Travels with Snowbirds, Orlando to Palm Harbor FL

---

---

Sunday February 5, Orlando to Palm Harbor, FL

And

Monday February 6, Palm Harbor

And

Tuesday February 7, Palm Harbor

Busy, busy busy, no time to write, but boy do I get phone calls, txt msgs, emails when I am silent. Makes me feel good.

So, to catch up. I will take each of the 3 days separately.

Sunday first

It didn’t rain, so it was pleasant unhooking. Bittersweet for sure, Ginnie and I had a great time here in the dustbowl, but time to move on. Sad to leave her for a week for sure.

First stop, gas, $3.539, and glad I did because that was the cheapest I saw it throughout the day. Over the river and thru the woods. I didn’t want to take I4 the whole way, I wanted to see the countryside, so I headed southwest on the back roads of central FL. I had to slow down once to follow an eagle so big it made me look twice. I checked on line to be sure there are eagles in FL, and yes there are! A wonderful sight to see in the wild! Then I saw a huge and I mean huge bull in the woods near the road. Afterwards, I realized it was behind fence, but there, sitting in the pine trees, horns as big as Texas was this big brown bull. Just beyond I realized I was back in cow country as there were many large fields with lots of cows. Again at the edge of the road I saw 3 large, let’s call them, roosters. Red heads, white bodies, brown bottoms and tail feathers. Just clucking along, ready to become road kill if they inched a little bit further into the roadway.

First stop, Michaels in Lakeland to purchase yarn for a few hats and another baby blanket. Put Winston in his crate, and he wasn’t barking when I left nor when I came back. Whew. I was right near I4, so hopped on to speed the trip along and stopped next at Lazydays RV ‘world’. 126 acres including campground, Camping World, and RV sales and service. I had to check in at the gate and got a pass to surrender upon my exit. Huh? I was directed to the sales office and met Dee F unpronounceable last name. I asked if she had any used Class Cs I could look at quickly as my dog was (in crate) in RV and in the sun. Not a problem, they are a dog friendly place, let’s go get him and look at some RVs. Walk? Oh no, we will get a golf cart, this place is too big. The 3 of us (me, Winston, Dee) drove all over the complex so I could get ‘a feel’ for their business. 273 service bays. A crown club area where you pull in for service for your ‘high end’ Class A. Then past all the Class A’s separated by gas and diesel, new Class Cs and B’s and B+s, finally getting to the used area. I got a glimpse of the campground which looked gorgeous. I guess people camp there and just walk the property to look at all the RVs, but there is security all over the place. Net nut, we looked at 3 RVs, all 26’ Class Cs. First 2 were ok, but not exactly what I was looking for. Third one I spied just sitting there, and it wasn’t on Dee’s inventory print out and she was confused. We went inside and it was exactly what I have been looking for. Around 26’, bench dinette, entertainment unit over the cab and linoleum floor everywhere except cab and bedroom. The only negative was the bed is a corner bed, very difficult to change sheets on. The bench dinette slid out about 4 feet and it had 3 large windows. Dee made a mistake with me, she told me that she had a customer looking for this exact configuration and she had been looking for 6 months for them. Note to self, she was not going to be interested in selling this to me since she already had someone on the hook. Back in her cubicle she determined that this Winnebago Access did not have a title; they had been working on getting it for a long time. It had been sitting on their lot untitled for 3 months. Red flag; if there 3 months, how come she hadn’t seen it before? She told me she would call me after their Monday morning staff meeting when she had a better idea about these title issues.

I continued on I4 then on back roads to cousin Valerie’s house in Palm Harbor. What a nice warm welcome from Val. Husband Bill was away on business trip to Seattle, and I wouldn’t get to see him this trip. Winston remembered this house, and immediately took off to the room where the cats hide from him and mayhem ensued. Valeris’ dog, Holly, wanted to play, and, as we know, Winston doesn’t play, he just looks and sniffs and barks when Holly pawed him. When things calmed down we left the cats roaming in the master bedroom, Holly crated in there as well, and Winston roaming the main portion of the house and met up with grammar and HS classmate Maureen for dinner at Cody’s. A lot of laughs, great pina coladas (2 for 1 Sunday special, $6) and steak special (strip, baked, all you can eat salad and bread, $14.99) and throw the shells on the floor peanuts. I loved it. Maureen is on her way to Ireland for 8 days to visit family as well as explore from Dublin to Galway and back. I am jealous. Maureen has been waiting for over a year for her hearing service dog and I hope she gets one soon! I can’t wait to hear about her trip.

Back at Casa Val, all animals survived and I don’t think Winston marked anywhere! Whew. To bed early in a nice fluffy bed with nice fluffy pillows and slept like a baby until Winston woke me up on top of me, pawing my head.

Monday morning chores took us to the post office and I finally mailed the baby blanket to John. A lazy Monday morning, with no 9:00 Lazydays phone call. GROWL. Val’s oldest son, David and his girlfriend, Lindsay, and his 2 Pembroke corgis joined us at Val’s. More mayhem. Casey, female, 7, and Lou, boy, about 1. Bark, bark and more bark. 3 dogs played and Winston watched. He barked when they tried to play, you get the idea. Trying to keep Winston separate didn’t work; it was a while before they all settled down into a dull road. I did not see the cats.

At 4:00 I wrote a snippy email to Dee unpronounceable saying I was disappointed that I did not hear from her at 9:00. I had a phone call within 5 minutes, yadda yadda yadda bull shit bull shit bull shit; “I was busy,” something every customer wants to hear, right? She had not checked on the title issue, but would and call me right back, which she did. “I thought you didn’t think I was a serious customer with money,” says me. The business manager told her that the rig had been on their lot for months (why do I not believe that) and they had no idea when the title would appear, 1 week, or 3 months. Sounds like a repo for sure, now. If I wanted to leave a deposit, I would get the first phone call when it became available. Do I look like a sucker? In my best snippy customer way, I said, no that was not acceptable to me.

I told her if she came across another rig with the same things I was looking for, she should give me a call. In the meantime I was out stopping at lots of RV dealers and I was hoping to buy something.

So, now I have Lazydays number. If you’re not interested in a big new class A, then forget about it. I was taught work close to the money, and Ms Dee unpronounceable had not yet qualified that I was or was not a ready and qualified buyer. So, f#$%^ them and I will move on. They sure were a pretty place, though. You get what you pay for, and I think when you buy an RV from them you sure do pay for it somehow, someway.

Back to Val’s: Lou in his crate, Casey running free on one side of the house, Holly in her crate with the cats in the MBR, and Winston free in the rest of the house, and off we all went in David’s massive pickup to Koba’s Japanese restaurant and met up with middle son, Richard, and youngest child, daughter Audrey and her fiancé, Adam, to celebrate David’s (December) birthday. Whew, did you get that? I ate like a pig, 3 of us ordered The Imperial: steak, lobster, shrimp, special appetizer, special this, special that; the others ate more sanely, but still massive amounts of food. A lot of laughs, some stimulating political conversations, and I felt like a balloon upon leaving.

It was good to see all the kids together; previously on previous trips I had only met Richard. I met them all as babies when my kids were younger at my Middletown house. They have grown into fine, friendly, interesting people. I look forward to joining up with them at Audrey’s wedding in May. Lovely engagement ring from Tiffany’s, Audrey. Can’t wait to share in the wedding festivities! I am excited!!! It was a pretty peaceful night sleep, considering the animals outnumbered the people. Val has a lot of patience to put up with the pee on the floor, the barking dogs, the running all over the tile floor, etc.

Tuesday morning, rain again. We decided to go to an early movie. David took Lindsay to the airport for her flight ‘home’ to Austin. Again we blocked all dogs in, except Winston who roamed, and went to see Daniel Radcliffe in “Woman in Black.” Not my usual type of movie, I avoid the scary horror things, but the story was very interesting with a nice little twist at the end. To end the day, out to dinner one more time to a local pub with a yummy Chicken Caesar wrap. I truly am going to blimp out of here.

Time to put down the pen for tonight, rather put away the keyboard and watch NCIS.

Tomorrow off to Ocala, about 100 miles north, for a Loners on Wheels campout thru Sunday.

Kat out

---

Photos

Maureen
Corpus Christi and Mineola HS classmate, Maureen Kelly

Maureen, Valerie, Me
An honest to goodness man from Ireland took this picture. He kept putting his eye up to the digital screen on the back of the camera. We sure did laugh.

dinner at Koba
L to R
Adam and Audrey. Richard being silly, me, David and Lindsay. I won't embarrass Richard by sharing the picture of him in the silly birthday hat, trust me, it was silly.