On Your Mark…Get Set…

Almost go time!  We’re getting ready to take off on our 2019 big adventure.  Right now we’re parked in Brandon FL where we stored the RV over the winter.  We’ve been here a few days getting set up and getting prepped for the trip.  We’ll be taking off tomorrow and heading north.  More on that below.

Here’s a quick update of what we’ve been up to since our last post in the fall of 2018.  Unfortunately this year our trip will be without our beloved Big Guy.  He was suffering from cancer when we returned last October and we had to let him go almost immediately after we got back to Florida.  We miss him so much but at least he enjoyed his big adventure with us.  RIP Biggie. We love you.

We’ve been adjusting to ‘winter’ in Florida which has confused us because it seems like it’s just been summer forever.  We had lots of visitors over the last few months and have been exploring our new home base and the surrounding area.  One of our favorite places to hang out is Fort de Soto park which is only 10 minutes south of our condo.  They have beautiful white sand beaches with sand as soft as powder and it’s never crowded.  Here’s my daughter Leah on the beach during her visit down to see us in March.

And we rented kayaks often to paddle around the park.  A few times we were lucky enough to see dolphins swimming around very close to us. That’s my niece Arielle videotaping from her paddle board.  Watch until the end.  They swim right under us almost like they want to play!

We even had a manatee came up to our kayak to say hello.  It was the first time I’ve ever seen one live and up close. It was so awesome and a little scary.  This guy was close.

We’ve also made a big update for the trip this year – John has a new baby.

We ended up going with a Ram 2500 with the Cummins Diesel engine.  So now we can pull the RV up those mountains that we couldn’t get to last year.  Can’t wait to head up the road with all that power behind us.  Needless to say –  John is in love.

And now everyone is asking us the same question “Where are you going this year?”  Here’s our plan – although as usual, it’s subject to change because we like to go where our adventures lead us on the road.  This time we are heading north out of Florida towards the northeast to visit family and friends.  We’ll be stopping in the Smoky Mountains on the way up to camp with friends of ours and then continuing north to Pennsylvania.   We’ll stay there a week or so to see my kids and then head up to NY to visit John’s girls.  Then off to upstate NY to stay in the Finger Lakes area to visit my Mom and Dad.  From there we are headed to Kentucky to see Johns sister and her family.  After Kentucky it’s out to the west.  We’ll stop at many new places along the way west and would like to get as far northwest as the state of Washington and maybe even up to Vancouver Canada to visit John’s sister and family there.  On the way back down we want to go into northern California to see Yosemite and the giant redwood forest but it depends on any fires there this year.  After that we will head back south and east.  We’ll definitely do Utah again and Arizona and continue east back to FL by sometime in October.

When we leave tomorrow I’ll start posting the map so everyone can follow our progress.  We are so excited to start out and can’t wait to see what this trip has to offer.

Stay tuned….. 🙂