2020 Planning

We have now been in Zephyrhills for a month and it has started to feel like home and less like we are tourists. To be honest, we haven’t been touring much at all the last 3 weeks. First I was down with a head cold, then when I was getting better, Tim came down with it. For him, it has now lingered for over 2 weeks and his cough was not getting better. We finally decided to contact his doctor and he is now on antibiotics. I am hoping that does the trick and he will be feeling better very soon.

I spent the first week that Tim was sick in Inverness at my Aunt Tish and Uncle Paul’s house. After Aunt Tish’s hip replacement, she was in a rehab facility for a week. Once she was home, she was supposed to have physical therapy from a home care company. Well that never happened, so I made daily phone calls during the week I was there trying to get that set up. I made progress but it was a very slow process. Her therapy started a few days after I left, which was over 2 weeks after she was home from the rehab facility. It is so difficult to navigate the healthcare approval process and if you don’t have an advocate pushing for it, you can get lost in the shuffle. That is what happened here. A faxed order was either lost or never received by the home care company and the rehab center never followed up. A very frustrating process for sure! I am glad that I was close enough to be able to be there and help out with that as well as do the basic housekeeping, laundry and cooking while she recovered.

Enjoyed my daily walks while in Inverness. This road is a block below their house. I love these trees.

Scenic view on my daily walks.

While I was there, I started to do some research and planning for our 2020 travels. Initially we planned to travel up the east coast this spring/summer and get to Maine by early September, so we could spend fall in New England. We discussed heading to the desert southwest next winter. After being here in Florida and having the opportunity to spend time with my Aunt and Uncle, we decided we wanted to come back to Florida next winter to be closer to them. I don’t think that I have mentioned that they were also RVers and spent about 15 years work camping in an RV park in Wildwood, FL after they retired. After hearing how much they enjoyed their time at that park, I thought it was worth a look before we made a decision to renew here in Zephyrhills. It is much closer to their home and also close to The Villages where my cousin Janet and her husband Lou live. Another benefit is that it is closer to Tim’s sister Sue and her husband Greg.

Tim and I stopped there the day he picked me up after my week in Inverness. We liked the campground and feel that it will work out well for us next year. It is different from this resort. Here is more like a mobile home community with about 80% of the sites stationary park model homes with added on florida rooms and only 20% RVs. The campground in Inverness is probably 80% RV sites and 20% park model homes. They both have a full activity schedule and are filled with snow birds January through March. Both have positives and negatives but I think the campground feel will be more our style. We learned that the park in Inverness is a Thousand Trails park which meant that we had to decide if we wanted to buy the membership.

To get more information on Thousand Trails, we scheduled a meeting with their sales representative at the park. I have to say the presentation was very informative and there are many options and considerations with these memberships. The rules can be pretty complex and hard to understand. Rosie did a great job presenting the options to us and we decided to buy the basic membership, the Camping Pass (formerly known as a Zone Pass). We now have a one year membership for the South East zone.

I think it was worth the investment. Even if we only stay at the park in Wildwood for next winter season, we will get our money’s worth. There was a special so we saved $100 on the membership. With the membership, we will have a $500 savings on the cost of the winter season which basically is what the membership cost us. So any additional stays will be a bonus since those will be at no cost. We should be able to stay at least 2 weeks in the system as we travel back to Pennsylvania this spring and hopefully stay at least 2 weeks or more in the system as we head back to Florida next fall.

We met some other campers at the Wildwood campground who recommended a site to request for next season. They are going to be running a special for a few weeks starting 2/15 that will save us another $200 on the seasonal rate. We just need to call them on 2/15 to book and put a deposit on the site. Their seasonal rate is less than where we are now and it includes electric. We thought this park included that as well but learned after we checked in that it does not. Over all, we think next year’s costs for the season will save us about $1000 from what we spent this year. That is a big deal for us since we are retired and full time.

Our current resort is a Sun community and they were running a special at the Tampa RV show for discounted rates for April, 2020. We can stay where we are for $299 plus electric for the month of April. That is a fantastic rate so we had to consider it. To be honest, it would probably be better to start heading back north in April since Florida will be getting pretty warm by then. Starting our travels again in April would also give us 2.5 months to get back to Pennsylvania, so we could spend more time in each place that we stop. We really waffled on making the decision by Sun’s 1/31/20 deadline.

One consideration is a trip that I have planned with the girl’s the week of 4/20. Katie likes to do a spring photography trip and I have been her travel companion the last 2 years. I convinced her to come south and go to the Florida Keys with me. I have always wanted to drive down to Key West which is a trip that Tim does not want to do. Katie was willing so we invited Kim and Whitney. Kim has vacation in April so we are waiting to go when she can join us. Their flight costs are the cheapest if they all fly into Ft. Lauderdale. I spent some time looking for flights from places we might be and it was more expensive than a flight from Tampa. With the savings on the RV resort and flight costs, we decided it was best to stay here for April. It may be hot so we will just have to spend more time at the pool!

One of the great things about the RV lifestyle is flexibility. So we can easily stay in Florida longer if we want to since we are not locked into any set schedule. Tim is willing to do this to accommodate my travel plans and I am willing to accommodate his as well. He wants to attend the Forest River Owner’s Group (FROG) rally in Goshen, IN, which will be the 3rd week in August, 2020. Going there would make a trip to New England for the fall very difficult for us. We simply don’t want to travel that far that quickly. Knowing we want to spend time in June and July in Pennsylvania to visit family and get in doctor appointments and spend time in Indiana in August, I now have a high level plan for 2020 travel.

Right now, it looks like we will have about 6 weeks to travel north through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia to get back to Pennsylvania. When we leave PA in August, we will travel to Ohio, then Indiana for the FROG rally. After that, the tentative plans are start south and spend the fall traveling through Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama on our way back to Florida by mid December. I haven’t booked anything yet but have started the research. I will book the longer stays first, then work on the rest of them. I am looking forward to research travel routes and scenic areas to visit in each of these states.

Got the trailer washed and waxed - much easier when you hire someone! They even cleaned and treated the roof. They will be at the FROG rally so we can get it done again in August.