"Doin some fishin"

While Marge and I have been doing some regular fishing and of course bragging about how wonderful the fishing was, my good friend Dave Harris from home decided to take me up on an offer to see for himself. Dave has a place in the "Villages" where he plays a lot of golf!! Dave and his family live and breathe golfing. His three sons are all good with very low handicaps and Mike his middle son plays on the Canadian Tour. They all play as much as they can and enjoy the game very much. Below is a picture of us having lunch with Dave at the Cafe by the pool here at Sunshine Key.
We had been waiting for a couple of good days without too much wind and reasonably calm seas to go fishing. Dave drove down and last week we went out bright and early in calm seas no wind and lots of fog and heavy mist. Actually it was reasonably warm and the fog and mist really didn't cause too much of a problem. We even caught a fair number of fish! That evening Dave and I went out to eat and he left the next day. A good time!

Our son Ben is coming down for a long weekend in two weeks to do some of the same and get a little sunshine to boot! Will keep you posted.

Internet service

For some reason the last two months have not been the most satisfying relative to dealing with the internet and all the various connections to it. We have "suffered" through old fashion land lines to private service and even tried Comcast again which was the final straw! WE MISS OUR DATASTORM!!!! As you may recall, that was the one item that was not covered under the insurance...... we needed a rider to cover that type of item. I finally broke down and signed up for the private service that Sunshine Key offers. For the time being we will have better connections and hopefully, I will keep up a little better now.

We have been here now a little over two weeks and have been busy since we got here seeing old friends and settling in. All of us have had some real problems with management this past fall as they seemed to change the rules and particularly the costs with regard to having a boat down here. Bottom line is that the cost of having a boat went sky high by virtue of the fact that we can no longer keep the boat on site for free, but are now required to keep it either in the dry racks they were to have built or in a marina slip. All this at an increase of about $500.00 a month or more minimum. Needless to say there were a lot of upset people. The racks, however (seen below) still are not finished and management had to back pedal. Next year will be interesting as we are aware of many who are not returning or at least for not for the length of time we usually do. all a due to these new costs. Unfortunately, the Florida Keys as beautiful as they are and the cost of being here ... has started to force people to look elsewhere. Times change! An interesting side note is that there are many vacancies where there never were in previous years. Perhaps due to the cost of fuel but the change in policies at this campground have certainly had some effect.


New animal alert.....Iguana's. They have invaded this small Key. Not easily seen but fascinating to watch. The ones we have seen seem young or smaller than we have seen in other areas of the keys but they are neat!
Look close .....he's there in the tree by our motorhome.

We have been doing a little fishing with great success and eating our catch regularly.....There is nothing like fishing during the day and then having fresh fish for dinner in the evening. Our friend Dave Harris is down to fish for a day or two ....will let you know how that turns out.

Back in Florida Keys

The funeral for big Al went well with respects being paid by old friends and relatives. As I had said previously he was very well thought of and a fine man.

We were able to fly back to our coach which we had left at Collier Seminole State Park in the overflow area. The park people were absolutely fantastic about taking care of us and allowing us to leave the coach there and they even kept an eye on it for us. They even helped us pack everything in so we could leave it and catch a plane home. Nice People!!!! Thank you again Joe and Karen.

We arrived back to find everything in order and packed up and headed out for our favorite Florida Keys spot. Some changes at the resort but we are settled in and we will try tokeep you up to speed on everything we do and see.