Month: January 2017

We have ARRIVED!!!

Good evening, all! It’s not as late as I write this tonight as it was last night. We’ve arrived at our destination! We are at Pine Island, Florida. An island north of Sanibel Island and right off the coast of Ft. Myers and Cape Coral, Florida. Pine Island is not your typical tourist hangout. It is still a little bit of “Old Florida.” It is not developed into a cement and skyscraper environment. Most of it is zoned as agricultural land. Some of Florida’s finest fishing is done around Pine Island and in Matlacha Pass.

Matlacha is a small island between Pine Island and the mainland. The village of Matlacha is a haven for artists and writers as is Pine Island. Crops grown on Pine Island include palm trees for shipping to Arizona and California, mangos, and lychee fruit. Pine Island fruit is very sought after. I will tell you much more about Matlacha, Pine Island, and the other small towns on Pine Island as I explore them this next few weeks. This will be my sixth time here visiting their very nice RV park as a snow bird.

Along with exploring everything about Pine Island, I will take a trip, and take you with me, into the Everglades. Other trips into Central Florida. We will even spend a few days on a sunny beach in the panhandle. So, now that I’ve arrived, there will be lots of adventures and lots and lots of photographs I want to share with you.

We put in about seven hours on the road today and it was mostly uneventful. I calculated our mileage tonight. It was 1052 miles from my home in northeastern Kentucky to this little island in the sea. I think I feel every one of them. 🙂 We arrived after dark or I would have taken some photos for tonight’s blog post. All we had time to do was park the RV and visit with friends.

You may be wondering about friends in a RV park. Pine Island is such a great place that the same people come back year after year. It has been a couple of years since I have been here but most of my friends are here as they are every winter. I got to see a few of them tonight and will see more tomorrow. Then, we went to Bert’s Bar and Grill in Matlacha for a quick dinner. Bert’s has been written up in food publications, particularly their grouper sandwiches. That is what I was going to have to eat, until I saw LOBSTER ROLLS on their menu. Grouper will have to wait until my next visit to Bert’s, probably tomorrow! I had the best large lobster roll I have ever eaten!

Bert’s is an experience. We sat there and ate and listened to a live band play classic rock. Santana, if you can believe that, and they did an excellent job. I was off in my own little rock and roll world. It was 70 degrees on Bert’s patio, Santana playing, and lobster. How can you beat that!? Oh, I forgot. The patio is on the Gulf of Mexico! I remember listening to Santana when…..oh…..never mind! 🙂

Then, back to the RV. Everyone is in bed and I’m finishing this post to you. Tomorrow, I’ll start taking pictures and will describe everything to you. More “Adventures” coming your way then!

Whew! Remember last night’s post, when I said that I was going to sleep late this morning, linger over several cups of tea, yadda yadda yadda? SILLY ME!!! Just let me tell you what happened this morning at the RV Park in Ringgold, Georgia we hurriedly pulled into last night! Before 7 a.m., I heard beeping outside the RV. Then the sound of big trucks. Then heavy equipment. Right outside our RV! I drug myself out of bed and peeped out the window. As I looked, a crew of men dropped a telephone pole on the bank right above our RV! The crash woke up my husband and he comes roaring out of bed and I do mean roaring. We stood there in incredulous silence (because we couldn’t hear each other). Why had they parked us in that particular spot?

I drank a cup of tea and he drank a cup of coffee. We pulled out of there before 8 a.m. but not before getting our money back. Unbelievable. This did not start the day off particularly well. We were approximately at the northern border of Georgia at that point.

We had not had showers. We had not fed the dog or ourselves. We had done nothing that we normally do in the mornings. Plus the RV needed gas. I needed to stop losing my mind. We drove a little way and pulled off in Calhoun, Georgia at a Flying J. We decided, since we didn’t get much sleep the night before, that the driver needed to sleep and I needed to rest. I, you see, seldom sleep much. So my husband got a few hours sleep while I did chores around the RV, did some computer work, and took care of Betsy (my dog). I tried to sleep, really I did. It just was not going to happen. About 4 p.m., we pulled out of the Flying J and decided to drive at night. I knew that we would go through Atlanta right at rush hour. “Oh well,” I thought, “why not make a really bad day worse.” That it did.

It’s not far from Calhoun to Atlanta and the heavy traffic started as soon as we got on I75. It was wall-to-wall 18-wheelers from Atlanta to way past Macon. In Atlanta, the rush hour traffic was not to be believed. My cousin, Liza, lives in Atlanta and works downtown. So, I decided to call her and let her join me in my misery. Except Liza was not in Atlanta that day. A business trip had taken her out of town. She got my message and called me back and laughed at ME sitting in rush hour Atlanta traffic. That was just not fair. I’m sure she still finds it amusing! It took hours to get from the north to the south side of that city.

We finally got past Macon and it is still many miles to Valdosta, Georgia, which was our goal for the day. We arrived at the Flying J there at 12:40 a.m.

Just about the only thing that had not gone wrong today was something mechanical with the RV……knock on wood!

After eating a bite, doing some RV chores like washing dishes (no dishwasher), setting up WiFi, and sending husband, dog, and cat off to bed, here I am! It’s only 3 a.m. and I am just now winding down. But, we are literally in shouting distance of the Florida state line! It’s 58 degrees at 3 a.m. in very southern Georgia. Not bad. We have 357 (approximately) more miles to go to reach our destination. I am so very ready to get there! It might be tomorrow!

More from “Adventures” tomorrow evening when I am more coherent and when we just might have arrived! For your viewing pleasure, perhaps, below is Betsy, a very good traveler:

We Leave in a Few Hours!

I should be sleeping instead of writing this blog post. I had to do something to wind down after a really hard day of work. The last day of packing the RV for the trip. The last day of really hard work although the first day at the RV park is pretty hard work and the days of driving aren’t easy work. We’re driving 1000 miles and right at this minute, that seems like a long way!

Today, like yesterday, was wall-to-wall packing except for a few minor things. My traveling companion got the tow dollie and car hooked up to the RV. That doesn’t sound like much work but when it is 43 degrees and raining and the tow dollie is slick, believe me, it’s not easy. Now he hopes he can make the turn out of the driveway to drive up the road! These things want to make me giggle tonight even though they are not funny. That’s because I’m so tired I’m on the verge of hysteria! If I did giggle, my traveling companion would not be amused! RV’ing is not for the faint of heart!

As for me, I made a grocery store run, stocked the pantry and refrigerator in the RV, washed all the RV dishes and pots and pans, and generally cleaned things up. Then, I came in the house and started working on my clothes. If you knew about my clothes, you would be the ones giggling! You see, I like clothes. I have a lot of clothes. But, my clothes are not necessarily all suitable for RV’ing. So, I spent a lot of time picking out what was suitable for the trip and realizing I have more cold weather clothes than warm weather clothes. Good! That means I’ll get to go shopping since we’re going to south Florida! I love jeans. Nice jeans. Levi jeans. There is a Levi outlet very near Ft. Myers. What a shame that I have to go shopping there! 🙂 Actually, I have enough jeans but who has to know?

What I don’t have are shorts because I seldom wear shorts. Maybe I can find Levi shorts? Since I’ll be making at least one trip into my beloved Everglades, I’ll definitely need shorts. Hot there! I’m a bit of an environmentalist about all wildlife. The python situation in the Everglades disturbs me.

Back to packing. We’ve covered food and clothes. But, there is so much more. We had already packed linens but we forgot towels. We almost completely forgot towels. That would not have been a good thing. I had to pack a tote for my dog and cat. A tote for my sundries like hair products. A tote for cosmetics. Multiply this by two when you take my husband into account except he doesn’t need cosmetics! Or hair products.

Finally, he is gone to bed and I am writing this blog post. We will leave by 9 a.m. tomorrow. I still have to shower and make a stab at those sundry products. Then bed for a very few hours. I’m the navigator so sleep wasn’t as necessary for me. We will drive only about 250 miles tomorrow.

We will make about a two-hour stop at a good friend’s home in Tennessee. We’ve been friends all our lives but I’ve never seen her home, so that will be fun. We’re taking things a little easier this trip to Florida and stopping when we want. We’re anxious to get there. We aren’t anxious to kill ourselves doing it!

The next time you hear from “Adventures,” (tomorrow) it will be from the road. I’m excited!