So, I was walking down the street one day and…

you’ll never guess what I saw parked in the parking lot just off Hwy 41 in Fort Myers --- the GhostBuster-mobile! I think it’s the real one because it was parked in a lot with a bunch of other vintage cars “for sale”, looks exactly like the one in the movie and has a New York license plate on it. Looks like one of the ghostbusters was hard up for some cash! Anyway, it was pretty cool to run into.

I went to the bird refuge on Sanibel Island one day and saw some amazing birds. The first flock I saw that day was a flock of Roseate Spoonbills. They are big birds --- close to 3 ft. tall and are the color of a Flamingo. The bill is really long and flattened out like a spoon on the end --- very peculiar. What a sight that was! I saw a bunch of others birds that day, but they were too far away to get a descent picture with my little camera, but it was a thrill to see them. Jeff and I have become pretty good friends with our neighbor, Len, who lives across the road from us. He’s from Thunder Bay, Canada. He’s got a really good system down for himself --- he owns and runs a resort up in Thunder Bay in the summer and comes down to Florida in the winter. He plays on the park horseshoe league and has gotten Jeff down to the pits throwing shoes a time or two. They have lots of fun down there. Len’s the type of guy that needs to be doing something all of the time and he manages to do just that. Here he is buffing his 5th wheel. Jeff likes to be busy doing something all of the time too --- but he’s not exactly into buffing the rig. Here he is reading at the beach. This is more of his “winter style”.

We went out to a beach just south of Fort Myers ( about 10 miles or so) by a little town called Bonita Springs. There’s a beach there called Barefoot Beach. It is so beautiful. Jeff took a shot of the walk-way going out to the beach.

He also caught a picture of one of the raccoons that was rummaging through one of the trash barrels by the washrooms. This guy was not afraid of Jeff what-so-ever!

It was a quiet and lovely day at the beach. We did a bunch of reading, shell hunting, wave watching and just hanging out. It was a good day to dig your toes into the warm sand and wait for the sunset.

Later --- Wendy

CAPTAINS LOG 1.15.09

I never expected much, I still don’t. I only thought that spending the winter in Florida would be easier than trying to stay warm in Minnesota. It is. But it's not all easy.

Let me put a few things in perspective. Wendy and I live in a house on wheels. We live basically “on the road” not much different than the thousands of other RV “full timers” and “part timers” that become our neighbors for a month, a week or a few hours at a time. Everything is pretty temporary out here.

While most people, not living in an RV, basically get to enjoy their daily routines in the comfort of their familiar surroundings, we are adrift in a sea of interstate highways, gas stations, coin laundries, and Walmart parking lots.

As we drive along we sometimes comment “Oh they have a CVS” or “they have a TJ Max” or “Look…a Home Depot” We relish in the familiarity of it almost as though we just spotted someone that we know. Most of the time we cruise along wondering who Winn Dixie is or Dillard’s or Beal’s as though those stores are someone we haven’t met yet and maybe we should think about expanding our circle of friends.

Who could guess how this living arrangement would affect us? Right now we live in a park with three or four hundred strangers from varied backgrounds each living in separate mobile compartments that range from nylon tents to full scale motorized RVs. These units are parked ten or twenty feet from each other and each has a name printed on it. Names like; Bounder, Traveler, Tour Master, Canterbury, and Jet Aire just to name the ones I can see through my windshield. Many of them also have cute wooden signs with the owner’s names; “Barney and Silva Johnston, Big Lak,e Colorado,” or one of my favorites: “Here lies the last dog who peed in this garden”. The park offers clean showers, a laundry, heated pool, mail delivery, free WIFI and activities like pot-luck dinners, bean bag baseball, shuffleboard, and horse-shoes. If you are good enough you could even get on the shoes team and travel to other RV parks for tournaments.

98% of the men down here have beards. About 10% of the women have facial hair. Everybody dresses casual…baseball caps, t-shirts, shorts, no socks, sneakers or flip-flops. Almost everybody has a bike of some kind. Some of the guys drive small scooters or even motorcycles that they haul in special trailers. Oversized, 3-wheel trikes are common with the older folks…especially the ladies.

Over 80% have dogs. Some have two or three. The small dogs like to hang out on the dashboard looking out the front windshield. Most are quite well behaved. Sometimes I hear their owners repeating in loud whispers the words over and over “No barky…no barky…” or “Stay…stay…staaaay… staaaaay…stay!

One of our neighbors has a parrot. When we first arrived and Wendy was bending over to get something out of the car, the parrot gave her a loud wolf whistle. Now that’s a well trained parrot!

This week we are experiencing a cold snap along with the rest of the country…but our cold snap is only bringing our daytime temps down to the 60’s and dipping to the 40’s at night and the Floridian’s are running for their fleece. The cold weather up north is on the news every night. Because it’s so cold in Minnesota right now, we get to see video coverage from Mpls/St. Paul and have even gotten the low temps from Thief River Falls --- right here on our local channel in Fort Meyers. Guess we picked a good winter to be in Florida.

The Captain

Who would have guessed we'd find our home at Shady Acres??

Shady Acres RV Park --- sounds like a place up in Brainerd, right? Well folks, it's right here in Fort Myers, Florida and most of the shade comes from big ol' palm trees. But the shade, such as it is, is a coveted thing down here in the sunshine state. Many of the RV parks (outside of the state parks) don't have much for big trees --- so this one is pretty nice.

Hallelujah! It’s January 7, 2009 and we only have 13 days left of the Bush Administration!! Needless to say, we are very excited for the Obama administration to begin. I just bought both of his books (waited until they came out in paperback --- pinchin’ pennies, savin' a buck) and we both plan to read them both. Exciting and hopeful times are in our very near future!

Jeff and I left the Keys on 12/27/08 and headed up to the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area. We saw lots of beautiful and fun water scenes on our way up from the Keys. The color of the water down there is just so beautiful! But --- can you imagine the cost of a boat slip??


We found one of the few Walmart’s that allow RV parking near Miami to settle in for the night. Before that, however, we headed for the beach in Fort Lauderdale with the rig. We drove down these beautiful, palm lined streets to a very nice state park beach and swam in great, bouncy waves all afternoon and then had dinner at the state park café. Not a bad day considering we live in a parking lot:)

We headed across the state to Fort Myers the next morning. We had reserved a spot in an RV park (Shady Acres) for the month of January. It looked nice on the website, but you never know what it will really be like until you get there.

We were pleasantly surprised and pretty darn lucky because we had committed a full month! At any rate, we liked it so much we asked if they had a spot for the month of February . We lucked out --- they did, so we’re here for 2 months. Time to settle in for a while and get away from the Walmart refugee life.

Jeff and I both spend a lot of time at the pool --- swimming and reading. It's very clean (top priority for us Ryan's) and is heated (a real luxury for us Ryan's) --- so we are happy camper's.

We went to the public Fort Myers Beach on Saturday, 1/3/09 and had a blast. We got a couple of chairs with an umbrella and stayed there for the day. There was so much energy there with all of the people. They came in all sizes, shapes, nationalities and ages.



We loved watching the teens do their boogie board surfing on the waves crashing on the beach. There was a fair amount of teen posturing going on that was as much fun to watch as the boogie boarding.
There were lots of characters there too --- like this guy with his parrot, that rides on a chunk of wood on the front of his bike. He stopped and let people hold him and take pictures and wasn’t even asking for money (a rarity for this type of thing), he was just having fun sharing his bird. There was also the guy pushing his ice-cream cart up and down the beach with a live palm tree attached to it.

We set up on the beach right in front of an area that had a lot of boats parked out in the water about 50 – 100 feet away. It was like a boat party-lot. There were about 25 out there anchored. They would walk into the beach from their boats --- no special powers or anything, it was only waist deep right there --- and party on land & water. Fun group to watch. There was also sand volley ball games going on and a live band at a bar just down the beach from us. We could hear the music where we sat. It was Reggae and fit the scene just right.

Jeff and I did our swimming gig --- love that ocean!! All you really have to do is just bounce along in the waves and have a day of it:) It is, however, a very sandy thing to do and find the fine white stuff everywhere --- car, clothes, floor, carpet, shoes --- even occasionally in our sandwiches. Another great thing is that we haven't seen much for mosquitoes down here--- but are you familiar with a little bug called "no-see-ums"? Well --- "we-have-em"! They're so small, they get through screens and even bite through clothes. I went to Walgreens the other day and bought everything I could find to ward them off and stop the itching once they bite. Unfortunately, I haven't found a solution yet. If you know of one, please consider this an SOS!

Jeff and Wendy (Itchy and Scratchy)