Life Goes On -- Even in an RV Park...

It says in the brochure for Peace River Thousand Trails that the park can accommodate rigs up to forty feet long. That may be true, but they certainly don't enforce it. Early this morning, there was this 45 foot, three-axle fifth-wheel that was attempting to park across the narrow road from us. With the truck and trailer, he is a good 70 feet long --

The driver knocked on the door of the neighbors next to us and had them more their car. He had us boxed in. We really can't move Auntie Violet as there is a tree right behind us! The truck pulling the fifth-wheel was a huge Volvo truck that ended up less then a foot from Auntie Violet's nose --

I was sure glad that I had put my little lavender tree and the wrought iron road runner alongside Auntie Violet instead of in front where I usually put them (the above two pictures were taken through the cooling screen we put in the front windows) --

Then when they finally got the fifth-wheel parked, instead of parking the truck alongside, he parked it along the road. It's a pretty narrow road and due to the tree in the back of our site, we are right close to the edge as well...

Oh well, I guess I just need to relax and not worry about anyone clipping us as they fly by...

When we arrived at the RV Park yesterday, the package with my new Kindle DX was already here. It looks just like the old one except that it is black instead of white. It seems to function a bit more quickly than my old one as well. The Amazon people had sent me an email with a prepaid mailing label to print. Forry removed my old Kindle from the case and put the new one in; then I repacked it in the same box the new one came in and taped it up and put the new label on.

This afternoon we went to the post office in Wauchula to send the old Kindle back and discovered that it was a UPS label, NOT a USPS label. And there is no UPS store in the town. The lady at the post office said that we would have to call UPS and have them come pick it up...

So when we got back to the RV Park, I stopped at the office to see what I would have to do to allow the UPS guy to come through the security gate. She said I needed to leave the package at the office and they would see that it went out with their UPS delivery in the morning.  I do have the tracking number so I guess I can make sure it gets sent...

Movin' On

We got up and got going fairly early this morning and pulled out of Bee's RV Park by 10:30 even with putting all of the Christmas stuff away. We really didn't move to far, just a couple of hours south to Peace River RV Park near Wauchula. I don't think we've traveled a single leg of all our travels this year without running into this --

Road construction is just part of the game -- and in this part of the world they don't have to stop for snow and ice!

We definitely were in orchard country today! We passed miles of orange groves --

And lots of trucks full of oranges --

These mesh sided trailers looked really neat all filled with fruit --

I think we passed a juice processing plant. There was no signage that we could see, but there sure were a lot of trucks heading that way --

It sort of reminded me of home. Instead of wheat or potatoes or onions along the road that had bounced off of the trucks, there were oranges.

Then we began to see the empty trucks heading back out to the orchards --

We actually drove past the RV park which was on the other side of the four-lane divided highway and had to make a U-turn at the next corner to get back to it. We made reservations at Peace River RV Park through our Resort Parks International (RPI) membership, but it actually is a large (400 plus sites) Thousand Trails facility. It's the only park we have ever been at (except for a couple very small self-service parks in the west) where we were NOT assigned a site!

The lady at the desk showed us the park map, showed us the areas that "were pretty full," and the sites where we "might get satellite service," and then told us to "call her and let her know what site we parked in..." It reminded me a bit of flying Southwest Airlines with the people evidencing the same kind of rather rude pushy behavior.

There were two rigs, and then a third, rig that pulled in behind us. While we were unhooking Toad (as advised by the lady in the office) so that we could check out the available sites, they pulled around us with their tows still attached. Keep in mind that this is an older park with fairly narrow roads. They went racing up and down the roads looking for sites. I watched one of them come around the same area three times...! There are actually quite a few empty sites, I counted at least twenty as we drove around in Toad. And there are fifty or sixty more in the area with only water and electric hookups.

In the meantime, we had found a spot down towards the end of the sites with sewer hook-ups. All of the sites are back-ins as the pipes in between are not buried very far below the surface and are vulnerable to breaking if driven over. While I waited in Toad at the site for Forry to drive Auntie Violet down to it, I watched one of the later-comers actually pull around and pass him on that narrow road!

We are sitting in a site that is oriented north-south, so we could look out the Auntie Violet's and watch this gorgeous sunset tonight.

A Day of Leftovers...

I must have really been tired last night! I was in bed by 10:30 when we normally stay up until 1:30 or 2 in the morning. And I slept around the clock! (Oh, all right, I admit I got up a couple of times to stumble into the bathroom...)

So by the time I got up this morning, it was time for brunch. Forry had cracked and cleaned the couple of crab legs that I had left from Christmas Eve.  I got them out of the refrigerator along with eggs for omelets. He used the new little grater that Santa had stuck in his stocking to grate some Gruyere cheese and I sauteed some green onions and chopped up a few celery leaves. The omelets were delicious!

Later we finished off the little bits of seafood cocktail and cranberries that I'd brought home from Christmas dinner. I think they tasted even better today then they did yesterday!

Our neighbors in the RV across the road from us were very busy taking down and putting away all of their Christmas decorations. I noticed tonight that they were probably the only ones -- the park is still pretty brightly lit up. We will be moving further south on Wednesday, so will pack our things up and put away the Christmas box tomorrow.

The five-way switch on my hard-working Kindle DX quit working last week. ;-(

After trying all the reset tricks I know and checking the Kindle Internet trouble-shooting page, I finally called them. The lady I talked to didn't take long to tell me that I had purchased it in March of 2009 and that it was out of warranty. But then she said that with their service support, they would send me a replacement for $90. A quick check showed that the DXs are still selling for about $250, so we decided to go ahead. She assured me that they would ship a new one that would arrive by the 28th. I gave her the address of the next RV park, Peace River Resort, that we should be at on that date. Then I called to alert Peace River that it was coming...

I am lost without my Kindle! Thank goodness that Bill and Leslie gave me a hard copy of Walt Disney, An American Original as part of my Christmas present!