Back to our Florida Winter Home

December 17, 2025

This will be the last post of 2025. Since you last heard from us, we celebrated Thanksgiving, spent a quick couple of nights in some state park in northern Florida, settled into our ole familiar winter RV park, ran the gauntlet of our annual medical and dental visits, and prepared for our yearly trip up North for the Christmas holiday season.

Julie is writing this post while sitting in the Tampa airport waiting to board a plane to escape sunny and 80 for snowy and 0. Being retired people, we have adopted the habit of getting to airports way too early because, well, what else do we have to do? The giant pink flamingo was a fun new touch this year...

Our last post left you hanging back at Okatibbee Lake in Mississippi. From there, we traveled to Atlanta for a fun several days with Julie's sister's family to celebrate Thanksgiving. We were fortunate that there was a level place to park on the street right in front of Stephanie's house. It was so nice not to need to find a place to drop off the trailer while we visited. An extra bonus this year was that our kids flew down to meet us from St. Paul 🙂.

One last view of Lake Okatibbee Lake through our bedroom window

Atlanta up ahead!

The weather was quite nice when we arrived (low 70s and mostly sunny), but as soon as the Minnesota contingent arrived, the weather took a cooler turn with highs in the 50s and lows down in the upper 20s. At least that was still an improvement over what the Twin Cities had to offer.

The Thanksgiving feast was a definite family affair, with everyone taking a part in the preparations and cleaning.

Too many cooks?

There was almost always a game going on--either at a table or on the TV

For some reason, everyone was greatly entertained by watching Colin prep his baked apple dish

The amazing spread! (Not quite all of the food is shown here, but you get the idea.) Julie somehow neglected to get the obligatory "Family Seated at the Thanksgiving Table Waiting for the Picture to be Taken While Everyone's Food Gets Cold" shot this year--oops!

Burning off some of that turkey dinner

Having our house parked out front turned out to be pretty convenient. It was nice to have access to another oven and fridge when needed. Plus, we didn't need to pack anything. But since we stayed inside the house, we did have to make the daily trek to pick up a change of clothes and such.

It's been a long time since the camper has gotten this cold inside! (We didn't bother running the heat)

A big thanks to Stephanie and Eric for welcoming us all into their home for Thanksgiving this year!

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the kids flew back to Minnesota while we joined the annual RV migration south to Florida. It was a bit of a long drive all the way to the Tampa area from Atlanta, so we stopped off at Stephen Foster State Park for a couple of nights to break up the trip.

They really don't want you to park here

In an unusual twist, Julie neglected to take any pictures during our stay at Stephen Foster State Park. It was a nice enough campground, but we don't recall really doing anything there. That's our state in life now--if we don't photograph it, it didn't happen 😉.

We made it safely to our RV park. Our assigned site this year wasn't as great as last year's, but it wasn't the worst one in the park (a plus!). Sorry, no pictures of the site. (Julie has really dropped the ball lately, but let's face it-- this RV park does not quite compare in natural beauty to the many scenic places we have been this year.) We do however have a picture of the darling "duck birds" (Black-Bellied Whistling Ducks) that call this RV park home most evenings and have the most cheerful chatter.

We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! See you again sometime in 2026!

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