Flexibility and Changing Plans

Some people approach the RV lifestyle without making plans and just going with the flow, letting the road take them wherever it leads. There are risks with not planning in advance, especially finding places to stay. For us, that would be too stressful and nerve wracking. I like having a plan and knowing we have RV sites scheduled in areas that we want to visit and Tim wants to know he has a definite place to stop after 3-4 hours of driving. So instead of last minute planning, I tend to plan about six months in advance so most of our nights are booked. I leave a few nights open for travel days for a little flexibility on those days.

Most of the time that works well for us but sometimes, life happens and our plans change. Recently that happened to us but it was for a very exciting reason. Our youngest daughter Kim got engaged to a wonderful young man, Greg Smith. We are very excited for them. They planned their wedding for March, 2022 in Cincinnati where they live. We initially planned to leave Florida in early April and start heading west with the thought that we would spend at least a year or two out west. Of course we want to be there for them, help where needed, and celebrate with them. So, instead of heading West, we are going back North, to Ohio and Pennsylvania this spring and summer. I am looking forward to wedding dress shopping in May. To make it easier for getting back for the wedding, we are going to spend next winter in Wildwood, Florida again.

Kim and Greg. Our daughter Katie took this photo during their engagement session. She did a great job capturing how happy they are!

Since we didn’t go out much this year, we are looking forward to coming back to the same place. We are really hoping life will be more normal next winter and we can do more touring and socializing. There is quite a bit to do in this area that we have not yet experienced and some places we are eager to explore more. One such place is Mt. Dora. We met Sue and Greg there a couple of weekends ago and highly enjoyed walking around the town. It is a very quaint town on a lake in Central Florida and is host to many festivals during the year. We didn’t want to go during a festival so we went on a fairly quiet and not too crowded Sunday. We drove in along the lake and parked in the center of town next to a park where we met Sue and Greg. The town reminded me of Carmel in California although on a much smaller scale. There were a few blocks on a couple of streets in the center of town filled with a variety of shops and restaurants. We wandered through the town but only went in a few shops because they are small and unfortunately only about half of the people were wearing masks. We still had a great time, found some places to check out, picked up lunch and ate in the park, then walked to another park on the water. As we were browsing, we found a restaurant with a side patio that wasn’t crowded so we sat outside and enjoyed some wine and relaxed as we watched the people stroll by. All in all, it was a great day and we hope to go back next year perhaps for a festival.

The park at the lake in Mt. Dora has this cute pavilion facing the miniature lighthouse.

The inn looked like a nice place to stay. This is the main building but there were other side buildings as well.

View of the lake from the Inn.

Enjoying the day with Sue and Greg. We found this pretty fountain in a little square behind a few shops.

Luckily, when our plans changed, I had only started planning our trip west so we didn’t have reservations yet. I had just started planning again and was now looking for where to go in April as we head north to spend May near Kim in Cincinatti when we had another change happen. Good thing we are flexible! We were really hoping that we could get the Covid vaccine before leaving Florida and we lucked out. The age requirement changed from 65 to 60 and older so we quickly booked our shots. We were able to get an appointment the day the age requirement changed. Our second shot is on 4/12 though and we were due to leave this campground on 4/1.

I wanted to move to a spot closer to the gulf so I could go to the beach more often since we were staying in Florida longer, so we booked a place just north of Crystal River. It would mean an hour drive back for our second shot which is easily doable. I was excited about the opportunity to put my feet in the sand more often:>) I had just started packing up our stuff this week so we can close up the fifth wheel for traveling when the RV park called me. They had to change our site due to some construction that they have starting next week. A trench is going to be dug right through the site we had booked. We could have chosen a different site, but we can save a bit of money just extending our stay here. Tim talked to the office and we are now booked at this same park and site until 4/19. I guess I just have to drive a bit when I want to go to the beach. It is good that we are flexible and willing to change plans. With this lifestyle, that seems to be a necessity.

We are booked near Cincinatti starting May 4 so we will be traveling north fairly quickly for us. That means we are taking a fairly direct route and won’t hit any new states so no additions to our map. We added 12 states in our first year on the road and only added one so far in our second year. I think we will only add one more before our second year ends. I think it may take us much longer that our initial 5 year plan to visit all of the lower 48 states!