Florida, Jacksonville - Monday, January 6, 2014 - Pecan Park RV Resort

I got out my pedometer yesterday and put in a new battery so I could get started on my plan to walk more.  I was hoping to get in a mile and a half a day for a couple of weeks and then start bumping it up until I could make it for five miles.  I did the mile and a half yesterday.  I got in a mile and a third today before it started raining and blowing hard – I know I wouldn’t melt and I sure wouldn’t blow away, but I’m a wimp and headed home.

Greg got us prepared for the impending cold snap here.  He had to dig out the heated water hose and closed off the sewer hoses for a couple of days.  We can usually go for four days before we have to dump the tanks, so we should be good.  It’s supposed to get back into the 70s again by the weekend.  We’ve switched to the floor furnace from the heat pump in order to keep heat in the basement storage area and to keep the floors warmer.  I’m sure we are better prepared for a little cold weather than some of our neighbors.  Our next door neighbor came over last night and said they had never camped in cold weather before and was asking Greg’s advice.

Naturally they don’t have the water pipes winterized here so the campground guys are going around to the sites that don’t have RVs in them opening up the faucets to drip so hopefully they won’t freeze.  A lot of people took off from here this morning, I think heading south for warmer weather.  When it was 49 degrees here at noon, we looked at the temperature where we were supposed to be now before we got stuck in Jacksonville getting this fridge problem fixed – it was 79 degrees.  Norcold is really beginning to tick me off.  Norcold is where our fridge part is coming from.

I’m just hoping that all of the snow and frigid temperatures up north don’t delay our part shipment from Ohio.  It took them ten days to get the wrong part here in good weather, I can’t imagine what it will take in adverse weather!!

In all honesty, a refrigerator part seems like a small thing when I think about what our family and friends are dealing with in Indiana and Kansas.  Our thoughts are with you, please stay inside and stay warm.  Love to all.

Florida, Jacksonville - Saturday, January 04, 2014 - Pecan Park RV Resort

My last post on Thursday indicated that the part for our fridge was in.  I was wrong, the box for the part for our fridge was in – the part that was in it was the wrong one.

Believe it or not, I’ve managed to stay calm through this whole process.  Retirement has evidently mellowed me considerably.

We are staying back at the Pecan Park RV Resort in Jacksonville while we wait on the correct part to be shipped.  The weather here as I write this at 8:40 is in the 50s, but we are expecting some weather in the low 30s at the beginning of the week.  I know I have no sympathy coming from our family and friends up north who are dealing with record breaking cold.  Stay safe, we think about you all the time.

Florida, Jacksonville - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - Elite Resorts, Clermont

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!!

I’ve been a bit lax in getting my posts out, but we’ve been having such a good time with the kids and grandkids.  This morning they all took off to get back home. 

Right now we are back in Jacksonville at Rivers RV – guess what, the part for our refrigerator is in!!!!  We will be pulling into the service area first thing in the morning hopefully to get our fridge up and running again.  It’s raining here, so we are inside just being lazy.

We left the Elite Resort in Clermont, FL this morning, we enjoyed our stay there.

 

This is where we stayed for the week.

 

 

The park is very well kept.

Since we spent all of our time at the kids’ condo, we didn’t have time to take advantage of the amenities the park had to offer.  While we were here they had a breakfast, an ice cream social and a New Year’s Eve party.  We found out those folks do like to celebrate New Year’s Eve – lots of fireworks and firecrackers going off in the campground.  I was a little surprised that they allowed this because otherwise it is a very quiet, upscale, gated community.

On New Year’s Eve Papaw Jack Crosley treated everyone to a wonderful meal at Johnnie’s Hideaway in Orlando.  Yesterday we all went to the Sea Dog restaurant, the food was good but it took forever to be served.

I just spent some time reading through some of the blogs written by other fulltime or wanna be fulltime RVers.  It made me realize how very lucky we are to have the support of our family to pursue this dream of ours.  When we announced to our blended family of five children, eight grandchildren and one great grandchild, that we were selling everything and traveling fulltime, I do think some of them were surprised.  But, once they realized we had thought everything through I think they were as excited about it as we were.  Not a one of them made us feel guilty for “leaving them” like some of the stories I just read. 

We’ve been so blessed that all of our children have grown up into very responsible, hard-working adults who are great parents and people in their own right.  They all have their own lives and they know that we will be there for them if they need us, but we expect and they live up to our expectations of taking care of themselves and their families.

Modern technology allows us to keep in touch with our kids and grandkids through Facebook, Face time and frequent phone calls.  Our blog probably allows them to know more about what we are doing than they did when we were home in Indiana.  Our travel allows us to spend quality time with them since they all left home and spread out from Kansas to Washington, D.C.

Our children have become more than the children who used to depend on us, now they have become wonderful friends - and, we are very grateful for their support.