Lake Wales, FL – Dec 2025

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from here at the home base.  Time has absolutely flown by since I’ve returned here to Lake Wales.  Catching up with doc appointments, re-engaging with my technology committee duties here in the community, and spending time with family and friends has all but consumed most of my spare time.  Then throw in a last minute event that threatens the quiet and peaceful lifestyle that we all enjoy here in Saddlebag, and you have the makings of chaos.  All the details follow in this edition of the Luv2RV blog.

Home Base Happenings

Returning back to the home base following a 5 or 6 month journey away, always brings with it lots of projects that need attention.  Some mandatory like yard weeding, tree trimming, shed cleanup, and the like, while others are optional and generally involve spending money to make overall improvements.  One such project that has been on my list for a couple of years now was to do some sort of edging around all my mulched islands around the yard.  The absence of a barrier seems to allow for excessive growth of weeds from the grassy area up and into the mulch beds – causing the need for lots of weeding when I get back in the fall.  I looked around Home Depot and Lowes to see their various offerings – mostly of the stake something in the ground variety.  Frankly, I didn’t like any of them.  A similar search through Amazon pretty much netted the same results.  I just didn’t like any of it.  When I searched on FB Marketplace to see what might be out there, I ran across a couple of postings that offered concrete edging.  I’d seen that in several places here in the community, and it looks really nice.  Being concrete, it should have a good long lifespan too.  The ads quoted pricing starting at around $8 per foot.  I did a really rough pacing off of my four areas and came up with about 200 feet.  So I figured all in with install and taxes, I’d probably be in the area of about $2,000 for the job.  So I contacted each of the two vendors expressing my interest, sending them current condition photos (at left) and asking for more details.  One responded virtually immediately, sent me photos of his prior work, color and stamp style samples, and an offer to come out and measure for a formal quote.  A couple days later, he came out, measured just over 160 feet (my pacing was obviously not accurate), and quoted me a price well within the budget.  So, I awarded the job to him, and we settled on an install early the following week.  Later that day, I had heard back from the other person I reached out to – but told him he was too late and that the job had already been contracted.  Snooze, you lose!

I was really intrigued with how this whole process worked.  They first used a sort of tiller machine to dig a trench around all the four ares to be edged.  This got rid of the grass and created a nice flat base on which to lay the concrete edging.  Next they mixed bags of concrete, coloring, and water to form a doughy like mix.  That was then shoveled into the hopper of a custom machine that forms and pushes the concrete edging a few inches at a time.  Once it is layed, they use a trowel to finish the form and smooth things out, then using a custom tool, they stamp the concrete to match your selected pattern. It was absolutely fascinating to watch!  I took lots of pictures and captured some video and created a short montage of the entire process.  Hope you enjoy it!

So the end of last month was Thanksgiving, and again this year, my brother Gerry came down for a few days and joined me for a Saddlebag Thanksgiving dinner.  They changed things up a bit this year and used and cooked full turkeys instead of the pre-processed turkey breasts.  That, along with the mashed potatoes, yams, green beans, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie for dessert, it was quite the feast!  Also we had a break in the weather so we moved the entertainment to the outdoors with a football game and a fire.  It was a great night!  Unfortunatly, we had endured weeks of dry weather and as a result there was a wood burning fire ban at the time.  Fortunately, I have the gas firepit as a backup so that is what we used.  He and I also got together a few weeks later down at brother Don’s house, checking out the various restaurant options on the island.  For this particular night out (at left, bottom), we headed down to the good old neighborhood restaurant called Archies.  Back in Nov, all the brothers, better-halfs, and cousin Louise  had all gotten together for a nice lunch out.  It was a lot of fun and great to see everyone once again.  I’m looking forward to catching up with other family and friends in the area during my winter hibernation here in glorious and warm central Florida.

Community Updates

Well, besides things happening here at the home base, there have been a few things going on within the community.  First up, an amazing achievement that happend right here in Lake Wales and the small but mighty local airport.  There were over 130 jumpers from 20 countries that gathered in the little town of Lake Wales in an attempt to break the world record for largest canopy formation.  In fact, Saddlebag’s very own resident and photographer extraordinaire Michael Tomaselli was one of the jumpers, who shot video and took many of these amazing photographs.  You can see his amazing video of the record breaking event HERE.  The jumpers spent several mornings doing jumps, practicing for the grand finale record breaking attempt.  They achieved that new record on the final day when 104 of the skydivers joined to create this amazing formation.  Quite the achievement, and certainly even more special that our little town of Lake Wales was host to this amazing event.  A news article with more details of this event can be found HERE.  Lastly, a website with all the details of the jump along with more photos and video can be found HERE. Congratulations to the entire international team for this amazing record-breaking event!

So now, where to begin on this next community happening.  It was the day before Thanksgiving, most folks were in final preparation to celebrate with family and friends – some cooking elaborate meals, while others availed themselves of a fully prepared meal absent of all the prep work and cleanup afterwards (that was me).  I beliieve it was early afternoon on this Thanksgiving eve when the word was starting to get out about a hearing happening just 6 days later regarding a proposal to create an 850 acre sand mine that included land immediately adjacent to our community.  We did not receive the 20-day notice as required by county law.  It would appear by the short notice that they were trying to sneak in the announcement during a 4-day h0liday weekend presumably hoping few people will notice.  Well, our community DID notice, and they took immediate action.  A group was formed between Board members and community residents to quickly build up a defense to this audacious plan.  Petitions were started, and research began as to to the type of mine being proposed and its potential environmental, health, and property value impacts.  It was a herculean effort causing holiday disruptions to many people.  The communications team made quick business with getting the word out, and all the board members and several residents began creating their 3-minute speeches of opposition to present at the hearing.  100 t-shirts were quickly ordered that said Protect Saddlebag, and two buses were chartered to cary the the force that would be Saddlebag Strong to the hearing.  For my part, I created a short 55 second video showcasing the wonderful community that is Saddlebag, with messages of opposition to the proposed mine – which you can view HERE.  I stood before the commission and intruduced and played the video for them. So we showed up in mass, as best prepared as we could given the rediculously short notice, and made our discontent with the plan well known to the board of planning commissioners.  This plan is a 65 year venture, with revenue estimated to be $30M per year.  So needless to say, they were very well funded and this was clearly a David vs Goliath challenge.  But never underestimate a gathering of grouchy seniors who came to oppose this crazy venture.  As amazing as it was, we actually prevailed in defeating the proposal with the planning commission voting 5-2 against the proposal.  Wahoo!  What an amazing, though short lived victory.  The sand mine group had seven days to appeal, and that has already since been filed.  So, clearly, this is not over by a long shot.  The followup appeals hearing has not yet been scheduled, but we anticipate it to be sometime in Feb or Mar.  As you might imagine, a large group of folks here are full speed ahead in developing the strategy to defeat this once again.  But alas, this will definitely be an uphill battle.  The local news media has been an outstanding supporter, coming out to our community to learn about and broadcast our concerns.  They were even at the hearing as well.  Here are a couple of links to these local Florida news stations that were following this story:

• WFLA NBC 8
• WTVT Fox 13

Other Stuff

You all know that I am a huge fan, and regular user and contributor to the app call Roadside America.  As of this writing, I’ve visited 1,101 Roadside attractions, and have contributed pictures and/or comments to 291 of those.  So anyway, the Roadside group does know who I am.  Well, as it turns out, that was going to be a huge benefit to me.  I received an email a couple of weeks ago basically asking me given my obvious enjoyment with Roadside, would I be interested in beta testing a new app they are currently working on.  Of course being the geek that I am, and the big Roadside fan, it was an easy decision to participate in their testing.  Oh, and one other little tidbit that helped push me over was that the new app was called Roadside 66 – a dedicated app to all things Route 66.  How great is that!  Rt 66 is my destination for next year’s RV adventure.  It would appear that Roadside is developing an app similar to their primary one, but instead focusing all the entries to interesting things to see all along Rt 66.  Talk about perfect timing!  I suspect they are doing this now since next year will be the 100th anniversary of Rt 66, and I imagine they are anticipating lots of folks exploring that route next year.  So anyway, Ive got the beta app loaded and I’ve been going through it checking out all the things to see.  It’s going to be a tremendous asset and guide for my journey next year.  Thanks Roadside for inviting me to be a beta tester, and for creating such a perfect and timely app!

Final Thoughts

Well, I wanted to get this blog edition finished and published before Christmas.  Since today is Christmas eve and I’m putting the final touches on the writing and editing, it’s looking like I will get this out there in time.  Hard to believe that I’ve already been back here in Florida for two whole months!  Time certainly does fly when you are having fun.  I’ve been extremely busy these past several weeks with community events, fighting mining companies, and spending time with family.  So as they say, never a dull moment!  I do want to take this opportunity to wish all my friends and family a very Merry Christmas, and a happy and healthy New Year.  I’ll be back next month with my end of year wrap up, and hopefully an early glimpse of the planning progress for next years RV adventure.  So, till next month, be well and safe travels!

I only show a sampling of my adventure pictures here in the blog, and do so mostly in collage format for brevity and ease of reading. If you want to view an album containing individual full fidelity and hi-res images of all my travel pictures related to this specific blog, click the image below. Enjoy!