April 2011

Apr 30th we traveled up to Paradise Stream which will be our summer home. It was a great campground homecoming as a lot of the seasonal campers stopped by and greeted us and caught up on all that happened over the winter months in all of their lives. We did manage to get the camper set up for the summer; it is good to have everything ready for our time here. We did have one incident and that was the living room slide out came out about 12 inches while we were driving and we had to keep it retracted several time in the last 15 miles. We found a leak in the hose and will have to repair it prior to leaving. Tomorrow we plan on going to Church and then do some visiting with the family. We also plan on doing our yearly Cabela’s shopping spree which will be a free event as we save up our points. It was a great day at the campground.

Apr 29th wow so much time has passed since we last wrote to the journal. The last 4 months were such a blur as we had visitors come and visit and/or stay at our place. Back in January during the car show we were visited by two friends of ours, one was the first we got to meet and the other one we worked with while in Maine. Also, during this time Kate’s brother died (he lived in Ocala). She came in for the funeral, and she came down and stayed for a night. At that time she was looking into buying a park model here in the future. In late January Ron and Kay were in the area and we spent a few days with them and showed them our part of Florida, that also include going to the local vineyard and tasting of the wines. Later Jeff & Shirley came down for a week and they as well are looking to buy in the area, not really here at the park. Dennis and Pat bought a place south of Sebring, they got a real good deal as the brand new house sat empty for 4 years and was sold by the bank. Our friends and group of people that we hung with did a lot of different things that included going to the Canadian Snowbird Fest, spending way too much time going out to eat, and just generally having a great time together. We had our schedule of Monday bowling basically stop in February as we could just not fit it in, as we had the guests stopping by and also Kathleen was starting to prep for some surgery that was done in March and she didn’t bowl the rest of the year. On those Mondays Jon golfed and that had him going out 3 days a week. Jon did go back after a six week layoff and bowled the No Tap Tournament our group has and bowled a 300 with an 802 series. On March 23rd we went on a 3 day cruise to the Bahamas with Jon’s two sisters and niece and their spouses and Jon’s great niece, Gracie was along. We had a great time and it was good to be with some of the family. Also during this time we replaced the carpet in the motor home and had the sofa reupholstered along with the window frames and valances done. We stayed active in our church activities along with Sunday services; we went to the Wednesday evening Bible study. On the 23rd of April we started our journey north. The first day’s journey got us to Camp Fountain in Orlando, where we had a great time with the Fountain’s. We left there on Easter Sunday and drove north to the Charlestown, SC area for the night and then we continued to the Outer Banks of NC for two nights and toured the area. We found Kitty Hawk and the Area of the Wright Brother’s first powered flight very interesting. We then traveled further North to Harper’s Ferry WV. We are in a campground in MD. That is between a railroad yard and a very swollen Potomac River, as they had a lot of rain in the last several days, storms that came across the country and killed about 340+ in its wake. Today we toured Harper’s Ferry and determined that we had underestimated our time here to tour the area in its entirety. We just briefly touched on the town itself, while we toured the Antietam Battlefield and spent a lot of time at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. We then went back to the campground and started to make preparations to travel tomorrow.