A Fun Day Today

We joined the RV Dreamers for lunch today at Smokey Bones in Lakeland, Florida and what a good time!! It was nice to meet and get to know more of this fun group. And the lunch was good too!!

We all introduced ourselves and let everyone know what we are up to as far as full timing and how long we had been at it. Nice to compare notes with others….. And we are really looking forward to the rally on April 12 in Sevierville, Tennessee where we are sure we will get to know everyone even better and perhaps develop friendships (and this means a lot).
We took Cheyenne along and she did fine in the truck. It was not too warm for her and she really enjoyed her bbq treat that Charley took out to her!!

We did get some good pictures of the crowd (27 or 28). Now we just have to see how many names and faces we can put together!!

Attached are a few pictures. Hope you enjoy. Note the before and after lunch plate was Sherry’s (what a pig!!). I saved the turkey breast for a turkey sandwich later.

A Lazy Day Today

We drove back to Bushnell yesterday, leaving about 5:00AM and arriving between 12 – 1:00. Needless to say we were pretty zapped when we got here and have done little that required any energy until today. We hope that things will stay calm and we won’t have to do anything like this again.

We did do a little cleaning this morning in the 5er and Charley did a grocery run so we could cook dinner tonight. It is going to be a good one!! Pork tenderloin, mashed potatoes, asparagus and corn. Yum! Otherwise just a lazy, lazy day.

And of course we have the RV Dreamers lunch tomorrow in Lakeland. We are really looking forward to meeting some more great people and getting together again with those we met at the RV show earlier this month. Planning to try to take some pictures of this outing for posting on our blog.

Stay tuned!!

Unexpected Developments

We had to make a quick trip back to South Carolina yesterday so that Charley could take care of something at his Dad’s house today. He dropped me off at our son’s house while he went to take care of this. We just locked up the 5er and let the campground office know that we would be back either Friday or Saturday. So we drove about 7 hours yesterday and then Charley drove about 6 hours today (round trip to and from his Dad’s) and we now have about 7 hours ahead of us to get back to Bushnell. The good thing about this unexpected trip is that we are getting to see our family. We have really missed them, especially the grandkids! We are going to decide later today about whether we will be leaving tomorrow or Saturday.

We will be exhausted when we finally do get back but we will rest up for a day or two and be ready to go again. Hope all this will help explain the lack of blog updates for the last few days.

We did run a lot of errands on Tuesday and we were glad that we had gotten those out of the way before we had to make this trip. Sightseeing once again got put on hold but we will have plenty of time to get that caught up later.

It may be Saturday or Sunday before I get another update in so don’t give up on us.

Another Rainy Day

Well, we arrived in Bushnell, Florida yesterday afternoon and we like this park much better than the one we just left. Charley and Cheyenne have been out walking several times but, since it has been rainy all day, I have not had a chance to see the entire park yet. We did see the pasture full of donkeys as we pulled in so we have already picked up some apples and carrots so that we can feed them when the weather clears. I saw at least 2-3 babies!!

Our day yesterday was a busy one. After packing up the 5er we left Spanish Main Resort at 8:00AM and headed for Camping World to get our auto satellite dish installed. Glenn, the tech who did our install, was fantastic!! He stepped Charley through everything he was doing and explained it all to him and he did a great job! Everything worked the very first time!! We were at Camping World until around 2:00 but it was worth the wait. We were able to walk over to Cracker Barrel and eat breakfast while we were waiting.

We pulled into the Escapees Park (Sumter Oaks) in Bushnell, Florida around 3:00 and checked in. Charley parked the 5er, got her level, hooked up the power, put the slides out and we then pushed the button on our new satellite dish. Charley was so worried that we would not be able to use it because there are so many trees here in this park. He was convinced is a better way to put it, but, GUESS WHAT? About 10-12 minutes after the button was pushed we had TV!! And it was perfect, all channels including HD are working perfectly!! This put a smile on both our faces. So before we had even finished getting set up we had TV. Already worth the expense in my mind!!

We grilled burgers for dinner last night and tonight we are grilling steaks. Going to the pancake breakfast here at Sumter Oaks in the morning. Hopefully the sun will be shining tomorrow and I can get a few pictures that we can share.

I’ve Been a Bad Girl!!

I just realized that I have not updated our blog since Sunday!!. Shame on me. Guess I am having a hard time getting back into the habit of updating every day.

On Monday it rained almost all day so needless to say we did not get out much and even had trouble getting Cheyenne out when she needed to go. Everything that we had outside got soaked. Yesterday, when the sun returned, Charley rinsed it all to remove the sand and dirt. And, guess what, it came a shower last night and got it all wet and dirty again!! So Charley has to do it all over…. We will be moving tomorrow so have to get it done today.

We have not done any sightseeing since Sunday. We have just been enjoying being retired.

Will be pulling out very early tomorrow morning to deliver the 5er to Camping World for the installation of our new automatic satellite dish!! We cannot wait to see how this is going to work. It better be good!!

We plan to drive to the beaches and to Busch Gardens while the install is being done since Camping World indicated that it may take most of the day. We plan to finally take some pictures around the area and I promise to share them. May be Friday before this happens since tomorrow may be a long day….

We will be moving to the Escapees park in Bushnell when we leave Camping World tomorrow and plan to stay for a couple of weeks. We have heard good things about this park. We also liked what we saw when we were there last week.

We did eat seafood at an interesting place last night, Skipper’s Smokehouse. The place looks like it is about to fall down but the food was very good and VERY reasonable. If ever in the Tampa area you should give it a try…..

Lazy Day

Today was sort of a lazy day but this one was unintentional!! The power in this area (a large portion of the west coastal area from Bradenton to Tampa) went out around 9:00 this morning and as of right now has not come back on. So Charley had to go get gas for our generator and get it running so that we had all of our creature comforts like TV and computers!! We felt sure it would be back on in a short period of time so did not do this until the power company missed the deadline they had set for themselves (1:30)….

We really did not have any specific plans for today and I guess that was a good thing. Planning to have spaghetti for dinner and continue to stay in.

We will have to see what tomorrow has in store for us.

Just in case any of you followers are planning a trip to the Tampa area we would like to mention that we are not impressed with the resort that we are staying in. The name is the Spanish Main RV resort. It is one of the Carefree resorts and they primarily deal with permanent situations and not short term visitors. Sites are quite small and very difficult to get into with a large rig.

Fun Day at the Show

We went back to the RV Show yesterday and had the pleasure of meeting and having lunch with the RV Dreamers that were there. Met lots of very nice folks and really enjoyed talking to them all. We then signed up to meet them for dinner last night at the Crazy Buffet in Tampa. The buffet at this restaurant was quite extensive, including sushi, chinese, hibachi, stir fry, salads, desserts, etc. The food was okay but the company was great!!

Planning to take today off and do a little cleaning up around the campsite. May have to run a couple of errands but hopefully not too many.

We did get our installation of our automatic DirecTV dish on top of the 5er scheduled for 1/20, when we checkout of our current location. We cannot wait to get this done to save Charley on setup time when we are traveling.

After this is complete we are planning to go to the Escapees park in Bushnell for a couple of weeks. This is one of the ones we visited earlier this week and it is very nice!! We may return to Tampa and try the Lazy Days campground after that if they have a site open.

First Day at the RV Show

In the AM:

We will be going to the show this morning in Tampa and I will update our blog with information later today. Wanted to get one correction posted as soon as possible. There is no dinner for RV Dreamers tonight as reported yesterday. We were looking at forum information from 2010 and simply did not notice that it was from last year. Oh well, one of the results of growing old I guess!!

In the PM:

Went to the RV Super Show today. So many RV’s and so many vendors!! We only made two purchases, a hat for me and a doormat for our front door that has the following embroidered on it:

Welcome

Sherry, Charley & Cheyenne

It also has little puppy paws in the bottom two corners.

We wound up with a very large bag of brochures and catalogs, along with a few gifts from the vendors. It will probably take us a full day just to weed through it all after we finish with the show. We did find a few deals on camping that may help us while we are here in Florida and that is always good.

If any of you full-timers out there have not been to this show you need to try to make it at least one time. It is big. They even have Prevost motor homes that they require the removal of your shoes before you can enter. Fancy that!! Too fancy for us, we didn’t even stop….

Going back to the show tomorrow and will be finishing up. Also stopping by Camping World to get our satellite dish installation scheduled!! Hurray!! After this no more manual adjustment to get the satellite to work! Turns out that Camping World had the better deal…

Rainy Day

**Sorry, had my facts all messed up and had to fix!!

Yesterday was a rainy day. We did venture out and drive to the Escapees Sumter Oaks Park in Bushnell, Florida to check it out.

This is a very nice park and it is not far from things like Walmart, restaurants, grocery stores, etc. .We are thinking seriously about moving to this park when we leave here.

We were going to take the Gulf Coast scenic route on the way back to the 5er but the rain was coming down hard at this point and we decided to return on the direct route and just chill until dinner time (bbq chops, salad, rice, bread – yum!). About an hour after dinner we had strawberry shortcake with fresh Florida strawberries that we picked up at one of the local produce stands. It was delicious!!

And, of course, we had to have a bag of navel oranges too.

Planning to just take care of a few things around the 5er today and get ready to spend tomorrow at the RV Super Show in Tampa. Got to see if we can find the automatic DirecTV satellite dish for the top of the 5er.

We also signed up for a lunch on Thursday with other full-timers at the show. We are really looking forward to meeting everyone.

Still no pictures but we will have some eventually!!

Snow Birding!!

Well, we Dilworth’s are now in Thonotosassa, Florida (near Tampa) and loving the warmer weather!! It is actually 72 today. We arrived on Thursday and have been getting a few things taken care of and resting up a little.

We are staying in the Spanish Main RV Resort and we both agree that this one will not be visited again. Their website is very misleading – it is not near as nice as it is portrayed to be. This resort is mainly permanent trailers with a few open sites scattered throughout the park. They are not very easy to get into as we soon found out!! There was no way to get our rig backed in to the first one they gave us but we had to prove it to them!! After they moved us we were able to get parked although it took some doing on Charley’s part.

We went on our first outing today to visit the SKP Resort in Wauchula, Florida to see if we are interested in getting on their wait list for a permanent lot there for the future. We have more research to do before we make a decision but we are leaning toward moving forward with it. This was a very nice place and you could tell that it is very well cared for. The good thing about it is you do not lose money even if you decide to cancel at a later date (other than a $25 processing fee). Charley and I are not ready to commit to being in one place for an extended period of time yet but we feel that one day we may be interested in 5-6 months in one location.

We went out to dinner last night. We were interested in a good local seafood place but didn’t have any luck getting recommendations so we wound up at Red Lobster. We will ask around some more to see if we can find one later. We will be doing steaks at home tonight with all the trimmings (yum)!!

I should be updating our blog daily or at least every other day going forward. Sorry to have been so quiet lately!!

No good pictures yet but will share them when we do!!

Delay in Plans

We have not left for Florida yet but planning to leave very early tomorrow morning. There were some things that Charley needed to take care of for his Dad before we left and that took a couple of days.

Needless to say, we are ready to get there and relax for a day or two before we begin any sightseeing or 5er/Truck maintenance (both need a bath inside and out!!).

We are hopeful that everyone in our family will stay well during the remainder of the winter months. It has been rough on many of us the past couple of months. That would really make this a Happy New Year!!

Will report in after we actually arrive in Florida – will take us a couple of days to get to our final destination (one overnight stop on the way).

Stay tuned!!