We enjoyed our week long stay at Cosby Woods Campground near Silver Springs, Florida. It is a nice campground with a restaurant on-site. The campground is a member of Coast to Coast Resorts so we only paid $6.00 a day. Three years ago we visited nearby Silver Springs, rode the glass bottom boats and took in the other events there. We recommend it for a relaxing day but since we had been there we skipped it this year. Still having trouble with our refrigerator we stopped at Tri-Am RV in Ocala for service. The technician determined a gas solenoid valve assembly was not functioning and they had to order it. We have an appointment with them next week to put the part in and see if it fixes the refrigerator.

Near Walt Disney World we camped at Destiny Secret Lake Resort. It is a nice and large park, but they have no provisions for hooking up a computer for e-mail and taking care of finances online. We have stayed in thirteen campgrounds since October and this is the first one that has not let us do our e-mail. For that one reason we have to rate the campground very low. Norm's oldest son was attending a medical convention at Walt Disney World and that was our reason for being there. Troy brought his wife Sandy and their two sons, Luke (nearly three) and Logan (eight months). They live in Sartell, Minnesota and Troy has a medical practice in St. Cloud. We only get to see them about three times a year so we were looking forward to meeting up with them. They visited our motorhome and we prepared a meal, only the second time we have had visitors for a meal. Then we spent a day with them at Epcot in Walt Disney World, and we baby-sat the boys two nights so Troy and Sandy could have nights out. We have memories of the beautiful boys that will last a lifetime. We will remember Luke taking us on a long walk to a children's swimming pool, his throwing rocks in a pond, and helping us read night time books. Logan is only eight months old but he enjoyed the sights and sounds of Walt Disney World and always had a beautiful smile on his face. We ate lunch in China and dinner in Morocco. Logan got excited when the belly-dancer performed.

Tom and Tinka Dooley, friends we met at Escapees Rainbow Plantation in southern Alabama, told us if we ever got to the Orlando area to spend some time with them so we decided to take them up on their offer. Tom and Tinka live part of the year in their home in Alabama and the rest of the year in their motorhome on their son's property in Florida. We arrived at their place in Sorrento, Florida on a Saturday afternoon in time for a party. Their son and his wife, Tom and Cris, had a six day old son, Dustin, and family and friends had come to celebrate the event so we joined in. After the party we joined Tom and Tinka and went to the community center in the small town of Cassia. Every other Saturday the locals meet for a pot luck supper and music and singing. Groups of musicians can be found in the building, under shelters and under trees in the park. Visitors take lawn chairs and move from group to group around the park listening to Bluegrass and Country music. It was a very enjoyable and entertaining evening. The best part about traveling fulltime is the people we meet. The Dooley family is an example of the good people in this country and we plan to visit them again someday.

We rolled up to Tri-Am RV in Ocala to have the refrigerator repaired. Tri-Am is a family owned business with good service and they know how to take care of their customers. We hated to leave the warm weather in Florida, but Christmas time is nearing and we wanted to spend the holidays with families in Kentucky. Our pace so far has been slow and we have stayed off interstate highways the last two months. Now it is time to hit the interstate and rack up some miles heading north to cold country. With every mile we drove the temperature dropped and wind and rain started. A few miles into Georgia we decided to stop for the night. The next day we drove through Georgia including through the middle of Atlanta. A month ago we tried to avoid the cities but Norm feels like a ham driving the motorhome and we never slowed below 65 mph driving through Atlanta. By late afternoon we reached Kimball, Tennessee and decided to spend our first night in a Wal-Mart parking lot. The procedure is simple, buy a few items in the store and ask if you can spend the night in their parking lot. Since our refrigerator was working properly we could dry-camp.

The weather in Kentucky was windy and rainy and we arrived at Norm's parents house in Irvington late in the day. It was nice seeing the folks again after two and one half months. We checked with the local police and they recommended we stay in a grocery store parking lot in a shopping center. The police told us they would drive by once an hour to check on us and the motorhome. The next day we filled the propane tank and drove to Otter Creek Park where we planned to stay the next nine days. Otter Creek Park is owned and operated by the city of Louisville and we had checked with them in September about staying there in December. They had full hookup sites with a special winter rate of $81 for nine days. We were surprised to find the park was virtually closed down with only a few dry camping sites. Since there were no utility hookups and no dump station we decided to stay in a KOA campground in Shepherdsville, half way between Norm's and Linda's parents.

We had a whirlwind of visits while in Kentucky since that is where most of our families live. The big day with Linda's family was Christmas Eve at her parent's, John and Jean Click. Attending the event were Linda's parents, her son Jeremy Sharp and his daughter Emily, his girlfriend Amy Smith and her son D.J., Linda's daughter Amy Sharp, Linda's sister Jan and her husband Steve Hundley, Linda's brother Dan, his wife Rita and their sons Aaron, Nathan and David (Medina, OH), Linda's niece Lisa and her husband Aaron DenDekler.

The Sunday after Christmas was the big event for Norm's family. Everyone attended church then met at his parent's, Tom and Thelma Payne's house. Those in attendance were his parents, his brother Larry Payne, his wife Luz and their sons Andrew and Chris (Elizabethtown, KY), Norm's sister Gloria and her husband Don Martin (Kokomo, IN), Norm's son Troy Payne, his wife Sandy and their sons Luke and Logan (Sartell, MN), Norm's son Darren Payne and his wife Martha
(Mt. Sterling, KY), Norm's son Nathan Payne, Norm's nephew David Martin and wife Christy Grant (Chicago, IL), Norm's nephew Eric Martin (Chicago), and Norm's aunt Mildred Bates.

Months in advance both of us had made dental appointments for checkups with our regular dentists and we both found we needed some repair work. We prefer to use the dentists we have used for years so when we visit in Kentucky we will also visit our dentists. We also got haircuts at our regular places while in Kentucky. Linda volunteered to work one day at her old job so she could remain an active employee. At the end of the day she realized she had made a good decision about retiring. She had to get up at 4:00 a.m. to drive to work, the temperature was -3 degrees and the roads were covered with snow and ice. After spending nearly three months in the warm and sunny south this was a rude awaking.

Speaking of weather, the temperature dropped below zero and remained below freezing for days with over four inches of snow that refused to melt. We tried to move the slide in and it was frozen. The TV antenna and satellite dish on top of the motorhome refused to move. In other words we were stuck. After nearly two weeks in the frozen north land we decided to head for Texas. Norm had queued in his computer, fourteen e-mails to family and friends and three stocks to sell and two to buy through his brokerage service. The plan was to borrow the telephone line at the campground, send the information and hit the road heading south. Then disaster struck, the computer's hard drive crashed so we spent an additional two days in Kentucky and transferred everything to Linda's computer. Norm will get his computer repaired later, it's time for Texas.

We decided to high tail it to Texas so we drove late into the night and stopped overnight at a Wal-Mart parking lot in Brinkley, Arkansas. The roads through Arkansas, I-40 & I-30, have to be the worse roads in the United States. The Dutch Star rides on air bags and usually floats down the road with only the big bumps being felt. Through Arkansas we thought the motorhome would shake apart and it was terrible all the way across the state from West Memphis to Texarkana. We
highly recommend skipping Arkansas even if it means driving hundreds of miles out of your way.

The next day (New Year's Eve) as we were nearing our destination of Livingston, Texas, Norm's mother called our cell phone to tell us his father had been taken to the hospital with pneumonia. We arrived at Escapees' Rainbow End in Livingston, our home base, in time for a New Year's Eve party in the activity center. A multi-course meal was served, one course each hour until the stroke of midnight. Most of the park attended and we enjoyed the fellowship of about 250 other
Escapee members. At midnight there was no Y2K disaster, the electricity stayed on, the water kept flowing, and the TV reported no disasters.

We kept in touch with Norm's father's condition and the next day his brother called to say his father had taken a turn for the worse. Norm's sister was heading to Kentucky and we decided it was time for us to return.