Holiday Magic

Where did the holidays go?  They were magical for us and, like magic, they’ve disappeared!

After leaving Key West, we put Greg on a plane to Connecticut to spend Christmas with his brothers from other mothers.  Then we checked into the nicest RV park we’ve been to during our entire trip.  

From there, we did some last-minute shopping at the endless malls and storefront plazas in the Pompano Beach / Ft. Lauderdale area.  

We had a great evening with our special friends from CT (to call them friends seems an understatement), the O’Connors.  

Abby and Clark arrived from Chicago on December 23, and we spent Christmas in Delray Beach at Larry and Nora Rosensweig’s house, whose driveway was a snugly perfect fit for The Big T.  

Delray Beach has a cool, old-Florida-meets-new-Florida vibe.  We savored the restaurant scene, the beach and the Intracoastal Waterway running through town 

But mostly, we enjoyed family time and the warm (literally and figuratively – shorts on Christmas Eve!) hospitality of Larry and Nora. Christmas Day provided extra fun, with the family of Nora’s brother joining us for dinner (and an interesting appetizer).

We then pushed hard to get from South Florida to Tuscaloosa. Our drive through rural South Georgia featured something we haven’t seen before on the trip – a water tower in the middle of a road (U.S. Highway 82).

JJ flew down from New York and joined us to watch the Alabama-Oklahoma game with the Wooldridge and Sandersons, then ring in the New Year on Lake Tuscaloosa at the house of Robert and Ruth Reynolds (who, luckily, also had an RV-friendly driveway!).  

We also played a soggy round of golf and had a nice boat ride on Lake Tuscaloosa. That little patch of blue sky in the boat pic is as close as we got to sunshine in Alabama from the day we arrived until the morning we left.

It’s not a visit to Tuscaloosa without going to the greatest rib joint in the world, Dreamland!

Ruth Reynolds is an expert on the healing power of minerals. She provided me with an amazing diagnosis and treatment for my sorer-than-usual wrist! I’m glad to provide an unsolicited plug for Ruth’s products, available at ohmstateofmind.com.

And this saga wouldn’t be complete without admitting to a sheepish incident in Tuscaloosa. The amount of rain in Alabama in the past few weeks turned it into Seattle Southeast. As we pulled into our space in the RV park where we stayed for a couple of days before going to the Reynolds’s house, I backed up a foot too far and got off the gravel and into some grass. Some very wet grass. Which turned into mud as I tried to get out of it. Predictably, my efforts accomplished nothing but spinning our tires deeper and deeper into the muck, so we eventually swallowed our pride and called AAA for a tow. Not a good self-esteem moment, but we did get a full ROI on our annual AAA membership fee.

On January 2, it was back on the road, with fond memories of a special holiday season and gratitude for family, good friends and their welcoming hospitality.

Happy New Year, everyone!