It's fairly quiet where we're staying and we have very few visitors. There is a hawk that stays around here and we see it hunting and one morning it caught a small snake. We did get this photo of the eagle sitting on one of the lamp posts here.
This morning we had a pair of sandhill cranes walking around looking for food and they eventually came close to the RV.
One of them actually walked across our patio mat.
Sandhill cranes are quite large, can live up to 20 years and stay with the same mate for years. I don't know which was the female and which was the male since their markings are identical.
Earlier this month Mike had taken a photo of the RV with his cell phone showing our solar panels tilted up. I thought I would include that photo today.
This morning after breakfast we drove over to Tampa to visit the RV Super Show that is held at the Florida State Fairgrounds. This is not our first visit to the Tampa RV Super Show. Our first time was several years ago before we had our Adventurer and we were still deciding what type of RV we wanted. We've been to the Super Show a couple of times since then.
We paid a $5 parking fee when we entered the fairgrounds gate. We were directed around to the south side of the fairgrounds and parked the car. We brought Tinker with us and he was ready to go exploring. I had downloaded and printed (a $1 discount coupon for the RV show, so we paid $9 each for admittance.
We walked through the vendors' area and then walked outside to look at some RVs. We're not in the market for a new one, we just like to see what the new models look like and see what new features the manufacturers are coming out with. We picked up some brochures of some of the RVs we looked at.
We took turns looking inside the RVs since we had Tinker with us and he can't go in the RVs. We did fill out a survey at the Winnebago display. The survey was about the things you like in your Winnebago/Itasca RV and what things would you change.
We bought a couple of Philly Steak sandwiches and soft drinks ($19) and found a picnic table where we sit and eat lunch.
We looked around some more before we headed back to where we had parked the car. Tinker had a good time walking around and seeing some of the other dogs that were at the RV show. He slept most of the 63 miles back to Kissimmee.
We've been out here on Poinciana Blvd for a few days and Mike took some photos of the RV this afternoon.
We've parked the RV in an area where the ground is solid and level (some of the ground here is too soft to park the RV on).
We have seen a few deer here and Mike took a photo of this one a couple of days ago.
We spent the morning getting the RV ready for our move this afternoon. This morning Mike took photos of our RV parked at my brother's house.
After eating lunch, Mike drove the RV out to my brother's property on Poinciana Blvd and I followed in the car. On the way out to Poinciana Blvd Mike stopped at a 7-11 to get gas in the RV ($3.299 a gal).
We had purchased a 50-amp electric box some time ago and had a local electrician install the box and connect it to the existing electric service on the property earlier this week. Since there were already water and sewer connections where we are going to park the RV, all we needed was the electric box installed.
After setting up the RV, we had dinner before going back over to my brother's house to celebrate his 85th birthday and our 44th wedding anniversary. My niece Kathy and her family were there and my nephew David.
Here is a photo of our Christmas tree decorated with the ornaments I bought on our trip this year - most of them are from the places we visited in Alaska.
Fletcher drove up from Ft. Lauderdale to spend the Christmas weekend with us. It's been a long time since we were together for Christmas and it is great to have him here.
My niece, Christa, stopped by the RV to see us before she visited with her grandparents.
We had Christmas dinner at my brother's house this afternoon. We didn't have far to go since we are parked in their yard. My niece Kathy and her family joined us for dinner. We had such a good time that we forgot to take any photos today of all of us together.
It's been about 5 years since we had spend Christmas with my brother and family and it was really nice for us to be together.
While we were in Dothan, we had our regular checkups with our doctor and dentist. We both had our eyes checked at our optometrist and I got new glasses. I found out that I have cataracts and that one of Mike's cataracts may be growing back and that we both needed to be re-examined in about 4 months. We've already made appointments at the opthamologist here in Dothan for April.
On the way up to Canada this year a rock hit the windshield on the Vue and caused a large crack. We normally drive with a cover over the windshield, but the wind was blowing so hard that day that we had to take the cover off. We decided to wait & get the windshield replaced when we got back to Dothan. So last month we had Auto Glass Medic come out and install a new windshield.
We had a great time visiting with our friends Glenda & W.T. at The Willows. W.T. & Glenda invited us to their house for Thanksgiving dinner. Glenda's son, Mike, joined us for dinner. We all had a good time and ate too much.
We did get together for dinner with our friends from Ozark, Mike and Gayle. I guess I wrote down the wrong date on my calendar and we got a call from them one night wanting to know where we were. We were supposed to meet at Golden Corral for dinner. Mike & Gayle came over after dinner for a visit. We did get together for dinner a few weeks later.
On December 23 we said goodbye to Glenda and W.T. and headed south to Kissimmee, FL.
We took our usual route down US 231 to I-10 east and then south on I-75 to the Florida Turnpike. We left Dothan a little after 9 a.m. and arrived at Sue's brother's house a little after 7 p.m. after driving 379 miles.
Since we had filled the gas tank in the RV before we stayed at The Willows, we didn't have to get gas until we got to Wildwood before we got on the turnpike. We stopped at a Pilot station and got 45.75 gallons at $3.169 a gallon. The toll on the turnpike for the RV and car came to $10.50.
We slept in this morning, so we left the Supercenter just before 11:00 and drove south on I-65. We stopped at the Flying J at Exit 264 to get gas (29 gal @ $3.179 gal). We decided to have a late breakfast at the Denney's there.
Mike ordered their Lumberjack Slam (pancakes, ham, bacon, sausage, eggs, hash browns and toast) and I had the Ultimate Omelette with hash browns and toast. We were back on the road by noon.
We stopped at the Sam's Club at 4:00 in Dothan to fill up the RV gas tank one last time (27.38 gal @ $3.139 gal) before we go to The Willows RV Lots for the winter.
We arrived here at The Willows at 4:45. The owner and our friend, W. T., helped Mike with setting up the RV in our site. We are in site F which is the one we've stayed in before.
It is so good to see W. T. and Glenda, his wife, again. We had a great trip this year, but it will be nice to stay put for a while.
I don't have any photos to post for today's travels because it was raining a good part of today. It was 214 miles from Gardendale to The Willows.
We will be spending the winter here in Dothan. It is time for our annual doctors and dentist visits and we both need to have an eye exam. So the first thing on our agenda will be to make the appointments with our doctors.
We need to have the windshield replaced on the Saturn Vue and Mike is going to be working on removing the tar on the RV and car that we drove through on our trip down to Haines, AK.
