Fort Myers, Florida - February 1-27, 2009

The beginning of February found George alone down in Fort Myers as I was still back in MN dealing with the family emergency. George wasn't alone for very long, though, because two of their friends from Minnesota, Gino & Connie, came down to visit for a week. As you can see, George was not the only one enjoying their company. Mr. Bailey was glad to have someone to play with besides George. While Connie & Gino were visiting, they not only had to tour the beach scene like Sanibel & Captiva Islands, they had to hit the two casinos in the area. George said the one on the boat was the most fun and Gino even won a t-shirt while Connie came out the bigger winner walking away with $100 more to her name! (I don't know why, but George didn't take any pictures of Connie, but I know she was there with Gino!) A couple of days after Connie & Gino left, our close friends, Becky & Gary Rogers (the ones who we saw when we were in Orland0) came down to the Fort Myers area with their entire family (all 9 of them!) and George joined them on a few of their excursions. Gary & Becky were excited to have their grandchildren here for a visit since they live in California and George enjoyed having some little kids around (gave him an idea of what life will be like when/if we have grandchildren of our own). George went to Everglades National Park with the Rogers to go on a boat ride. He didn't see any alligators while on the boat, but there were plenty after he got off. He did get to watch a few dolphins that took to swimming around their boat for awhile. After the Rogers left, George had only a few days to get the RV all cleaned up because Curtis & I were flying down to Fort Myers on the 22nd. After much persuading, Curtis decided to join us on the last part of our winter trip. Since I had planned on being in Fort Myers for a month & had lots of ideas of what to see & do, we didn't spend much time relaxing around the campground once we got there. The day after we got there, we went down to Fort Myers Beach and walked around. As you can see, Curtis made friends with one of the local birds shortly after we got there. However, we did discover that you do not walk on the beach while eating ice cream cones. After getting our ice cream, we decided to take the scenic walk down the beach back to our car and all of a sudden we were attacked by sea gulls. They hit George on the hat & got it all sandy and knocked my sunglasses right off my face! But they didn't get our ice cream! Curtis decided that putting the mattress from the hide-a-bed on the floor was the most comfortable way to sleep, but he forgot that by being on the floor, Mr. Bailey was going to be his morning wake-up call! Even though none of us are Twins Baseball fans, we just had to make a stop at their spring training camp. As you can see, it's an incredibly beautiful area. Too bad we won't have time to see a game because I think it would be fun to watch them play at this stadium. We went to Sanibel Island and enjoyed doing some shelling and beach walking, but the most fun was stopping by the little shopping center where Curtis found the perfect pair of sunglasses! Unfortunately, we couldn't convince him to buy them when we told him he looked just like Elton John! While Sanibel is supposed to be the best beach for shelling, I found that Lovers Key was much better. There were fewer people and the water was milder so it was easier to walk in the water and pick up shells. I couldn't believe that I actually found a sand dollar all in one piece and it's got to be at least 3" in diameter. I was absolutely ecstatic because sand dollars are my favorite kind of shell! I even found a baby starfish that was about 1" big, but since it was still alive, I had to throw it back into the water. I've found bigger starfish before when I was in California and walking around the tide pools, but never have I seen one when walking along the beach. It was so adorable! One of the nice things about our campground was that it had a mini-golf course and we made use of it a couple of times before we left. As you can see, Curtis is quite the pro golfer! Now we're off to Naples for the weekend!

Fort Myers, Florida - January 19-31, 2009

We left Orlando and headed across the state to Fort Myers on the Gulf Coast. We only had time to check out the huge outlet mall and go to the RV show in Fort Myers before I was called home to frozen Minnesota on a family emergency. Needless to say, George & Mr. Bailey are down in sunny warm Florida and I am back in the frozen tundra. Mr. Bailey is enjoying his new friend, Chloe, and he especially likes that he can now ride in the EOS with the top down (Bailey & Chloe are hoping George is going to take them for a ride in the car!). George took Chloe on a tour of the RV Park we're in and she seems to like the mini-golf course. While I'm up here in Minnesota, George is enjoying getting out and meeting the other residents of the park. He found that several of them play musical instruments so he has gotten together with them to jam. It's not quite his kind of music, but he's enjoying having people to share music with him. Maybe he'll even have the opportunity to try his talent out on some new instruments. He's never played with an upright bass or dulcimers before so it's really been fun. When not strumming the guitar, George has found he has other talents like washing clothes and cleaning the RV - something he never thought he would be doing when we decided to head to warm weather in the winter. He's anxiously awaiting my return so I can take over those chores for him. While George hasn't gotten out to do much exploring around Fort Myers yet, he & Bailey have gone out on some adventures & hopefully, he took some pictures that I can share with you later in our blog.

Heading South 2009 & Orlando, Florida - January 12-19, 2009

On the road again! We haven't stayed in the rig since it was up at Grand Casino in Hinckley, Minnesota during the month on August 2008, so it's a little like opening your cabin up after being away from it all winter. Due to a family medical issue, George and Mr. Bailey headed south without Katherine on Wednesday, January 7. A few cold days and nights on the road with lots of male bonding time, George was glad to finally reach Florida in only 4 days. He got to our camp site at Tropical Palms in Kissimmee a day early arriving on Sunday, January 11. Katherine took the easy way down on a 3-hour direct flight from Minneapolis to Orlando. She arrived after all the work of setting up was complete. Oh, what a life! We spent the first day down here getting re-acquainted with the rig, setting up things the way we like them when we're living in it and grocery shopping. I want to introduce a new member of our traveling family. Her name is Chloe and you'll see her in some of our pictures throughout our trip this year. She's an adorable little doll that my sister, Karen, gave me for Christmas to bring on the trip. Here's a picture of Chloe & Bailey ready to hit the road and another one taken in front of a palm excited to be in warm weather. As you can see, Chloe and Bailey get along great! Actually, Bailey thinks she's a new play toy for him so I have to be careful not to leave her where he can get at her! After one day of setting up and resting, we hit the ground running and spent the next 4 days visiting Disney World. We started off with Epcot, which is our favorite and then went to the Magic Kingdom the following day. The third park we went to was Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM Studios when we visited it about 15 years ago). George really enjoyed Lights, Motors, Action Extreme Stunt Show. We both agreed that if our son, Derek, had been with us, he would have wanted to participate in all the stunt driving at this one. Of course, my favorite was the Beauty and the Beast Live On Stage performance. There's a new ride at the Studios called Toy Story Midway Mania, in which you wear 3D glasses and the ride takes you through a maze of carnival-type shooting galleries where you shoot pies, bullets, whatever out of your gun. I was ahead of George, but then he must have gotten his second wind because he ended up with over 107,000 points to my 88,000! (Personally, I think he cheated!) Our final day at the parks was spent at Animal Kingdom. I've been there a few times, but it was a first for George. I don't think he'll ever enjoy going to the zoo back home again. It's incredible how up close and personal you can get to the animals when you take the safari ride. Since the weather's been cooler than normal - it's been in the 60's to low 70's, the animals were out and active. Again, I think my favorite part was the "Festival of the Lion King" live stage performance. All in all, the parks weren't very busy so we were able to get through them in about 6-8 hours each day. Last night, we met our close friends, Gary & Becky Rogers, and their daughter, Emily, for dinner. They used to live in Minnesota, but now live down here so I only get to see them about once a year. After dinner, we decided to go to the Animal Kingdom Lodge to see if we could see any of the animals roaming around outside the lodge. Here's a picture of the Rogers and Katherine standing in front of a authentic African head dress that weighs over 200 lbs. I can't imagine putting that on my head! We were incredibly lucky because there were lots of critters out walking around near the lodge. George is now a firm believer in Disney's saying that dreams do come true! While we were at the lodge, we were able to use some 3rd generation night vision goggles to look out and watch the animals after dark. I think he spent as much time looking up for UFO's as he did looking at the animals since these goggles are the recommended ones to use for night time UFO sightings! We spent our last day in Kissimmee (Orlando) relaxing and enjoying the wonderful weather.

Minnesota - June, July & August 2008

Well, I've been told that I can't take a break for the summer & I need to keep up with our blog, so here goes. We got back to Minnesota the first of April and thought we would see little or no snow. Boy, were we wrong! I think it snowed almost every day in April and then switched to rain almost every day in May! We're thinking about not coming back to Minnesota until mid to late April next year. We spent the first few months we were back in Minnesota just enjoying being home and spending time with our family. We took our rig up to Shorewood RV where we purchased it and gave them a list of things that needed to be fixed, all of which was warranty work. There was nothing major wrong with the rig, but since it was in for its 1-year checkup, we wanted to have them fix every little thing we found wrong with it. It was also a great place to store it until summer at which time we were planning on putting it at some campground for the summer. Great plans always seem to go wrong, don't they? We were so busy that we never got around to picking it up & setting it up at a campground until the middle of July. Memorial Day weekend, Katherine, Derek, Jenny and Katherine's sister, Karen decided to head down to Chicago to visit Karen's son, Bob & his new wife, Ellie. They had just returned from their honeymoon and moved from Oakland, California to Chicago. After 7 hours on the road, we arrived in Chicago and tried to reach our hotel, The Belden Stratford. Every road in the area was blocked off. It took us an extra 45 minutes to get to our hotel even though we were only a few blocks away. We later found out that Johnny Depp was there shooting his latest movie. We had to keep our eyes on Karen to make sure she didn't run around the hotel looking for Johnny since he's her favorite actor. The room was actually an apartment with 2 bathrooms and a walk-in closet off the bedroom that was as big as our office back home. The views of Lake Michigan and Lincoln Park Conservatory were beautiful. We met up with Bob & Ellie on Saturday and we all went to the Museum of Science & Industry. Since Jenny is a science teacher & had never been to the museum, she was like a kid in a candy store. On Sunday, we went to Bob's in-laws for a delicious cookout. We had a great time and plan on going back some time in the fall, but next time it will be Karen, Curtis & Katherine and we'll go see the aquarium next time. On June 27-29, we changed our mode of transportation to the Harley. George and I, along with Derek and Jenny, rode the Harleys up to Duluth for the annual HOG Rally. We left early on Friday morning in what looked like it was going to rain at any moment, but we were lucky and only got a few drops on us all the way up to Duluth (about 150 miles north of home). We stayed at the South Pier Inn which is right across the lift bridge from Canal Park. Our view was incredible as we could see and hear the bridge go up every time a ship/boat was going through the canal. It was so much fun. Shortly after we got settled in, we decided to go up to the Harley dealer. We walked out of our room and ran into Tom & Sandy Horne, who are dear friends of ours (and Derek's godparents). What a surprise! We hadn't seen them for awhile and they ended up being in the room above ours - talk about a small world! On our way back from the Harley dealership, we hit a downpour of rain and got totally drenched. Thank goodness, we were on our way back to our room and our room had a fireplace & a jacuzzi so we could warm up real nice. On Saturday, Derek & Jenny headed up to Gooseberry Falls and George & Katherine went to the Park Point Art Fair. We all met back in time to go on the annual HOG Rally ride up the North Shore & around Duluth and the weather was perfect. Our ride home on Sunday was again great because the weather continued to hold and it was a perfect day for a ride. However, since it was the first time this season we had been on the bike for a long ride, we were a bit sore for the next few days. It wore off in time to go on another ride on July 5th. We met up with Jenny & Derek and Craig (my former boss at the PD) & Tommy Reid and enjoyed a nice ride up to Taylor Falls where we stopped for some delicious homemade root beer. The weather was incredibly gorgeous for a ride and we continued over the river and into Wisconsin where we drove south to Hudson. We stopped there for lunch and had a delicious one at a small restaurant that Craig & Tommy had eaten at before. It was a great day for a ride and this time, we weren't nearly as sore as we had been the previous week. So...here we are the first part of July and still haven't gone up to Shorewood to get the RV back! We finally took the time and found a spot in St.Cloud at the St.Cloud Campground and RV Park. It's a nice little campground that's only about 75 miles from home so we rented a site for a month. Getting up here was quite an experience, one which I don't care to ever repeat! I dropped George off at Shorewood RV to pick up the rig and I headed up to St. Cloud in the car. I got a call from George shortly after I left him and he said that the rig was overheating so he had to pull over about 5 miles down the road from Shorewood. And wouldn't you know it...it's a hot humid day & he pulls over in the recycling center with the waste management site only about 1/2 block down the road - yuck! George climbed under the rig & found that the fan belt had broken, so we called Freightliner & they sent out a tow truck to tow it back to them. I thought George was going to cry as he watched his baby being hoisted up on a tow truck! Lucky for us, it was all covered by the warranty. Can you believe it cost $450 to tow the rig 8 miles??? Incredible! But on July 21st, we were finally able to pick it up again and head to St. Cloud. It's nice to be able to stay up there for a night or a week, whatever we have time for since it only takes about an hour to get there. My dear friend, Becky Rogers and her daughter, Krissy, came to town the last weekend in July so I stayed home with them while George, his Dad, and his brother, Eric went up to St. Cloud and had some quality sons & father time. George & Eric decided to play a round of mini-golf while there and George had to gloat because he beat his little brother! Of course, Mr. Bailey (our Shih-Tzu) loves being back in the RV! I think he likes the fact that we're all in the same room together all the time! We only have about one more week left up here and then it will be time to move on. I can hardly believe it's been almost a month since we set up camp in St. Cloud, but we've already reserved a spot at Grand Casino Hinckley. I know it's a casino, but they have a great inexpensive campground, too! Who knows...maybe we'll get rich on the $5 we might gamble!

Salt Lake City, Utah - March 23-28, 2008

We didn't realize how far St. George is from Salt Lake City. It's over 300 miles and took most of the day to get there, so we spent our Easter driving & setting up the coach at our new site in SLC. Of course, the first place we had to visit was the LDS Conference Center since Curtis had never seen it. It is incredible & huge. It sits 21,000 people and has a huge organ. One of the neatest parts of the center is the glass ceiling in the foyer. It's absolutely beautiful, especially on a sunny day! Standing on the roof is the best place to get a picture of the Salt Lake Temple. The roof is about 6 acres and they grow flowers, trees and prairie grass on it. After we left the Conference Center, we walked around Temple Square and got a chance to see the changes that were made to the Tabernacle. One day while driving around Salt Lake City, we came across a few motorcyclists & were really impressed with the way they were dressed - who ever said McGruff couldn't ride his own motorcycle in a parade? We had heard that it might snow on our last day in Salt Lake, but didn't really believe it until we woke up and looked outside! It lasted only a couple of hours and then was all melted - too bad MN snow couldn't disappear that fast! We met Mike & Catherine Long, old friends of ours who now live in Utah, and their daughter, Leslie (who Curtis went to school with) and her husband, Beaudy and their 2 kids, Dakota & Kennedy, for lunch at a really great Vietnamese restaurant. The food was delicious, the view was beautiful and it felt good to have the time to visit with old friends before heading home. Curtis was able to meet up with an old friend and her husband, Catherine & Steve Monson, for a visit at our coach the night before we left Salt Lake City. Our time in SLC seemed short & we were sorry to say good-bye to the friends we had a chance to re-connect with on this trip. This is also the end of our blog since it's the end of our travels. We're now going to put the "pedal to the metal" and make tracks through Wyoming, Nebraska & Iowa stopping only long enough to rest & then continue on our way home. Our travels have been great, but it'll be good to get home - we miss Derek & Jenny and the rest of our MN family. I hope you have enjoyed following our travels as much as we've enjoyed traveling! We'll give our Roaming Valhalla a rest for awhile as we plan our travels for next winter. Until then, may you all have some wonderful adventures of your own!

St. George, Utah - March 20-23, 2008

The drive to St. George was incredibly beautiful and long. In fact, we decided to break it up into 2 days of driving, especially since George is the only one who drives the rig. I can't drive a car through the mountains, let alone a huge motor home! Before we left Pomona, we dropped the coach off at the service center for some work. While they worked on it, we went out to breakfast at Denny's where Curtis said he wanted the kid's rocket ship drink glass, so I asked the waitress if he could have one & she gave him one (some kids never grow up!). Doesn't he look happy??? Our first night on the road, we pulled into the parking lot of Buffalo Bill's Casino in Primm, Nevada and spent the night with all the truckers - what an experience! Buffalo Bill's is in the middle of the desert with nothing around it but an outlet mall and 2 more casinos. Not much to do, but the dinner & the breakfast at the casino were delicious! As I said, the drive to St. George, leaving the desert and heading into the mountains, was absolutely incredible. We couldn't believe how beautiful it was in St. George and the surrounding area. It sits in a valley surrounded by red bluffs & high mountains with snowy tips. We happened to be in St. George over the Easter weekend, which is when they have their yearly art festival. The most beautiful building in St. George, of course, is the Mormon Temple (if you look real close, you'll see Curtis sitting on the temple steps). It was especially nice to go out for a walk each night around our resort and be able to look up and see the temple all lit up. Since we only stayed for the weekend, we didn't have much time for sightseeing, but we did enjoy the wonderful weather in the upper 70's. We knew it would probably be the last time we would see temps that warm until summer hits Minnesota. Happy Easter to all as we head off to Salt Lake City!

Pomona, California - March 16-20, 2008

We made it driving the RV through Los Angeles from Ventura to Pomona with no problems. The California highways have got to be the worst ones in the entire USA! I drove Aunt Barbara to her friend's house in Claremont while George set up the coach at our new site, which was right next door to the Fairplex County Fairgrounds - too bad it wasn't time for the fair! The weather was absolutely gorgeous in the upper 70's the entire time we were there. Since Curtis hadn't been to Downtown Disney and we were going to meet one of my closest friends daughter & her family at The Rainforest Cafe there for dinner, we decided to get there early so we would have some time to wander around before meeting them. I showed Curtis around taking him to the entrance of Disney's California Adventure, where I got a picture of him sitting inside the "C" of their sign. We met Melissa, Rob, Robbie and Lauren Au at The Rainforest Cafe and had a nice visit with them. (Yes, Becky, I have to agree that they are the cutest grandkids!) Lauren took to Curtis & insisted on sitting next to him at dinner. We sat right by a huge stuffed gorilla & about every 15 minutes it would come to life and make sounds that scared Lauren so that she would grab Curtis. He was so patient with her! I got a day of R&R (actually I cleaned the coach and washed all the bedding & clothes) when Curtis & George went to Warner Bros Studios for a tour. Curtis liked visiting their sound stage and George liked seeing the actual General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard. They had a good time & enjoyed telling me how the studio had an entire floor dedicated to Harry Potter (and I missed it!). The weather was so perfect, I hated leaving California. It meant we were at the end of our travels west and were now heading back to Minnesota (and we were told MN just got a lot more snow!). But Utah...here we come!