Here we are....fresh into a brand new year. We wish you all a healthy and happy year....and one with many good stories to tell.
We stayed pretty busy between Christmas and New Years. The park had a Christmas Eve golf cart parade. Many of us decorated our golf carts and drove together throughout the park. The person leading our parade must have thought we were at the Daytona Speedway. We tried keeping up but we were bouncing around and doing our best just to hold on. We sped past some of the areas as a blur at 100 mph Im positive. Finally, Cory just stopped trying to keep up as I bellowed to slow down in my merry and festive voice. Lulu was frozen in fear and shes a daring soul...remember?
This was our first Christmas away from our family so we knew it would be different. It was. We woke up to resounding quietness in our RV. No one was around...just the two of us. Total silence encircled us. We turned on the TV for sound. I took advantage of having not to cook....Cory and I went out for Christmas dinner. Sandy & Sam were apprehensive about crowds and
Covid so they didnt go with us. We planned to dine at the Trough (Golden Corral). Not many restaurants were open. We passed Dennys and IHOP that had their doors open for business. We went early (11:30 AM) to beat the crowd. Hey.....what crowd? As we entered, there was no one in line....just us!...like in our RV. Wheres the crowd? Not here. We easily found a table......there were lots of empty tables. I guess everyone else was thinking like Sam & Sandy and decided just to stay home to avoid the crowds. There were a few people who dared to venture out to the Trough but it was amazing......we could hear echoes throughout this restaurant. Of course, we managed to do exactly what we swore we wouldnt do on the few times we here. We gorged ourselves into gastric distress even though it didnt seem that way when we took only small portions of everything!
To take our minds off our full and bloated stomachs, Cory drove around Celebration to see their Christmas decorations. Of course, during the day its not the same as at night. Some of our friends from TP had driven their golf
carts at night here to Celebration. They visited one street in this magical town that went all out on Christmas decorations. The houses coordinated with one another so the music made their lights dance in sequence. It must have been beautiful. I took a few photos of a couple houses that participated with this display. We came back to our RV and called our families to wish them a Merry Christmas. So good to hear their voices. We missed them. We rested as our food digested!
We were thrilled when some of our friends stopped to visit. They had lived at Tropical Palms for many years before moving on. Mike and Lois rented a Sandcastle last year but their plans are to stay in Panama City this season. Their best friends are in a cottage here at TP and they wanted to be with them for awhile. Jeff and Judy also lived and worked here at TP. They live in a park in Hudson, Florida now. It was wonderful to see all of them again and we truly appreciated that they stopped to see us.
cottages. I think in my last blog, I told you about some of the Sandcastle cottages being moved out of Tropical Palms and relocated to another park. Well, it happened. Six more cottages were taken away. This was no easy task. They had to first prep them and disconnect everything. Then they had to put axles and wheels under each one. These cottages are on small lots with not much room around them. The skilled workers really had to work hard and jockey these buildings around to get them off their sites without damaging the property around them. Sometimes they used a rail system to actually slide a cottage across the rail to get it moved. It was really something to watch. Then a big truck towed each Sandcastle away. We spoke to this truck driver. He made it sound easy.....no way, Jos.
