March 1, 2002.  We are stopped at the new Escapees Park in Florida near Bushnell. It is called Sumter Oaks and the name is fitting.  The park is filled with large live oaks.  In fact, so many trees that we had a problem getting a signal for the satellite dish!  The park is undergoing renovation and is coming along nicely.  There is a store and a sandwich shop in the main building and also a large meeting hall for the SKPs to gather for the daily social hour.
We drove to St. Petersburg on Friday to visit with our daughter, her husband  the the grandtwins. This was our first opportunity to see our new granddaughter, Julia.  Julia was born in mid January and her brothers think she is pretty neat.

March 3, 2002, Sunday.
We moved The Rolling Home to St. Petersburg on Sunday and boondocked in the kid's driveway.  Our grand twins love to the the rig sitting in the driveway and they helped grandpa set up.  One of them walked along the driver's side of the rig telling grandpa what room each window was in. He remarked that he had been in that big motorhome, but it was a long time ago.  In fact, it was over a year ago and he was about two and a half at the time.  We were surprised that he remembered so much about the motorhome.

March 4, 2002. Monday.
The Rolling Home needed a drink of diesel so we filled up at a truck stop in Bradenton on our way to Okeechobee. We shouldn't have to buy fuel again until late April or early May as we leave Florida.  We rolled south on I 75 to State Road 70, turning east and heading toward Lake Okeechobee.  We passed through Arcadia, a small south central Florida town that while growing, hasn't changed all that much in the 20 or 30 years we have been going through here.

We arrived at the Elite Resorts at the Big O in the early afternoon.  Our friends, Bonnie and Tom Breward spend the winter in this park. You may remember them from Blairsville, a couple of falls ago. They are from the Ft. Lauderdale area and spent a month or so next to us in north Georgia in both 1999 and then again in 2000.  They didn't make it in 2001, but we caught up with them this year!

We settled in at the Big O and quickly arranged to go to dinner with our friends Becky and Harold Hilliard.  It was sure nice to be able to wear shorts everyday.  The weather has been perfect and John has not had on long pants since we arrived in South Florida.

We did have some different neighbors at the Big O.  Sandhill Cranes are very large birds that mate for life.  You almost never see them by themselves. 

On Friday, we took the Tracker to the local Chevy dealer and had the oil and transmission fluid changed.  We no longer do this at quick lube places. Either John does it or the Chevy dealer does it.  After three problems in three years with those fast change places, we just don't trust them anymore.  The famous, loss of all oil episode in Georgia in October of 2001 was the final straw.

We have now turned over 36,000 miles on the Tracker. In addition, we have towed the Tracker more than 34,000 additional miles.

We also had another neighbor at the Big O.  We call him BigOGator.  He lives in the pond right behind our motorhome. 

March 13, 2002.
Today we took the Tracker in to get new tires.  The original tires had over 65,000 miles on them and we don't want to take a chance on having a problem while towing, so off we went to WalMart. Walmart sells their own brand of tire now called the Liberator. They are made by Michelin and we put five new ones on our toad.  These are light truck tires since John wasn't happy having regular automobile tires on the 4WD Tracker.

March  19, 2002.
Ok, we know we are going to come back to the Okeechobee area for the winter from now on, so we decided to go ahead and start shopping for a boat a few weeks back.  Today, we found a pretty good deal.  We bought a 16 foot Lake Sport from the Northlake Marina in Lakeport, Florida.  The boat is rigged as a bass boat with a nice trolling motor, fish finder and a 50 hp Yamaha engine. It also came with a galvanized trailer. Now we have to figure out what to do with it as we travel in the late spring, summer and fall!  Actually, this year the dealer has agreed to store it for us and then next fall we will find a storage facility to keep it in.  Or we may do a long term lease on a lot and just leave it there. 

March 25, 2002
We left the Big O Rv park and headed down the lake to a small community called Lakeport. There is a very nice Rv park there called NorthLake Estates. We saw this park years ago when it was being developed and marveled that anyone would actually stay there.  It is about 20 miles south of Okeechobee and about 10 miles north of Moore Haven.  We came looking for it last year and almost missed it. The bare pads and no trees park we remembered had matured.  Lots of nice trees, some park model homes and the place was filled with snowbirds.  We decided to try it this spring to see if we wanted to nest there next winter.  We rolled into the park on Monday the 25th and paid up for a month's stay.   It is a really nice park.  They have an on site restaurant, a work out room, a shop, a craft area, a very nice pool and a big clubhouse.  They have individual mailboxes for the residents and all the streets are wide and paved. The sites are about 40 x 20 and some are 40 x 30, poured concrete.  Lots of really nice folks here too.  We are now in our second week on this site and have already put a deposit on one for next November.  In fact, we are going to take an annual lease here.  That way we can stick a small storage building up on the site and get some of the really important junk we are hauling around out of the rig.  We will also be able to leave our boat on the site when we leave next spring.  This place is about an hour and half from our son in West Palm Beach and a little over two hours to our daughter and her family in St. Petersburg. This is a good distance from them for all of us!

Saturday, March 30, 2002

All the Florida kids showed up today. Our oldest son and his wife, and our daughter and her brood.  We took the twins to the pool and grandpa and daddy went swimming with them.  Grandpa raced the boys in the pool and amazingly, they won the race! We got to play with our new grand daughter Julia all day and her Mom got a break from taking care of the baby.

We have explored the few restaurants in the area, the one previously mentioned that is in the park, the Cheers and Beers, a local pub just down the road that serves a great lunch and the Countryside Restaurant, again very close to us, open seven days a week and serving all meals including pizza.  Wow!  What more could we ask for!
 
 

Camping for March       $393
Diesel Fuel for March    $78.22
LP for March                    0
Boondocking in March   1 night