2012 comes to an end

Another year goes down in the books.  It was marked by my second retirement, the last one hopefully, and several of our friends' retirements as well, must be getting older :-)  Our son's marriage, visiting family that we haven't seen in a long time, traveling with both of Jan's sisters, and being fancy free on the road, a long time dream.  We dealt with our internet and phone issues and are very pleased with the results.  We changed from 2 MacBook Pro laptops and 2 iPhones to 1 MacBook Pro, an iPad, and 2 iPhones, and are happy with that set up.  We got a new mail forwarder and address which helped our motorhome insurance, but hurt our Jeep insurance, hard to figure.  We did not use our kayaks at all and are reevaluating our water needs.  In fact, I think I will be selling my kayak.  We both have bikes now and enjoyed them a lot, and continue to enjoy them.  We were quite active physically, but as Jan says and she's right, I could be even more active for my own good ;-)

Thought it might be interesting to post a few of our stats throughout the year:

We stayed at 52 different campgrounds, and only one would we not go back to.  We had wanted to increase our time in each campground for two reasons, one to slow down, and two to save money, and we did okay, but want to extend it a bit more.
We averaged $28/night, with zero dollars being the low, and $59.35 being the high, all in all a bit more than we wanted to spend.  

We drove 11,524 miles in the motorhome, and drove the Jeep approximately 15,000 miles.  Our longest day in the motorhome was 416 miles and the shortest was 20 miles between campgrounds.  We wanted shorter days and we did very well in this department.

We used 1900 gallons of diesel fuel with the average price $3.99/gal.  The most we paid was $4.35, and the lowest was $3.66.  Slowing down gained us more than 15% in fuel economy!

We slept in 12 different states.

We met our budget in terms of campgrounds and fuel.

Looking to next year I anticipate fuel to be a bit more, and the campground prices to go up a bit that we will try to offset by staying a little longer at each one.  Also we endeavored to stay at more State and National Parks, and we did, but their prices are creeping up as well.  We believe we will drive a little less next year as right now we are contemplating staying on the East coast for a change, and will try to get up into Canada.  We have about 75,000 miles on our motorhome now so will have to get the first engine service, a valve adjustment, but are not anticipating any large maintenance issues, but as you observed this year, sometimes things just pop up!  

All in all a very good year, and if our government doesn't completely fall apart, we are looking forward to another wonderful year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYBODY!!!

Our winter spot

It occurred to me that I have referenced our spot in Nokomis, but haven't showed you where we are spending the winter.  We are in the back of the Encore Royal Coachman resort on one of only 5 pull throughs out of hundreds of regular sites.  What is unique to our site is we have quite a bit of room and privacy on our living side.  You can get some idea from the photos.  Encore is an old resort among many pine trees and it takes some imagination to figure out the sites, kind of like someone was playing pick up sticks.  Anyway here is our home sweet home for the winter.

Our Earthboxes in the foreground

This gives you an idea of the size of our site

Here they come!

Winter in Florida.  After Christmas the snowbirds start arriving in earnest.  The campground is about 2/3's full, but tons are arriving daily.  I'm sure all the bad weather up north has undoubtably altered a lot of plans.  Most of the people here are going to stay 3-4, and even 6 months.  Every site is full and reservations are already made for the next year!

Our tomato plants are growing well, and the basil plant is already overflowing the small Earthbox.  We are over the hump with my Mom for the time being, so we can't put off our projects any longer.  All but one part has arrived so we've got to get to it.  I haven't even washed and waxed the rig yet!  We got our bikes tuned up today, so since we are only about a mile from the Legacy Trail we will get back to riding as well as walking.

A Christmas Scare

After a very nice Christmas Eve dinner with my mom, spent visiting and talking about old times, we wished her good night and headed back to the motorhome.  We got a call later that night that she was in distress, and after many hours got her somewhat squared away, although at times we thought we were going to lose her.  Christmas day wasn't too much better, she was very weak, and pretty resigned to not being able to live on her own any more.  But at about 8pm, she surprised us by getting up off the couch, marched into the bathroom, and got into bed all on her own!  Today she woke and announced she was feeling pretty good, got up, got dressed, came out, had breakfast and lunch with us, and is feeling much, much better.  We don't call her the Energizer Bunny for nothing!  We are hoping there are many more ups than downs as the Bunny winds down.

Merry Christmas!

Here it is, Christmas Eve, wow the year has flown by!  A lot sure has happened this year, another retirement, a lot of travel, our son getting married, failing health of my mom, the upcoming retirement of a good friend, Larry, John's retirement from Delta, and early next year, Karen's retirement, the ability to have spent time on the road with Nancy and CT, and Karen, visits with Viv, a fantastic time seeing Sandy and Kris and their clan, a wonderful unexpected visit with Bruce and Cathie to name just a few of the things.  Christmas has never been a big holiday for me, the commercialism has almost destroyed it for me.  I cherish Thanksgiving and that's when I give thanks for everything and enjoy time with family and friends.  This Christmas is a bit poignant though, Kelly and the kids aren't coming, Jason and Jessica have plans with their family, mom isn't up to much, another part of the family is mostly together in Auburn.  We've spent Christmas apart before, but this time it seems a little lonely.  We are getting together for Christmas Eve dinner with mom, and will see her in the morning for brunch, then we'll have Christmas dinner with Ray and April.  I am confident it will be nice, but it will be quiet.  

Jan and I found out we are not as young as we once were.  We helped Jason and Jessica move on Saturday, and by the end of the day we were hobbling around, Jan might say I was hobbling around, but we both ended up in bed by 8pm, dead to the world.  But amazingly enough neither of us had any lingering aches or stiffness the next morning!  

So Merry Christmas to everyone, hope you are where you want to be with the people you want to be with, and send out wishes and prayers for all the folks that are away from their families, particularly our military that are far, far from home and family.

Happy Birthday to me!

Jan took me up to the Apple store yesterday and bought me a birthday present, a new iPhone 5!  Very cool, it has a lot of features that my old 4 didn't have, and now I have Siri which is frankly amazing.  You just talk to the phone, Siri really, ask questions, tell it do things, add things to the calendar, direct you to somewhere, almost anything and it does! How do it do that??

As to DirecTV, I had my doubts that it was possible to add a Whole Home System to our motorhome, but they assured me it was possible, and of course, when the installer got here he said no way can I install a Whole Home System, just what I thought.  So he exchanged our SD DVR for a new HD DVR, and we are happy campers, even more so since DirecTV with prodding agreed to take some money off our bill for our "trouble".  So now we have a much larger HD TV in the bedroom, with a DVR!

We have been spending quite a bit of time with my Mom trying to take care of lots of little things as she gets her affairs in order.  Sounds a bit morbid, but if more people took the time and effort to do it ahead of time, life would be easier for those who remain.  It's a very responsible thing to do, and one Jan and I have and will do for ourselves.  Unfortunately death is a part of life.

We have been having a good time getting together with family and friends, the weather up til last night has been fantastic.  Last night a cold front moved through with thunder and lightning, pouring rain, and wind, wind, wind!  It is still very windy now and is supposed to stay with us until later tonight, and get this, a low of 40 tonight!  Don't laugh, here in Florida, that is really cold.

Pretty uneventful

Yesterday I made my foray to Atlanta and I have to admit it was no big deal.  My first contact was at the Sarasota airport at the unGodly hour of 5am, so it wasn't busy at all, big surprise, huh?  They were friendly and once I knew what to do it was a piece of cake.  Onto the airplane, good ride, good weather, and the rental car waiting for me with a free upgrade to a brand new Taurus, which was quite nice by the way.  Took a while to learn to even turn on the radio, but very nice.  Into the dentist's office right on time, then for some unknown reason, he had some difficulty getting me numb.  In fact when all was said and done it took almost 40 minutes to get me ready, but after I was numb, the rest of the process only took a few minutes.  Back in the car, turned it in, and even the security in Atlanta was palatable although busy, got to the gate 40 minutes before departure, right on the plane, and back by 2:30!  So that's all done.

Jan took the opportunity of me being away to wash all the windows on the coach, so they are gleaming this morning as we wait for the DirecTV guy to show.  I'll let you know how it goes.

New TV and Flying???

Jan and I went back to Costco to see if we could exchange the first TV which was too big.  We found a Samsung 27" 1080p HDTV that would fit.  Funny it was more money than the 32" we returned!  With some engineering and messing around we mounted the new TV just in front of the cabinet instead of in it and it looks quite good.  Presently we have a SD DVR in the bedroom so part of this process is getting a HD DVR.  I talked to DirecTV for about an hour and on Wednesday they are coming to install a new HD DVR in the bedroom and adding a Whole House System that will enable us to watch programs that have been recorded on either DVR in either room.  Should be cool.  I tried to convince them to just send the equipment to me and I would install it, but no dice.

I spent in excess of 35 years in airports and flying all over the country.  I've been retired now for about 6 months and haven't missed it very much, except now and then the "flying" part, but on Tuesday, tomorrow, I have to fly up to Atlanta, rent a car, see the dentist, and fly back down to Sarasota, and you know what?  I am absolutely dreading it.  Going through the hassles of security, wondering if I'm going to get on the plane ( I ride space available), and getting the rental car is not exciting me.  But it definitely beats driving 10 hours to Atlanta, staying overnight and driving 10 hours back.  Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the benefit, the only one left, of being able to fly free.  I was always thankful when I was working that so many people, customers of the airlines I flew for, were willing to put up with the hassles of flying in today's environment.  If they hadn't I wouldn't have had a job.

Slowly starting in on the Projects

We have been here for 10 days and slowly getting into a routine.  A lot of the frenzy is over now, so we are starting to take a look at our Project list.  We want to replace the TV in our bedroom.  It is a small 19" flat screen that is not HD, so we are looking for the biggest HDTV we can put in that looks okay.  Jason and I ran up to Costco yesterday and were really excited when we found a 32" that we thought would fit.  But we only measured one dimension, no I don't know why, and after messing around awhile, Jan vetoed it and I agree it looked funny hanging out past the cabinet.  So back to Costco we are going this morning and Jan and I will see if we can find something else that will fit properly. 
Our Project list is long and made up of a "To Do" list and a "Wish" list.  We plan to work through the To Do list first and see what happens on the other.  Unfortunately we have had to do a repair here and there as well.  I told you we repaired our satellite dish the other day.  Well now our WiFi amplifier system is acting up.  We have an external antenna and amplifier that is not working properly.  I have been in contact with the manufacturer and together we have determined that it isn't a software issue so they want me to send back the antenna and amp so they can either repair or replace it.  So up on the roof we will have to go and tear off the antenna and wiring to send it back, a not planned on project.  But worth it as this system has been terrific in our travels so it's important to get it fixed.  Then Jan noticed her remote for our Sleep Number bed wasn't readable, she couldn't make out the digits, so I figured we'd just have to get a new remote, well, I find out it is hardwired into the pump.  So a call to Sleep Number was in order.  We love the Sleep Number bed, to make a bed adjustable is a great thing and we find it very comfortable, but we had never had an issue previously so wondered how their customer service would be?  It was terrific!  Turns out they have a prorated 20 year warranty, so they would cover 64% of the price of a new pump with wireless remotes!  They don't make a wired remote system anymore, so we get a brand new pump and 2 wireless remotes for a very little bit of money.  A good thing!

Once we get the bedroom TV done I want to replace the front TV as well.  This is something that is really on the Wish list but I would like to replace our 720p, 37" HDTV with a 46", 1080p HDTV and I think we can just shoehorn it in.  We'll see after the bedroom is done.  Then the list goes on........

Gardening

I have mentioned several times that there are advantages and disadvantages to this RV lifestyle.  We think it tips way in favor, but one of the things Jan misses most is not having a garden and being able to play in the dirt as she calls it.  We have used Earthboxes in the past with exceptional results. This is an example of a tomato plant we grew in an Earthbox in Atlanta.

We had about 6 or 7 Earthboxes that we used when we had a house, but we gave them to Kelly.  When we visited this fall we "stole" one of them back!  Also we picked up a new little Earthbox and have another small planter.  Jan planted 2 tomato plants, a pepper plant, about 5 different herbs, and some flowers, so she is happy, happy.

We've had a busy week, two birthday celebrations, lots of visiting, lots of errands and doctor visits, so we are hoping to kind of ease into the next week.  We had an unexpected repair needed to our satellite dish.  We had noticed on our way down to Florida that we weren't receiving HD signal, but wrote it off to some trees that we convinced ourselves were blocking the view.  But after we arrived we put up the dish and still had no HD signal with an absolutely unimpeded view to the sats.  After a satisfying call to Winegard, the dish antenna manufacturer, they found out the arm holding the dish in alignment was bad, so I ordered a replacement and Jan and I installed it yesterday, HD is back!  Sad, but gotta have HD and a DVR!

The weather so far has been absolutely fantastic!  It is Florida winter weather that you hope for, sunny skies, low 80's in the daytime and 50's at night with very acceptable humidity.  Here's hoping it lasts the rest of the winter.

FLORIDA!

We made it.  We are now at Royal Coachman Encore in Nokomis, FL, and pretty settled in at site PT5.  It's going to be home for the next 4 months.  It dawned on Jan and I as we were nearing that we have never ever spent this much time in one place.  While it's true we were in Atlanta for plus or minus 6 years, we were on the move every chance we got even if for a few days.

We knew it would be hectic, especially this first week until we settle in to a more normal routine.  We went over first thing to see my mom, she put on a brave face, but is very tired, just plain worn out.  We took her to two doctors yesterday, and then took a few minutes at the jetty, a beautiful day, then left her at home pretty wiped out from the day.  Said hello to Ken and Carole, and Pat and John at her park.  Then hellos to Jack and Betty, and Harvey, unfortunately Jean had a fall and is in rehab for a few more days.  Our son Jason and daughter in law Jessica are coming to dinner, then plans with Ray and April, and what do you know, every evening this week is penciled in.  Also we met our mail forwarder and picked up some mail, have to go to the DMV today and get our address changed, then change our address in order to vote next year.  Ordered a part for our satellite dish as we lost our HD channels.  Started our subscription to the local paper, but are having a lot of problems getting it started, I guess they don't know where we are!  Need to get new glasses, have to work in a trip back to Atlanta for my permanent crown.  We need to see Dick and Ann soon and see how they fared staying in Florida for the whole summer, and, and.....

And we need to get lobsters for dinner for my birthday, and Jan hinted she is going to get me a new iPhone for my birthday.  Lots of stuff happening.

What a small world!

We were running some errands yesterday to be ready to head out this morning, and as we were going south on I-75, Jan yelled to look at that!  And sure enough going north on I-75 was our identical twin motorhome.  We have never seen a duplicate of ours before, same model but never the same color.  We didn't think much more about it, and as we pulled back into the campground, lo and behold, there was our twin parked right across from us! We wandered over to tell the owners what great taste they had in motorhomes:-)
Now for the small world part.
When we were negotiating with Lazy Days to buy our present motorhome, we had taken a little trip to Hendersonville, NC, and while we were there we had stumbled across the same motorhome and tried to buy it.  It had a Cummins instead of a Detroit Diesel, and I didn't know much about Detroits at the time and we tried and tried to make a deal on the one in NC with the Cummins, but they couldn't meet our price so we bought our present motorhome from Lazy Days.  Well, talking to these folks, it turns out their motorhome is the EXACT motorhome we tried to buy!  How weird is that?

Us in the back

Our front end

Our twin in the background