RV travels with Rich and Judy: St. Andrews State Park, Panama City Beach, FL November 25-December 2, 2013

After a difficult trip to New York and back, we spent one night at Blackwater River to pick up the RV and then headed to St. Andrews. We were especially looking forward to this stop since our my son, his wife, Sam, and their seven month old daughter Emilia are there. On the way to the park, we stopped by Rick's work location and saw him for a quick tailgate lunch in spite of the windy cold weather and threatening rain. St. Andrews was another new park for us and apparently it is one of the most popular Florida state parks – it's always difficult to get a site here. The weather had been very rainy (unusual for winter in Florida) and many of the sites had muddy ruts all through the site, but especially near the road. Luckily, our site wasn't too bad in spite of the continuing rain.

Rick and Sam

Rich and Emilia

On Wednesday morning, we met Rick at work and picked up – we got to keep Emilia for the day. We had a great time with her – she's one of the happiest babies I've ever seen. Thursday was Thanksgiving and we had Rick, Sam, and Emilia were over for a home cooked dinner – roasted chicken instead of a turkey, but mashed potatoes, gravy, escalloped oysters, bread dressing, cranberries, and pumpkin pie. Not bad for a tiny RV kitchen. The weather was still cold and rainy, but we were comfy and cozy inside - that's the beauty of the RV over a tent, in which we camped until our mid-fifties!

Since clean clothes and fresh veggies were getting scarce, it was laundry and grocery shopping on Friday, then cleaning. That is another of the beauties of RV living – it only takes about an hour to clean unless I do the walls and ceilings!

Cute little hedgehog

Emilia and Rich at the zoo

Black swan

Colorful bird

Aren't these the cutes

I fell in love with this beautiful wolf

She fell in love with Rich

Goat in the petting zo

Donkey in the petting zoo

See the stored fat on his rump?

Baby giraffe

This is an I-Can't-Remember...

Rick and Sam had taken the next two days off toand on Saturday they took us to Zoo World in Panama City, a non-profit educational facility. We arried mid-morning and wandered through the exhibits. We saw a cute little hedgehog, lynx, several kinds of monkies, a number of different parrots, budgies, and the like, swans, ducks, groundhogs, lions, leopards. By this time, the bird show was beginning. We watched and enjoyed. The birds were beautiful and it was fun to see the things they had been trained to do. By this time we were all ready for lunch, so we had a picnic outside the zoo then went back in for the wolf exhibit. There were three wolves, but only two were calm enough to be a part of the talk. They were abolutely beautiful and Montana loved meeting all the folks in the audience.

We then went through the reptile exhibit and on into the petting zoo where they had a baby giraffe, turkeys, a pony, donkey, and goats and all sorts of other animals – all of which were expert beggars for the pellets of food sold by the park. The donkey was obviously a success as large lumps of fat were visible on his body. Apparently, many visitors were afaid the collections of fat were tumors, since there was an informative sign about it.

After finishing up at the zoo, we then drove over to the marina to watch the boat parade. It was a perfect night for the parade – the rain had let up as had the wind and the sunset was spectacular. We saw some nicely decorated boats, and lots of happy folks dressed up on them.

At the marina

After the parade and all of our walking at the zoo, we were ready for a good meal which we enjoyed at Los Antojitos, one of Rick and Sam's favorite spots. It was a family-owned restaurant, which is what we look for rather than chains, and the food was very good.

It had been a great day and Emilia was again a happy baby. The next day we did some Black Friday-on-Sunday shopping and had lunch with the kids at Outback. The next day we headed out to Fort Clinch for two weeks. It was great to spend so much good time with Rick, Sam, and Emilia and are already looking forward to next time we can get together.