Christmas is Coming We Better Get Going

Billy after we landed at Windsor airport 

Going home for Christmas is always an exercise, but so enjoyable seeing family, friends and realizing after about a month we can't wait to get back to our MH and starting moving on. It's worth it going home but takes a bit of organization, research and financial planning.   What to do first? Find an Indoor warehouse for the rig.  We have in the past stayed at Auto Boat Storage in Orlando so we called them a few months ago to reserve a spot.  Nope.  Full.  Then using the Internet we found another one north of Orlando in Altamonte Springs, Adult Toy Storage.  Nope. Full.  As well we called big Boy Toy Storage in Melbourne.  Nope. Full.  What???? We put our name on a waiting list at all 3. This was going to make it tricky to buy airline tickets, what location will we fly from?  So I searched for flights in all 3 locations, searching for best prices.  Maybe a super deal will help us put our faith into one of the warehouse locations, which it ultimately did.  Early October while we were still in Ontario we were watching local Windsor TV with big news that National Airlines out of Sanford Florida were going start flights to YQG Your Quick Getaway Windsor Airport .  The 1st flight to be scheduled for Dec 17 - I got on line and found round trip tickets for $360 usf.  Perfect!  Sanford and Windsor are smaller airports (nice for walking, and checking through no huge lineups for security) and best of all we can get picked up on our side of the border.  So convenient.  Ok after that we called Adult Toy Storage every couple weeks to see if we were moving up the waiting list.   The warehouse provided a taxi they use for the airports, which I called and reserved.

 Our flight was at 10:30 a.m. so the day before we would put the rig away at the warehouse, take the taxi to a hotel room up at Lake Mary and next morning take the hotel free shuttle to the airport.  As it turned out everything turned out great.  Being the inaugural flight we were treated first class, only 20 people on a 180 seat flight to Windsor.  100 passengers going back to Florida.  Crew were quite thrilled with the winter season coming and many of the flights already more than half full and some full.   Wonderful for Windsor and South western Ontario Snowbirds.  

Not your average Morning Coffee Scene

Dec10/15 weather 78 sunny, nights cool 60.  Just perfect.

We have been able to sit out each day with our morning coffee here at The Grand Oaks RV Resort and Carriage Museum.   Today we had a treat.    We had 4 carriages go by, exercising their horses..... How cool is that?????    What a beautiful hobby!    

Good Eats

Billy's Cafe

Dec 1/15  Weather  nice and sunny,  78.   Went out for a few errands and could not resist stopping here.   Really how could we drive by?  With a name like that its got to be good right.    And it was.   Waffles with strawberries and a pile of whip cream.   Yum.    We think we might be Professional Eater Outers!!!

Fannnnncccy Coach

Dec 5/15  Weather   Central Florida is back to normal fall weather, 70's and low 60's at night.   We are booked in to the Grand Oaks RV Resort till we fly back for Christmas.   The park is attracting more coaches than in previous times we have been here.... which is really good for the place since it is such a nice horse farm that happens to have camping.   Ha ha.  That's the order we see it.   Horse farm with camping, not a campground with a horse farm.   Billy came back to get me the other day, come take a look at this one.   Wow.   Beautiful.   If you had a couple million dollars what would you spend your money on???   

You know at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what you have.   We are all staying in the park enjoying the same thing.   But you can't help but look at this coach and say "Wow".  

Whose counting?

Nov 25/15  Lady Lake Weather 77 high, 63 low.  Perfect. 
We had an email the other day from camper friends we met in Napa and later in Indio.  (Hi D & M :)   They had said they finally checked off being in 50 states of their United States.  Wow, what an extraordinary thing on their personal bucket list.  Which led us to talking about where have we been since 2011 when we started fulltiming?  Billy has a big map taped to the wall in the cargo trailer which he has been highlighting as we motor along the highways, in the USA and Canada. 
Every time we take off to another campground we fill in a Campers Daily Log sheet.   Sifting through the stack for the last 4 years is interesting. We feel so lucky that we have been to so many wonderful places.  And we still love this lifestyle.  Who knew?  It's not for everyone but it's definitely for us.  Looking through this still feels like we have just touched the tip of the iceberg..... there is so much to see in North America.

campers daily log

In this electronic age we still keep the paper copies of the campgrounds, and they are full of hand written notes (what we liked or didn't like).  Can't help it, we are dinasours!  We have a huge and heavy pendaflex folder where all the USA campgrounds we have stayed at are filed; and a smaller one for Canada.

Campgrounds filed by State alphabetically

Once we asked a fellow who has one of those stickers on the side of his RV "how do you earn your sticker?"  He said he had to camp in the state/province to earn his.  Another camper said he earned his sticker if he stopped in the rest area or at a restaurant along the way.  Seems campers make their own personal rules for earning the sticker.  Funny, we don't personally have those stickers on our coach but they are conversation pieces with fellow campers that's for sure.  Might have to get them after all next time we are at Camping World.

Canada Camping Stickers

USA Camping Stickers

Our curiosity for our personal count was perked up.  So we went through the  folders and a list was made in every state and counted up.  Our rule is that we have to camp in the state;   25 states to date.  231 campgrounds of which only 7 had been stayed at more than once.  
Canada count......  6 provinces to date, no territories. 23 campgrounds of which 2 we stayed at more than once.
We do try to move around and try different campgrounds; so the repeat of parks is pretty low.  You just never know what the park will offer till you camp there, and what you might learn and who you will meet.  Let the adventure continue :)
 

Wonderland for Seniors

Nov 23/15 Weather sunny and crisp fall temp of 68, low last night was 43.  Couple of cooler days right now then back to mid or high 70's.   Hey no complaints here, we received a picture of what our family in Ontario woke up to ....Yikes early snowfall.  Thanks El Niño.

my brother's backyard in Ontario Nov 21

We put our black leather jackets on to tour around the back roads today, it felt good with the sun.   Only 2 miles away is a community called The Villages.  We stopped in for a stroll around the Christmas tree in Town square, and coffee at Panera Bread,,, just no Tim Hortons down here. Haha.

Town Square at Spanish Springs - ready for christmas

  The themed area nearest Grand Oaks is Spanish Springs.  I think it's the the oldest section and very pretty.  The Villages is still growing, over 110,000 people.  The community has more golf carts than New York has taxis!!! Can you imagine??  Yup the carts are everywhere. 

golf carts lined up on the street outside Panera Bread

plate on the front of one of the carts - Chatham???

Found it funny to see one with a plate on it reading The Village of Chatham. Just like home?  Cool.  

Horses and Horses and Horses

Nov 19/15  Weather is 78 and rainy on our travel day, the storm seems to have moved into for Florida for a couple of days. Next week forecast is for 70's near Central Florida, which is more normal for the fall.  We are headed back to Lady Lake and the Grand Oaks RV Resort; 2 miles to the west of The Villages. 

RV  Park very busy

It's less than a month now before we fly back to Ontario for Christmas so we are going to stay in one spot till then.  Chill for a bit.  Our friends have come down to Florida so we can visit and do some motorcycle riding with them.

Beauty in action

A big horse event is taking place; The Hunt Country Horse Show Finals are going on Nov 20 to 22/15.   It's so smart of this place to have RV sites for the Horse people right on site.  Many of the trailers carry the horses and have camping in the front.

Younger girl and her horse - so well trained

Over 250 horses and riders are in for the 3 day extravaganza.  We went down to watch the action.   Beautiful Horses!!!

in the arena

sticker on one of the pickups.... Nope I can't do that !!!!

So What Will We Do Today? HIDE

Nov 18/15 Severe Weather watch today.  Seriously.  The Weather channel is our Favorite channel !!!  Yesterday we saw this storm cell was forecasted to move into our area.  So we closed up our slides before nightfall.  Put away our outdoor stuff.  Ready to hunker down.

lone kite surfer

cloud coverage on the sun was striking against the kite surfer

Then we went to the beach.  Wind and Waves were rocking, red flag was up for Ripcurrent advisory.  There was a lone kite surfer just a boogeying !!! So cool.

we are right in the middle of this area

This morning we checked the TV and Internet.  Only a Tornado Watch.   Ok, good. Sat outside for morning coffee.

nice caption on the internet - look at the picture of the spout in the background

You could feel the air getting heavier, then the rumbling far away.   Fellow campers out in the streets gathering, looking at the sky.   No siren.   Checking the media, the cell has been upgraded to a Tornado Warning.  Must be closer.  Live feeds on the local news channels show a small tornado passing thru Destin.  That is about 10 miles from the campground.  It's not even raining here?

Lower level of our home- under the picnic table?

The weatherman suggests being prepared to take cover in the lowest level of your home........   Bill??? What is the lowest level of our rolling home.  Looking at our basement doesn't seem too promising.   What about under the picnic table? Nah. If the siren sounds we will take shelter in the nearest concrete block bath house.   Oh crap.  Now our cell phone is emitting a siren......  That is a first for us.    Another tornado alert East of us.   Ok, 8 miles away.   Again we are good.   What a day!  Gotta love Florida.
Tomorrow we are headed back south......  

Panhandle of Florida

Nov 14 - 17/15 Weather 70's plus and 60's at night and sunny.

The riding in the Panhandle is nice when you pick the shoreline highways, like hwy 30a and old hwy 98.  West takes you to Destin and Fort Walton Beach.

East takes you to Grayton Beach, Seaside/Watercolor, Alys Beach and Panama City Beach. 

Seaside - a perfect village

in the town square of Seaside they have half a dozen Airstream trailers that are eateries

entering Alys Beach - very upscale

You can eat seafood fresh from the Gulf morning, noon and night.  I haven't had meat for 5 days, shrimp, oysters, crab, fish!!! Billy is the carnivore. 

inside the Red Bar restaurant, its one of those places you can't stop your eyes from wandering the walls and ceiling

Just kept hanging to the water. The new housing is incredible.  High end rentals and private seaside homes. A lot of dollars here and some neat funky restaurants. Of course Jimmy Buffett is everywhere - we found a Margaritaville at Harbourwalk Village in Destin. 
 

Jimmy is everywhere

There are several state parks along this area for camping and beach access.  The other thing that we are always alerted to are the Military bases.

military chopper

Sitting at our campsite having coffee and "KaBoom,,,,,BaBoom"!!!!!!  Oh right,  they are practising bombing maneuvers.   While walking the beach or sitting at the water for lunch the deafening sound of a chopper or fighter jet makes you search the skies!  

Odd camper

Nov 13/15  Weather is low 70's, and 50's at night.   Humidity is gone.   Turned off our A/C.   Wonderful weather.

Walking around our state park we came across this odd camper??? Mac Tools.    It stayed the weekend.  You see the oddest things. 

The wheels are turning

Nov 11/2015 The forecast is staying warm and our two weeks are up in central Florida so we decided to head north.  Really????  Not all the way North, just to the Florida Panhandle, Santa Rosa Beach which is about 10 miles east of Destin.  It will be cooler there and the beaches are beautiful.  Why not, that's why we have wheels.  In our travels in the last four years;  time and again we have heard wonderful reviews about Top Sail Haill Preserve State Park & Gregory C Moore RV Resort.    It felt like we were missing something not to make a special trip to stay at this State Park.  It is a busy park so we made a reservation just to make sure after retracing backwards 370 miles we will have a site.  Not flying by the seat of our pants this time....

our site is plenty big for our trailer in front of the coach

The State purchased the RV park in 1998 and folded it into the acreage of the preserve.  The camp sites in our loop are very long, concrete, full 50 amp hookups and include television.   TV?  Yes, it was leftover from the private RV resort and we can see why, the Pines are so tall that you will not get any satellite reception...  Hey we are trying to follow the finale of The Voice!!!  ha, ha.  We tried our dish when we setup;  it just kept spinning around and around trying to find a signal.

paved pathway to the beach for bikes, walking and the tram

There are a number of nature trails, water ponds and one paved pathway to the beach.  There is even a shuttle to and from the beach.  The path winds through the protected dunes and pops you out at the water.  The white sand is virtually blinding it's so white.  And it squeaks when you walk barefoot,,,,, no kidding! 

the dunes just before you break onto the beach

The best part is that it seems to be all yours, it's not crowded at all.  In both directions you can walk for miles.  It appears that without a doubt the reviews were right, it is well worth the visit and deserved of its ranking in the top best state parks in America.

billy and rosey - found a bench to set the camera on for a timed shot

not another person in site

P.S. Don't forget the time zone change - fall back 1 hour crossing into central time from eastern time zone.

snow white sand

A matter of perspective

Nov 7/15  Hot, hot, hot.  It's still 90.  We are certainly glad we had the new A/C installed in our bedroom when we first arrived in Florida.    The Florida Grande RV park had a Welcome Party on Monday night for any newbies.  So we went to that,,, turned out we were the Guests of Honor.  Wednesday they had a Pasta night for $8 so we went to that.   Really can you make a meal for $8?  Why wouldn't we go?  Friday we joined in the Happy Hour from 4:30 to 6:30.   Very nice people here and lots of activities to participate in.

some country road

 Almost everyday we have been riding in all directions.  Dade City, Floral City, Brooksville, Center Hill,  Howie in the Hills, Leesburg, Mascotte, Groveland, Yahala, Bushnell, St. Leo/San Antonio.   Billy and I have been saying Webster is in the middle of nowhere.   But we were corrected by the owners of the park ~  "it is the center of everything".   Love the Attitude Adjustment!!!

Yahala German Bakery

Another country road

Webster Motorcycle Swap

November 1/15   Weather is record setting hot.  90+

The first Sunday of every month the little town of Webster has a motorcycle and auto swap meet at the flea market grounds.  It is also the time change of falling back an hour so when we think its 10 in the morning, it's actually 9 am.  This will work for us with the heat at record setting temperatures we are going to the swap meet as early as we can to survive walking around in jeans and biker boots.   When you pay to park you get a ticket for a refreshment - water, pop or beer.    We pulled in about 9 am and there were all kinds of guys walking around with a beer!!!  Ha, ha.  I texted my brother about beer at 8 am and he said "that's the way life should be".  He is such an old biker.

Where do they get all these parts????

Do we need anything?

Oh yes, Billy has been looking for a set of used hard bags to switch out on our Road King,,, and the best price we found in Ontario was $750.   Our current bags are black leather and if we could find a set that would fit on our mounting rails we could take them home and in the spring and have a body/paint shop fellow match the black cherry paint of our bike. 
Oh crap.  Billy is finishing the negotiation.

The bags fit our bike so we are piling them on the luggage rack

So now how do we get them back to our campground???  Bungee cords are Red Green's answer to Duct Tape.  What a scoop, and we got them for half the price.

made it back to the RV site