Almost Homeward Bound

It's been a few days so now I must try and remember what we did since Tuesday's posting. Nothing stands out so it must have been a few boring days.

I do know that the weather has been kind of strange. We've been in the pool once since Tuesday, and that was only for an hour. A "cold" front came through - the highs are near 80 and lows in the 50s. The blanket is off the bed and the furnace hasn't been on for a couple of weeks. The wind has been gusting to 35mph, making our biking around the park more strenuous than we like.

We have become known as "that couple always biking" and "the pool kids." Since Mark's heel has been hurting since October, he can't walk around the park so we ride. We ride over to the Jai Alai to bet on a trotter that some new friends from Ontario own. They always let us know when Whatever Lola Wants runs. Last night we placed a show bet on her and she came in second. That netted us about $5.

Every evening we ride down to the lake to see if the small gators are hanging out. They haven't been around lately - I guess they don't like the white caps coming in to shore.

Tonight was the "Farewell Dinner" put on by the park for all the RVers since most people will be heading home in the next couple of weeks. Last year's farewell was wonderful. This year it had the makings of being such a fiasco that we gave our tickets to Wayne and Judy. At 9:30 this morning, many in the park headed to the main hall to "reserve" their table for tonight's dinner/entertainment that didn't start until 6:00pm. It got quite ugly when we heard others saying they just removed the reserved signs and put their own stuff down. Only 200 could eat inside, and the rest had to eat out in the wind. We didn't want to get in the middle of it all. We headed to Ocala to get Mark a new pair of tennis shoes. He's also been wanting Long John Silver for dinner so that's where we went while 400 other people ate free food in the park. We were so stuffed after eating, but I was craving ice cream. There just happened to be a Brewster's right down the road from LJS so now we are extremely stuffed.

Today we spent most of the day trying to figure out what we are going to do in the next couple of weeks. Mark's Uncle Bill passed away last night. We always knew we would head home once he died to attend the memorial service. We just didn't figure he would die so soon but at least he is no longer suffering. After hem-hawing around most of the day, weighing all of our options, we've decided to leave Florida when we had planned to - next weekend, and make a slow trip to Kimberling City where we will leave our trailer for about a month. Our trip to Texas will just have to wait for another time. Michael was kind enough to offer up free airline tickets, but we just couldn't figure out a way to make it all work. This must have been a sign that it's time we go home. We're leaning towards going to Texas for the 2009/10 season, so we'll meet up with our Winter Texan friends in December.

Mark at the lake tonight, standing on the condemned dock.

Orange Lake still hasn't filled up since the huge sink hole opened up in it a few years ago. We've seen pictures of this dock from four years ago. The water was to the top of the dock then. It's got a long ways to go to get there again. It's only come up about a foot since we left here a year ago.

This is where I was tonight instead of the free entertainment. As you can see, I had the place to myself. Mark was kind enough to come sit with me for the last half hour that I was up there.