A Trip to Tallahassee

This morning we drove the seventy plus miles to Tallahassee to visit our friends Danny and Gail. We have been friends for many years (Gail proceeded me as President of the National Rural Health Association - NRHA). Even though they lived a long way away from Washington State (first in Texas, then in West Virginia), we would see each other at national conferences and pick up the conversation right where we had left off the last time. We would also see each other every fall at the Health Sector Assembly in Utah where we both represented rural health at that prestigious think tank.

Then there was our memorable trip to the NRHA convention in Anchorage when we stayed on afterwards and with Wayne, another friend and a former NRHA President, spent another week exploring Denali National Park and the Fairbanks area.

We were fortunate this trip that we were able to meet up, as Gail and Danny had just returned on Monday from a trip to Venice, Italy where they were celebrating Gail's 60th birthday. We spent a very pleasant afternoon visiting, catching up and taking a long walk around their neighborhood. While we we were out walking, the power in their area went out, so we returned to the house in the dark. It came back on in time to fix a very good dinner of lamb steaks, collard greens and roasted yams. We finished off the evening by watching the first half of the Republican Iowa debate before we made the long drive back to Auntie Violet.

Making Reservations

Forry and I usually fly pretty much by the seat of our pants. We're not real in to making reservations, partially because we don't like to plan that far ahead. But, we realize we are in unfamiliar territory at a very busy time of year. So the last week or so, we've been looking through the various directories looking for where we might want to stay during December.

We have some friends in Tallahassee that we'd like to visit, so we were looking for a place near there. Through our home resort, Neskowin Creek in Oregon, we have memberships in both Resorts of Distinction and (ROD) Resort Parks International (RPI). ROD only has a couple of parks in Florida, but RPI has quite a few. We finally decided to try Pine Lake RV Park near Fountain. Unfortunately, while it is an RPI park, it is not an RPI Preferred park.  Which means we could only stay there one week using the $10 per night rate (plus their $5 per night electricity charge!) instead of the usual two weeks.

But, that will work. If we leave Styx River on December 6th, we would be at Pine Lake until the 13th. Then we want to be somewhere fairly close to our friends Bill and Leslie who are settled in at Mouse Mountain RV Park near Disney World. I spent some time on the Internet checking reviews on RV Parks in the Orlando area. A couple of the ones we looked at in the RPI directory had some very poor reviews. It seems that many of the membership RV Parks are old and in need of renovation! (We've run into that several times!)

We finally made reservations for two weeks at Bee's RV Park near Clermont. It had some pretty good reviews and the pictures on the Internet looked nice. We'll stay there until the 27th and then most likely start heading down the towards the Keys.