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Published: February 29th 2016
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We left Daytona on Tuesday morning and headed directly into some really bad weather. It looked like our window of opportunity for travel would be from late morning into the evening and that's just about how it worked out. We made the 5 hour run to Carrabelle Beach under fast moving clouds, gusty winds and a few passing showers, got set up in our new site on the Gulf of Mexico, got dinner over and sat down to watch the storms on TV. It hit here a little later, around 2:00 am. After seeing pictures of an RV park in Louisiana get torn to shreds by a tornado it was a little unnerving to feel the camper rocking back and forth on its four stilts and four tires while the national weather service had us under a tornado warning. As it ended up the tornados stayed to the west and we were just hammered by strong thunderstorm cells for about three hours. Wednesday we took a little nap, unloaded the motorcycle and broke out the fishing polls. Its been all good since then.
On the Gulf Coast......We have had a really good time here in what can best be described
as Old Florida. There are no close big cities, just small towns, local restaurants, shrimp boats, and a very colorful local people. I hung out at the local gas station/tackle shop for about a half hour talking fishing and southern Florida with the owner while the locals wandered in and out, that was quite an experience. The RV park is full of great folks from up north that like to fish, drink a little beer and wine, and relax for the winter months; true snowbirds. We did two rides this week, one to St. George's Island and one all day round trip through the Apalachicola National Forest. No pictures from the forest because well, it's just a bunch of pine trees for miles and miles. St. George's is a barrier island and a nice beach town that I'm sure really fills up in the summer. If you are in the market for a beach front condo on the Gulf of Mexico there were plenty for sale in the $600,000 to $750,000 range. Yeah, me neither! We spent one day at the St. Marks Wildlife Refuge where we were determined to find alligators in their natural habitat. While others were racing
in and out of the refuge, we took our time and slowly cruised the back roads finding a number of them sleeping in the sun or cruising around. This refuge was a great place that gets very little publicity, even locally. It was our best day of the week. So tomorrow we are off to Pensacola and the Blue Angel Campground for two weeks. More fishing, sightseeing, and relaxing but no more alligator hunting.
A few of our friends have asked, "How has the retirement money flow been?" Well things have been just about how it was predicted. The Social Security started right on time, no problems thus far and I don't suspect there will be any. We had applied early with a start date in 2016 after retirement and the first checks were deposited exactly when they predicted. The unused leave check was combined with my last gov't paycheck which caused a pretty big hit in taxes but we look at it as money in the bank for next year. The first gov't retirement check was also deposited right on time and as we expected it was about 80% of what the final number will be. Health insurance
has been maintained without interruption. OPM has been very professional, keeping us updated on progress via my personal account access through the internet with e-mails when something changes. We have no complaints with OPM. So for those of you that are looking at gov't retirement in the future our only tip would be to make sure you have a financial advisor to help you lay out a plan (we used Brian Kuhn and he was spot on) and then work the plan. Be sure you have enough in savings to fund yourself for the first two months until everything starts to roll in and you will be fine. Since we are on the road we established up a number of direct payments through the bank for our monthly bills and that is also working well which has relieved us of that worry. I guess the key is planning, planning, planning. I have to admit that in the beginning not getting that big check every other Friday was a little scary but things have started to roll now we have adjusted. If you have any specific questions feel free to drop me an email.
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Doc
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Gator watching
Ray, Michelle, Seems like you are really enjoying life. Good to hear you were not affected too much by the storm. Good to see you are riding some. Hopefully you did not need the "police station" where the picture was taken. Thanks for the insight for retirement. Keep having fun. Doc & Beth