Catching Up

Lots of stuff to catch up on. Last week we went to sunny Florida in HaRVey the RV. Cousins Marilyn and Terry from Chicago rented a place in The Villages, so we decided to go see them and made a trip of it. We were going to make our usual stop at Disneyworld, but when I checked ticket prices I decided that they had priced themselves out of our price range. $79 (plus tax!) for a one day ticket with no park hopper privileges. Thanks, but no thanks.

So we headed for Sarasota because we had never spent time on the west coast of Florida. One of my best friends from Lawrenceville and Boston, Keith Montgomery, lives in Sarasota. I had been looking for him for years without success. Lo and behold I found him on Facebook, of all places. I stood up for him at his (first) wedding and knew his daughter as a little girl. (She is now 41!) I hadn't seen Keith in about 35 years.

I will let Judy fill you in on the details of what we did, but here's what happened. We got to Sarasota in the very late afternoon on Thursday. They wanted to meet for dinner, which we did. We met Keith's wife, Bunny, and we all hit it off. We had figured we would have a pleasant dinner and that would be it. To make a long story short, we spent all three of our days in Sarasota with them and had a great time.

Then we went up to The Villages to see cousins Marilyn and Terry, and Rick met us there. Somehow we have all managed to stay close even though we live 1000 miles apart. We spent most of our time with them doing what we do best - eating. It was great to see them both.

Now the interesting part. We hit sunny Florida during a record-breaking cold snap. In The Villages it got down below 20 degrees at night. It is by far the coldest weather we have spent in the RV. Frozen pipes, ice on the car, and icicles hanging from the awning (see picture above). We almost had a catastrophe when I realized on the last day that we were almost out of propane and could not find any on a Sunday! It was like the miracle of Hanukkah that the propane lasted the night.