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)