Lake Wales, FL – Nov 2024

Life is grand here at the FL Home Base. The weather has been fantastic, and the snowbirds are returning making the community bustling again. I’ve resumed my Audio/Video tech duties, in addition to working on phase two enhancements to the community website. It truly is wonderful to slow down, relax, and enjoy the company of friends and family.  2024 was a great travel experience that allowed me to check off several more places on my bucket list. A recap of this year’s travel, along with updates from here at the home base follows. Enjoy!  P.S.  In case anyone is interested, the vacant RV lot across the street and diagonal from me recently went up for sale.  PM me for details if you’d like more information.

2024 is a Wrap

What a year it was!  I towed the RV just over 8,100 miles this year passing through 15 states and making 43 stops along the way.  If you add day trips and site seeing while I was stopped, my grand total distance driven would certainly approach 10,000 miles.  I spent just under $10k in campground fees on this journey, and just over $4,500 in fuel.  However, I was plagued with lots of maintenance and repair costs this year which so far has totaled to just over $20k – the highest expense of all in 2024 and the highest ever in this category.  Ouch!  I sure hope the investments I made in repairs this year will carry me to several trouble free years ahead.  This year’s path is shown in the top picture at left.  This is my 7th year of full time RV travel, and the map at bottom left reflects all the routes I’ve taken each year thus far.  I also updated the animated travel path video to include this year’s trip, and present it here for your viewing pleasure.

I managed to check off several items from my list this year – both National Park visits and state visits.  Unfortunately, as of the time of this blog, I was not able to locate the state stickers or blue stars I use to update these two collections.  It’s beyond me how I manage to misplace things within the limited confines of a 330 sq/ft home!  Anyway, I had to regress to my youth and simply color in the places I visited this year (digitally of course). I’ll eventually find the stickers and stars and will update the actual maps then.  So, for states visited this year, I checked off Missouri, Montana, Idaho, and Nevada.  With the exception of a few missed interior and east coast states here and there, that pretty much leaves the farthest west states of Washington, Oregon, and California to complete – which are on my target for 2025.  I think I’m also going to try and swing through Wisconsin and Minnesota next year so that I can check those off the list as well.

I also checked off five additional National Park visits in 2024.   These included Big Bend, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier, and Death Valley.  Of these five, I had only been to one (Yellowstone) in the past, so most of this year’s National Park visits were for the first time.  Though not tracked in the same way, I also visited another NPS landmarks in 2024 –  specifically Casa Grande National Monument in Arizona.  So, I made pretty good progress in seeing as many National Parks as I can.  Next year, as I travel through Washington State, Oregon, and Northern California, I should be checking off upwards of a dozen more visits.

Lake Wales, FL

I’ve gotten back into the swing of things since I’ve been back here to the Home Base.  While I certainly have slowed down my traveling pace, I have continued to keep somewhat busy.  First up, my nephew Jeff and his family made a rare appearance in Florida taking his boys to Disney.  While he was here, he was kind enough to treat his dad and uncles to a marvelous dinner at the California Grill – the restaurant located in the top floor of the Disney property known as the Contemporary.  Wow – the meals were exquisite and the views out over the rest of Disney were nothing short of  magical.  We were even treated to a 15-20 minute fireworks show. Thanks Jeff and Angela and family for a wonderful visit and fabulous meal.

Next up, my brother Gerry came down for a visit for a few days.  His primary purpose for the visit was to go to the Lake Wales Little Theater for the production of “The Bold, the Young, and the Murdered”.  It was the comedy story of an old  television soap opera that was having failing ratings, and the ensuing cast member murders that would hopefully revive it.  It was a very well done who-done-it that left you hanging until the very end.  Well done cast!

As it would happen, the Cypress Gargens Waterski Team was having a benefit performance on Saturday to help raise funds for one of the skiers that had gotten injured.  Though I’ve seen the ski team perform several times, it would appear my brother Gerry had not.  So, I suggested we grab some camping chairs and head on down lakeside to Winter Haven to watch them perform.  As always, they delivered an excellent show.  It’s amazing that the ski team is made up of people ranging in age from 6 or 7, all the way up to seniors, and everything in between.  They really are a group of skilled performers, and they do put on a terrific show.  Once again, I created a little video made up of still pictures and video I took at the show.  Hope you enjoy it!

As is often the case, Gerry and I also found time to enjoy some local restaurants.  We checked out a new to us BBQ place that turned out to be pretty good, while also returning to a prior favorite Italian place.  There, just as we began eating our food, a woman came by that I thought to be associated with the restaurant, asking how we liked our food.  However, it soon became apparent that she was not affiliated with the place, but rather was herself a patron there to order and pickup a couple meals to go.  She ended up sitting down with us at the table, ordered a drink, and chatted us up during our entire meal.  Not only that, she helped herself to tasting our leftovers, and even went so far as to ask the waitress if she could box up our leftovers for her to take home.  As luck would have it, the waitress misunderstood her, and simply tossed our food away.  To say this encounter was a bit on the strange side would definitely be an understatement.  She was certainly pleasant enough and was a great conversationalist.  It might be that she was there looking to pick up one of us, but sadly for her, neither one of us were having any of it.  Oh well, chock one up for the odd and funny!

Back around the homestead I enjoyed reconnecting with some community friends.  Fellow Tech Committee member extraordinaire Gordon and his wife Joan came by for a nighttime visit around the campfire.  Gordon also brought and introduced me to his daughter Dani who was visiting from California.  We all enjoyed a nice warm evening fire while chatting and catching up over summer activities.  Nice to have met you Dani, and thanks Gordon and Joan for a terrific evening.

In other local happenings, we had the grand opening of Ollies just a couple of weeks ago.  For those who may not be familiar with the chain, Ollies is a discount store that mostly carries surplus or close-out items.  There was an Ollies just a couple miles from me back when I lived in Maryland, and I was a big fan and frequent shopper.  I guess I’m just drawn to these types of discount stores.  Even as a kid growing up in New Hampshire, there was a place called Johnny Zyla’s that most considered a junk store, but I found it fascinating and filled with cheap treasures.  Oh well, I guess that’s probably why I enjoy flea markets and yard sales too.  It’s the thrill of the hunt, and the art of the deal.  Also of interest to me locally is it would appear that a Panera Bread is currently under construction out on Rt 27 here in Lake Wales.  I love Panera, so I’m looking forward to this opening – said to be scheduled for sometime mid January 2025.

Last up to report on is an update on our hurricane cleanup, and to correct a misstatement I made in the last edition of the Blog.  As for cleanup, as noted prior, most of the effort here was to collect and dispose of tree limbs, palm frowns, and similar debris that were spread all through the community.  The maintenance staff did a great job collecting and consolidating all this material into large piles down by the golf range.  The intent was to then have this material hauled away.  Well, apparently they got estimates in the 8-10 thousand dollar range to do the removal.  Well, someone on the team got the idea of just burning the stuff rather than hauling it away.  A few hundred dollars later for a burn permit, and the debris was set on fire in a controlled burn.  It was fun to watch, and the savings to our budget was most noteworthy.  Well done team!

Lastly, I shared pictures in the last blog of orange trees pulled up from the ground and burned to clear out an entire grove that was adjacent to the entrance to the community.  Now that all the work is done, this is what the area looks like now.  I was under the impression that this clear out was for a housing development that was to be built in this area.  Well, thankfully, I was wrong.  This area is zoned agriculture, and no change to that zoning has been requested nor approved.  It turns out the farmer who owns this particular tract of land wanted to clear out the under performing and under desired oranges, and will in-turn replant some other crop within this field.  Rumor is that it will become a watermelon field.  I must say, I never had the desire to snatch an orange from these trees in the past, but I sure might be inclined to sneak a watermelon on occasion. Yummy!  Anyway, I’m thrilled that there is no planned further erosion of orange groves from around the community, and further that no housing development will be coming to the area.  Wahoo!

Final Thoughts

Well, my first month or so back home to Florida has gone by quickly.  I have already begun roughly sketching out next years travel plans, and should have something fairly close to complete in the next couple of months.  The intent is to head to the Pacific coast to visit those states, while filling in some of the areas in the middle along the way that I’ve missed over the years.  Should once again be an epic journey.  For my family and friends, I hope you have (or had depending on when you read this) a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, enjoying time with family and friends and eating lots of wonderful food.  I’ll share my Thanksgiving events in next month’s blog.  Till then, 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!