Hot food, cold weather!

The weather certainly has been a hot topic of conversation recently, Polar Vortex shifts, snow in the south, it’s making people crazy! I just saw the mayor of Atlanta on TV blaming the National Weather Service for the 2 ½ inches of snow that fell on the city. I assume he was blame shifting because of all the grief he was receiving from... well from just about everyone in Atlanta. What he should have said is, Look this is the south, we don’t have the recourses to handle snow, it’ll melt on it’s own in a day, pull up your big boy pants and get over it!

BTW, we’re suffering down here in Florida too, it was in the fifties and overcast all day. It will be the same tomorrow and with rain before returning back to our normal 70’s. Millie and I didn’t whine about our weather hardship, we got tough, put on our sweatshirts and went out to the New Mexican restaurant down the road.

The restaurant located on Rt 192 a couple miles from our campground. Millie and I have eaten in Mexican restaurants all the country and this is one of the best. Many east coast eateries lower the hot and unfortunately also the flavors, while western restaurantes think heat means flavor. Our dinners were amazing in every way, taste, presentation, potion size, it was all good. We also had an excellant server experience; Lynn is just perfect, knowledgeable, helpful, and pleasant. We definitively will be going back to Chuy’s. 

On a different subject, on Tuesday we went to Downtown Disney with Wayne and MaryAnne. This portion of Disney is outside the gate and accessible to the public without paying for park admission. It is an outdoor mall, we have something similar in Myrtle Beach called Broadway at the beach, but here at Disney most all the stores are selling Disney themed things. We enjoyed the walk along the lake in 80 degree sunny weather and had a nice lunch on an outside patio. 

See you down the road.

Picking and singing at the campground

Millie and I attended two musical venues recently here at the campground. They were both entertaining and both have interesting side stories about the bands.

The first group was called the George Durham Band. The bandleader and pretty much the whole band was George Durham, a tall articulate black man. In addition to the 30 instruments he had on stage which he played at various times, he was also a singer, the sound man, and music director. George was an engaging showman, during the bands break he even joined the audience members who where line dancing.  The lead singer was a barrel chested black man with dreadlocks, he looked like he belonged in a Reggae band, but he did an exceptional job on the classic love songs. The real kicker was the keyboard player; she was a white haired Caucasian lady who could have passed as the organist in church. Visually they were an odd mix but they made the music work.

At the George Durham show we sat with Wayne and MaryAnne Wingard so of course Wayne and I ended up talking about the Chrysler plant we retired from, who’s doing what now, who died, etc.

The second show we saw was the Weaver Believer Survival Revival Family Band. Yes that is their name, I didn’t make that up. Originally from Northeast Georgia the Weaver’s

and 7 of their 8 children live full time in two 40 foot tour buses. The children range in age from 12 to 25 and they are very talented, each of them plays an instrument and sings in the show. Their act consists of a lively mixture of bluegrass, southern gospel, and country music. They recently auditioned for Dollywood in Pigeon Forge Tennessee, so you may see them performing there in the future.

See you down the road,

My movie review

I don’t have much blog worthy news; we’ve just been doing regular stuff. I replaced the nitrogen cylinders that hold up the hood on jeep, I’m sure I replaced them a few years ago, but they weren’t holding the hood up so they had to go. I ride my bike everyday and Millie is very disciplined about going to the workout room or the group exercise class every morning.

Millie and I went the movies and saw a show called August: Osage County. I’m secure enough in my manhood to say I enjoyed this movie, but a lot of men probably won’t. This is a very well done drama with a smattering of dark comedy. Because it was adapted from a stage play it helps if you like live theater. The movie is what I call a characterization, meaning it’s more about the actor’s portrayal of the subjects than the story line. That’s another reason I don’t think a lot of men will like it, we like movies that follow the man code. It doesn’t matter what we’re doing; shopping, eating, or movies, the man code is applied to everything. For the uninitiated I will explain the code, it is very simple. 1. Identify objective, 2. Initiate plan of attack, 3 Secure objective, and 4.The happy ending. The movies like August: Osage county that are just a snapshot of time with no clear objective and no happy ending are in clear violation of the Man Code and that’s why you’ll never see the likes of Steven Seagal or Sylvester Stallone in one. Clint Eastwood used to only appear in movies that adhered to the code but then he did that Bridges of Madison County movie and left 15 million male viewers very confused.

All of the actors did a good job with their parts; Meryl Streep did an Oscar winning portrayal of Violet, the strong willed and contentious central character. Julia Roberts plays one of her daughters and did a great job character acting.

See you down the road.

At the end of the day we had a fine pair of golden slippers

Greetings,

This morning as I write this I realize a lot of you are having to endure some very cold weather. Better you than me, if I was up there I’d be whining so much someone would smack me in the head. Monday was MLK day; TV news here in Orlando was all about robbing, shooting, etc., sad reflection about the lack of advancement in some segments of our society. That’s all I’ll say about that.

We’ve washed the jeep, made our first trip to Wal-Mart and have generally settled into our winter home. Millie goes to the exercise room every morning; I walk the dogs and tell myself that is exercise. We have ridden our bikes and will do that a lot while we’re here. Millie rode off and left me the other day because I stop and talk to anybody, but I did find my friends Wayne and MaryAnn Wingard, or rather, they found me when I stopped to chat with someone across from their motorhome.

 I flunked a tolerance test yesterday, but was consoled with a fine Mexican dinner accompanied by a lovely lady with golden shoes. Let me explain; a couple days before we left Myrtle Beach I broke a crown on one of my molars. Knowing my dentist would not be able to replace it before our departure I decided to deal with it while traveling. My first idea was to wait until we got to Texas and go across the boarder to a Mexican dentist. Cost being the main factor in this idea, but then I decided I didn’t want to wait around in Southwest Texas for a week or two while the replacement was being made.

I did an internet search and selected a dentist near our campground. Goldberg Dental is a large firm with about 8-10 offices in Florida. I arrived 15 minute before my appointment and soon observed that this was a very busy office. I wasn’t too concerned as it appeared to have a large staff to handle the volume of people coming and going. I won’t go into detail but after two hours of sitting in the waiting room I got up and walked out, never having been seen by anyone other than the receptionists. 

Millie had been shopping at a nearby Bealls Department store nearly the whole time which she assured me was not a hardship and she was very pleased with the golden shoes she purchased. We went to Ay Jalisco Mexican restaurant for a late lunch where a fine meal and my lovely wife brought my world back to happy. Not sure what I’m going to do about the tooth but that’s for another day.

See you down the road.

Gone South

Greetings,

Millie and I have escaped from this winter’s wobbly Polar Vortex and its cold arctic air. Not that it’s really that cold in South Carolina but we’ve got the motorhome, warmer climate is just 550 miles south, and .....well the open road has been calling us! 

We drive secondary roads as much as is reasonable so it took two days to drive to the campground which is a few miles west of Disneyworld. We left on Friday afternoon and drove down highway 17 to it’s junction with I-95 near the Georgia border. We overnighted in a typical Encore campground which was old and showing it, but ok for a night.

You can drive highway 17 down thru Georgia, but we did that last year so opted to take I-95 to Jacksonville Florida. From there we took I-295 west around the city rejoining Highway 17 at exit 10. (RV tip: there is a large parking lot adjacent to a McDonalds about a block down 17 on the right.) At Palatka we took highway 19 which goes thru the Ocala National Forest and on to highway 27 just north of Clermont. This is a very calm drive which bypasses the often very busy I-95, and always busy I-4.

Our campground is about 20 miles south of Clermont on 27 but our reservation wasn’t until Sunday so we overnighted at Bee’s RV Resort getting the last overflow site they had available. It was a pull thru close to the entrance, so we didn’t have to unhook the Jeep and were able to make a quick exit on Sunday morning. By 10am we were settled in our assigned camp site (C-11) at the Orlando housand Trails Campground, where we will be for 14 days. Life is good!

See you down the road!