Halloween Party at Peace River

Peace River had a nice costume party for the park on Saturday night, so we made sure to attend.  I miss having little ones to celebrate the holidays with so I love it when I can still have a reason to make goodies and dress up.  I spent the day making pumpkin spice donuts, cupcakes and chocolate covered pretzels.

When we arrived at the party, it was kind of dark inside and I was trying to figure out who was playing up on the stage.  It took me a few minutes to realize the couple singing was Buddy and Diane.  My shots didn't turn out, so you'll have to peek at Donna's pictures here: Florida Picklers. 

The only shots we did manage to get to come out decently were a few from the dance floor.  Notice my "I don't know what the heck I'm doing so I'll watch Donna" poses.

I have fun dancing even when I don't know what I'm doing. 

We even managed to get Nathan out there for one dance.  There were tons of goodies and great music and fun people.  We had a nice time.

I have to share this cute picture of Ambir with her boyfriend, Daniel.  It looks like they had fun that night too.  I know I'm biased but she is such a beauty and such a ham when it comes to pictures.  I love it!

Living the life in fun Florida!

The Visionaries

Finding the pictures of the Nature Preserve the other day also reminded me that I said I would come back and share some more sculptures with you from the Botanical Gardens that we visited in Myrtle Beach.

This one features the couple that founded the gardens.

A poem written by the husband of the couple:

And another nature shot because I took hundreds of them that day.

So pretty, isn't it?  I could have easily spent days in those gardens.  We spent two days there and felt like we were rushing to see all there was there.  Just a beautiful, peaceful place to be.

Living the life in Florida!

Why Being a Picture Freak Can Be a Good Thing

It drives my family nuts that I'm a picture freak.  If I had a dime for every time one of my kids said, Mom...enough with the pictures, I'd be (a little) rich.  It really isn't so fun that I have a camera stuck in their faces many times when they'd like to just enjoy the moment.

But every once in awhile it is a good thing that I'm a picture freak.  For instance, I have been known to be so engrossed in grabbing a great shot that I don't react like I normally would.  That can be a great thing.  Like when this guy slithered right in front of me.

 I was so excited that he was right there, so close that I could get a great shot...that I forgot to be scared that a creepy crawler was practically within reach of me.  Instead I was screeching, oh my goodness...I can't believe I had the camera out for this!!!!

In the back of my mind I had the thought...I bet I freak out over this later.  But I didn't.  Even now, when seeing the pictures I am just thrilled I got the shot.

So see kids, I'd be even more neurotic if I didn't take pictures all the time!  There is definitely a bright side to this obsession of mine!

Living the life in sunny Florida!

Nature Preserve at Huntington Beach State Park

I have had pink eye for days and days now, which means I can't wear my contacts.  Because I can't wear my contacts, I can't play pickleball.  Because I can't play pickleball, I have stayed home and tried to do some photo editing/organizing.  Which is how I came across this little gem that I forgot to share with you before.

Huntington Beach, not only has the beach and the campground, it also has this wonderful little nature preserve complete with boardwalk.

I can't believe that I missed this when sharing our Myrtle Beach fun before!

It was really beautiful.  We didn't see a whole lot of animals but the other nature was worth the walk there.

Living the life in earth's splendor!

Weekend Project

We have not really changed anything in our RV since we bought it.  We have more than made up for that now though.  When we bought the RV, we bought it to accommodate five of us.  Now there are three of us.  Soon there will be two of us.

Our needs have changed, so we have tossed around the idea of getting a different RV when Austin left home.  I would like a smaller RV.  Nathan would like a less expensive RV.  But we also love the RV we have.

Jack and Ruth that we became friends with this summer inspired us to think outside the box and make our current RV something we'd love.  So we decided instead of having three bedrooms and one and a half baths that we would now have two big bedrooms and one bathroom.  When Austin leaves home, we can use his bedroom for Nathan's office.

It was a lot of hard work on the guy's part this weekend, helping to make these changes.  I caught a few shots in the midst of the tearing the walls down.  Nathan, who hates all kinds of physical labor, so give him a big hand:

And the room with the walls tore out and the bathroom almost "gone".

Whew!  What a mess!  I spent today cleaning up and sorting through stuff, which led to many bags of goodies to be donated.  It's funny, we think we live so light now given all we own fits in our RV.  But each time I go through our things we find more and more that we don't really need.  The longer we live this way, the lighter we want to live.  But we also accumulate gadgets and gizmos along the way so we are far from cured when it comes to consumerism.

I will try to remember to snap some pictures when we have the room finished and decorated the way Austin wants to.

Home Sweet Winter Home

When we first started full-timing, we didn't understand the annual sites that people stayed on.  I mean, we understood what they were but we didn't understand the why.  Our thinking at the time was if you have a house that has wheels, it should move around.  Otherwise what's the point.

Like so often in life, we now do understand it since we are now in the position we are doing it ourselves.  Why?  For many different reasons; but in general because our needs have changed since then.  So for this season at least, we secured a site that would allow us to stay put in one spot.  I have no idea if this will be something we will continue to do and I don't need to know that.  I only need to know what works best for us today.

The cons to staying put are we don't get to see new things and new people as often.  The plusses are we get the spot we want for a longer period of time, we hopefully get to know the people that are staying put here with us a bit better, joining a CSA and we have internet.  High speed internet!!!!!!  Which we had long forgotten about.  Which means Nathan can work much faster and more effectively and so can I.  I can blog much faster which means I may return to more regular blogging.

Oh and we had to find a spot that was big enough for us to play cornhole on.

We really love our new spot.  It's Home, Sweet Home, for now.

Peace River Today

I'm happy to report that the river is back where it should be for the most part.  The park still has a lingering odor from the flooding but it seems to be drying out as far as I can tell.  The area past the cones is what I had taken pictures of before.

Ninja Squirrels

The squirrels here are really entertaining.  They like to mess with poor Ava, who is generally sitting on the back of our couch looking outside.  They seem to taunt her endlessly.  I'm not sure if they have nothing better to do, or if they are trying to intimidate her. 

Let me show you what we are dealing with!

I know, this guy is trying to look all innocent here.  Don't fall for it though.

He knows we are onto him.  First he runs away.  Then when that doesn't work he tries to be very still, thinking he can blend into the tree.

As soon as he sees that we are not going away, he turns all, "HELLO! MY NAME IS INIGO MONTOYA! YOU KILLED MY FATHER! PREPARE TO DIE"

 

This is just the tip of the iceberg.  They climb on top of the RV and throw acorns on the rig.  (Ok, here is where Nathan will say that is just the acorns falling from the trees but I know better!)  We hear their little feet scurrying all over the roof. I keep expecting to see one of them peeking at me through the skylight while I take my shower someday.

We are not scared though.  We will defend our little space here and our little dog.  Time will tell how this battle will end!

Living the life in Sunny again Florida! 

Flooding of Peace River

So much for landing in the Sunshine State!  When we landed in Peace River, we were surprised to see how hard it was raining.  It is rare for it to rain all day long here.  After being here for a few days, it was still raining.

Normally, rain is desperately needed in Florida.  I guess as all things though, too much of a good thing can be a very bad thing.  That seems to be the case here because all the rain caused the Peace River to flood.

Here you can see that the river is over the banks, and is covering the mini-golf area.

This is sad enough, but the real trouble is in the areas where the RV sites are at.  Some of the sites are covered in water.

Some of the sites are completely covered with water, including the electrical boxes.

It was pretty disturbing to see all the water here.

If it were not causing some issues for the park, it would be really enjoyable to look at because the water is rather pretty.

 We hope this does not cause major long term problems for the park here.

Myrtle Beach SC to Wauchula FL

Yesterday we headed south for our yearly migration to Florida.  We went halfway landing in Brunswick, Georgia.  We originally planned to spend a week there before heading to Florida but someone was anxious to get to Florida and asked if we could skip Georgia, so we agreed to alter our plans so we could accommodate that request.

We hit heavy traffic and it rained hard the second day so travel was slow.  Much slower than it normally is.  We were so happy to get to one of the places we call "home" which is Peace River Thousand Trails.  Our friend Buddy and his pretty partner Diane are here.  Rich and Donna are supposed to arrive at the end of this week.  We picked out a nice spot that we hope to stay at for the next several months.

We will miss the beach while we are here but we will not miss the tempting (read fattening) food that we encountered in SC.  This is one example of the food we did come across and Austin was brave enough to eat.  Fried Corn:

We had fun what little bit of travel we did this year and we are looking forward to a wonderful winter with the good people that are here. 

Brookgreen Gardens~Animal Show

I've already shared so many of the neat parts of Brookgreen Gardens, but I didn't want to forget this part before I move on because we enjoyed it so much.  While we were sitting and eating our lunch, we heard this neat woman doing a Meet the Animals show.

We headed over there after we were done eating so we could catch the rest of the show.  I'm glad we did because we got there in time for Nathan to make friends with a snake.

Not to be outdone by a grown man, this cutie pie followed suit:

His sister was thinking thanks but no thanks.  Same as me!  We also got to meet an eastern screech owl.

She/He was a real beauty.  Completely calm during the whole show like she'd been a stage star her whole life.

We had a great time learning lots of neat facts and being a bit more up close and personal with the animals!

Project 365~Oct 2 through Oct 8

Brookgreen Gardens~The Sculptures

There are so many fabulous parts to this place that it is impossible to say which part is the best.  I can say that the sculptures were the most surprising part to us.

We knew there would be some sculptures from the website, but we didn't truly envision how many there were and how grand some of them were.

It is hard to put into words how emotionally touching they were.

 

There were so many and they were all so beautiful that it was hard to absorb it all.  I couldn't even begin to share them all here.  I am going to share a few today and share some more later.