Merry Christmas from Pine Island

I hope everyone at home had a wonderful Christmas.  This is our third Christmas in Florida, so we're starting to get used to the "weirdness" of being in 80 degree weather and away from family - but I don't think I'll truly EVER get used to not being home for the holiday.  This year is a little different in that Brenda and her family are actually down here in Florida, so wouldn't have been part of my Christmas anyway.  And I got some nice messages from Alan and his family wishing me a Merry Christmas and thanking me for sending a couple gifts to them all.  I talked to my mom on Christmas Eve and she is with my sister Dolores and her family for a few days, so I'm sure she had a nice holiday also.  We actually had a nice Christmas today because we went to the Christmas dinner here at the KOA.  What a feast!  The resort provided the ham, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, along with beverages.  Then everyone brought their wonderful homemade dish to pass, which of coure always means wonderful food.  I ate way too much, but Dave really outdid himself and is teetering on the brink of being totally and completely miserable.  It's 7:21 as I type this and he just went in to lay down for the rest of the evening!  You just can't put Dave into a "buffet" situation and expect him to use any kind of self-restraint (as anyone who knows him will attest to).  The people down here are really very nice - the more we get to know them, the better we like them (...not unexpected, right?).  But in spite of everything, Christmas is always at its best when you're with family....

As I mentioned above, Brenda and her family are down here right now - they are in Jacksonville visiting Arnie's daughter and her family.  I spoke to Brenda this morning and they did their Christmas yesterday and she wasn't positive what they were going to do today.  But I pulled a bunch of pictures off Tessa and Chelsey's facebooks and obviously they had a wonderful day today.  I'm going to post a few of her pictures into this blog post - don't they look like they're having fun?  And I love the pictures of Arnie with Emma - precious, aren't they?  Emma's first exposure to the ocean, commemorated for all time.  What I'm REALLY excited about, though, is that on Thursday they are going down to St. Augustine for the rest of the week so I'm going to drive up there and spend Thursday, Friday and Saturday with them.  I CAN'T WAIT!  It's only about a 4-1/2 hour drive so I plan to be there by noon at the latest on Thursday.  This will definitely be my special Christmas treat!  I'll have a mega-post for when I get back, with tons of pictures I'm sure.

When I looked back at the blog, I see that it's been ten days since I've done an update - the last one was December 15.  That's kind of a long time, but it seems like the time has just kind of slipped away.  It's weird to think that, by the time I get back from St. Augustine, we'll only have two more days before we leave Pine Island and move up to Punta Gorda.  Crazy!  We've really enjoyed the past week and a half.  So what did we do?  Hmmmm.... I have to think.....



Well, for one thing, we went with Scott and Deb to Mary and Paul's condo in Cape Coral.  They were having a few friends over for the Christmas boat parade.  We had two boats that went down through the channels and down to where the parade was getting organized.  We rode around through the different boats, checking out the very elaborate decorations on some of the boats.  Wow - some people put a few bucks into this event!!!  I'm attaching a couple pictures, but it was hard to take good shots because we were moving, they were moving and it was dark.  So this is the best I could do.  After we rode around on the boats for a while, we all went back to some other friends of Mary and Paul's and had a very nice campfire on their dockside patio.  It was a really nice evening with some old and new friends.

We also put our kayaks into the water a couple times, including once at the little city park in Matlacha.  That was fun because we paddled through some of the channels, looking at some of the "funky" little residences in this wonderful little fishing community.  We really like Matlacha - it's the connection between the mainland, which is technically Cape Coral, on the north side of Fort Myers, and Pine Island itself.  You have to go over the bridge at Matlacha in order to get onto the Island. Matlacha is this great little fishing village, with lots of little brightly-colored shops and restaurants and some wonderful restaurants and, one of our favorites, Bert's Bar.  Bert's is an old OLD bar that sits right on the edge of the water and has lots of atmosphere.  They have really good seafood, frequent live music and what they advertise as a "million dollar view".  We went there for our Christmas Eve dinner and enjoyed just sitting out on the dock overlooking the water, the fishing boats and the birds.


We even had a special little outing for Brandi - if you go through Fort Meyers and down to Bonita Beach and then head north, you come to Lover's Key.  There is a very nice little state park at Lover's Key, which we visited last year.  It doesn't have a campground, unfortunately, or it would definitely be a place we would camp at.  But just a little ways from the state park is a special little beach that is dog-friendly.  It is one of the very few dog-friendly beaches that we're ever come across, so it's a really special place for us to visit.  We took Brandi and, OH MY GOSH!, she had a BLAST.  She ran and ran and ran and ran.... well, you get the idea.  She is such a good little girl, she went up and "met" all the other dogs (which of course involves LOTS of sniffing of body parts!) but she always plays nice and is never agressive even to the little dogs.  And BOY where there a lot of dogs there - over the couple hours we were there I would guess there were 50 dogs that came and went.  The only problem with the beach, as with many places on the ocean, is that the whole place disappears when the tide comes up!  Yep, according to some of the people that we chatted with, the whole beach is virtually underwater at high tide.  In fact, I was standing there talking to one nice "mom" of Raza, a very nice mellow old German Shepherd, when she nicely pointed out to me that my bag, my chair, and my towel were now sitting IN the water!  Yikes-I don't know if we'll ever get used to this "tide" thing!

I know I'm missing a couple little things, but that's probably a pretty good summary of the past ten days.  We do a lot of walking, some biking (Dave pretty much every day, me not so much although we did ride to the Publix together the other day), and I'm still plugging away at my running program.  We've been to the pool a number of times, gone out to eat a few times, and somewhere in there I continue to work a couple of hours a day (on average) for Kerkstra.  All in all, a REALLY good life, right?

So tomorrow I pack up my little suitcase and get ready for my little road-trip up to St. Augustine.  I can't WAIT!  In the meanwhile, I send out best Christmas wishes to everyone back home - I hope you all had a wonderful day today!

Halfway thru our Pine Island visit... already?

Hard to believe it's already the 15th of December, and our month here is half done.  It seems like we're being a little more "mellow" and laid back on this trip - are we getting OLDER???  I told Dave we'd better get off our behinds and DO stuff because I have nothing to blog about!  Obviously we have to do SOMETHING every day, but quite a few of those days are spenting doing things like sleeping in, taking the dog for a long walk, Dave going on a bike ride, us going to the pool and then spending an inordinate amount of time deciding what to do for dinner.  (I do have to admit-the pool is quite nice and as long as you aren't overly offended or grossed out by a bunch of old people with fairly bad bodies, floating around on their swim noodles, it actually isn't a bad place to spend a few hours in the afternoon!  And the people are all very nice, I have to add.)

We did, however, make some new FRIENDS!  And, frankly, we don't do that very often because we kind of like our own company and we like our privacy and we don't really want to "adopt" people as we travel - in other words, we're anti-social!!!  But we met this nice couple from Indiana this week - their names are Tina and Ed, and they are very nice.  A couple years younger than us, but retired - he from GM, and she was actually a bank teller for about 30 years.  They just bought their rig last year and used it a lot this summer, going to a lot of state parks.  We love that of course, because we too believe in USING your RV if you have one!  We met Tina and Ed at the pool, and made a "date" to go out for peel-and-eat shrimp on Tuesday.  Of course, there is a "special" at one of the seafood restaurants in town (oops-I forgot the name of the place - I think it's something like The Waterfront or something similar).  Anyway, they have shrimp, either hot or cold, for 45 cents apiece on Tuesday.  We got 4 pitchers of beer, close to 60 shrimp, and this decadent dessert ( a deep-fried, coconut-dipped piece of cheesecake-YUMMY!!!!) all for $48-for the four of us.  And for us retirees, there's nothing that makes us happier than a good food deal!

Wednesday was our anniversary - unreal...I've spent SEVEN years married to "the Lokes" - and he's spent seven years married to me.  I'm not sure which of us should be commended the most.  No-I'm just kidding-we actually still really LIKE each other a lot, at least most of the time!  So, since I did NOT end up flying back up to Michigan, we got to go out for our anniversary and we picked this excellent Italian restaurant on the island (actually, in Matlacha) called Micelli's.  Of course, neither one of us actually ordered Italian...Dave got the ribs (check the picture-doesn't he look happy?) and I got the stuffed flounder.  Excellent!

So-regarding Michigan-since Chris decided to stay on, we ended up deciding that we should delay my trip up there until early January.  That way, we'll be through the first couple days of year-end processing, so maybe I can jump in and help out with that, plus our support person, Deb, can schedule a two-visit at that time also.  Hopefully we can spend some time strategizing about the ERP implementation and keep things moving even while I'm on the road.  I'm fine with waiting until January to go up, but am a LITTLE nervous about there being SNOW!  But I guess I'll just have to wait and see, and just deal with it if I HAVE to!

Yesterday Dave and I did an AVA walk - together!  This is my 57th AVA  walk, but up until now Dave just couldn't walk that far.  But now that he has TWO new knees, he's doing GREAT with walking.  We take Brandi for a nice long hour to hour-and-a-half walk every day or two, and he said he wanted to tackle doing one of the AVA walks with me-and those are 10K (or 6.2 miles!).  I picked the downtown Fort Myers one, which maybe wasn't the best choice.  It 's probably not one of the most scenic walks - I think he might have enjoyed Sanibel a little more.  But we did it, and he did really well!  It was really fun to have someone WITH ME-normally I do these walks alone (unless Cindi and Glennda are down for a trip, or I'm with Brenda) so that was a treat.  Little does he know that he set a precedent now and I'll be expecting many more of these in the future!

And last but not least, we went out fishing with Scott and Deb again today.  I absolutely LOVE being out on the water, on their pontoon boat, with the sun and the water and everything.  We had an extra special treat today, because we had a mother and baby dolphin swimming around by us for the longest time.  Apparently "mama" was teaching baby how to hang out by a boat and snap the smaller fish that the humans throw back into the water.  I snapped a bunch of pictures, but it's really hard to catch them because by the time they come up and I hit the button on my I-Phone and the picture actually "snaps" a second or two have gone by and they normally are already back under.  But I did catch them out of the water a couple times, so I cropped the pictures and am posting one.  If you didn't KNOW it's two dolphins you might not recognize them - but since you DO know, you can tell...right????  Anyway, believe me - it was SO beautiful to see them swimming together and coming up out of the water side-by-side.  And, we also saw a bald eagle sitting in the mangroves watching us fish - also a beautiful sight!  Dave and Deb both caught groupers - too small to keep but fun to look at - boy, they are really quite UGLY!  When we got back to Scott and Deb's house, we had a wonderful fish fry.  Deb was such a sweetheart and kept each separate type of fish apart, so we could taste the difference between each type.  We had kingfish, sheephead (which are wonderful tasting), pompano and sea trout.  They also had some halibut they had brought down with them from home.  So we had a wonderful dinner together, along with their friends Jim and Lanay (I have no idea if that's how she spells her name).  By the way, I have to add a comment regarding this last picture - when Scott and Deb come in from fishing, Scott cleans the boat and Deb cleans the fish.  Their fishcleaning station is right on the channel, so Deb attracts a lot of attention from the local birds.  She tosses the skin and guts to them and it's a hoot to watch them fight and scrabble to get their share.  Fishing, floating, eating:  it was a great day!










....But I can't end my post today without mentioning how heartsick we are over the senseless, horrible shooting of those precious little first graders in Newtown yesterday, as well as the teachers and others at the school.  We've watched hours of coverage of this tragedy and our hearts go out to all of the families of the victims.  How can such horror exist in the world????  We all need to tell our children and grandchildren how much we love them, don't we?

First Week on Pine Island

REALLY?  We're already one week through our month-long stay here?  We really do like it here on Pine Island.  If you're not familiar with it, it's an island right off the shoreline from Fort Myers, actually Cape Coral to be more specific.  The island is about 20 miles long, and our KOA is about 3 miles from the southern edge of the island.  It's a very nice park, maybe a little pricier than most of the places we stay, but it's such a great location that we don't mind paying up a little to be here-we figure we make it up by staying at less expensive places later on, right?  There's a very nice pool here, although, let's face it, any pool in Florida at this time of year is pretty much filled with the geriatric group, so maybe the scenary's not so attractive... but, HEY, we have a right to lay by the pool too!!!  It's about a three mile bike ride into St. James City, and there are some nice little bars and stuff in town that are fun to go to.  I think I posted pictures from here last year, because we were here for about 6 weeks then - the last half of December and all of January.  This year we're only staying for the month of December, then moving up to Punta Gorda for the month of January.

For us, of course, the best part of the island is the fact that our friends Scott and Deb live here about 8 months of the year.  They are great friends, great hosts and GREAT party people.  Honestly, I don't know HOW they keep up the pace they do.  But they love people and they love to be with people.  And everybody here on the island knows and loves Scott and Deb!  Now that we've been here three times, we're beginning to know some of their friends too - especially Mary and Paul, who are super folks too.  In fact on Wednesday we spent pretty much the whole day "clubbing" with the four of them.  By clubbing, I do NOT mean like night clubs and dancing until 3:00 AM or anything like that - nope, I mean the "O" (for Oriole) club, the Vets Club, the Moose club, the American Legion club, etc.  Scott and Deb picked us up at 11:00 in the morning and we spent the next six hours "clubbing".  I'll say one thing for these people - they can sure drink a lot of beer!  I am a rank AMATEUR compared to them - in fact, neither Dave nor I even tried to keep up.  But it was a fun day and we bumped into different people that they knew along the way.  But honestly, I think we were in bed by 9:00 that night!  And I don't think we'll repeat the day in the near future.

Yesterday, however, was a totally different story.  We went out fishing with Scott and Deb on their pontoon boat.  We had a BALL!  It was a gorgeous day - some big puffy clouds, a little smidge of rain, mostly off in the distance, and a beautiful rainbow!  I snapped a picture of it and am posting it in the blog, but I'm not positive it'll show up very well - we'll see!  I didn't fish because I don't have a license and Scott and Deb are very religious about sticking to the laws down here - it's just not worth the risk of them losing the ability to fish by having guests and doing something stupid.  I brought along a book and had a great afternoon watching the three of them catch fish, soaking up the sun, and just relaxing!  It was a wonderful afternoon.

Dave loves fishing down here because the fish are so different from up home.  I'm posting a few pictures, although they aren't great.  The most fun one is the puffer fish - he's an ugly, lumpy little gray thing that puffs up like a balloon when he gets caught - and you would absolutely SWEAR he's going to explode any second!  Scott caught a pompano, they all caught sheephead (which Deb tells us are great eating), and then they all caught a bunch of sea trout, which are supposed to be wonderful to eat.  The majority of the fish were under-size and had to be thrown back, but Dave caught a lovely 17 inch sea trout, which was probably the biggest fish of the day.  Deb, however, is the QUEEN - she LOVES to fish and is very good at it.  Scott says she catches WAY more fish then he does - in fact, lots of times he mostly nets for her and repairs snapped lines and stuff like that.  It's great that they both enjoy going out on the boat so much, and we were very grateful for the chance to go with them.  TERRIFIC fun!

Tonight we went up to the Legion for the Friday night dinner - Dave had broasted chicken and I had the fish-and-shrimp combo.  Both were excellent, but we agreed that we can NOT eat like this very often - we need to get back to making our healthy home-made dinners.  We both feel like we should lose a few pounds.  So - going forward! - a little less eating out, a little more cooking in!

And I have to put in a word about work.  For those of you who know me, you are aware that I have been doing some "temp" work for K****** over the past five years, primarily in the summer but I'm also set up to be able to go online and work from the road.  It's been a "win-win" situation over the past couple winters, as they've needed a little extra help and it gives me a little extra pocket money.  Over the summer we converted to a new ERP system and are still in "early days" of going live with lots and lots of new procedures, so I'm definitely going to help with a little of the extra burden over the winter, which I'm very happy to do.  But this week we were also faced with the possibility of losing our controller and I spent quite a bit of time on conference calls, helping with some brainstorming and contingency planning.  Everything has turned out great - Chris is staying "on board" and there are some very positive things looming on the horizon, so all is good....  But it's been a little time-consuming; in fact, I've put in about 40 hours of work this week and will be flying up to Michigan for a couple days next week.  I actually love staying involved and helping Katie and Robin with some of the month-end duties - it's good for my "old brain" to keep exercising!  (Now if I can just get my "old body" to do a better job of exercising!)  Dave has been very patient and supportive this week because he realizes this is a pretty critical time for the company, and for people who I've come to care very deeply about, and he's also being great about my flying home for a couple days.  But I told him today - tomorrow is SATURDAY and I'm GOING TO THE POOL!  PERIOD!  So - the next pictures I post may have some of the afore-mentioned geriatrics laying by the pool - be forewarned!  But it's 80, it's sunny, and life is good!!!!

Time to Head to Florida

Since it's been a week-and-a-half since we left home, I guess it's time we cross the Florida state line pretty soon.  It's been great to just "meander" down here - very leisurely pace!  We spent four days in Columbus, then three at High Falls, and now three at Reed Bingham, but tomorrow morning we'll be heading south for the last leg of our trip down.  We still plan to take two days to get all the way down to Fort Myers, which is probably kind of silly but we really like to only drive a few hours a day if time permits (which it does since Thanksgiving was SO early this year).  We'll only be drving about 200 miles tomorrow - as far as Bushnell, which is just north of the Tampa area, and then we'll get down to Pine Island pretty early on Saturday.

Our time here at Reed Bingham has, as usual, been very pleasant.  The weather yesterday wasn't GREAT, but it wasn't too bad (certainly not compared to home, where we hear a little snow has fallen!).  But today was very nice - in the low 60's and sunny all day.  We just got back from having a very nice dinner at Carter's Catfish House, which is about 20 yards outside the park limits.  I had this excellent deviled crab, which was sort of like little crab cakes smooshed into crab shells - 4 of them - along with an excellent twice-baked potato, the salad bar, and hush puppies (I LOVE hush puppies!).  Dave had a grilled shrimp salad, with a huge bowl of crispy fresh salad ingredients and 3 skewers of shrimp - 12 shrimp total.  And our total bill was $28.85!  What a bargain!  This place is only open Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings and it's almost worth scheduling your trip around their hours.  Excellent!

We had two lovely campfires during the two evenings we've been here - we had to use the rest of Dave's "scrounged" firewood since we won't be having any more fires for two months now.  One of the disadvantages of staying a month each at the next two RV resorts is no campfires.  We've already decided that next year we're going to spend more time in state parks -we really are campground people at heart!

Most of the rest of our time here we spent taking walks, Dave riding his bike, and me still focusing on getting back into my running program - I can NOT believe how much ground I lost over the past couple of months!  Valuable lesson to be learned.

But the most exciting thing that occurred over the past three days involved our little "wild child", Brandi!  (Surprise!)  There is a really nice hiking trail here in the park, that goes down to the river but has an extensive length of elevated board walk that is built maybe five feet off the ground and goes through this kind of swamp land along the edge of the river.  There is one point along the boardwalk where a side path goes down to an observation deck right over the river.  From the observation deck you can go down about five or six steps to a "raft" that kind of floats right in the river - I think it's there so people could possibly pull up in a canoe or kayak and climb onto the raft and then do part of the hike.  Anyway, we were down on that raft area when Brandi decided to lean way over and get a drink of water and all of a sudden SPLASH she fell headlong into the river.  We have no idea how deep it is, but she definitely was way over her head - and she is not normally a swimmer - she doesn't ever go out past her belly.  So Dave and I are yelling and screaming and she's dog-paddling like crazy and swims UNDERNEATH the raft.  Now Dave and I are terrified because we don't know if she'll get trapped underneath there or how in the world we're going to be able to reach her.  Fortunately, she swam out from under the raft and headed toward shore, where she climbed up and started running through the swamp.  We couldn't get to her because the whole boardwalk is too high above the swamp for us to get down, or for her to jump up.  So we had to walk as fast as we could to where the boardwalk FINALLY got lower to the ground and she could finally jump up.  But while we were trying to get to that area we were calling to her so she'd stay with us and she was RUNNING RUNNING RUNNING from one side of the boardwalk, underneath it, and over to the other side in these huge circles.  We could tell she was pretty frantic and couldn't figure out how to get up to us.  When we finally got to the area where she could jump up and rejoin us on the boardwalk, she was gasping and panting and was just crazy frantic.  POOR POOR baby.  When we finally got back to the RV, she jumped up on "her" couch (we all know the couch belongs to her!) and basically passed out for the rest of the day.  So once again, Brandi seems to provide the highlest level of drama for the trip.  Fortunately we love her to pieces, and we were SO relieved that she was ok.  Naughty girl-she really had us scared.

So now that THAT is all over, we are ready to pack things up and head south where we can really unpack and get settled in for a month long stay.  By the time I post the next blog we should be safely settled into the KOA on Pine Island (right off Fort Myers) and enjoying our 80 degree weather. 

Hanging out in Georgia for a While

High Falls State Park is SUCH a nice place to pull over for a few days.  When we pulled in on Saturday, the park was almost full, but by Sunday afternoon we were almost entirely alone in the park.  Honestly, I don't think there were four other rigs in the whole place.  On Saturday we just kind of hung out in the park, went for a walk and hit the sack early - it was a pretty long two days of driving and neither of us slept well at the Walmart outside of Knoxville.  But Sunday was beautiful!  We went for a long (probably 2 hours) hike along the river and the falls.  The falls themselves are not very tall, but they are really pretty.  The terrain is fairly rugged, so it's a fun hike, with lots of climbing up and over and around.  Brandi LOVED it!  I'm attaching a few of my pictures, but probably have about three times as many that I'm not.  After our hike on Sunday we drove about ten miles to visit another state park in the area, Indian Springs State Park.  It was ALSO a very nice park and another place we'd definitely consider spending a few days at on future trips.  We have had great experiences over the year with the Georgia state parks - they are very pretty, well-maintained, and have really spacious sites.  Monday was do-your-own-thing day.  I actually spent a few hours doing some Kerkstra work but still had more than enough time for another nice long hike on the other main trail in the park.  Dave spent most of the afternoon doing some fishing - didn't get anything but he always enjoys dropping a line in a pretty river!  We had great campfires both Saturday and Sunday nights, and did hot dogs one night and hamburgs the next night.  I know - NOT very healthy, but what the heck...we're camping!  And after we leave here, we'll be staying in RV resorts for December and January, which is definitely NOT camping - and there will be NO campfires.  So for now we're just enjoying the option of having fires and eating bad food.

On Sunday Dave did his normal firewood "scrounging" thing - he collected a LOT of leftover firework, including a big hunk of wood that he then chopped all up with his wood splitter,  Just for fun I'm posting the "before" and "after" pictures of his prize chunk of wood - hey, it's cheap entertainment for him plus is good exercise, right?  Overall, we had a really nice little three day layover here at High Falls...!

On Tuesday, I did the weekly Kerkstra conference call and then we packed up and headed out to head further south.  It was a pretty easy drive because we only planned to drive as far as Adel, GA with a stop at Reed Bingham State Park.  This is another park we always enjoy staying at for a few days.  The only problem we had (and it really wasn't an issue at all...) is that it pretty much rained all day today.  We don't LOVE driving in the rain, but since we only had about two-and-a-half hours to drive it really wasn't an issue.  We have a great site here at Reed Bingham and are looking forward to temps tomorrow in the high 60's.  There is a very nice hiking trail here too, so that's probably what we'll do tomorrow.  We plan to stay here until Friday morning, have a couple more campfires and then we'll finally head down into Florida. 

In the meanwhile, as a VERY weird way to entertain ourselves, we went into the local grocery store here in Adel and took pictures of the food.  OK - I KNOW that's really weird sounding, but HONESTLY we are just amazed at the food they people down here eat.  We try very hard to be socially accepting of other "cultures", but do you REALLY eat this stuff???  So Dave's picking stuff up in the store and going "Oh my God, look at THIS!" and I'm using my I-Phone to snap pictures so I can post them.  REALLY rude, huh?  So even though we had hot dogs and hamburgs over the last couple days, we are feeling really virtuous and healthy now!  (Plus, I've re-started my running program so am feeling absolutely saint-like at the moment.)  So here's some pictures of the culinary delights available at your local southern-Georgia grocery store (and, inc ase you can't read the labels, these are "country cured neckbones", "country cured pork hocks" and "country cured jowls", in addition to the all-time favorite "fried out port fat with attached skin."  And we wonder why we have an obesity crisis in this country?

Thanksgiving and Headed South!

Hope Everyone Had a GREAT Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful few days with Brenda and her family.  We left a day earlier than usual, on Monday instead of Tuesday.  We had great traveling weather - it was like a miracle!  Sunshine, no wind, no rain, no accidents - everything was terrific.  We pulled into Buck Creek State Park at about 4:00 and got all set up.  As usual we were the ONLY camper in the entire park.  And it is SUCH a beautiful park, right on the edge of this gorgeous reservoir.  After we got set up, we drove about 20 minutes to get to Brenda's house and we all just had pizza together and then dropped off my old Christmas tree at Tessa's apartment.  I haven't set up the tree for about 3 years now and, honestly, probably never will again, so I was more than happy to "gift" it to Tessa.  On Tuesday, Dave and I took Brandi for a two hour walk in the park - it was probably close to 60 degrees, sunny and the water was absolutely calm and flat - really pretty!  After we got her worn out a little, we left her on the couch in the RV and Dave and I headed into Westerville to Brenda's bakery.  I hung out until about 6:00- and of course she put me to work making batches of sugar cookie dough! - while Dave rode his bike around town - what a treat for him to be able to spend time outside on such a mild day.  Arnie, Tessa and Chelsey all came to the bakery at various times throughout the afternoon, so all of us went to dinner together at the Westerville Grill.  I had the old "truckdriver special" - meat loaf, mashed potatoes and gravy on bread - boy, am I going to have to get out and start running again!


Wednesday was a great day for
me.  The weather was beautiful - I think it hit 70 - so Dave decided to stay in the park.  He went for a long, long bike ride and then put his kayak into the lake for a few hours and did some fishing.  He told me he had a really nice day just spending time outside and enjoying the weather.  While he played outside, I went in and played at Brenda's bakery for the day.  Yep, she put me to work again and I loved it.  We made pumpkin and apple pies for our dinner, and she had me make a whole bunch of "ganache" (I have absolutely no idea how it's spelled, but basically it's semi-sweet chocolate chips melted into heavy cream - delicious!).  I also ran a bunch of errands for her and then (being the accountant in the family!) got all of her books caught up to date.  But mostly it was just great spending the day with her.  I left the bakery about 6:00 or so and headed over to Tessa's apartment to help her and Chelsey (with a little extra help from Emma) decorate the tree.  It looks terrific in Tessa's apartment and I'm so happy I was there to be part of her setting up her first Christmas tree.

Thursday, of course, was Thanksgiving and we all had a wonderful day together - great meal, great company, such special family time together.  It was so special to see Tessa and Chelsey multiple times over the three days we spent in Columbus, and of course our little Emma is just so cute and sweet and funny.  She's at that fun age where she's just learning to walk so she takes about 10 or 12 steps then falls onto her little bottom.  But, actually, I was surprised to see how well she IS walking - and oh my gosh, does she have a lot of energy.  She is, at least in Ohio, the center of the universe for all intents and purposes.  (And that's as it should be!)  Her mother, her "auntie", and of course her Grandma Brenda and Grandpa Arnie all just love the pieces out of her.  She's a very lucky little girl, surrounded by all the love in the world!

Friday morning we took off for parts south.  It's always sad for me to be leaving the family behind, but it's also exciting to know we're starting off on our next adventure.  This year we plan to be on the road until late April or early May.  We plan to spend the trip entirely on the Gulf side this year, ending up in New Orleans.  I'm very fortunate because I have the opportunity to keep working for Kerkstra this year, even while I'm on the road.  It's good for my brain and good for my pocketbook, and hopefully I'm able to provide a certain amount of value to the team back at Kerkstra even though I'm not physically on-site with them.  (This is where any of my blog followers who happen to also be Kerkstra employees can join in with a big "A-MEN" if you'd like.)  Anyway, we got as far as Knoxville Friday night and pulled over to stay in a Walmart overnight.  Dave had noticed that our back tire on the car seemed soft....AGAIN!  I just had it fixed on my last Friday at work, and now it was soft again - frustrating!  Anyway, the Walmart we parked in was adjoined to a Sam's Club so we took the car there and sure enough they found a small puncture that the kid in the Holland Sam's Club apparently missed.  It was a relief to have a specific answer to our problem, especially since we also somehow lost our backup camera about halfway down to Knoxville.  This is very frustrating because we sort of feel like we're flying blind without being able to see the car behind us.  We've decided to wait until we're settled in on Pine Island before we deal with it, but we feel better knowing we probably aren't dragging a car with a flat tire behind us!  So, anyway, we got settled into the Walmart parking lot, got dinner and went to bed about 9:00 (unreal!) - but I don't think either of us slept very well because it was COLD COLD COLD in the rig.  Poor Brandi - I think she almost froze to death.  But we all made it through OK and today (Saturday) we got through Atlanta, which is always a HUGE relief - we HATE driving through Atlanta! - and we decided to pull into High Falls State Park for a few days.  High Falls is located about halfway between Atlanta and Macon.  We have LOTS of time before we have to be down in the Fort Meyers area - our reservation isn't until December 1, so we've got a whole week.  We stayed at this park 2-1/2 years ago and really enjoyed it.  The weather is pretty good - about 60 today and tomorrow, but it's supposed to be in the low 70's by Monday, so we decided to pull in here and stay until Tuesday.  I'll take pictures tomorrow and Monday and post some - it's very very pretty here - but in the meanwhile we are just happy to be on the road, eating the fantastic cheese cake that Brenda sent with us, and getting another wonderful trip started. 

(PS-I also saw on the Weather Channel on my I-Phone that it's supposed to SNOW in Michigan on Saturday and Sunday, so it looks like we made it out JUST in time again - sorry, all you guys up in Michigan - don't hate us, OK?!)