Hello again!

I’m going to devote precious little space to what it took for us to establish ourselves as Florida residents, with a new mailing address, new local bank, new storage place, new drivers licenses, register and title the dinghy, register to vote, apply for Florida healthcare and then add, change and delete all that one must when you have a new address. Russ deserves a gold medal for his patient, tireless efforts and for putting up with my exasperated discourse every time things went awry; oh and you know they zigged when we wanted zag, changed plans on the fly and lord, I am so, so glad it’s done.

Even getting our Enterprise rental car on Nov 15 so we could get to DMV, dentist, etc, had him gone one solid hour and the place was less than a mile away from the marina!!  If you need to know more, I’ve added a page (tab) for the topic.

We arrived at FPCM a few days early which meant we could check out the well-known and extensive Farmers’ Market.

Sunny, breezy and delightful. Live music too. Every Saturday and a much smaller one Wednesday afternoons.

 

 

DMV or not? We opted for what may look like a DMV office but is in fact the county tax collector’s office. Everything is much larger here in Florida compared to Connecticut.

Donuts- yes we managed to work in plenty of those. Donut Circus in Fort Pierce was the best- not super fancy but fresh and how can you beat $4.21 for 6? plus we often got a 7th included for free. 🙂  The local law enforcement could be found there too, only they tried to go incognito. Got a tip about Jupiter Donuts in Stuart but never got that far.

Egrets- ah they kept me busy one morning. You get the idea.

Flew on Spirit Airlines from Orlando to Windsor Locks, CT. Spirit is no frills and their version of First Class is four seats in the first row. We took two to keep Russ and his long legs comfortable for the 3-hour non-stop flight.

The Marriott Springhill Suites was pricey but only a very short walk to the Uhaul pickup location. We opted for Hotels.com, so as to get some good deals for all our hotel nights this trip.

Spent Tuesday and part of Wednesday carefully loading the Uhaul, then turned in our keys and bid farewell to our storage unit of seven years. Felt like early Christmas as I peeked into boxes and the drawers of my linen press; first glimpse of the contents since packing up in 2010.

Enjoyed a happy family Thanksgiving in Ivoryton, CT. Benj drove down and we got to spend a few extra hours with him on Friday before we needed to start the long drive back to Florida.

 

There’s no avoiding I-95, but we wanted to avoid tolls as much as possible and the Cross Bronx Expressway leading to the GW.  Our EZPass could not be used on the Uhaul and we couldn’t know which toll plazas still had a cash lane or were electronic only.  And as you may guess, we wanted to drive over the new Tappan Zee Bridge and make sure that final span was properly in place. 🙂

 

Traveling, flying and driving can be stressful, but if you have a nice room and a king bed to fall into, how great is that? You all may be spoiled but we sleep in a cave-like space just this side of Queen. And by that I mean “down” side.

Two and a half days after leaving Connecticut we arrived back at the marina without incident; just a few traffic backups on Sunday. Gotta love Google Maps for driving.

Monday we got back into the heavy lifting and managed to get 95% packed into the new unit.

The St Lucie County Christmas parade took place a snowball’s throw from the marina. Talk about weird- not cold, no snow and hot beverages to warm you up. Still, was festive and I got to wear what minimal warm weather Christmas-y things I have.

What’s a Florida parade without a boat or two?

The park where the weekly market takes place has all these tall palms and not long after arriving here we watched the county workers wrap lights around the trunks. Each tree had some sort of small box as part of the light strands. Then the day came for the parade and tree lighting- Dec 2 and we watched the palm tree light show as the colors changed, often rapidly, in keeping with the music.

May you all be blessed with the joy, love and peace of the holiday season. Wishing you superb health and happiness in the New Year!