Back In Florida, Reuniting With Routines And Folks

 Hello from Inverness, Florida!

We made it back to what I consider my home base, Inverness, Florida, on October 26.  Since then we have been kind of busy.  I love my Florida routine.  Monday, Wednesday and Friday I have morning exercise with friends and then the gym for weights and PT exercises.  Tuesday and Thursday I ride with the Withlacoochee Bicycle Riders (WBR), and on Saturday I meet WBR friends for breakfast.  I love these folks here.

Unpacking and Reloading

My truck was parked in Steve's Garage without the cap.  The engine started right up and the interior didn't smell musty.  Yay!

My trailer, LILAC also did not have bugs or mice or any moldy smell. The next day I moved into my assigned camping spot at Oasis Mobile Home and RV park about three miles south of downtown Inverness.  It is a small spot and it took me a while to get it into position.  All my neighbors were out trying to help me with directions that didn't make sense.  I finally asked them to relax and go away and let me figure it out.  Ha ha.  

While unpacking and getting set up, I got lots of fire ant bites on my feet and ankles.  These bites blister and then itch like crazy.  A neighbor lent me a can of ant spray.  But a few days later I got bit up again.  Steve lent me a heavy-duty sprayer and the stuff he uses around his home.  I used that.  A week later I got a few bites again.

The park has a new rule, I can not put up my shade/rain canopy.  My space felt much smaller.

***

Before we had left on our trip in May we had removed the cap from Big Blue.

I had stored some curtains and the bedding in Steve's house.  There was a lot of stuff to pack back into LILAC and the truck.

I packed also the bedding from Steve's Trailer that we traveled in.  I took it to a laundromat and washed them.  Now they are ready for May 2025.

I used lots of unscented kitty litter to absorb moisture in the truck and in the trailer. It was still good. I delivered that to the Humane Society.

On our six-month trip we put 15,066 miles on Steve's truck.  At the end of this blog I will list all the places we camped and maybe some of the highlights and links to the blog posts for some of the highlights.  If you have been following my blog it will be a quick re-cap of the traveling you have done with me over the summer.  Thanks again for being there with me/us.

Our first week here, Steve was super busy getting some things done on his house here so he could leave it for a month to go up to New York to see his family again and work on his New York house.

I started riding the trail again and noticed some differences.   

The city bathroom on the trail used to have two stalls and a men's and women's room.  Now they are sex-less/family restrooms and the stalls have been removed.

The remnants of the many trees that fell during the two hurricanes lay along the edges of the trail.  And the Withlacoochee River was so high that the deck and a picnic table were completely submerged at Lake Townsen Park.

Linda is my neighbor at Oasis and was glad to have me back in town so she could have a riding partner.  It is nice to have someone to ride up to our bicycle riders group meeting place in Inverness.

I had really missed my friends Jean and Debra during the summer.  

Jean can no longer chat on the phone due to the muscles in her mouth no longer working.  We had texted each other over the summer.  She has ALS.  But she can still trike and walk and dance and text.  We have been having fun.

Debra and I have met up a few times at Sleepy Hollow (An outdoor biker bar with music on the weekends.)  She got a new knee over the summer and is back to triking in her neighborhood and dancing when she gets the chance.

Another change on the trail is they have done some repaving in places.  And in one of those places they got a little sink hole. 

It took just one night to start feeling cozy and comfortable in LILAC.  She's so perfect for me!

Except for the fire ants...

Is it time to buy a brick and mortar home?

As you know if you have been traveling with me this summer.  I have flip flopped a lot on whether to buy a home or not.  The prices in Windermere, where I used to live, are still way above what I want to pay for a place.  

When I got back I started looking around again.  I looked at a mobile home and it really hit me how much maintenance it would require.  Especially each fall when I returned after traveling.  

A condo in a community like Windermere would be best.  But the prices in Windermere are over my budget.

I found some in the right price range at Inverness Villages where I have looked before.  It will be easy biking to the trail once they finish construction on highway 41 North.

While Steve was in New York, I went to look at a few.  I brought along my friends Susan and Mike.  She was an interior designer and he has done a lot of construction.  They were great to have along.  Mike even thought to bring a plug in light to check the electric sockets.  Susan pointed out the good drainage in the landscaping and the higher quality cabinets and counter tops.

We looked at three first floor condos.  The first one was far better than the other two, which would have required a total remodel.  

I made an offer on unit 158.  They accepted.  I close December 2, 2024.  It comes with furniture!

You can get a virtual tour by clicking that link while it is still up on realtor.com.

Some of my friends are shocked that I am not moving in with Steve.  I assure them it isn't because he isn't the absolute best.  He is!  

If I had been looking for a man (which I don't think I was), and if I had made a list of what I would want in a man.  And if I had let my fantasies soar to the highest heights.  I would be able to check off every single item with Steve.  Every single item and still get some bonus items I didn't think of when making the list.

And if I were afraid that maintaining my independence would in anyway drive him to go looking for someone else to spend his years, I would probably drop some of my independence.  Because he makes me smile... a lot.

My drive to remain independent comes from deep within.  I can try to explain it, but to those who don't have that drive, it wouldn't make any sense anyway.

Some of it, I think, is just in me from childhood.  It might be part of the "born to wander" part of me.

It might come from a few times in my 41-year marriage that I felt trapped or stuck.  Sometimes feeling I had become so dependent and con-joined financially with George.   Dependent.  

Remember the time leading up to George's dementia diagnosis?  Years of his personality change and not knowing it was dementia?  Or the years of the financial roller coaster of being married to an entrepreneur.  It was a wild ride of boom and bust, boom and bust.  It isn't that I didn't have a good and comfortable life.  The business made it possible for me to go to school and be a stay at home mom at times. We had a great life compared to most. It all turned out ok and it isn't that I didn't love George.  I did... most the time.  It is just that I am older now, and I like being on my own sometimes. 

But anyway, if you are curious, Steve is supportive and even excited that I am buying a condo.  It is a good financial move.  

I think I flip flopped a lot because the right place and the right time and the right price had not appeared.  This place feels right.  I am not scared.  I am content.

And don't worry about LILAC.  She has a free storage spot near my condo and I have already booked a couple of Sisters on the Fly camping trips in 2025 for me and LILAC.

***

Steve is still in New York.  He will be home in early December.  I have spent a lot of time at his place while he is gone.  Using his Wifi for all the research and paperwork involved in buying a home.

Last week, I sent Steve this picture of a woman Debra and I saw at Sleepy Hollow.  He texted back, "You have been out purpled!"  LOL.

Political Change

Since I last wrote we had an historic election.  The day before the election, my friend Beth had a few of us Harris supporters over for some soup and Mexican Train.  It was a good distraction.  

As you know, Harris lost the election.  

Now some of those women I played Mexican Train with have agreed to go with me a few times to some City Council or County Commission meetings in January.  We start January 7th. I have imagined we will recruit other women and maybe some men.  We will have matching T-shirts.  We will make waves and stir the pot.  And hopefully be a voice of sanity and facts to counter the lies, the fear mongering, the book-banning, the only-one-religion folks  trying to take over our communities and country.  We'll see where it goes.  Will it fizzle or will it grow?  

Future Travel Plans

In November besides buying a condo, I have been planning some of our travel for 2025.  Want to know where we are going?  No?  Well then, skip the next three or four paragraphs.

In late January we are going to Roatan.  Where is Roatan? Well, I didn't know either.  It is an island off the coast of Honduras.  We are going there for snorkeling with our friends, Mark and Christy.  We traveled with them to St. Croix about the same time last year.

In late April we will fly to the Netherlands where we will do a bike and sail boat tour.  Then we will take a train ride to Berlin for a few days of walking the city.  Then a few days in Prague before we do a self guided bicycle tour from Prague to Dresden.   

In the summer we will spend some time in New York before heading toward Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.  We will spend about a month camping and traveling around Newfoundland.  A fellow bicyclist is telling me it is a lot like Alaska.  Then we will zip down to New York again before heading over to visit my sister in Wisconsin in the fall.  It might get cold before we finally zip back to Florida.

In November 2025 we are going to Costa Rica.  I haven't even started planning that yet.  Is your head spinning yet?  Mine is.  The planning is a lot to keep track of.  I have folders for the Condo purchase, the condo insurance, the condo HOA.  I have a folder for our trip to Europe and one for our camper trip.  

I was feeling pretty satisfied withs my planning abilities when we got back to Florida.  We went to a lot of campgrounds and we never arrived  at a campground where they said they didn't have a reservation for us or room for us.  It went pretty smooth.  We only had one flat tire on the trailer which Steve noticed when we stopped at a wayside.  We lost the awning in a storm in Minnesota and had a little leak that he was able to fix.  So it was a great first long trip for us.

AND we got along in that 20 foot trailer for the whole dang time!  The future is bright!

Below is a list of places we camped just for grins and giggles.  But you don't need to see that unless you are curious.  Next time I write to you I will own a condo and have more pictures.

***

5/4/24  Moonshine RV, Fort White, FL with Mark and Christy.

5/6/24 Pasttime RV, Okefenokee Swamp, GA where we kayaked among roaring gators and floated over a few.

5/12/24 Myrtle Beach State Park, NC where we triked through town and I cut Steve's hair for the first time.

5/16/24 OBX Campground, Outer Banks of North Carolina.  We rode 71 miles one day, saw where the Wright brothers had their first flight, and got our own flight at Kitty Hawk Kites.

5/19/24 Henlopen State Park, Lewes Delaware.  We flipped horseshoe crabs and visited the Peanut Butter Store!

Orgasmic Peanut Butter Cannoli

Oh!  And we rode our bikes back from dinner and music when the sun was setting and the moon was rising.

5/27/24 Steve's House near Lake George, New York.  There we visited his family and he worked on his home and the camper.

And Steve took me to a Bonnie Raitt Concert at the Palace in Albany!

5/30/24 I went by myself to an Airbnb near Stowe, VT.  There, by chance, I ran into my friend and former neighbor's sister who volunteers at the historical museum.  Of course I visited Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Factory.

6/3/24 Back at Steve's NY house.  Steve worked on adding an extension to the counter next to the sink in the camper.  It came in very handy.  

6/7/24 Four Mile Creek Campground, Youngstown, NY.  We rode the Niagra Trail on the Canadian side.

6/9/24 Our friends, Debbie and Jim, Waterford, Michigan.  There we met up with two more of Steve's Florida neighbors and friends, Christy and Mark.  We had a fun time just hanging out together.

6/10/24 Montague Trailway Campground, Montague, Michigan where we met up with eight Florida biking friends to ride the trail.

6/14/24 End of the Road Winery in Germfast, Michigan, a Harvest Host.

6/15/24 West Bay Campground, Rhinelander, WI where we visited my sister Mary and brother in law Dave.  There we also went to Kovac Planetarium and were blown away by it. I caught a cold. Steve put together a new compost bin for Mary, and Mary and I attended a solstice party.

6/27/24 Indian Point Campground, Duluth, MN.  We biked the Munger trail.

6/29/24 Grand Marais Campground, Grand Marais, Minnesota.  Loved this campground close to lake Superior and right in town. We walked to the grocery store, shops and restaurants.  

7/1/24 Rockwood Outfitters Bunk House on the Gunflint Trail in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota.  This was the staging point for our three night canoe trip into the boundary waters where we were grateful every day for our mosquito head nets and our backpack meals.  Just add boiling water.

7/8/24 Royal Oaks RV, Bemidji, Minnesota where we met up with Florida friends Ann and Fred and rode the Paul Bunyon Trail.

7/12/24 Sinclaire Lewis Campground, Sauk Center, MN.  Here we dashed for the storm shelter (the first we had seen in our travels) after a storm grabbed hold of the awning on the camper, tore it and bend the arms.  That same night a tornado tore through Janesville, WI where trees fell on my son's house while they took shelter in their basement.

7/15/24 Palisades State Park, South Dakota.  On the way we saw a sign for Pipestone National Monument and turned in.  What an interesting stop full of beautiful wildflowers, an original prairie!  I bought earrings with little pipestone beads.

7/16/24 The Tractor Museum, Kimball, SD is a Harvest Host.  We visited the Corn Palace.

7/17/24 Cedar Pass Campground, Interior, SD in the heart of the Badlands National Park.  This was an awesome stay.  We saw big horned sheep and watched anthropologists brush off ancient bones recently discovered.

7/20/24 Stockade North Campground, Custer State Park.  One day we drove to Hot Springs where there was an awesome in situ dig of mammoth bones where there had been a steep slippery sloped sink hole back in the mammoth and giant sloth days. We also drove the wildlife loop in Custer Park.  Once we were surrounded by wild buffalo during mating season.

7/24/24 Travelodge, Edgemont, SD to start our bike tour from one end of the Michelson Trail to the other.  Steve asked me how I manage to plan our bike tours for the hottest days of the year.  Starting our tour on a 107 degree day.

7/25/24 Plenty Star Ranch was our first stop on our tour. 

7/26/24 Super 8, Hill City, SD, On the way we visited the Crazy Horse Memorial.

7/27/24 Super 8, Deadwood, SD  Motel was expensive.  The next day we played tourist in Deadwood.  We did a bus tour and toured a gold mine that wasn't really a gold mine. Then drove back to our trailer in Custer.

7/31/24 Fort Casper Campground, Casper, Wyoming. We visited the museum where I learned that JC Penny started in Casper, and that Wyoming was the first state to give women the vote in 1869.

8/2/24 Fireside Resort RV, Jackson, WY near the Teton's National Park where we kayaked two quiet lakes, String and Leighy.  It was lovely.  And we did a float trip and passed two young grizzly bears on the shore.

8/5/24 Rivers Fork Lodge Riverfront RV, North Fork, ID.  Our campsite was right on the river and the smoke from forest fires was thick.

8/7/24 Crystal Gold Mine Campground, Kellogg, Idaho.  We rode the Couer d'Lene trail and the Hiawatha Trail, saw a lot of moose, and enjoyed a visit from Steve's daughter and her boyfriend.  We had a real adventure on an ATV.

8/18/24 Regency Park RV, Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada.

8/21/24 Tunnel Mountain Village, Banff, Alberta, Canada.  Where we hiked nine miles with a bad back and didn't regret it.

8/28/24 Canyon Hot Springs near Revelstoke, BC. where we visited a historic ski jump.

9/1/24 Osoyoos Lake Veterans Memorial Campground, Oroville, Washington.

9/4/24 Lake Wenachee, near Leavenworth, WA the Bavarian style town.

9/6/24 Horn Rapids RV, Richland, WA where we toured the site for making the fuel for the first Atomic Bomb, Hanford.

9/7/24 Wallowa Lake State Park, Oregon.

9/10/24 Bruneau Dunes State Park, Idaho where we hiked up the largest Dune in the United States.

9/14/24 KOA Brigham, Utah.  We rode our trikes to the great Salt Lake.

9/17/24 Fruita Campground, Capital Reef National Park, Utah.

9/20/24 Ruby's Inn and RV, Bryce Canyon, Utah.

9/24/24 Mather Campground, Grand Canyon National Park.

9/26/24 Hacienda Solano Resort, Chandler, AZ where we melted our electric cord trying to keep cool in 114 degree heat... and we visited with my brother and his wife.

9/29/24 Cosmic Campground, New Mexico, we set our alarm for when the clouds cleared to get a good view of the Milky Way.

9/30/24 Gila Hotspirngs Ranch, Silver City, New Mexico we got to walk through the home of ancient cave dwellers.

10/2/24 Hacienda RV Park, Las Cruces, New Mexico.  We visited White Sands National Monument, the Rocket Museum, and the Las Cruces Pride Parade.

10/6/24 Carlsbad RV Park, Carlsbad, New Mexico, Carlsbad Caverns were worth visiting both days we were in the area.  Yes, we watched the thousands for bats fly out of the cave.

10/9/24 San Angelo State Park, Texas.  Steve replaced the screen door knob that had started to malfunction.  I went to the gym and blogged.

10/11/24 McKinnley Falls State Park, Austin, Texas we got to see the band Trout Fishing in America at the Best Little Church Bar in Texas, The 04 Center.  We made my Florida friend Regis envious (He's a big fan.)

 10/13/24 The Holiday Inn Express, South Austin, Texas is where we went to escape the heat for a night.  We went to an awesome Mediteranian buffet nearby for dinner.

10/14/24 The Pickled Pelican RV, Holly Beach, Louisiana.  We vowed to get back there someday.  A really quiet beach where we found lots of sea glass.

10/15/24 Fontainebleau State Park, St Tammany Parish, Louisiana we biked the Tammany Trail and spent two days wandering through the downtown and French quarter and the Aquarium/Insectarium of New Orleans.

10/18/24 Gulf Shores State Park, Gulf Shores, Alabama where there were lots of trails to explore by bicycle.  

10/22/24 St Andrews State Park, Panama City, Florida. 

10/23/24 St George State Park, St. George Island, Florida we kayaked, visited an oyster bar where they were having a costume contest for Halloween.  What a hoot!

10/26/24 We arrived home to Steve's.

Thanks for trippin' with us!  It was a blast!

Th th that's all, folks!