Said “farewell” to our Texas family during breakfast at El Bosque this morning.  It was a teary eyed event although we realize that we are not leaving forever, just until November of next year.  We left knowing that our adult children have lots of mom’s to call on should anything go horribly wrong.  Nice knowing that we have so many friends that love us as much as we love them.

Back at the LilyPad, packing, poking, pushing, smooshing and cussing resulted in enough things being secured to be ready to pull in our slides, raise the jacks and set off on our journey come morning.

Tanks and pipes received a thorough cleaning today.  Not something I had thought about doing in the grand scheme of living in an RV and not necessary when we lived in the old “sticks and bricks”.  It takes about 3 hours and involves, as you would guess, running water out of every opening in the RV except the front door, which is a substantial amount of running water.  Lots of things take more time than you would guess but then at our age, it’s expected, we are slower at everything.   A bit of shopping, prepping food for the pups and finding new ways to store things we need filled the rest of the day along with the ever present job of cleaning up the dust and dog hairs that gather everywhere every time we roll down the road.  Our expedition to the land of the cool weather and large scary animals is but a few months away.

The winds have been blowing for 2 days.  They make the slide toppers sound like they are ripping off…very unsettling.  I don’t ever remember our sticks and bricks shaking like the Lilypad has been doing over the last few days.  It rained and the rain covered the Lilypad and Ribbit with huge dirt splotches.  My poor car is not used to harsh weather, being covered with dog hair, drool and being filthy most of the time.  Guess Ribbit better get used to cold and dirt because Alaska won’t care that Ribbit was once a “Woodlands Rich Bitch Car” …a term given to our Lexus by our friend Pete.

John just changed his cell phone ring from Christmas music to “I was born under a wandering star…”  I’m not all that sure that he was, but he certainly is doing some major wandering lately.

Christmas was spent at our Daughters apartment.  I had given her some of my decorations and she decked out her house and porch so I wasn’t too homesick for my decorations that are all stuffed into our storage space.  Liz did such a good job that she one first place at her apartment and it came with a cash discount from her rent…yea!

We stopped at Bellingrath and toured the beautiful gardens and home. The weather was cool but sunny. We enjoyed wandering the grounds and relaxing.  All the flowers that are displayed here are real and grown in hot houses on the property.  We were told that this time of year is the most beautiful.  Added to that is the beautiful light display at night which they were assembling as we strolled around the grounds.   Seems we are always just missing good stuff.  So that sounds like a really good reason to come back!

The dogs were cozy in their crates with the TV on for entertainment and it was wonderful not having to rush anywhere.  I started to think that maybe this retirement stuff isn’t so bad after all.

As I couldn’t pass up a chance to spend a day at Disney, I talked John into going to Epcot for a day on the way home.  I brought a 1951 (my birth year) Mickey with me and we took pictures together all over Epcot.

The RV sites in Disney’s Fort Wilderness are first class all the way and have a price to match.  I don’t think we have paid higher at any other place since starting our RV journey.  Got a picture of Coke that is served around the world.  I had a taste of each and it was so sweet it hurt my teeth.  It was a long but relaxing day and Epcot was all decked out for Christmas.  We didn’t miss a thing going full speed early am to late pm.

We left Daytona for Jupiter to visit  John’s 100 year old mother.  John decided to turn into a grocery parking lot but he couldn’t turn around in the lot to drive out.  He came so close to the stop sign, he had to go outside, grab ahold of it, pull it away from the bus and let me drive forward or take the stop sign with us.

Millie and KatieBug got to visit in Mom’s room and KatieBug got to sit on the bed with her.  It’s always enjoyable when we visit mom even if she is in her own little world.  At least, when she talks with family that have passed, she always includes John and I in the conversation.

We stayed at Jonathan Dickinson State Park and our site was very nice.  We did have to move once but the second site was the handicapped site with a cement walk all the way to the nice clean restrooms.  It is a beautiful park with miles of beach area, beautiful sunsets and lots to do.  Our plans are to visit again and stay longer so we can take the boat out to see the Manatees.

Juno Beach has a leash free area and we took both the dogs just before a storm was to arrive.  Millie and KatieBug dashed around like dogs gone wild and enjoyed every second of their time on the sand.  Neither had been on the beach before.   Millie found the seaweed interesting enough to guard, so KatieBug had to dash around and try to get there before Millie so she could have some for herself.  Seaweed dog breath is not a pleasant smell especially in the tight quarters of the LilyPad.

Arrived in Daytona for the Good Sam Rally and spent the next few days in the blistering heat with only 30 amp power which meant you didn’t turn on you’re a/c and to many appliances at the same time.  Being new to our RV and not having to do without 50 amp since the first day, we were not prepared when circuit breakers kept tripping and the temperature crawled to drippy hot.  John went straight to the Tiffin forums and found out that things we didn’t know we had were draining down our amperage and tripping the a/c.  Thank heavens for all those folks on the forums that have already had your problem, found solutions, then wrote about it.  Live and learn and hope you don’t do anything too stupid along the way.

A Rally is a strange form of entertainment.  They have classes each day and some are enjoyable and some are not.  Most of the sales booths have ways to win prizes and they sell everything you could ever want for your RV.  One of the freebee’s was a great freezer bag and we found a slice of space to keep.  Funny how the older you get, it doesn’t take much to make you happy.  If you collected points by visiting each site, you could spin a wheel and win something.   John and I gathered enough points to spin and I won a book.  After putting all our paper on computer and giving away all our books so we could fit into our RV, wouldn’t you know I would win a book.  The title was, “How Do They Live Like That”, and I must admit it was very enjoyable.  I could certainly relate to many of the horror stories.

They had an awsome vintage trailer show with perfectly refurbished trailers.

The entertainment was super.  Reba sang her heart out to all of us RV’ers then stepped into her million plus dollar  Prevost and we all went back to our humble RV’s.  The next day they allowed RV’s on the speedway but we chose to leave rather than wait around in the heat.

Left for Daytona, FL.  Stayed at a Louisiana casino one night.  Beautiful clean RV Resort and had dinner at the Casino.   The food was excellent and they sat us in a romantic corner.   They even had cement dog walking paths that were lit and had poo bags along the path.  The cost effective Wal-Mart RV Resort was our choice for the next few days.