A Quick Trip to Florida

As I mentioned in my last post this past weekend Maxine and I did a quick trip to Florida. On Saturday December 7 we awoke relatively early and packed up for our trip. With stops it ended up being about an 8-hour drive to Lakeland, Florida. It was a beautiful day, about two hours into the trip I was able to put top down on the convertible and drive the rest of the way enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. We arrived about 4 o’clock in Lakeland and checked into the motel for a two-night stay. Then we took a ride over to Lake Parker Park where the picnic was being held on Sunday, to check things out. My friends Kelly and Bill “especially Kelly” were the ones that coordinated this picnic (check out their blog posts here). Kelly has put together these picnics several times now, for all RV dreamers that winter in Florida. People come from near and far to these picnics. I first met Kelly and Bill at an RV-dreams education rally back in 2014. These are rallies that are put on by our friends Howard and Linda Payne, they put together these education rallies a couple times a year. You can check out Howard’s and Linda’s webpage here to get more insight. What this is a network of full time RV’ers that all met through Howard and Linda in some way or another. I knew that there would be several people there that I know quite well. In a matter affect I knew my really good friends Jim and Diana, who I worked with at Heceta Head Lighthouse in Oregon back in 2017. We’re going to be there and I haven’t seen them in about a year and a half. When we first met it was at Washburne Park in Oregon when they arrived and were setting up camp for their month-long volunteer position at the lighthouse. The funny thing is, I was there to welcome them and greet them as new host, we had never met before, but Jim’s face looked so familiar. The reason he looked familiar was I had seen his picture before on my friends Tracy and Lee’s blog. Lee and Tracy are also fellow RV dreamers and there was an instant connection because of that group. Over the next few weeks we got the be very close and enjoyed each other’s company, you see Jim and Diane are also from the Midwest being from Michigan. We have connected in person several times over the last few years whenever we were close to each other. We also keep in touch through our blogs and phone calls and texts. But it’s not the same as seen each other in person, so I was very excited about getting to see them again. You can check out their blog post here. The fun thing is Maxine was even more excited about seeing her old friends than me, “I think”. She always gets so excited when she recognizes people that she hasn’t seen in a while, which makes them feel good too, to be remembered by her. There were several other people there that have we had met before and we all had a great time catching up. Plus, I got to meet a bunch of new people and are looking forward to staying in touch with them, and hopefully spending more time with some of them this winter, when I’m in Florida. I was too busy visiting that I did not take any photos myself. But Howard did and he was willing to allow me to share some of them with you from his Facebook page. (Thanks again Howard) here is one of the whole group, all except Howard who took the picture. This one has Howard right in the center. And several other photos as we all mingled around and were visiting. We all had a great time and before you know it was going at 5 o’clock. The picnic started officially at noon but Maxine and I had arrived shortly after 10, because we knew a few people would be there saving the shelter. It was a casual event and people came and went as their schedule allowed some came from near and some came from far. But Maxine and I came the furthest. It was a little after five and the rest of us were getting ready to leave as the park closed at six. Maxine and I headed back to the motel for a quiet evening, we got up Monday morning and headed back to Georgia another pleasant day and leisurely drive. Tuesday morning, I got up to a very pleasant day here in central Georgia and started working on my project for this week. What I have been doing this week was putting up information signs along the nature trails in the park.

The park got 10 nice new information signs on plant and wildlife that are abundant here at the park. Before I left for the weekend Julie, I rode around the trails in marked where she wanted to place the signs. So, this week I got some 4 x 4 posts cut down to 5-foot lengths and went out and dug them in.

I only had to dig a couple feet into the ground, but amongst roots and gravel sometimes the digging didn’t go really smooth. After a couple days I got them all in and they look great.

That’s it for this week thanks for coming along, “Safe Travels & Happy Trails” to all, Rick

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