Now in The Villages

Since our last blog post we have transitioned from our small pop up camper to a very nice, very comfortable home in the Villages.  Our hosts/landlords had to return to Wisconsin unexpectedly early due to an illness of one of their family members  Their early departures coupled with their generosity allowed us to move in a full 10 days early at no additional charge.

People have asked what we do here.  First the weather is near perfect with daily high

temperatures in the mid 70s to mid 80s.  The weather has allowed us to spend some time at the many nearby pools.  There is nothing like the simple pleasure of diving into a sparkling pool of water with nothing but your swimsuit and wallet.  Nothing was destroyed except my pride.  

We spent a day going to thrift stores and flea markets to buy some used golf clubs.  I think all of us have stereotypes of the deep south and when you look for them, you see them.  The huge Marion Market was no exception.

As for the golfing we've already been to one of the driving ranges and I think golf

lessons are in our future.  

I've played just a very little bit of pickle ball with my brother, Bill and learned  there is more to it than I thought, so earlier today Cathy and I signed up for a pickle ball class to be held next Friday.   

We've gone to a couple of movies (discounted price with our Villages ID cards) and afterward walked around

one of the three public squares that offer free entertainment on a nightly basis.  While this photo is not good, it should show 100s of people "of a certain age" all line dancing to Up Town Funk.

Even trips to the nearby  grocery store are more fun when you're driving back and

forth in a golf cart  which are sometimes called "golf cars" down here.  

In short, We're Lovin' The Lifestyle.  

Pizza, Sea Oats and Kite surfing

It is an undisputed fact that campers are some of the nicest people in the world.  

It was certainly true of the old couple from Indiana who stood on the back bumper of our trailer so that I could lift the front of the trailer after it fell off the car.

It was even more true about Andi and Tom who camped next to us.   One night they

gave us a huge pizza that the pizza guy had delivered after making a mistake on their take-out order.  And it was true of a man named Dave who camped across the road from us.  Dave reached the age of senior citizen a few years back.  He came down from Rockford, Illinois by himself.  When we tried to give the extra pizza to him, he declined. However, earlier in the day he had met a woman who was camping with four little children and no other adult.  He brought us over to her and she was excited to accept the portion of the pizza that had no meat as she and the children were vegetarians.  None the less she took the meat side of the pizza for the kind people that were camping next to her.  

So, if you’re keeping track, the official count was one pizza and five  campsites. 

Campers are some of the nicest people in the world.
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Adapting and rolling with the punches is one of the keys to successful camping.  

Our next destination was to be Johnathan Dickinson State Campground in Hobe Sound.  Hobe Sound is on the Atlantic coast and is about 4 hours from where we are.  We’ve gotten some reports that the campground was damaged by some storms and that now shade was a scarcity.   

However our hosts/landlords of the house in The Villages are returning to Wisconsin unexpectedly early and said we could move into their house after they leave at no additional cost.  So our next adaption is extending our stay at Fort DeSoto before temporarily mothballing the camper and heading to the Villages. 

I wasn't sure what sea oats were so I picked everything and brought it all to the ranger station to be identified.   They laughed and laughed.

I decided to try kite surfing.  Here I am on my first attempt.

As I got better I went for a few jumps.

Some of my friends joined me after a while.

I wish any of this were true.  It looked fun but like my dream of playing profootball or swimming with the Henderson Swim team, I think that part of life may have passed me by.  

Fort DeSoto update

So, many of you have  been asking me why we haven’t blogged in a while.  Well, not so much “many” of you but some of you.  Ok, not really “some” of you.  But seriously, maybe someone was wondering about our blog.  Maybe not so much wondering out loud, verbally but maybe silently - like in their heart.   So here is what is going on southern Florida by way of photos.

On Saturday our friends, Rick and Sarah Noel,  who were vacationing in Clearwater, came  to visit and go out to lunch.  We had a great time and we appreciate the effort they made in coming to our campground.

We remembered last year that the ushers at St. John Vianney wore tuxedos.  They still do.  Maybe the idea is you’re less likely to give a tuxedo-dressed usher the leftover coins in your pocket.

After Mass we stopped at a farmers market and split a ham and cheese crepe.  

We also saw this tuxedo dressed man making and selling barbecued ribs.  Maybe he used to be an usher at St. John Vianney.  

Here’s one of the reasons we haven’t blogged in a while.  It’s so very easy to bike to the all but abandoned beach and get caught up in a book or the scenery.  This is a photo of Cathy.

I may have stayed too long at the beach.  You can see what type of sandals I wear as parts of my feet turned a very nice shade of red. 

We took a drive down to Sanibel Island to visit our friend, Marilyn Maglio.  After lunch, she was eager to show us her church.

Outside was some very cool statuary, including this bronze statue of Christ.  I took this photo off the St. Isabel Parish website.  Note how the bench was made for two, enabling the visitor to sit down and spend a moment or two with Christ.

In the back of the church hung a portrait of the area’s bishop, Frank Dewane, a Green Bay native.

We spent a night in Bradenton before venturing to Anna Maria Island to visit Mike and Mary along with their friends, Karen and Wayne Hollister.  From our campsite to their house is about 6 miles as the crow flies or about an hour by car.

Anytime we head south of St. Petersburg we cross the Bob Graham Skyway Bridge.  I took this photo off the internet.

Thanks for letting us share the last few days with you.

We're Camping

Bill & Duke

After our two nights in The Villages, we reluctantly bid farewell to Bill Blaney and the two dogs he cares for and set out for Fort DeSoto campground near St. Petersburg.

Now, you have to realize that when you set out on an adventure like this, some things go wrong but with the proper amount of planning and strategizing you can minimize these errors.  As an example, we made our camping reservations several months ago.  So on Monday we proudly pulled into the campground a full 14 minutes before “the google” said we were to arrive.  When we went into the ranger station to register, eager to start this leg of our adventure, we were told that our two week reservation did not begin until Tuesday!  Boy we laughed.  We laughed and laughed.  Cathy laughed so hard that when I looked over at her it looked liked she was about to

Our New Campsite

cry.  The ranger mercifully provided us with a campsite for the night – but today we took down our site and set it all up again, just 5 sites down the road.

The setup on Monday went amazingly well.  We were completely done in an hour!  This includes setting up the camper, unpacking the car, setting up the clam and stringing the tv antenna in a tree.  The time it took for Cathy to set up the inside of the camper was shorter than usual as we forgot to bring sheets for the bed.  Again, we laughed and laughed and laughed and headed into town for sheets.

Today At The Beach

We are now completely settled in our new home away from home for the next two weeks.  Life is good.

Running With Scissors

Have your ever run with a pair of scissors and not tripped and the scissors didn't stab

you in the heart?  Have you ever gone to a carnival or county fair, eaten a bunch of junk food, went on the rides and not gotten sick?  Did you ever go out when you were a kid, stay out way past your curfew and in the morning your parents didn't even ask you what time you came in?  The common theme here is that you did something stupid and got away with it.

Click on the photo to enlarge

Cathy and I would like to offer a fourth example.  Wanting to leave for Florida, we waited out winter storm "Beth".  Then came the frigid temps that closed schools and roads.  On Thursday afternoon we were sitting around home and at 4:00 we decided it would be a brilliant idea to leave home immediately so we could get through Milwaukee and Chicago during low traffic times.  With the real temperature at -9 and the windchill probably -20 we hooked up the bikes and trailer and drove four and a half hours, all of it in the dark, to Hammond, Indiana but only the last hour was during the snow storm.  However, just as in the previous examples - we got a way with it.

Friday, well, Friday was even worse.  We crept along on the interstate for hours

Notice the bikes?

reaching speeds up to 10 miles per hour.  When you're going this slow it's good to find ways to amuse yourselves so we started counting accidents which included cars in the ditch.  We got bored and stopped counting at 33.   By 10:30 am. we were ready to call it a day and started to look for a place to stay (yes I wrote a.m.).  By the time we found a hotel the roads were better so we plugged away for another nine hours.

We stayed in Tennessee on Friday night which was good because we were able to eat breakfast, pack up and still be out of the hotel by 8:15.  We thought of ourselves as energetic eager beavers who were up and out early in the morning.  If we had stayed in Georgia, just 10 miles away, it would have 9:15 and we would have been slothful!

The rest of the ride to Florida was long but thankfully uneventful.  We were concerned about traffic in Super Bowl crazed Atlanta but all six lanes of traffic moved along nicely.

St. Timothy's in the background 

We reached The Villages in time to wash the salt and dirt off the car, bikes and camper and still make it to St. Timothy's in time for 6:00 Mass.  We'll be staying with Bill Blaney for a couple of nights before heading to our first campsite.  Thanks to my cousins, Bill and Karen Early for sheltering these northerners for a couple of days.

On The Road Again

Yup, we are hitting the road with our tiny pop-up again.  We got a late start because of Hurricane Michael.  You'll recall that Hurricane Michael hit the Mexico Beach area of Florida pretty hard.  In November we received a notice from T.H. Stone Park that our camp was, well - gone.  That was supposed to be our second stop of the winter.  Not being able to find a replacement campground, we decided to cancel our first scheduled stop and push back our departure date to February.

This change in plans turned out to be fortuitous.  On January 16th, Ken had two additional stents placed in his heart.  For those of you keeping count these are #5 and #6.


So, if you have any interest in following us this winter, we'll be keeping this blog.  Our motivation is simple, we want to stay in touch with you during this adventure but we'd rather keep our whereabouts off social media.

Like other blogs we've kept you don't have to follow us.  There won't be a test.  We know that it's sometimes difficult to post comments.  If you'd rather email us, that's ok too. We love hearing from you.

Best wishes,
Ken and Cathy
KBlaney55@hotmail.com
CBlaney55@hotmail.com