On The Road Again

Well, we did end up taking the RV to Baltimore for Ellyn's surgery (see the previous append) and we are now staying at the Bay Harbor RV Park in Abingdon, MD, about 30 minutes from the Johns Hopkins Medical Center where Ellyn had the surgery done on Wednesday. It has been rather cold and windy but, since we settled on an offer on our house on Tuesday, we decided to hang out here for one more day before heading back to Danbury. The park is right on the Bush River, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay, and is nice and quiet, has wi-fi and cable TV, so Ellyn has been comfortable here resting her eyes and recovering.

We walked around the park a bit yesterday, until the wind came up and forced us back inside. It is still pretty windy today and only a few degrees above freezing. This morning the outside water hose was frozen up. I think I will have to leave the water on in one of the sinks to try to prevent it happening again. 

Today we went to Lutherville-Timonium to the Maryland State Fairgrounds where they were having an RV show. Although we are now happy RV owners, we still like to look at other rigs and see what is new or different. But now we may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. If all goes well, we will be closing on the house by the end of March and then we will be totally free. Ellyn will have to come back here for a follow up appointment but we will have our kayaks then and maybe the weather will be nice enough to be able to do some paddling.

Back in Danbury

We're back in Danbury, now...well, at least for a few days. Happily, we had a very uneventful drive all the way back from FL - in 3 days including an overnight stop at Ellyn's brother's and sister's-in-law home. We're catching up with friends and errands here and will be leaving again on Monday or Tuesday for us to travel to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore for Ellyn's eye surgery. She's having eye muscle surgery on her strabismus. Here's more information that you would ever want to know about the surgery http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/wilmer/pdfs/STEDLG.pdf and the renowned Dr. Guyton, who will be performing the surgery http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/wilmer/employees/cvs/Guyton.html We're currently leaning towards traveling by car and staying in a motel because there aren't any year round campgrounds that are close enough to Johns Hopkins.

Enough Already

This is Ellyn and I'm going to write this one in the first person - I'm a bit bummed out today. It was 24F when I awoke this morning to go to a 8am Rally speaker IN A TENT. I know that's not as cold as it's been in the NE but we are IN FLORIDA and we are at a rally where we are supposed to be spending time OUTSIDE and in TENTS. In my bummed feeling this morning, I feel like this cold weather stole our last week in Florida. It's supposed to warm up to 65F this afternoon and the 70's tomorrow but we start home the day after that so this was our last week. As the saying goes...Everybody talks about the weather but nobody can do anything about it. By the way, there was frost everywhere this morning. In Florida. Hummmphf!

The good news is that in 20minutes, that I'm going to join with some other members of the Chai Chapter of the RV club to PLAY MAJ JONGG....that should cheer me up even if I don't win!

Fort de Soto County Park

This was our last park stop before the FMCA Rally. The park is a series of islands or "keys" as they are called in Florida. The camping area is very nice and the spaces are quite wide and long. We were able to get the RV in and out pretty easily.

The first evening it was very clear so we went out on one of the fishing piers to watch the sunset. They keep the piers open after dark for fishing but the rest of the park is closed. Before it got very dark, we went by the kayak and canoe rental area to check out the ease of launching our own. A park ranger came by when we were leaving to see what we were up to. Guess we made him nervous.

The next day we went to the far end of the park to walk the nature trail. This was to let the day warm up a bit before we went kayaking. It was a bit disappointing because there were no animals or birds to be seen. We cut it short and went back to the picnic area for lunch. At least we did see some birds there as well as some noisy fishermen.

So, we went to launch into the bay. It was still a quit cool and breezy but the sun was bright and warm. We saw a woman with a small dog with a PFD on. Ellyn chased her down for a picture and chatted with her for a while. The woman also took our picture before we parted ways. At one point we saw some other kayakers watching an area of the bay intently. When we got close, several dolphins broke the surface. We had not expected that. One of the kayakers told us they had also seen a manatee in there before.

We finished up, went back to the RV for a nap, and then out to dinner. It was Super Bowl Sunday and we were close to Tampa. Little traffic at that time. We tried to go to a Japanese restaurant but it was closed. We did find another place open but we were the only customers and the sushi chefs were watching the game.