The Merry Marsden Travels

Friday, April 9/10 Lakefield, ON Canada After a lovely Easter visit with Tom and Diana in Virginia and an overnight hotel in Altoona and a wonderful bed and breakfast stop in St Catherines on Tuesday night we arrived back in Lakefield on Wednesday. We calculated we travelled over 10,000 miles (16,000 km) since we started this journey on Dec. 19/09. Our Ford truck gets 10 miles to a gallon of diesel fuel when it pulls the trailer so that is over 1000 gallons - at around$3 a gallon - you do the math. Our campground fees totalled about $2000. But the memories of the places we visited and the wonderful people we got to spend time with is priceless. Looking forward to our next journey! We are still rookie RVers but we have learned a few things on this trip which will make the next one easier. Thanks to everyone who had the patience to travel with us via this blog. Mary and Don signing off. Adios amigos!

Thursday, April 1/10 New Bern, NC We enjoyed the beautiful sunny day today to look around the historic downtown are of New Bern, North Carolina. We are parked for these 2 nights in a small RV Park outside of New Bern. New Bern is a town of 28,000 on the East Coast at the mouth of the Trent and Neuse Rivers. It is celebratin g it's 300th anniversary of its settlement by Swiss explorers. New Bern is na med after Bern, Switzerland. "Bern is Swiss for bear so there are decorated fiberglass bears around the town for the anniversary. Also there are "historical hydrants" painted like historical characters important to the town. They also have a Firefighter's Museum here but we didn't tour it. We walked around the historic downtown area viewing the historical homes. It's most fa mous attraction is the Tryon Palace. This North Carolina government house, built between 1767 and 1770 by Royal Governor Wm. Tryon represented the British crown and became NC's first ...

March 29 - 31/10 Brunswick Georgia We have moved int o Georgia on our way up the East Coast. The weather gods were smiling on us and we spent a beautiful sunny warm day exploring Jeky ll Island with our bicycles. Jekyll Island was once a favoured resort for an array of wealthy and well-known figures in Amercan history - including the Rockefellers, Pulitzers, Morgans and Vanderbilts. Their winter cottages and club house hotel compose a 240 acre historic site museum. There are over 20 miles of paved trails that circle the island. We had a delicious lunch in the Grand Dining Room of the Club Hotel. The picture on the left is of the Goodyear cottage (Goodyear was a lumbar baron from Buffalo). The picture on the right is an alligator that was sunning itself beside the bicycle path. There are more pictures posted at www.themarsdens.ca if you are interested. We had the camera with us today.

Saturday and Sunday March 27 and 28/10 We moved a couple of hours north and landed in a new RV park - Southern Oaks RV Resort - south of Ocala, Florida. Through Passport America we have half price camping in this park - $15 for a night. On Saturday afternoon we biked over to a big Flea Market - which was really a gigantic dollar store. On Sunday morning, Mary biked over 5 miles down the road to check out "The Villages". The Villages has a population of over 75,000 now. It started in the 1960's as a Census Designated Community with lots of regulations and is now the largest residential development in Central Florida - 98% white and mostly republicans. It is a golf cart community with special golf cart lanes on its roads, golf cart only parking lots at shops and restaurants and a golf cart only bridge over their main highway and a couple of tunnels at other spots. By December 2008, the residents had over 38,000 golf carts. (info from Wikipedia in The Villages, Florida). We...

To March 25/10 We really haven't done too much exciting touristy sight-seeing stuff this past week but we have enjoyed time with friends. We attended a Chili Blaze event put on by the Pinellas Park Fire Department at a local park. The next day there was a "Country in the Park" event in the same park and Mary visited in the afternoon. Sunday night we enjoyed a St Patrick's dinner at Bria n and Thery's friends - Jane and Diane and their dog Fuzzy. Jane has a thing for cows and there are hundreds around in her home. We were dressed up for the occasion from Thery's tickle trunk. On Monday we had a field trip over to the Orlando area to visit Gord and Jill Hill from Belleville who had rented a house with a pool. Gord is another retired firefighter and friend of D on and Brian's. On arrival back at the campground, Thery strained her ankle and had to unforturately back out of the week's line dancing classes with Mary. On Tuesday, Diana and Dave Twiner from La...

To March 18/10 It has been a pretty quiet week. We have been enjoying spending time with Brian and Thery King (Brian w as a firefighter Don worked with) who have a mobile home here. On Sunday we went together to Sawgrass Park nearby and admired the critters, which included turtles - hard and soft shelled, armadillos, alligators and many birds. Thery and Mary have gone to 2 line dancing sessions and some shopping too. Don and Brian rummaged up some old golf and fishing equipment for Don fro m a mobile home that was being cleaned out. We have been biking and walking and have warmed ourselves in the park hottub because we would like the weather to be a bit warmer but we can't complain. Thursday we journeyed down to Sarasota and on the way back took some photos of a big cruise ship (Carnival Inspiration) going under the long bridge south of St. Petersburg.

Update as of March 13/10 It took 5 days of driving, through 5 states and as of tonight 4 hours of time change (with tonight's jump forward time change) but we made it from Arizona to Florida. You don't want to know how many gallons of diesel fuel we went through. It took 3 days to make it through Texas. We spent 3 nights in Texas, one in Alabama and now in Florida. We at in Robert's RV Resort in St. Petersburg. This park has over 600 sites and lots of activities. It is March Break now so I think there are some extra family members around too. Florida seems very soggy from all the rain they have received lately - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida are all soggy right now. We are hoping we brought lots of sunshine with us and this week's forecast is for sunny weather.