Happy New Years

Happy New Years everyone, I know my blogs are getting further and further apart but the longer we sit back the least we do.

Here is Ron in the pool on Dec. 31, 2010, the weather has finally turned warm and I am enjoying every bit of it. The pool is heated and is so nice and clean, this park is very nice.

We had a great New Years eve, we went first to the clubhouse and visited with others and listened to the music, however it was a little old fashioned for us so about 10pm a few us took

to the street out in our park. We got the music going and we danced on the streets until after midnight, the evening was calm and the temperature fair.

January 1, we decided we could do no more eating so in order not to offend anyone we took off on a day tour and let them have their big New Years Day dinner.

Today we really saw the difference 30 miles can make, we started out by going to Everglades city where the only nice thing there was a very nice rv park, shown below.

Otherwise the town looked dry and worn out. From here we went not 20 miles down the road to Marco Island and Naples, and here it is tropical deluxe, huge resorts, everything green and beautiful.

Along the way we stopped in the Cypress park and took a walk into the everglades on a boardwalk, it was amazingly thick and there were lots of birds.

This is just a picture of how it looked amongst the trees.



Ron on the boardwalk

Look how this vine wrapped itself around this tree.

At the end of the mile long boardwalk you come to a pond which my pictures do not do justice, it was so green. We did not see any turtles but there were a couple gators and my favorite bird.

The gators, if you look really close you can see how big his teeth are.

My favoite bird(have not found out his name yet) was swimming in the pond, he would duck down swimming under the water looking for fish and then pop out just his head and have a look around. He finally caught a fish and he took that fish and beat him to death on the side of the tree until I guess he was not going to get away, it was fun to watch.

We drove back inland as I had read an article about this program town that was built to be idealistic. It turned out to be very catholic with pope and church names on all its streets, it had a very big university but had still not quite got off the ground. It was built in 2007 and so I am sure the recession has not helped its development.

Here is the church in the central square. The name of the town was Ava Marie.

It now gets to the high 70's and low 80's during the day so it is a pleasure to sit back and relax, just take in leisure time and do lots of visiting with new friends.

Hope everyone had a great New Years and we will see you all in 2011.