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Published: November 29th 2018
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What we left behind!
A Florida Sky & hot air balloon And we were right on the money! On the third day of travel, we arrived at our home in Shongo, NY. Cory pulled into our snow covered driveway on Tuesday, Nov.20th at 3:20 PM. The car kind of slipped and slid on the driveway. Under the fluffy, white stuff was nasty mud. Almost like pigpen mud! Besides the deep white snow on the ground, the snowflakes were sprinkling down all around and adding to the accumulation. Welcome to our home.....to a true winter wonderland. What were we thinking?
On Sunday, Nov.18th....we left warm and toasty Florida in our overly packed sedan. The new windshield was so clear. The blue sky was the typical true Florida blue sky. Not a cloud in sight. A hot air balloon had just floated over our RV. We watched it slowly move along in the rear view mirror of our car. Bye Florida friends, Bye RV, Bye Tropical Palms, Bye Golf Cart, Bye new bicycle, Bye gorgeous weather, Bye Walmart with $2.18 gas in Clermont....just keep the lights on for us....we’ll be back the last week of December. See you all then.
We made sure we had all the necessary navigation tools to get
us where we want to go as quickly as possible....without killing ourselves. We had Cory’s cell phone set to WAZE, the Tom-Tom was planning our route, our dash cam was recording our travels on the roadways and the SunPass got us through the Florida toll roads in a flash. We had so many wires strung around, we looked like intensive care patients hooked up to every life saving device.
We were on a mission: to return home in NY so we could be with our family for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Last year, at Thanksgiving, I tried to tell our family that we wouldn’t be with them at Thanksgiving or Christmas. We had made our reservations earlier at Tropical Palms....check in would be October 29th, 2018. Well, I found it most difficult to share this new plan with all of them. My blubbering and slobbering hindered my words from coming out clearly. Snot and tears rolled down my face. It wasn’t pretty. I was so torn and upset looking at all of them, knowing this day was the last major holiday we would spend together. OMG.....I’m bawling right now as I reflect upon this moment of agony. Cory finally
came up with a wonderful solution. We would go to Florida as planned, drive our car back home for Thanksgiving and stay through Christmas, return to Florida after Christmas. I jumped on his proposal. So that is what we have done. Our family has planned and prepared the Thanksgiving dinner that most of our family will attend. It will be at our house. It will be so wonderful for all of us to be together again. Our only contribution to the dinner is squash. WOW.....I may get to watch the Macy Day Parade this year. Yeah! We pray for good weather as some of them live almost 2 hours away. Plus we want frozen ground so they don’t get their vehicles stuck and have to wade through mounds of mud. The prediction is for one of the coldest Thanksgivings on record...nine degrees! Hey, we are accustomed to that! Remember the ICE show at Gaylord Palms was set at nine degrees! We survived that. We shall survive it again. Bring it on!!
Our Christmas will be celebrated on December 23rd. Because some of them have two families to visit, it was decided this will work better for everyone. It works
for us. Just like Sam’s birthday - we shall observe Jesus’s birthday a few days in advance. What would Jesus say? “Okay” I hope.
Therefore, depending on the weather, we shall head back to our RV in Florida on Dec.24th. I guess that means we will be sitting inside some strange motel on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. Hmmmmm. That will be different for sure. At least Lulu will be with us singing Christmas Carrol’s. And, of course, all of you will be with us, too. So much to appreciate and celebrate!
Our trip home was uneventful.....which is very good! Cory drove @ 500 miles each day. We stayed our first night in Florence, S.C. The motel: Super 8, wasn’t that super! Just so-so. It did have a huge, pretty picture over the bed. Probably so you would focus on it instead of the rest of the room. We ate at a Cracker Barrel. You can never go wrong there. They had a busboy who worked so very, very hard at his job. He was extra fast in clearing the dirty tables. He ran from table to table. He had a bad deformity with his face....not sure why
or how it was like that. We could tell he must have had a tough life. His clothes didn’t fit and his shoes were so worn out. His work apron covered up some of the wear. We told the manager how impressed we were when we watched him working. She agreed and said his name was Mr.Davie. We signaled him over to our table and expressed our favorable impression of him and his work ethic. He gave us a crooked smile and thanked us. I tucked a monetary token in his wrinkled shirt pocket. He returned and thanked us again and wished us a Happy Thanksgiving. It was difficult to understand him because of his impediment but we got his message. I’m not sure how many people have given him a compliment in his life. They probably, nervously, looked away from him. Sad.
We started to see occasional blobs of snow around Winchester, VA. They faded away and turned to rain as we kept going. We stayed in a Best Western in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania last night. It was very nice and cheaper than the dumpy Super 8. We ate at a Ruby Tuesday. We exited I-81 in Marysville, PA.,
cause I-81 was closed further ahead and detours took you away from it. Have no idea why it was closed down. Cory knew his way home so it didn’t matter. He’s like a human compass....most of the time. Me - I’d have us in Atlantic City or somewhere far away. I have no sense for navigation. Around Williamsport, PA., we started to really see the unwanted stuff: SNOW! And it continued all the way to our home base. Boo-Hoo.
A few miles outside of Shongo, Cory said he felt like we hadn’t been away at all and we were just driving home from Wellsville.....even though he had actually just driven all the way home from Florida.
It is a strange feeling. Once settled in our house, it didn’t seem like we had been away for almost a month. But all our recent fabulous and fun memories are right up at the front of our memory box. I even have proof it all happened: my blog photos! Plus Lulu was an eye witness. I know we aren’t just having wonderful dreams from this past month. We’ve been tested:we aren’t crazy!
Now, to get down to business. Cory spent
the evening going through our mountainous pile of mail. Our daughter, Lory, had it all nicely separated out for us. Tomorrow, we’ll get the tables set up for the big dinner on Thursday. Our granddaughter, Rachael, has her birthday tomorrow so we’ll be giving her a big shout out. Happy Birthday, Rachael....one day early! Then we have our various routine doctor and dentist’s appointments. Cory will have several dental appointments because of his latest dental issue which still needs attention. We have a couple get-together’s to attend. We need to gather everything we plan to take back with us for Florida. We need to get ready for Christmas. Our family with gather here again at the old homestead. I promptly need to figure out how to contact my Travel Blog Site in order to get my publishing problem fixed. I’m hoping by using my home computer, I might get through to them. I don’t know but I am remaining positive. Have to.
And here we are, folks. “Home again, Home again, Hooligan.” To each of you, we wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving. We hope you take advantage of this respite and relax and enjoy your holidays. Don’t unpack
completely....we are staying. Our journey is a busy one....going and coming and going again. Relax, you all will get your same assigned seats on our return trip. Just be on time, please!
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