OK, yes, I let the blog fall way behind again, more than it has ever been.  But in my defense, we were in Key West, and the, er, social calendar was rather full.  So expect a flurry of posts this week catching us up, starting with this short one about our first week in 2018, and then three posts about our time in the Florida Keys, along with monthly reports for January, February, and March.

Daughter Andrea’s holiday schedule defined the beginning of the year plans for us: I left Rosemarie at Xavier and Joy’s house in Coral Springs while I took the rig, the tracker, and the cat back to Central Florida.  Dad and Marcia were still there and had a duplicate reservation at Wekiwa Springs State Park that I was able to use for a four day stay.  I made the three hour plus drive, this time reluctantly taking the Florida Turnpike since the time difference to avoid it was significant, and arrived mid afternoon back at our preferred CFL campground.

New “Shell On Wheels” shirt, a gift from sister-in-law Dolores.

I met Dad and Marcia’s friends with whom they had traveled a bit in California.  In one of those small world coincidences, they are the RV couple that had also traveled with our friends Jen and Dees of Nealys On Wheels.  None of us have satellite TV, and over the air reception in the park is almost non-existent, but I was able to set up my laptop to the TV and stream the College Playoff semifinal games thanks to our unlimited* data plan with Verizon.

Andrea and I celebrated New Years Day with a swim in the big spring, which due to the cold weather we had nearly to ourselves.

After months of procrastination stemming mainly from my fear of making it worse, I finally got around to replacing my failing lap top battery.  What started as simply limited battery life had progressed to the point where it would hold no charge at all, and the slightest jiggle of the power cord would cause the laptop to shut down.  The replacement process was as simple as I hoped, entailing the removal of a dozen or so tiny screws, including one that was stripped, and one small power connector.

After a four day stay I connected up and headed back to Coral Springs to pick up Rosemarie.  We had two days before our reservation at the Key West Naval Air Station starts, and used that time to make final preparations for what would surely be a significant bit f dry camping while we waited for our turn in the full hook up sites on base.

* The “Unlimited” plan is not without limitations, with speed throttling frequent once any device on the plan reaches a high amount of data usage.