They’re Coming!

You can tell winter is on the way here in Florida when the colors of the license plates start to change. That’s right, the snowbirds are coming.

About this time every year I hear from RVers who are going into a panic because they can’t find a campground here in the Sunshine State. Especially any campgrounds on or near the coast. No, you’re probably not going to find anything if you waited this long until you start making reservations. Many campgrounds are booked up months ahead of time, so if you want to spend your winter listening to the surf, you need to make reservations no later than sometime in the early spring. And the Keys? Forget it. If you start making calls now, you may be lucky enough to find something for next winter. You’re not going to just pull into a place with no reservations and find open spots waiting for you.

However, all is not lost. There are many small mom and pop RV parks in central Florida that you might be able to get a reservation for. And the great thing about Florida is that the state is not all that wide. So no matter where you are, you can get to either coast on a day trip.

Speaking of Florida, it seems like the crazy housing boom of just a few months ago is starting to go bust. Interest rates are going up, and some of the high prices are dropping. Real estate agents say that they don’t have shoppers getting into bidding wars like they did not long ago.

That doesn’t surprise me, because things got pretty crazy around here and it wasn’t sustainable. Someone put a new double-wide manufactured home across the canal from our house about a year ago. He only lived there for a short time before moving out, and it sold to someone else for $240,000. That’s a lot of money for a manufactured home on a very small lot. Our son and daughter-in-law paid about the same for their nine acres and a three bedroom house, with a pole barn and other outbuildings in Alabama. And while it’s true that they are not close to the ocean like we are, I still wouldn’t pay that kind of money for any place in our little community.

In other news, I’ve spent the last couple of days working on Big Lake Drunk, my new book, and have three more chapters under my belt. Terry edited and proofed two of them yesterday and will do the third one today, and then I will send them off to my other proofreaders to do their thing.

I will be back at it again today, and hopefully, I will knock out another chapter or two. It’s nice to be home and writing again!

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us. Who knew you could get fined for putting trash in a dumpster?

Be sure to enter our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an RV camping journal donated by Barbara House. Barbara makes several variations of these, and they all have pages where you can list the date, weather, where you traveled to and from that day, beginning and ending mileage, campground information including amenities at RV sites, a place for campground reviews, room to record activities, people met along the way, reminders of places to see and things to do the next time you’re in the area, and a page for notes for each day.

To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – Why were we taught to fear witches and not the people who burned them alive?