We stayed 12 days at Spacious Skies RV park just outside of Savannah Georgia. Did a few things around this surrounding area. Weather was pretty good most of the time, except for a couple days. We spent one day in downtown Savannah going on the Old Trolley city tour. It was a blast. It takes about 90 minutes, and there are 15 stops you can get off at any point and just get on the next trolley that comes by about every 20 minutes. We bought a two day pass so we took the recommendation of staying on for the entire tour and see what spots we wanted to come back and see later. Our driver was pops, and he was a delight. He talked nearly constantly the entire 90 minutes, all the time, avoiding traffic, pedestrians, right turns, left, turn, questions from the audiencce. Made sure that virtually every sentence included a y'all! In fact, it might've been nearly every sentence! But he was a delight. The trolley probably accommodated about 30 people, it was mostly about half full most of the way. We decided to stay on for the full 90 minutes and not get off at any stops, although it was made clear that was an option. It was a clear, but a fairly cool day temperature wise, so the clear plastic windows were pulled down all the way. So I didn't get any pictures from inside the bus. After we got off, we wandered around downtown, and went and had a late lunch. We decided we probably wouldn't use our second day on the trolley tour, but spend that day at the Prohibition Museum. All about Prohibition in the US and its eventual repeal. And economic effects it had on the country. That was also tremendous fun, lasted about an hour, and we did that on Tuesday, November 28. I took a lot of pictures inside, and I'll post them on the Photos page.

Backing the calendar up and remembering now, we did a karaoke party in the RV park on Sunday night, November 26. I made a flyer and Gloria and I put it on all the RV doors on the afternoon the day before. As it turned out, the weather was pretty crummy, and lots of people leave on Sunday, so we didn't have many takers. We have a great karaoke machine, though, and one of our neighbors had a golf cart who helped us haul it down to the pavilion. The pavilion in the park is a huge open wall building at the bottom of the RV park. We would have one family of mom and dad and three kids, and one other dad brought his son. We had a blast from about 6 o'clock to 9 o'clock. Our neighbor with a golf cart helped me find the switch for the lights, and it was bright, cool, and tremendous fun! Most everybody left by about eight, but Gloria and I stayed and practiced till about nine. We also did karaoke at Little Luckys bar on Friday the 24th. Not a lot of singers, so we got in about five songs each!

But the height of the Savannah, stop, and one we delayed our departure for five days for, was going to see comedian Nate Bargatze at the Savannah Civic Center on Thursday night, November 30. We had tickets for the 9:30 pm show, but by the time they got everyone out of the previous show, and the huge throng in for our show, he wasn't on stage until about a quarter till 11. We like his act tremendously, and this live performance was no exception, and a great experience! But man, I gotta up my Budget line for Uber to Entertainment…!

We stay one more leisurely day at our spot in Savannah, and left on December 2 for the Orlando area. Our RV park we headed toward is called Grand Oaks, and it is in Weirsdale, Florida, about 60 miles north west of Orlando. It was only about 150 mile drive from Savannah, so we had a leisurely drive until we arrived around three in the afternoon. We're pretty good at set up now, and we were easily done well before 4 o'clock. Even the bikes were off the rack! We picked the spot because it's really near The Villages“, an adult retirement community that is really nearby. If you've never heard of this place, do a Google search or see some of the pictures or videos I took and some of the surrounding communities. The Villages is a collection of small communities of mostly something like around 100 to 200 homes… But hundreds of those villages make up thousands and thousands of homes. I think last count was around 80,000 homes, and something like 150,000 residents. Google shows the 2020 census at 81,444. But I believe it's grown substantially since then. Modest to very lovely, on or off any one of their more than 40 golf courses (that's not a typo, they claim more than forty golf courses, including 12 championship and country club courses), it's quite a sight to see and try to wrap one's head around. Residents enjoy free golf on any of the 40+ Executive courses, which are not the 12 Championship courses. Advertisements say the green fees there are modest and one can also purchase a championship membership enhancement, which allows priority, access to tee-times and other reduced rates. Sorry… Didn't mean to sound like a commercial…!

The weather has really cooled off here in Weirsdale, Florida now, for Florida anyway. It was supposed to get down to 40° overnight last night, and I think it did. Today is Thursday, December 7, 2023. Remembering Pearl Harbor…

Our RV park is called Grand Oaks, RV resort, and it is phenomenal. A very small part of the entire area I set off as an RV park, and all of the spaces are flat, concrete pads, full utilities, of course, and really near a lovely pool and sauna area. The entire area is something like 450 acres, and except for the reasonably small area set aside for around 75 RV visitors, is largely dedicated to equestrian and similar activities. No horseback riding for RV residents however. Please see some pictures I took, and even a video or two of the park grounds. Gorgeous huge trees draped with Spanish moss line the half-mile winding road to the exit toward town.

Riding up toward The Villages is really easy and a delight in this cooler weather. Mostly 35 MPH speed limit road goes all the way of the about 3 miles to Highway 27, which for about 20 miles is near or intersects all roads in, around, and through The Villages. Every store, restaurant, amenity, gas station, and other conveniences are constantly nearby. It's hard to find a statistic on how many communities are in The Villages, but Wikipedia has a phenomenal write up on it that includes history, structure, geography, demographics, education, events, and many other topics. Looks like something near 88 villages in 2021. Clearly more now, as they are constantly expanding.

I know I've mentioned it before, but RV Park Wi-Fi has been very reliable, absolutely contrary to what I have heard from others prior to our departure. I think we've only had one park where we had none. It's interesting, as we have ditched dish network, so we are 100% Internet TV now. For regular programming, we subscribe to YouTube TV, which, including one sports add-on and taxes and all fees is $98 a month. We're still getting used to how the DVR portion works, but we are extremely happy with it. Between that, Netflix, Apple TV, And a couple of other paid subscriptions, the cost is WELL below what I know I was paying for Comcast in Kirkland. it does mean, however, that we are 100% reliant on Internet for our entertainment packages. RV park Wi-Fi was the ONLY choice for internet the last couple of days, as Starlink Internet was suddenly failing to go online since the first of the week. I had trouble getting my head around why as it's needed clearly open view of the sky was obviously intact as there are no trees or buildings anywhere near our site. After a little bit of troubleshooting, I determined it was our 75 foot Starlink Internet cord (of all things!) that had failed. I kept a spare from some troubleshooting I had to do last year, and that cable in line caused the system to work. So a new cable has been ordered, and Starlink says it was shipped yesterday. Yay… Back to normal soon!

Weather stayed pretty nice through the rest of our day near The Villages, and we took several exploration rides, and I went through probably at least 15 of The Villages. I think there's over 100 of them in all. We went karaoke'ing on Saturday, December 9 at The Shamrock lounge pretty near our RV spot at Grand Oaks RV Park. As it turned out, Gloria and I and the Host were the only ones singing by about 10 o'clock, and they stayed open until 1:00 am. I started to lose count, but I'm pretty sure I got 15 songs in, and she got 14! And the place wasn't deserted. There were probably six or eight people playing pool, and eight or 10 we're sitting up at the bar. We had a blast!

We left our Grand Oaks spot on Tuesday morning December 12, heading for Venice, Florida. It was only about 150 mile trip this time, so pretty leisurely day getting there. We were totally set up and ready to enjoy the next 20 days by about three in the afternoon. As it turned out, we had a back-in spot, where we normally have pull through. Backing in our spot was a little bit more tricky, and was highly exacerbated by lack of good access from the approach road, palm trees, meter boxes, and parked cars near our spot. It was a Tuesday afternoon at about 3 o'clock or 3:30, and our next-door neighbors, Joe and Barb, have Tuesday happy hour for about 30 neighbors at 3 o'clock. Every Tuesday, we would find out! Our audience gave Gloria a standing ovation for how we finally got into the spot. It was the most difficult one so far, by a long ways! I should've been videoing. But I was on the outside giving Gloria directions on our phones, and she followed them to a T, and we ended up dead center in our spot, perfectly aligned with utilities to be hooked up! Then we joined our new neighbors for Happy Hour.

It's now Sunday morning, December 17, and other than a few grocery trips and relaxing for the last couple of days, it's been pretty uneventful. We lost Internet again yesterday morning, and I had to splice the Starlink cable with new ethernet clips to bring service back. It worked! We spent most of the day watching The Weather Channel, as a huge storm was coming across Florida, and eventually heading up the East Coast. They were predicting 3 to 5 inches of rain, power outages, possible tornadoes, and 40 to 50 mile an hour wind gusts. As it turned out, it did rain quite a bit overnight, but the wind was nearly totally absent. We will be here through Christmas and New Year's, so looking forward to taking a couple of nice slow weeks. Weather is supposed to be sunny and 65 to 75° for at least the next six days. Nearly perfect. Welcome to December and January in Florida!