We started the New Year in Seffner, Florida.  We stayed at the Tampa East RV park at exit 9 on I-4 for 4 days while visiting the grandtwins and coincidentally, their Mom and Dad.  While this park is a Good Neighbor Park, affiliated with the C2C, we were out of Good Neighbor coupons, so instead of paying $11 per night, we paid $30 for a site with electric and water, no sewer.  While at this park, we went by Lazy Days to check out their new campground, but it wasn't open.  This concerned us a little, since we had reservations there for the 17th through the 24th of January.

After leaving Seffner on 1/3,  we moved over to DisneyWorld.  Yes, it cost us $45 per night for our weekly stay, but our youngest son works at the mouse and he stayed with us in the RV for that week.  It was more convenient to pay the money and be close to his job.  We got to spend more time with him than we would have had we been in a cheaper park.  I would comment that putting a 37 foot motorhome into a 1970 era site with lots of trees, signs and garbage cans is not an easy task.  Worse, it took the guy in the 35 foot fiver next to us a little over an hour to get into his spot.  I even put the first boo boo on the D bumper by a close encounter with a garbage can.  Nothing serious, but it did take the paint off.  As an employee of Disney, our son was able to take us to Epcot and MGM for free.  That certainly beats the $45 per park per day that Disney wants.  We took our son to see the Cirque de Soleil at Downtown Disney, Westside.  It was another great show.  We have seen the one at Treasure Island in Las Vegas and now this one.  We may stop in Biloxi on the way west to see the show at Beau Rivage.

Seven days at DW is enough, so on Monday the 13th, we moved down the peninsula to Okeechobee.  We used to live in Okeechobee, so we spent the next week visiting with our old friends and neighbors.  The weather was great until late in the week when a cold front came through.  It dropped the lows into the mid 40s, but that wasn't so bad.  Afternoon temps reached into the 70s most days.

On January 20th, we went back to Tampa, camping at Lazy Days.  Lazy Days has their new campground open, so when we pulled in there was an American Coach rally going on.  The park was filled with Eagles and Dreams.  The place was a zoo.  Coaches everywhere and not enough room. The new campground is a study in how not to build a new campground.  The sites are back to back and too short.  Our 37 foot rig overhung the back of our site and , of course, the Eagle behind us also overhung.  We were almost bumper to bumper with them.  If they had just staggered the lots from one street to the next, it would have been a much better plan.  The sites are not level.  Can you imagine building a campground in Florida and not having level sites.  There is no place to park your tow vehicle or toad. Our rig
took up the entire paved area of our site, so we parked our Tracker on the grass.

 While this park is still under construction, all the infrastructure is already in.  I can deal with the pool, clubhouse and other amenities not being ready, but the construction of these sites is inexcusable.  I'd deal with Lazy Days any day for a new coach, but I won't stay in their park again.  Oh yeah, they raised the price $5 a day this year.  It now cost $25 a day to stay here.

Anyway, all of our kids showed up on Tuesday and that was one of the rare times that the whole family was together.  The only person missing was our daughter in law who had to work.  Our oldest son is working in various cities across Florida supervising the installation of telephone equipment.  Since he had a job in Clearwater this week, he has been here most of the time with us.  Our youngest son drove over from Orlando and of course, our daughter, her husband and the grandtwins live in St Pete.

We need to leave Lazy Days on Monday January 24th, because we need to be back in Blairsville on Wednesday for Libby's medical checkup.  We intend to drive the toad to Atlanta on Thursday to turn in my company computer, id and credit card.  After that, we will hot foot it back to the coast for warmer weather and then head west for Texas.

Here we are in Blairsville, Georgia on January 25.  Its 8 p.m.., 24 degrees and snowing.  Isn't it wonderful to be back in winter.  Assuming the medical checkup goes ok tomorrow and our trip to my old office on Thursday works out ok, we will try to be out of here on Friday.  However, it appears at this time that we may be getting either snow or ice on Friday, so we may have to wait out the weather.

Here is a shot of our coach on the morning of January 26.  The temperature is 19.  The second picture is the exact same shot I took in the fall of Lake Nottely, from our old campsite.  I thought it was a fun comparison.

Our plans for the next month include Biloxi, Mississippi, Rainbow's End at Livingston, Corpus Christi and the RV America Y2K Bash in Harlingen at the end of February.