[A/S] Christmas Florida - Feb 10th, 2001

[hhamp5246@xxxxxxx]

Hi Gang,

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. It's so warm I had to turn the a/c 
on..... (c:

The drive from Ocala to Christmas isn't cheap.... toll roads almost all the 
way.. it's really annoying because you have to stop every few miles. Diesel 
fuel isn't cheap either... it's 10¢ a gallon more than high test gasoline. 
I've seen it from 1.69 to 1.98.  

When I arrived the place was packed.  Seems there is an Airstream ham rally 
here and they are wall to wall.  I whined for a while and got a terrific 
space.... really wide and in the trees, but open enough for the roof top dish 
to work perfectly.

I wandered around and met some friends that I had first met last year when I 
was here.  Then I walked the dogs around the ham parking and surprise, 
surprise.... I spotted Rick Davis' shiny 1954 trailer.  Cool!!  "Rick!" I 
said... he turned around and welcomed us into his camp.

That was Thursday day...Thursday night Rick and my friend Craig hung out over 
here.

Friday was the day I took my boy to the vet.  While there I met a nice lady 
whose dog was in surgery.  She was waiting and her neighbor was with her.  We 
got to talking and I said that I live in an Airstream camper.  The one got so 
excited.  Seems she grew up in an Airstream.  She was recently divorced and 
dreams of fulltiming while she still can.  Her nighbor wasn't so keen on the 
idea.  She's a bit of a scairdy cat.  We ended up going to lunch in Winter 
Park (the vet is in Maitland), and I got them both pretty psyched about RVing 
and the life. They are planning to come out here to visit the park and 
experience it first hand for an hour or two.

The vet clinic is 25 miles from here.  It took 1 hour to drive it. Can you 
say traffic!!

Yesterday afternoon Brady just slept and slept.  The anesthesia had to wear 
off. I gave him 20 mg of prednisone so he thinks he feels good now.  We 
wandered out for a walk and wound up at a friend's trailer...what a blast.  
At one point I walked into the woods with the dogs and ran into Rick so I 
brought him back to the "party".  One of the women went nuts, she said she's 
spent every winter here and has never found a man in those woods and I 
brought one back after 5 minutes. The guys just shook their heads.

Rick is really interesting to talk to.  He moves new trailers from Elkhart, 
Indiana to dealers all over the United States. He has a 1999 Dodge diesel 3/4 
ton truck... it has 210,000 miles on it!  He loves it. I always wondered how 
trailers get to dealers because I never see trailer haulers. Now I know, 
freelance drivers pull them.

This morning Brady was still feeling good so we walked all around and visited 
lots of people.  This is what I missed when I was living in the cabin in 
Knoxville.  I can be alone, but if I want company it's right out the door.  
The only downside to this park is they have no computer hook up.  Not a 
problem for me though because all of my friends have phones in their 
trailers.  They come down here for the entire winter.
Personally, I think it's more fun to move around a bit, why have wheels on 
your house if you don't want to go see stuff? I could see spending a month 
here though.

I wanted to return my refrigerator fan to Outdoor World as it quit working.  
The dogs and I took a ride over there and I told the gate guy I was going to 
the RV store.  He gave me a pass and we went in.  The store is closed on 
Saturday. Duh. So I just drove around....this is a very bad thing to do as 
the residential parts are for residents only.  Yeah right (-:{

Outdoor World is one of the, if not *the*, premiere RV resorts in the 
country.  It's perfectly manicured.  Has parking pads for trailers, most are 
fivers.  It has houses with RV "ports" garages to pull in that $500,000.00 
Prevost.   Many of the little toads are painted to match the Prevosts and 
other monster motorhomes. Many of the houses are also color coordinated to 
the RVs. Gotta love it.  Some had for sale signs.
I grabbed two flyers, one was $225,000.00..the other had no RV parking and 
was tiny... it was $139,000.  I imagine the big really impressive ones were 
$500,000 and up.  Golf is king at Outdoor World. The whole place revolves 
around it. Everyone has a golf cart and every site has a little garage for 
your golf cart. Actually, I can't swear to that.  

I did see a few little common travel trailers. I saw no Airstreams, but I 
didn't go down every street.  I did see a silver Avion.  Another thing I saw 
a lot of were water birds.  Lots of Great Blue Herons, Egrets and Turkey 
Vultures. 

I never got stopped and asked what I was doing there... You can get in by 
saying you are going to the RV store...then don't hang the green pass on the 
rear view mirror. They also have restaurants, a post office, a pro shop...a 
country club.  Very snazzy.

I had to get back, my friends are having a pot luck dinner and I'm cooking 
Jamacian "Peas and Rice".  

I really missed doing this.  I'm so glad to be back out having fun. 

Hunter