Unwinding from the vacation

 

Wednesday January 18, 2023

We have been unwinding from the cruise, vacationing from the cruise vacation which was a vacation from our winter snowbird vacation! Millie has finished reading her Janet Evanovich book, I am nearly done with my Carl Hiaasen novel. Millie’s books from the Stephanie Plum series are always about stupid criminals and crazy people. Carl Hiaasen’s fictional novels are in the same vein, but always about people in Florida. Both writers use main characters that are…..lets say, slightly deviant from the norms of society. Think of Travis McGee, a reluctant hero boat bum by the author John D. McDonald. Just an FYI, there were 21 books in the Travis McGee series, all included a color in the title.

I washed the truck, first time since leaving home in December. Millie washed clothes, first tim……just kidding, she takes good care of me! Tomorrow we plan on visiting the Keys. The month will be over before we know it and we always go one time while here. We will probably only go to Islamorada for lunch or maybe Marathon, we’ll see.

Before we left for the cruise we watched the last two episodes of the British TV drama called Ripper Street. We have all five seasons on DVD and highly recommend them. The last episode was a little strange with the story split between the early years of them trying to catch Jack the Ripper and closing out the story in the present.

I don’t know how this happened but another series we recently watched used the same format. The last several episodes of Better call Saul jumped back and for between past and present. We’re not fond of this flash back method of story telling but, never the less, we highly recommend both series.

Recently we have been starting DVD movies and in the first few minutes rejecting them.   I don’t know if this is because we have high expectations after the two excellent series we just finished or its just a run of really bad movies. I never pay more than one dollar for a movie at thrift stores so its not a big deal. Maybe tonight’s show will be better!

Thursday January 19, 2023

We drove to the keys today going as far as the end of Islamarda. We haven’t been down this way in 3 or 4 years but it looks pretty much the same. A few new businesses and new paint of some of the old buildings. 

We stopped at the Elks Lodge on Tavernier; they’ve made some improvements to their little campground. It has an operable gate now, something that they should have had all along as close to the highway as they are. They have also added a dump station. 

When we stayed there, you had to leave the park to go to the state park to empty sewage tanks. Everybody just let their sink water run out onto the ground. They had put us at the end of the row and everyone’s discharge water ran down under our motorhome before pooling in the driveway on the other side of us. This was a totally unacceptable arrangement for us.. We were supposed to be there for a month; luckily I had not paid them when we arrived. The next morning I told the camp host it wasn’t going to work for us and we left.

waterfront in the Elks campground

That is how we discovered Southern Comfort RV Resort in Florida City. We had no other place to go in the keys all the campgrounds were booked solid. We went back across the causeway to the mainland and visited all four campgrounds in Homestead/Florida City and chose Southern Comfort. We’ve spent many winter months here since then.

BTW, two of the other campgrounds here are gone, one has houses built there and the other is vacant and up for sale. Soon to be houses I’m sure.