May 30 - MotorCoach Resort - St Lucie West to Florida Grande RV Resort - Webster, FL
Our Final RV Adventure Begins!
It’s been a while since I lasted posted, but our RV
adventure has been delayed a bit due to some minor medical things. I still
wasn’t getting better which required another doctor’s visit. Our routine dental
cleanings went fine for me, but Greg needed a root canal. So, that was done and
a few days later he started the crown and a week later for the final. I’m
almost completely recovered, and we’ll see how I do now that I have finished
the last of my meds.
Since we had numerous medical visits planned all in one
week, we moved from Okeechobee back to Port St. Lucie. We did take a brief
visit to see Lake Okeechobee before we left. If I would have been well, we
could have done some hiking around the area or go out on a boat to see more.
The lake is HUGE. I didn't even muster the strength to get out of the car. Who ME?
gator
Spotted Sandpiper
While we have had some extra time on our hands, we have been
researching where we will “put down roots”. Retiring from being nomads? We will
again have more of a home base as we did in Panama and while our health holds
out we plan to travel a lot.
We have explored all kinds of different “over 55” active
retirement communities. We went a bit North of here to the Vero Beach area and
it felt like a step back in time to Florida in the 1950’s. Just felt a little
too much like “God’s waiting room”. Perhaps, it was an active community at one
time, but not now. We went further South all the way down to West Palm Beach.
In both areas we looked at condos, apartments, manufactured homes and none of
them really fit the bill for us. We really like the Port St. Lucie area and we
looked at several “over 55” communities in the Tradition area. The models I
liked the best were in an over 55 community, but the clubhouse and all
amenities were for the entire community which has many subdivisions and all but
one is for families. So, screaming kids at the pool didn’t sound like a great
option. Another one we looked at had a bit of a weird layout. So far, we seem
to like the brand new Del Webb community that has just started building. We
wanted something small and everyone’s smallest ones are still a bit larger than
we would like, but we liked the Villas in the Del Webb community. Another one
is just in the early stages of building and there aren’t floor plans or models
available yet; but should be by summer. Valencia Cay Riverland by GL Homes does
many around the State of Florida. So, we are yet to see those to compare.
These Egyptian Geese visited us before we left Port St. Lucie MotorCoach Resort:
We are still working on the many things that need to be
wrapped up for Dad’s affairs. We were quite lucky that the house has already
sold and closed a couple of weeks ago. Phew! Still working on getting his mail
to come to us directly. We had a shipment of his mail sent to us and it is
still lost. You’d think at some point we would receive it or the envelope would
be returned to the sender. (the sender didn’t get a tracking number….)
This extra time has also given me time to finish all the
online photo albums from the South America cruise. I have even finished adding
them to the blog. For a couple of weeks I was on “rest” to help get over this
reactive airways & sinus thing, so that forced me to chill out and a lot of
time to work on photos. It seems the mold from the cabin/halls on the ship due
to pipes bursting and flooding cabins including ours and the smoke from
Salaverry kicked off this coughing. Pipes bursting and flooding is a common
problem on this particular ship, so the mold has had some time to set in.
We have had over 2 weeks of almost constant rain here.
That’s unusual, but none-the-less it just keeps raining. Sometimes all day long
and sometimes on and off.
We arrived today (Wednesday) in Webster, FL at the Florida
Grande RV Resort to start our final RV adventure. We have an optimistic and
jam-packed itinerary, but we can adjust as we go. Since we got a later start
due to our time in Iowa for Dad and back here getting our own medical and
dental things taken care of, we dropped our stops in Arizona, Texas and Utah
since we have already been to those. We hope to get to Alabama, Tennessee,
Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota,
Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas,
Louisiana & Mississippi. While we have been to a few of the states listed,
we do have to go through them to get from Point A to Point B, so will tour a
bit in those as well. This plan leaves a block of states in the Northeast and
the Southeast. We figure we can do those with a car road trip.
Due to the holiday week we will spend 4 days here in
Webster. (sometimes places fill up and you can’t always get in when & where
you want to) We enjoyed it here before and it will break up the driving before
continuing to Tallahassee for 3 nights. Since we can only go 65 MPR max, we
can’t get too far in a day. We went around 400 miles today. (in the pouring rain) If the weather permits we will visit a birding spot or two that we enjoyed last time we were here. If it doesn't rain we hope to get the RV washed & waxed. We scheduled the service for tomorrow if the weather permits. From Tallahassee we will head to Montgomery, Alabama for 3 nights.
After we got set up the weather cleared and we had this beautiful view from our front window (windshield):
On the road again…….finally!
