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.