May 24, 2007

We spent the last few days dry camping, staying in a repair bay, in a campground and had lots of idle time. On Monday, we dry camped in Lazy Days RV Super Center’s parking lot. We had an appointment to have some warranty work done on our motor home. Tuesday night we spent the night in a repair bay because it was taking longer than expected to finish our repairs. Wednesday night we stayed at the Rally Park Campground at Lazy Days. Each day we had lots of time between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM while they worked on our coach. We spent some of the time looking at new travel trailers, fifth wheels and motorhomes. We didn’t see anything we wanted to trade for ours. In fact, we didn’t see anything we liked as well as our Bounder.

Lazy Days is a exceptional dealership. They did everything to make our stay as pleasant as possible. They provided breakfast and lunch everyday at no charge for everyone. They have a very comfortable waiting area with two televisions, complimentary Star Bucks coffee and concierge area for assistance with any local entertainment or dining needs. They also have information seminars during the day on traveling, motorhome maintenance and individual components such as chassis, generators, invertors, heating and cooling, refrigerators, etc. It is truly a comfortable place to have repairs done.

In just a little less than a month we will be on the road for the summer. We are now almost ready for the trip. We look forward to seeing friends and family along the way.

May 15, 2007

On this day at 7:47 AM, the attending physician, Dr J. Mirro, M.D. and the operating room nurses again witnessed the miracle of birth. A beautiful 7 pound 8 ounce girl was born. These lucky parents already had a wonderful four-year-old little boy. Now they were blessed with a darling little girl.

Oh how I wish I could have seen the smiles on their faces. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be there to share the happiness they were feeling. The year was 1944 and I wasn’t around yet. In case you haven’t guessed, I am describing the birth of my wonderful wife, Charlotte. What a great day this turned out to be for me.

So what did we do on this special day? We went shopping at our favorite Mall near where we used to live. I found the new wrench set I had been wanting. Also I bought two new shirts and three pairs of shorts. I found the perfect tie but decided not to get it. Wait a minute! I’m not serious. I didn’t get anything for me. This is Charlotte’s day not mine. We bought two very nice blouses and a pair of jeans for Char. After shopping Charlotte had her favorite lunch. A small hamburger, small fry and small diet drink from McDonalds. She is very easy to please. We took the long way home through the country for a truly relaxing ride. It is great to be able to go anywhere at anytime and not need to worry about work. We love retirement. It is also great to have all the time I want to spend with my loving wife. Tonight we will have some cake and ice cream to finish an already perfect day.

Thanks to everyone who called or sent cards. Char really enjoyed talking to you and she appreciated the wonderful cards. Now my final thought for the day. Thank you Lord for giving me such a magnificent wife.

May 14, 2007

Another great day in the neighborhood! A few days ago we met an extremely nice couple in our RV Park from Kentucky, Derek and Joy Mathews. They are from the Florence area in Northern Kentucky, near Cincinnati, Oh.

While talking with them about Florida and Kentucky, they mentioned they would start work part-time for Walt Disney World. Since Disney is one of our favorite subjects, we naturally felt compelled to enlighten them with some of our Disney trivia, fun facts and general knowledge. Today, we took them on a little driving tour of the Disney property. We stopped at property control (the back stage employee outlet store) to check out the bargains. Yes, we all found something we couldn’t pass up. We helped them locate the areas where they report in the morning. Joy will be working in the Magic Kingdom and Derek will be at the front desk in the Caribbean Resort. We enjoyed a wonderful lunch at the All Star Café at Disney’s Wide World of Sports. Thank you very much Derek and Joy for our lunch.

On the way home, we stopped at the community of Celebration. We took a short walk near the lake where we took the above picture. Celebration is such a beautiful place. It has all the small town charm with all the needed conveniences.

We wish both Derek and Joy “the best” in their endeavor at Walt Disney World. Hopefully they will enjoy working there as much as we did.

May 11, 2007

For the last week or so we have been getting things ready for our summer trip. We have repacked each bin in the basement storage. Char has been rearranging things inside the RV. I lubed the slides, the leveling jacks and the steps. We flushed and cleaned the fresh water tank. We ran the generator for a couple of hours to get it ready. We still have things to complete before take-off. On May 21st we will drive back to our dealer, Lazy Days in Seffner, Fl, to have several warranty issues corrected. Hopefully, this will be a quick and simple process. I have spent many hours plotting our trip with the Travel Life Campground program. I will review and probably continue to change stops and routes until we leave.

We will join Richard and Vera at the Missouri Bounder Rally in June. The four of us will travel together the rest of the summer. Our plans include stops to see Jill, Karl and Abby and Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, Mount Rushmore and the Badlands in South Dakota, the Bridges of Madison County in Iowa, the Mall of America in Minnesota, my Mom and our families in Northern Indiana, the Longaberger Basket Company in Ohio, Camping World Outlet in Kentucky and North Florida Gulf Beaches. This is just a sampling of the many places we hope to visit. I’m sure one of the four of us will find lots of interesting things to check out along the way. We certainly are looking forward to a fun time with our great friends.

Tomorrow, we will go see Mike at the Port. This will be his last stop before they sail to Europe for the summer. Mike will finish his current contract when the boat docks in Spain. He plans to travel for a week to Paris and Normandy. He was part of the opening team at Disneyland Paris and wants to see what it looks like now. He will back in the Florida in June.

Here is a local weather update. We have several fires burning wildly in the State, which gives us lots of lingering smoke. Two days ago, we had the worst air quality in the entire country. To make matters worse, Andrea, our first summer season storm is setting off the east coast of Florida. Unfortunately, we are not getting much rain but this storm is bringing lots of smoke from Georgia fires to our area. The daytime temperature has been in the upper 70’s with nights in the middle 60’s for the last few days. Except for the smoke, it’s been nice to have the windows open. The near future forecast is for temperatures back in the normal range of upper 80’s to low 90’s with scattered showers. Hopefully, we will get some rain to help put out the fires and give us some relief from the smoke.