We're on the road, on the way to visit family and friends in Oregon (eventually), so here's some advertising from the Oregon coast for SIGNS SIGNS.
The YaTel Motel advertises "Always Ultra Clean — Usually Friendly."
I think it'd be worth taking a chance.
Our grandson and grand-daughter-in-law were on the Oregon Coast this spring and he e-mailed this picture to us. The motel is in Yachats, on the Central Oregon coast.
THIS POST IS LINKED TO LESLEY'S THURSDAY MEME: SIGNS SIGNS. Go click on the links. You'll laugh or learn something — or maybe both.
This sign is from our trip to London, but it pretty much tells you what kind of week we've had here at Upriver RV Resort in Florida.
It's been a busy week with a lot of activities, but none of them have been photo oppotunities. (Because I can't even walk and chew gum at the same time, I'd rather do the activity than photograph it!)
Most London signs were much nicer than the sign above, which was in an alley near London Bridge. We were far more likely to see one like this:
And here is the iconic London sign:
We still love looking at pictures from our 2007 trip and I'm glad I remembered these signs.
FOR MELLOW YELLOW MONDAY AND THAT'S MY WORLD
These guys live in South Carolina. Last week they came to visit us — Great- Grandpa and Great- Grandma — in Fort Myers Florida.
We went to the Imaginarium.
Lots of the toys and games were just like the ones they have at home — but the GGs don't have very many toys in their house, so it was fun to play there!
Oh yeah, they brought a couple of grownups with them. They came along to to drive the car and push the kids on swings and stuff while Great-Grandma took pictures.
Great-Grandpa took everybody for a boat ride to Franklin Locks Park.
Mom and Grandma (and the GGs, not pictured) showed the kids how we all wear our life jackets and our hats whenever we go out on the water.
It was a lot of fun. I think Great-Grandma and Great- Grandpa had the most fun of all. But today we are taking a long nap!
THIS POST IS LINKED TO THAT'S MY WORLD. Go click on the links to visit the world of other participants — or to join the fun.
Our son and daughter-in-law from Colorado popped in for a visit last weekend. We packed a lot into a short time, showing off our area for company.
We visited Manatee Park, across the river from where we live in North Ft. Myers:
The picture on the bottom right is from a different manatee sighting — it's very hard to get a picture of their faces, and so, since I didn't get a better one this time, I used this old one. (Nothing like stealing pictures from yourself!) Here is a link to the post where I used that picture before — it tells a little more about these fascinating creatures.
***
We toured the grounds at the Edison and Ford Estates in downtown Ft. Myers:
***
We watched birds at the J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island — from Wildlife Drive and while kayaking on Commodore Creek Trail:
All this doesn't even count the good conversations and meals shared, we had a great visit. But Bill and I are glad we didn't have to go to work Monday morning like the kids did (especially after they had to fly back to snowy Denver)!
On the last leg of our summer road trip, we were back in Charleston visiting our great-grandsons (and their parents).
Who could resist these beautiful smiles?
The weather was beautiful. (When we were here in July, it was almost too hot to go outside and play.)
This time they showed us how they ride bikes…color on the patio …blow bubbles….ride horses….. and, of course, we all enjoyed eating!
Life is good!
We are in North Carolina now — staying at a place that's really the 'end of the earth' but we love it! (It's called Sea Level NC) — tomorrow we plan to take a ferry to the Outer Banks where we'll spend at least a few days.
Our internet connection here is quite iffy — and it may be worse tomorrow. I'll catch up with the blog when we can!
This post is for MELLOW YELLOW MONDAY
Because there's a tiny part of me that wants to be the kind of mom/grandma/great-grandma who sits in a rocker on her front porch and stays involved with every minute of her kids lives, I am always out-of-sorts for a day or two when we leave family. (Believe me, if I really tried to be that kind of mother, I'd drive myself and everyone around me stark raving bonkers within a month or two!)
So Bill is always patient with me until I get into my 'on the road again' mode. At any rate, leaving Charleston was made marginally easier because of the knowledge that if we weren't traveling with our own tiny house, we'd never have had the chance to spend two weeks visiting our new great-grandkids, here on the opposite coast from where we used to live.
I wish we'd been blogging when our grandkids were this age — so much fun to take pictures.
I wanted to post a few more of both of the kids, but the Internet isn't cooperating. Perhaps I'll update this post later. Below is a picture of big brother.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Big brother doesn't mind posing, he just doesn't want to hold still long enough for me to shoot a picture.
THAT'S MY WORLD. Here's our world. Click on the blue to see other people's!
Our adorable great-grandsons — and the reasons the blogposts are a little scarce lately!
The middle picture is the boys with their grandmother (our daughter) when she visited them (from Oregon) last month.
It is a joy for us to be able to spend some time visiting and getting to know the two newest members of our family.
Those of you who've been following FullTime-Life for a while might remember the reason our first Winter in the Florida Canal Cottage had a delayed start.
Instead of being here for the typical snowbird season (usually November or December through March) we did not arrive at Upriver until the end of February.
Here's a link to the post about why we spent an extra and unexpected 40 days in Oregon during the early part of the season, while Bill had radiation for a recurrence of prostate cancer.
Luckily, he had no serious after-effects and we left Oregon for Florida just a few days after the end of the 40 days of treatment.
While the urologiy oncologist was quite confident about the treatments, he said that Bill would have to wait until June to get a PSA lab test to tell for sure. (After radiation, PSA test results would not be accurate for three months.)
We just enjoyed our time here at Upriver and really didn't dwell on the June deadline and what might happen…. but when he finally could take the test and the results came back reading A GREAT BIG FAT ZERO we were both very happy. As you may already know, the PSA test is one exam where 0 is a great score!
We've lived long enough to know that you never can tell what adventure life may throw at you next, but for right now we are looking forward to some simple adventures of the roadtrip kind.
Here's a picture of Bill by that funny little door shown above. It was in an alley near London Bridge back in 2007 (when we were younger than we are now — and celebrating our 50th Anniversary year).
Visit the Links on these two Memes to read and see pictures of life around the world: EVERYDAY LIFE AND THAT'S MY WORLD
We've had a few questions recently (well, a couple anyway) about our Full-Time RV life … and what the term RV actually means. It really is a catch-all for the many types of RECREATIONAL VEHICLES. The term "Full-Timers" is commonly used to distinguish those who have made their RV their only home from those who use one just for camping and vacations.
Many retirees use their RV as a Winter home when they head to warmer climates, while still maintaining a stick-and-brick home "up North". These folks are refered to as "Snow Birds".
But we decided shortly after we retired that two homes were one too many, so we sold the house we'd lived in for almost 30 years and for ten years we lived and traveled full-time in our Fifth-Wheel RV. Now it is parked back in the Pacific Northwest and is our West Coast home.
Because a year ago last Winter we pulled the Fifth Wheel cross-country to Florida for what we thought would be a one-winter visit. But we just fell in love with the Fort Myers area and Upriver resort and ended up buying a Park Model trailer here. We still consider ourselves to be full-time RVers — but in a different way from how we started out.
Park Models (we fondly call ours the Canal Cottage) are licensed as an RV but, when in place, look more like a small house.
They can be moved, but not by your average guy (or truck).
__________________
Here are a a couple pictures of a park model (not ours) in the process of being moved out of a spot at the park where we were staying.
Park Model RVs do not have water tanks nor batteries. They must be hooked up to sewer, water, and electric in a Park. Building codes require them to be not larger than 400 or 450 square feet of floor space. You aften see either a deck or an enclosed "Florida" or "Arizona" room built beside them. The ones that look like houses are usually not moved many times. They are set up on supports, and securely fastened to the ground. The axles and towing hitch are usualy removed. The utility attachments are made similar to a "Stick and Bricks" site built house.
Fifth-wheel RVs are designed to be hitched to a special support on the tow truck. They have two levels inside with steps to the upper level. They also are limited to 400-450 square feet of floor space. They usually have one or more "slide outs". These are additions to the rooms that move in and out on tracks to add more space to the inside of the trailer. They are self contained, meaning that you can live in them for some time without being "hooked-up" to park utilities. They have fresh water tanks, waste holding tanks, batteries — which are often used with inverters to change the 12 volts to household voltage, propane fired appliances and pumps to provide pressurized water. Living or camping without hookups is refered to as "boon-docking".
____________________________________
So, now that we're bi-coastal, with a tiny RV home on both sides of the country, we use our Class B Motor home for travel.
Class Bs are really way too small to be used as a Full-Time home. But ours has everything needed for exploring and traveling for short lengths of time.
It is also small enough — and economical enough – to serve as our daily driver.
Here's a link to an earlier post that shows some inside pictures of our RoadTrek.
Here are some Google pictures of some other types of RVs:
With a fifth-wheel trailer, like ours, you drive your truck and pull your house. In this RV, called a Class A Motor Home, people drive their house and usually tow a car behind them. All of he newer ones have slideouts. The price range is huge and the amenities on the upper-end ones can be quite amazing.
___________________
A Class C Motor home is smaller than a Class A, but bigger than a Class B. Don't ask me why. It's like a a large camper built on the truck chassis and often has slide-outs as well. We've owned a couple of versions of a Class C — ours were hand-built by Bill on used trucks though. They were a lot of fun — I wish we had some good pictures of them.
__________________
Here's an Airstream trailer, just one example of a pull trailer. It hitches on to the tow vehicle like a utility trailer.
___________________
This is a pickup camper. We had one of these for a while after the kids were grown, but before we retired.
For THAT'S MY WORLD and WATERY WEDNESDAY here's our watery weekend.
We were lucky to have a visit from our son Geoff this weekend. The three of us spent practically the whole three days on the water — that's what you do in Florida in the Summer. (And it seems like Summer here now, never mind what the calendar has to say!)
We took the boat up the river, through Franklin Lock and back. These pictures are at a little county park in the town of Alva.
________________
Geoff and his Dad look like they're trying to figure out where we are — or maybe where we're going! I guess it worked, because we got home safe and sound to rest up for another day of water-filled adventure.
__________________________________________
We spent a short time on the beach at Sanibel Island. None of us are lounge-around-in-the-sun types, but it was fun to dip our feet in the Gulf. (And as the horrible oil spill comes closer, it may have been our last chance to see the beach in this pristine condition.)
We also visited the Ding Darling Wildlife preserve on Sanibel.
Geoff and I kayaked through a marked channel (that's the picture on top of this post). (Bill chose to stay behind.)
It was a great experience – I had never kayaked before, but it was fun learning — and really good exercise for Geoff, who (literally) shouldered most of the burden. The path was beautiful — we saw lots of birds and an alligator. I have a few bird pictures for another post.
Back at the Visitor Center, we watched a pair of Manatees — it's mating season, so they were in an out of the water more than usual.
So it was another great Florida day on the water!
The next day,we toured the Babcock Wilderness. It's a huge privately-owned ranch here in North Ft. Myers which encompasses several of the watery ecosystems of this area of Florida.
The picture below is part of the Cypress Swamp area of the ranch.
A large part of the property was purchased by the State last year and will remain as a preserve while still allowing farming to take place.
We had a great weekend. Happy of course that Geoff came and happy because the watery weekend didn't include RAIN. His visit broke the record we've had recently — no matter whetherin Oregon or Florida, it has rained whenever we have out-of-town company. But not this time!
In fact, Geoff went home to Colorado with a slight sunburn as a Florida souvenir.
