Life Renewed

This past week has been all about remembering.   The last year, the changes we’ve been through, where we’ve been, where we’ve discussed going, what our goals were.   It’s always good to re-evaluate your life, your vision, your outlook on life, and most importantly, your memories.   Sometimes memories, when they present some unpleasant recollections, it can be tough to brush away the cobwebs to find the good things that happened.   And all of the good gets blinded by a desire to avoid touching those icky cobwebs in the corner of your mind. Well, this past week was time for a major sweeping out of the neurons in search of happiness that existed so long ago.   The cause for this hippocampus housekeeping was my mother’s death.   Our relationship was not always warm and fuzzy.   It could be downright difficult at times.   But I always knew that she loved me, and I loved her.   In searching for a way to express just what I’ve been going th...

At long last, we are settled into our winter landing place – a comfortable campground near The House of Mouse, in Davenport, FL.   It’s a nice mix of retirees who are either snowbirds or living here year-round.   Our friends from church, Donna and Joe, have been here for the past 3+ years, so we were welcomed with open arms.   Not just by them, but everyone around.   What a great feeling, after pretty much keeping to ourselves since we set off on this RVing journey.   This is the first place where folks have been so warm and friendly. Of course, upon our arrival, we had quite the audience.   Folks were coming by to say hello, but mostly to watch the “show” – Tim backing all 45 feet of rig into the campsite, which the campground owner was quite particular about placement of said 45 feet of rig.   We’re here for   5 months, so he INSISTED that we were situated nice and neat and tidy and STRAIGHT on the site!   What a riot that was! ...

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” After we left Gettysburg, we started our first shoulder season travel blitz.   We spent three nights in Ohio, south of Cleveland.   It was a pretty drab stay, since the weather was mostly overcast, but also because the campground was getting ready to close for the season, so it was virtually empty.   Only a handful of campers were there, and most were just stopping for the night.   We spent our first day at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, which was definitely a shrine to the past and present of the sport.   It was interesting, but as with tickets to a football game, the entrance fee was overpriced for what was there and for the actual size of the museum (much smaller than I would have expected).   The second day we drove to Cleveland to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.   All things considered, I would definitely want to go back to visi...

Our two weeks in Gettysburg are coming to an end.   It’s been quite a whirlwind, and we definitely needed our two rest days (Friday and Saturday) to take a mental health break.   The training courses didn’t go exactly the way we expected………. The first week was the RV maintenance portion of the two courses.   Tim had previously taken the online version of it and passed the test, thus ensuring his placement in the RV inspector course for week two.   It was extremely helpful, in that all the areas he viewed in the online course could now be better digested as a hands-on learning experience.   This was all pretty much as we expected it to go.   The unexpected portion was the fact that the wives were expected to participate each day for the first two hours.    That portion was devoted to developing a business, and learning how to run it – something we are quite well-versed in doing after 14 years in our past life.   Nevertheless, it was h...