Paradise Island - Fort Lauderdale - Home

We're Home now until the end of May when we'll travel to Branson, Missouri for the RV-Dreams rally. We are at home wherever our motorhome is, but this is Home.

Both Jim and I lived in Fort Lauderdale for a little over 20 years before we started our fulltime RV lifestyle. The house we lived in, and sold in 2003, is just a few blocks away. My Mom is about a mile away from this RV park, and Jim's Dad is a couple miles. Jim's son and grandson are about 10 miles. So, yes, this is Home. We have lots of friends here too. It's going to be a busy 2 months!

If you add up all the times we've been parked here at Paradise Island, it would probably total a year - maybe more. We were even here through hurricane Katrina! That was a rockin' good time! It's an old park and the sites are small. The original name of the park was Buglewood. It was built over 30 years ago when a 20 foot travel trailer was a 'big rig!' And ... it is one of a very few RV parks left in South Florida. Most have sold to make way for condos. This place is CROWDED. Especially compared to the luxury sites at Palm Creek, and the wide open spaces of Thousand Trails preserves where we have been staying.

That's why we like to stay here in the summer time. Off-season is the only time there is space. We apparently arrived a little early this year -the park is still full. If you wanted to stay here next winter - you are probably already too late to make reservations! Much of the park is full of people from Quebec who have been coming here every winter for 30 years!

As you can see from the photo, we just barely have room to put our awning out. We knew that the manager would move us to a better site as soon as one opened up. Sure enough, he called us yesterday to say that our favorite site was available! So we moved. At 8pm last night, we had a knock on our door. "You're in our site! We have reservations for this site. You must move." At least, I think that's what he said, French was clearly his first language.

Jim told him, "No - we're not moving tonight." First of all, since Jim works in the office when we're here, he knows that the policy is NOT to reserve specific sites. When a park is this full, they need to option to put people wherever a site becomes available - they cannot make reservations on a site-specific basis unless the reservation is for the whole season. Second of all, I didn't think it was possible that an RVer would arrive well after dark and expect someone to move out of their site regardless of the mixup! Stay tuned, we'll see what happens.

Later ... yes, we did move. After hearing their tale of woe, Jim decided it was a legitimate misunderstanding. No big deal for us to move - our second favorit site was open - and we'll move back when they leave in a few days.

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Thousand Trails: Peace River

What a welcome! Peace River was our winter home for 2006-07 so we just had to stop by on our way to Fort Lauderdale and say hi.

From the hugs by Suzy and Babette who checked us in, to the obligatory exchange of insults from Bob on his golf cart :-) We felt right at home. Even the gators came out to greet us!

We got a shout of greeting from Jane on the Pickleball courts. We had two visits from fellow datastorm users who get to see us on the Datastorm map as soon as we hookup. Here are Donna and Bob, fulltime RVers for many years. They have an interesting story on their own Blog. The nature trail is every bit as beautiful as I remember. The REAL Florida. We sure missed Debbie though. She was the manager here last year, but March 31 was her last day. After some 20 or 30 years of making sure other people had a good time RVing, she's gone off to RV herself! But her 'recreational vehicle' is a boat. Thank goodness she has a blog so we can enjoy her travels along with her and Richard. Way to go Debbie!

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Gundy - Geekville

It's all about the Blogs! They follow our blog, and we follow theirs. Even though we only spent a few days together when we first met a little over a year ago, we've become 'old' friends! We were thrilled to see that our paths would cross here in Florida so made reservations to stay at Thousand Trails Orlando for a couple nights. Greg and Marilyn greeted us with a special bottle of wine. In case you can't read the label, it's 'Goats do Roam' with a hand-printed second label of 'Geeks do Roam!'

They already had a party going on with their 'cosmic cousin' - they tend to meet up using the cosmic planning method! We added to the party when we got an email from blog readers Kathy, Steve and Gail from Orlando. They said since we were going to be in their neck-o-the-woods, could they take us out to dinner. We said "no - come join the party!"

So, here's our party - new friends and old - all because of blogs.

Kathy, Steve and Gail are very active in the Orlando chapter of FMCA, as well as Florida Geocaching Association. We sure had lots to talk about! We will certainly see them on the road again. Gail says she will be at the RV-Dreams rally in Branson in June, where we will be giving our seminars. Thanks for the visit!

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Boat Ride

What Florida is all about ... water and boats. So we jumped at the chance for my Dad to take us out on the water on Lake Rousseau where he lives. Isn't it pretty?

Click on any photo above and you'll be at the album where there are more photos.

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Ho Hum, Florida

No, I'm not saying that it's boring to be back in Florida. We quite like the place! We're parked at Ho Hum RV park in Carabelle, Florida on the gulf coast. Right *on* the gulf coast!

When we ran into our friends Bob and Polly in Arizona - they told us they planned to do some workcamping next winter at a park called Ho Hum near Pensacola. As we were checking out the map of our route from Alabama - we said 'Let's get away from our old wheel ruts on I-10 and take the scenic route this time ... and, look! We could stay at Ho Hum and see what Bob and Polly are going to be doing next winter.' We splurged the $27 to park with our front windshield looking out over the beach. And, Odie just goes berserk running on the sand!

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'Taking the scenic route' ain't all it's cracked up to be though. Yes it was pretty, but it took us about twice the amount of time as the Interstate, and it was a lot more stressful. So nice to be seeing water again ... after 6 months in the desert! If I put the following picture into a blog post in November and told you we were in Montana ... I'll bet you'd believe it was snow?! These are the famous white, sugar-sand beaches of the Florida gulf coast. Lots more photos on our Picasa Web Album. You can click on any picture above to get there.