Daytona Beach

After leaving Bushnell, we went to Daytona Beach to spend five days with friends from New York. We stayed at the KOA in Port Orange where our friends Chris and Mindy, and Ken and Amy spend the winters.  It was your typical KOA with tight sites but the company was awesome.

After getting set up, we were treated to dinner by Wendy, the manager of the park.  We went to North Turn, a restaurant on the beach.  Great food, great company and great view followed by a stop at Dairy Queen.

The following morning we decided to go to Waffle House for breakfast since we had never been there, followed by a trip to the huge flea market.

This picture is a reminder to us to never grow up and keep acting crazy and having fun.

Ray and I spent the next few days heading out on our own to explore the area as we had not been there since 1992 and boy has it changed.

The rest of our stay was spent just catching up with everyone and enjoying each other's company.  We were sad to hear that Chris and Mindy will be staying in Daytona permanently but we know that we will catch up with them next year and will spend the summer in Canandaigua with Ken and Amy.

The rest of our trip home to New York was spent doing one nighters on the road.  We were ecstatic to hear while we were in Florida that we are expecting our first grandchild so we were very anxious to hit the road and get back home.

Winding Down the Winter Season

The rest of our winter at Paradise Oaks was spent working and checking out other areas of Central Florida.  Ones day trip took us to Tarpon Springs, the sponge capital of the world.

It was not exactly what I expected.  It was just a small touristy area with one main street full of small shops loaded with sponges.  The crowd was rather intimidating for Mickey since he has gotten rather scared of everything in his old age.  I don't think it would be worth the drive to visit again.

On the other hand, we took a drive to Mt. Dora and we loved that area.  Again, several small shops and restaurants and nice parks as well.

We spent several day checking out other areas of central Florida.  While Paradise Oaks was a nice park (although the crowd was a little too old for us) and the job wasn't bad, we decided it was just not the area we wanted to be in.  Bushnell is not home to much and the drive to get any where we wanted to go was just too far. We have decided next winter to try Lake Magic which is four miles from Disney.  We look forward to being in an area that we really enjoy and making new friends.  To top it off, our friends Glenn and Deloris from New York will also be staying there so I'm sure we will be spending time with them