bubbling out of ground.

No one really knows where the term Cracker came from, but most agree that it is the term used to describe the Florida cattlemen of the 19th and early 20th centuries. They used a whip to manage their cattle and the cracking sound it made became their moniker. There are other opinions on the term as noted here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_cracker or search Google with the keywords “Florida Crackers”.

Cracker vendor who has made a chair seat out of neckties and a typical Cracker camp.

The next day we visited Webster. Now Webster is a bit of a legend in this area and only about 5 miles from our RV park. Every Tuesday afternoon, the RV park hosts a jam session where the park residents and other locals get together in the recreation building and play music. One of the songs they sing is about Webster’s Flea Market. It is held at the county fairgrounds every Monday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and it is M-O-N-S-T-R-O-U-S!!! The two parking lots alone cover the ground of 4 football fields. The flea market consists of well over a thousand booths, under cover and in the open, with everything you can imagine from fresh produce, kettle corn stands, antiques, topless sandals, guns, auto accessories, tee shirts, ball caps, do-it-yourself satellite dish kits, and did I mention antiques – vast quantities of antiques. You name it they’ve got it and more. Having been to flea markets in the past, Chris was ready to go in a couple of hours. Not Jay!! He had never experienced anything like it and we stayed until the end and beyond. He just could not believe the expansiveness and diversity of the event.

Webster Flea Market

Jay perusing a table of World War II relics.

The pressing of humanity was a fantastic test for Max and he was just a gem. Everyone who saw him stopped to pet him, young and old alike. He was unflustered, calm, his normal good self and was alert enough to score a hot dog someone had dropped.

A little information about the area:
Bushnell is located on the western side of central Florida, which is very different from the coastal, white, sandy beaches and azure seas most people envision as Florida. Sumter Oaks RV Park is situated between a large cattle ranch and a cement mining company which is entirely obscured from our view by a forest of huge Live Oaks, dripping with Spanish moss. Large Live Oaks throughout the RV park shade our and other trailers; sometimes a little too much considering the cool temps. In keeping with our experiences so far in encountering unusual creatures, the RV park has two resident Sandhill Cranes whose squawking can be heard from one end of the park to the other. Their tameness allows us, and even Max, to get surprisingly close.

Cranes at the RV park.

The locals have told us that the Florida cattle industry is second in the U.S. to Texas and has become the #1 industry in the state. Orange production has declined to second place mainly due to a mold that attacks the orange groves. If an infected tree is discovered all trees within at least a 100’ radius of it are destroyed in an attempt to control the mold infestation. A larger number of oranges are imported from South America than what are currently produced in Florida.

Cows on the ranch adjacent to the RV park.

By the end of February we had settled into a comfortable, relaxed routine between work and play. We made new friends, learned many “tricks of the trade” from the “old hands” at full-time RVing, visited dear friends and, in general, enjoyed our time until it warmed up enough for us to head north in late April; but an e-mail from Chris’ son, Kevin, potentially altered the rest of our two-year Odyssey.

Back to the Cat!!

The loss of Little Miss continued to cast a pall over our entire adventure. We decided to return to N. Carolina and invest a week in the effort to locate our missing family member (actually Chris decided to return and Jay went along with her not believing we would ever see Little Miss again).

The RV park in N. Carolina is over 600 miles from Tallahassee. So we decided to make it a two-day endeavor, stopping at a Wal-Mart in S. Carolina Monday night. Lucky for us we were listening to a radio station and heard a forecast of snow to begin at midnight. Now there are several things that we really have no desire to experience in life and one of them is towing a 5th wheel trailer in the snow. Our road fatigue rapidly changed to an intense desire to get to Rock Ridge before the snow. We decided that setting up the rig, in the drizzle, at 10 p.m. was not fun. But it was hilarious compared to waking up the next morning to 4” of new snow and freezing temps in the 20s.

We stopped for fuel and a Quiznos in S. Carolina and feeling really badly that Max had not eaten since breakfast, Jay split his cheese steak sub with him. Has anyone ever seen the speed that an 85 lb. black Lab can consume a steak sub? Happily, Jay did not lose any fingers in this exchange.

We spent all of Tuesday listening to the propane furnace try to keep the trailer at a habitable temperature while we watched the snow fall. The scenery was beautiful, but if we’d wanted winter weather we would have gone skiing. The forced lay-day did allow us to print up fliers, complete with a photo of Little Miss, and plan our strategy for the next day.

Wednesday the 21st was sunny and cold as we ventured out searching all the animal shelters in a three-county area and local vets in case someone brought her in for a check-up. We then passed out fliers, to all homes and businesses, in a fairly wide radius in case the cat had ventured far.

Our campsite two days after the snowstorm.

The next morning, while Jay was walking Max, he found cat tracks in the snow traveling from one wooded area to another. We tried to follow them but they criss-crossed and mingled with deer and other critter tracks so often, that it became impossible to find their point of origin. Later, while Jay was paying for more nights and propane, the managers of the campground loaned us an animal trap that they use to keep predatory critters under control. Armed with the sighting of recent tracks and the trap, Jay actually expressed hope in finding Little Miss after all. We set the trap, baited with tuna, in the woods where Jay first saw the tracks and continued contacting local animal shelters to see if anyone had found a gray tabby.

Friday morning was bright, and at least above freezing, but alas the trap was empty. Saturday morning we caught a possum. Not knowing the recipe for possum soup, we let the creature go. Meanwhile, Chris was reading everything she could find about lost cats on the internet. It didn’t help our morale to learn that 80% of lost cats are never found. We did read about a spray (Feliway) that would help to erase human scent and provide a cat friendly environment. Expensive stuff, but at this point, 5 days into our search, we were becoming more desperate to find her. With fresh tuna and the spray, Jay reset the trap Saturday afternoon and we tried to stay warm while we worked on updating our blog.

The trap was set in the woods beyond the trailers.

As was our routine, Jay walked Max about 10 p.m. As he passed the opening to the woods, green eyes and pointy ears appeared as he scanned the trap with his flashlight. He knew it was a cat and immediately ran Max back to the trailer as fast as he could since the dog is of NO help in these circumstances. Through his gasps for air, Jay relayed “I think we got her!” to Chris and sprinted, you got it. . . . back to the cat! Now, running is not Jay’s strong suit so, by the time he made it back to the trap, he nearly passed out from excitement and lack of oxygen. Sure enough Little Miss was in the trap and not very happy about it either. Jay was just emerging from the woods with the trap when Chris arrived, hardly adequately dressed for the frigid temperatures, to see if our booty was Little Miss.

The reunion was tearfully emotional and the next few hours were spent scratching and petting a very happy cat (once out of the trap she wouldn’t leave us alone). Little Miss had lost much of her weight, only skin and bones, but very clean and with no injuries. We’ll never know where she hid and what she ate for three weeks but no one ever saw her and she apparently stayed within a couple hundred yards of where the trailer had been when she got away.

Little Miss getting reaquainted with Jay.

Since we were paid up until Monday morning we decided to stay Sunday to regroup and plan where we were going next. We all needed the relaxation anyway. You have no idea how stressed we were the entire time Little Miss was gone.

Monday morning the 26th, was overcast and cool but a good day for traveling south. As Jay opened the door to take Max out for his morning walk there were three, big, ugly, ducks just outside the trailer.

Spying them, Max immediately lunged for and briefly caught one before Jay even knew what was happening. In the process Jay lost his grip on the leash and Max bounded after anything that moved. The ducks had fled the area and Max discovered a Blue Heron minding his own business in a nearby pond. He streaked through the pond after it but couldn’t even get close as the bird took flight. For the next ten minutes he ran amok through the woods and cow pasture. It’s too bad the ostrich was not in residence as it would have been amusing to observe Max’s reaction to a bird thrice his size.

See, there really is an ostrich in the pasture!! Behind her is the pond Max bounded through.



Jay alerted Chris to the crisis and gave chase. Eventually deciding it was futile to chase a 3 year old, physically fit, in the prime of his life, Lab, Jay returned to the truck to retrieve the tennis ball which is the total focus of Max’s life. Meanwhile Chris threw on enough clothes to spend the day stalking the dog, grabbed a chew toy and exited the trailer. Fortunately, Max was cantering back home. Chris waved the chew toy, he bit down and just before he turned and ran, she planted a boot onto the leash. Another search and rescue mission avoided.

With Little Miss in the trailer and Max locked in the truck, we beat a hasty retreat to warmer latitudes.

Below, a content kitty and all of us back together again.

Tallahassee

We finally got to Florida on the 9th of January. Aaaahhhhh Florida - the land of warm sunshine and palm trees where we can trade our winter wear for t-shirts and flip-flops. NOT THIS YEAR!!! We must have brought the frigid weather down with us because it became too cold to enjoy the out-of-doors just after our arrival.

Talle is where Jay’s daughter, Lori, lives and is a courier for FedEx. Since she has to apply for her vacation time in May for the whole year, we had planned this week together for many months – which is why we left the cat in North Carolina. We hoped that someone would find her and we would return to pick her up after our visit with Lori.

Lori and Sue just moved into a new house with all the fix-up, make-a-house-a-home projects required by this transition. They found time to take us dancing and to a Florida State University women’s basketball game. It’s been years since we’ve taken the time to go dancing and Jay had not been to a basketball game since high school. Yes, basketball had been invented then . . . we thoroughly enjoyed both.

We shared several meals together (at their place and ours), caught up on lots of stuff and, since it was the first time we’d stopped anywhere for more than three days, it gave us a chance to get a few projects done on Sonny. Unfortunately it was way too chilly for Jay to install some upgrades to the water system. Perhaps one day we’ll actually find t-shirt weather.

The week went all too quickly and Chris refused to leave before she saw some of the Tallahassee area. We spent some time doing a walking tour of the city complete with restored State House and historic homes. There are four driving tours and as smitten as Chris was with the number of ancient Live Oak trees and Spanish Moss, we chose the Canopy Roads driving tour. Go to this link http://www.imagesbychristine.com/Odyssey/TallahasseeFL_TrailGuide.pdf to view the four driving tours and explanations about what lies along them if you are interested.

This link www.imagesbychristine.com/Odyssey/Tallahassee/index.htm will take you to a gallery of Tallahassee photos beginning with the restored State House and the inside of the dome, which is now a museum. The photos of trees and homes line a seven-block long park on Park Avenue in the heart of the city. Most of the homes are now offices for attorneys and other professionals. Old Magnolia Road, the tree-lined dirt road, is part of the Cotton Trail we drove as is the old, Bradley’s Country Store which has been family owned and managed for over 50 years.

After an enjoyable, relaxing ten days, we said our goodbyes and headed . . . . . . . . . . . back to the cat!!

Savannah

Finally some warm weather!! After stopping at the Savannah Visitor Center, we arrived at the Skidaway Island State Park on Monday, January 5th accompanied by sunny skies and soothing, soft breezes carrying the warmth of the south. We took a lay day to wash clothes, clean up Sonny and in general relax for a few days and regenerate.

Our primary reason for visiting Savannah was to visit a former cook of Jay's when he chartered his sailboat in the Virgin Islands. Rubi McGrory, and her husband Bill, live in the historic district of the city in a wonderful old home which, like we all do with our homes, they are in the process of renovating. Rubi's artistic talents have the perfect playground of 10' high ceilings, spacious rooms and elevated patio to transform it into a fun, functional abode.

Jay’s Comments:
For those of you that know Rubi from my chartering days, no explanation is needed. For all the rest of you I must take a moment to introduce my “Gem of the Caribbean” who came to me in my hour of need. I had just fired the very worst cook in the Virgin Islands with no replacement in sight. Meanwhile Rubi had come to the islands, straight out of college, to cook on a competitor’s boat which turned out to be a sham. The befugalties of life brought us together and we found we were made for each other. Her warped sense of humor dovetailed with mine and we spend the next year and a half laughing our way through a multitude of adventures and many wonderful charters. I adopted her as my 2nd daughter and we’ve been best buddies ever since. Video available upon request.

Rubi has a whimsical artistic talent and is currently working on a Masters degree in art. Our arrival in Savannah coincided with final preparations for a textile art exhibit, that was organized by Rubi and her classmate Karin, which had blossomed beyond their wildest expectations. With our experience at hanging Chris’ fine art photography shows we were able to give her some helping hands. In typical Rubi fashion she rewarded our efforts with an original creation of a pillow complete with truck and trailer appliqué.









Chris is a lover of architecture in general, and especially of old homes. Savannah is an architectural photographer's dream. Breaking her vow to not photograph for at least the first month of the trip, she could not restrain herself from leaving the camera behind when we toured the city on the second day of our stay.

In keeping with our goal of sharing our travels on an educational level, Chris has photographed the informational signs which describe events and features of the city throughout its history as well as city sights. A gallery of the images is here - www.imagesbychristine.com/Odyssey/Savannah/index.htm. Photos that relate to the sign's subject matter appear next in the gallery.

Please keep in mind that these are "snapshots", i.e. taken on the fly and not representative of Chris' best work.

Because the gallery images may not be large enough to actually read the content of the signs, a slide show, which enables one to view the signs large enough to read, has also been created. The drawback is that you need to download the entire 16MB file in order to view it. If you are so inclined, the link is here - www.imagesbychristine.com/Odyssey/Savannah/savannah.exe.

See below for an explanation of some of the photos.

Slide Show Notes:
Each slide stays visible for about 3 seconds before it transitions to the next one. If you want to play each slide for a longer or shorter time, use the instructions below. You will need to halt each slide if you want to read the information on the signs.

Savannah slide show instructions:
Pause – hit space bar
Resume – hit space bar again
Next Slide – page down key
Previous Slide – page up key
Close the show - escape

Explanation of photos:
We started at the Savannah Waterfront. It is a relatively small city, by east coast standards, and has a rich history of Native American, Revolutionary War, slave trade and Civil War events and of course, the king of southern commodities, cotton as explained in the signs.

The statue of the waving girl is of Florence Martus who used to wave to the ships as they came into the harbor. The story about her goes that she was in love with a sailor that sailed away and she faithfully returned to the quay hoping for his return. Of course the alternate version of her story is that she was a little daft in the head.

Forsyth Park is a huge rambling park in the center of the historic district. It's pathways are sheltered by ancient Live Oak dripping with Spanish Moss and its 100 plus acres is surrounded by magnificent mansions and precious Victorian dwellings. One imagines they are strolling amongst the gentry in pre-Civil War spendor.

Savannah's cemeteries are as intriguing as it's homes. We visited the Bonaventure Cemetery, which lies outside the city on one of the many water channels in the delta. Contained in family plots surrounded by low, weathered, concrete walls, headstones carried names like Toloula. They were embelished with flowers, angels and crosses, with the ever-present Live Oaks standing silent watch.

The Stitch Spectacular show: Karin is shown with the show sign, then a couple of pics of the show itself, and the last one shows Rubi (on left) and Karin with one of the show pieces.

The final photo shows the wonderfully wooded, spacious campsite we had at Skidaway State Park. The best yet!!

Chris loved the historic homes and southern ambiance of Savannah and was reluctant to leave. But knowing that we would return for a longer stay, in warmer weather, we departed for Tallahassee and a visit with Jay’s daughter, Lori.

Heading South - Travails Times Two

Hello again!!

The balmy breezes at Quantico suddenly gave way to freezing temperatures with gusty winds by the time we reached our next destination at Yorktown, VA on Sunday, Dec. 28. Chris' grandfather, Charles Clark died in an aircraft accident at Langley Field in the late 1920s and she wanted to do some research about his life. He was the Captain of the 19th Airship Company that was stationed there and piloted what we know today as blimps.

Chris' family has a long history of military service dating back to the Revolutionary War. Clark Air Force Base in the Phillipines was named after her Great Uncle Harold Melville Clark (Charles' brother) who was also an Army aviator.

We celebrated the beginning of the New Year with our old friends Al and Suzanne Brassel and Jay took a side trip to see his friend, Harvey Orr's, new home and woodworking shop.

Next stop was Raleigh, NC where Jay attended an all-day Melaleuca seminar and Chris stayed in Sonny to recover from the madness of the last few weeks. However, North Carolina was not all-together what we'd hoped for. Upon our arrival at the RV Park, Jay was so intent on looking ahead at where we would park he neglected to pay sufficient attention to all that he was dragging behind him, i.e. 33 feet of trailer. Yep, you can almost visualize him taking that corner too sharply and sideswiping that tree. Correcting cosmetic damage is now another line item on our list of things to do. It was too painful to photograph so please excuse the omission.

Saturday's weather was sunny and warm, comparatively, and we were looking for things to do outside. In an effort to control the pet hair Chris successfully used the "furminator" on Max while he stood atop the picnic table at the campsite. When Jay returned from Raleigh, we were hoping for the same results with Little Miss.

Perhaps we should explain more about Little Miss. Eight years ago, Jessica got her from an animal shelter on Long Island, NY. Like most New Yorkers, she was a little difficult to deal with. She is the proverbial "scaredy cat". For months she wouldn't come out from under the bed when anyone was home. Eventually she would tolerate Jessica and other familiar faces but still disappeared when strangness was afoot. The trauma of the cross-country flight didn't help her psyche.

With this knowledge we proceeded with caution to take her outside to the "furminator table". With Jay wearing leather gloves, and Little Miss secured in a harness, we thought we'd taken all precautions to prevent an escape. All went well for the first 15 minutes and she was loving the experience complete with purring. As sometimes happens with older females a sudden mood swing occured. The tail twitched, a gutteral howl and out came the claws!!! While we were distracted by Jay's bleeding arm, Little Miss leapt from the table, squirmed out of the harness, with Houdini-like ability, and rapidly departed the scene.

Now this RV park is surrounded by dense woodland, with a cow pasture on one side. And like all good cow pastures, this one contains an ostrich. It is highly likely that Little Miss had never seen an ostrich. As she entered the pasture in an attempt to flee our grasp the big bird, with wings oustretched, immediately charged from the far side of the field, in defense of its territory. With Chris behind her and an angry ostrich in front she had nowhere else to go. Little Miss evacuated the scene the only way she could - straight up a tree.

With darkness setting in and temperatures plummeting we took turns trying to entice Little Miss from the tree. But she would not budge from her perch 10' above our heads. By bedtime Jay was convinced she would only come down with assistance and we resigned ourselves to seek a ladder in the morning.

Jay, the world-renowned feline expert, was proven once again to not know a thing about what he was talking about. In Jay's defense it rained during the night and Little Miss decided to find dryer accomodations elsewhere. A forwarding address was not provided.

Emotionally bludgeoned about the disappearance of a pet that had been entrusted to our care we felt we had to make a concerted effort to perform an exhaustive expanding square search ( a little Coast Guard search and rescue lingo there). We delayed our departure an extra day to distribute fliers, post her information on the local Craig's List and combed the area, often on our hands and knees, attempting to locate her to no avail. We would have stayed longer however the last time she got away from Jessica's home, she was gone for 3 1/2 months. We felt that if someone found her they would call and we would return immediately to retrieve her.

Rock Ridge Campground has way too much negative energy for our tastes. With heavy hearts, heads hung low and seeking warmth we reluctantly abandoned the search and continued south.

Next stop Savannah, GA.

Departure

Hi Everyone,

The six weeks leading up to and the first few days after we left home was much more hectic and stressful than we had ever imagined. One would think that with 10 months of planning and preparing for our departure we would be relaxed, have everything done, leisurely complete the final details and be on our way. Not to be!!!

Neither of our cars sold as quickly or for the money we wanted (based on Kelly Blue Book values) and the Honda was delivered to the new owner the day we departed. Chris made a 4,000+ mile cross-country trip with her daughter from December 6th to the 17th and her business made more demands on her than she had planned. These obligations cut into the time she needed to sort through and move the kitchen items and supplies, and her office papers and equipment to Sonny, thus causing way too much "last minute" work than we had expected. The weather in Maryland for all of November and December was much colder than anticipated and everything just simply took longer to complete and turned out harder than we thought it would be.

The good news is that even with last minute repairs needed in the house (a leaky pipe under the kitchen sink), in Sonny (the wintry temperatures caused water pipes to freeze) , Christmas and a hundred other little hurdles to overcome, we managed to leave by 5 p.m., Friday the 26th of December - AND WITHOUT A DIVORCE!!!

A little frazzled but happy, Jay is retracting the front support legs of Sonny as part of the last preparations for actually pulling out of the driveway.

Chris, Jay and Max just before getting in "Ol' Blue" and heading down the road.

We are taking care of Jessica's, (Chris' daughter), dog (Max) and cat (Little Miss) while she attends the Coast Guard's Officer Candidate School from January through early May.

Since we had so little experience with how well the contents of the trailer would travel, Chris spent the first 5 miles inside Sonny with a walki talki to tell Jay how it was going. We were pleasantly surprised at how smoothly it rode. Drawers and cabinets stayed shut and we arrived at the RV park in Fort Meade, MD and set up after dark with virtually no problems. Now just because our first day's journey was only 14.1 miles does not mean it wasn't a significant achievement. We were afraid Sonny had sat way too long and been so cold that it wouldn't move at all!!

The weather the next day was actually warm with a balmy breeze as we headed south. The traffic getting around D.C. was terrible (it was the first weekend after Christmas) we got to the RV park at Quantico Marine Base in Va to experience a most enjoyable sunset and evening at our lakefront campsite.

The next morning was spent retorquing bolts ...

and enjoying the scenery ...

before we headed south to beat the forecasted miserable weather heading our way.

We'll update you on happenings in Yorktown, Raleigh, Savannah and Tallahassee soon!!

Preparations

Our new home:
We decided to purchase a 5th wheel trailer based on recommendations of numerous old-timers living the RV lifestyle. We discovered and purchased the perfect used trailer at an RV dealer 8 miles from our home. The first piece of the puzzle that just dropped into our laps. Made by Sunnybrook, we named it Sonny.

A tow vehicle was required which we found effortlessly on e-bay. Ol’ Blue is a two-year old, one-ton, extended cab, long-bed GMC diesel pick-up truck, and we bet you can guess the color. We found it on a Thursday and by the following Tuesday Jay was on a plane to Detroit to drive it home. He got 21 miles per gallon and an opportunity to visit his cousins in Ohio en route.

Although RV parks have electrical hookups to provide all of our modern day needs, we installed a generator to enable complete self-sufficiency if we happen to find an open field somewhere that looks like it needs someone to occupy it short-term.

We spent September, October and into November customizing areas of the interior to accommodate computer stations for each of us and maximizing storage areas. We removed the existing dinette set and recliner and installed our desks. The cavern containing the multi-function TV, VCR, DVD unit, that weighed a ton, became a shelved storage cabinet for our office supplies. Chris’ computer monitor doubles as our living area TV.

Experienced RVers told us that trailer tires have a propensity for blowing out at the most inopportune times. So, we decided to avoid the excitement and put on new tires traditionally made for trucks. Installing the monstrous (some assembly required) hitch in Ol’ Blue was the last major piece of the puzzle needed for us to take a test drive around the block with Sonny. All systems GO!!!


We were ready to show our friends and family our new toys via an Open House celebration. It was a tremendous success with many in attendance who Ooooed and Aaaahhhhed at the spaciousness and comfortable details of Sonny. At one point we had 20 people inside with room to spare.





Next we will be loading our clothes, food and other supplies then moving in to camp in the driveway while we work out any other bugs/discover things we need/and settle in. The weather has turned very cold (into the teens this week during the day!!!). Where is Global Warming when we really need it?

!!! Five weeks to blast-off !!!