Stayed up with the kids to watch the ball drop!  I made it til 1:30 a.m. and could have gone longer if we weren’t driving today.  Fun to see all the NYC festivities now that we’ve stood right there.  Oh, this trip is soooo educational, ha.

Up and out bright and early for one last walk in my favorite area with the dogs.  it’s already hot and humid at 7 a.m. and the girls are panting.

No, no, don’t make us go!!!  We’ve been in the Keys for a month, and it feels like home.  We’ve met so many nice locals and other travelers, and there is still so much more to see.  I am already nostalgic because  I know we’ll never be back.  We won’t fly this far from home to go somewhere we’ve already been, because you can never recreate a good “vacation” time.  We have revisited most of the places from our 1998 trip, and Dan and I just keep saying, “you can’t go back”; it’s not the same.  The freshness and wonder and expectation just won’t be there, and that’s what we love about traveling.  So, off we go, north down the Overseas Highway to the mainland.  The Gulf on our left, the Atlantic on our right.

I drove the piece through the Everglades and thought it was beautiful.  It was a little strange to be driving with 4 lanes on a divided highway after being on 2 lanes or a bike for a month.  I kept searching the swampy area to the right for alligators – other RV’ers said this is a good spot.  This is the first time we’ve driven west, knowing we wouldn’t be going back East, so essentially, we will be working our way home for the next 7 months.  The last year has flown by, so we can only guess how quickly this time will pass.

We pulled into our new home/site at about 3 p.m.  This is our view for the month of January and we like it.  We are younger than most of the population here by about 20 years, but so far, they’ve all been very welcoming.  We were in the pool and hot tub by 4 p.m., so that was a good start to the year.  2015 here we come!