Virgin Snowbirds-The Drive Down

Thanks for tuning back into our blog. We know it's been awhile so we appreciate you joining us and for those of you who followed our other journey thank you for coming back. We left Connecticut just after Thanksgiving for a four and a half month stay down South. One of our goals on our "Trip Around the World" was to figure out where we wanted to land for the winters. Which, by the way, we are still trying to figure out. So, after spending five months home we're on the road again. We spent the month of December in Cortez, Florida which is a hop-skip-and-a-jump from it's better known neighbor Anna Marie Island (also known as AMI)..

We ended our last trip 441 miles short of 30,000 miles on the Coach speedometer. We didn't take it out one day while we were home. So, after our homestead, we once again hooked up our 2017 Ford Fusion Hybrid to the RV, Along with our e-bikes, we stocked the frig and freezer, packed up our $hit, and left on November twenty-seventh on a four day drive to Cortez. It is one of the oldest fishing villages in the country.

Our first overnight stop was in the state of Delaware at the Midnight Oil Brewing Company. It's one of those Harvest Host stays which we are still members of. It was a good first stop because it was a two hundred twenty mile, five and a half hour drive from home. We've stayed here once before. Not because it was great but because it was convenient. We celebrated our first day back on the road by purchasing a bunch of beer at the Brewery. Which by the way, we never bought this amount of beer in all of our prior 660 days on the road. Celebrate! Good beer-Good fun!

Our next drive was a 300 miler which landed us in Weldon, North Carolina. Conveniently, at another watering hole. This one was called the Weldon Mills Distillery. Never before has a Harvest Host walked 300 feet from their place of business to greet our passing Rv to welcome us. Tim did just that. What an awesome first impression. It's another free night stay at this venue because of our Harvest Host membership. After we settled in at the Coach in we walked to the Distillery where Tim gave us a tasting of their gin, vodkas, and whiskeys. It was like seven bucks apiece. The samplings were a little bigger than a thimble bit it was fun. And believe it or not it was insightful learning about their processes along with the history of the distillery grounds. After, we moseyed to the next room and sat at the bar.

Racheal the bartender was a hoot with a big booming southern draw. There were two other workers/drinkers/supervisors/trainers that chimed into the event. Each had big personalities and were offaly entertaining . We sat next to two women who were from Norristown, Pa, very near Brad's old stomping grounds in Cheltenham, Pa. They were Rving in a 26ft motorhome with two large dogs. Yikes! They were cool and we had a fun chat. After a drink, Tim, our more than gracious host took us back to our RV in a very cool old Trolley car. This dude rocked! The distillery visit was fun but what wasn't fun was when we got back to our RV we were having issues with our generator. Since we were boondocking that was an issue. Nothing worked since we weren't plugged in. Life on the road! We adapted as we usually have too! We used our propane for heat because it was still really-really cold out and we used our small little portable generator for Kathy's C-pap machine. Catastrophe averted.

We tried but couldn't fix the generator issue in the morning so we decided to shift gears and stop at campgrounds the next two stops instead of boondocking. Our next stop was New Green Acres RV Park in Walterboro, South Carolina. Yes, Green Acres was the place to be...haha! Then, we did an overnight in Ocala, Fl. We covered over 600 miles in those two days of travel. Both campgrounds were four star out of five. They were both naturally pretty, easily assessable, and we had electric, water and sewer service. All the utilities that we needed. Great decision on our part.

It seemed, as soon as we crossed into Florida the sun came out and the temperature rose ten degrees. Was it our imagination or did it really happen? Our final 180 miles got us to Cortez/Anna Marie Island where we stayed at Sarasota Bay RV Resort. We loved AMI. The beaches were awesome, the campground had everything imaginable, our neighbors were cool plus, we got to visit family there too. We'll share our stay with you in our next blog and no, no, no, it won't take us five months to drop it. We'll bang it out in the next week. Here are a couple AMI pics to get you in the mood. Thanks for reading down this far.

Love, Kathy and Brad