In 2010, I planned a complete trip to Florida and the southeast. We had spent the last two winters snowbirding in the Desert Southwest and thought a change was due. After I had gotten it all planned and I knew where we were going to stay and what we might see in each spot, I presented it to Gary for his comments and suggestions. Florida is much more expensive than the Desert Southwest since there are fewer resorts and many more people vying for them. I was being told that I had to make a full deposit to hold a site and that, if we cancelled, I would lose at least half of the deposit. More expensive, more difficult to get into and more difficult to get out of - the Florida resorts were challenging. After reviewing our plans we both decided that we wanted to be able to return to Iowa at a moment’s notice should Gary’s father, who was 88 at the time, get sick and need our help.
Thus, we’ve been going to Arizona and California for the winters. However, for this winter I planned an 11-day trip to Hawaii. What could be the problem with 11 days? Hmmm. Now I know.
Today we spent some time on the phone with Dawn, Gary’s sister who lives near Iowa City and is a nurse, who had gone to Fort Dodge to be with Lug and to assess his situation. Meanwhile, Cathy, Gary’s other sister who was spending a month in Austin, TX had retuned to Fort Dodge also. Lug’s situation is serious and, though he has been moved out of the CCU and into a regular hospital bed, will probably be in the hospital for a while. Now, do you think Gary and I can go to Hawaii? And, I’m sure you’d give the same answer that we did. No. And, we decided that we would head on back to Iowa, RV and all. We don’t know how long we’d be in Iowa and why leave the RV in California not knowing the future?
We then spent about an hour on the phone with Priceline canceling the plane, the hotel, the shuttle and the car that I had reserved for Hawaii. We will get most of our money back, and since I had bought trip insurance, will be able to put in a claim for the rest this way.
I’ve said that I fret lots about things that might happen, about things that might not happen, about things that have absolutely no chance of happening. In short, I am a world class fretter. I could earn an Olympic Gold in fretting. Recently, I’ve spent some time hoping that we would not get the flu right before our trip to Hawaii. Well, we’ve dodged that bullet. But now, it’s a much more serious fret.
We headed back to the RV, readied it for travel and we’re off. We wanted to get at least a few miles under our belts before we set in for the night. We left about 4:00 pm. We have never left in the afternoon for another campground. In fact, we’ve seen people leave in the afternoon and have wondered where in the world were they going at this late hour. Now, we’re giving others in this campground a reason to wonder about those crazy people from Iowa who are leaving now.
Our plan was to drive over the mountain range and get down to the central California plains. Unfortunately, we had gotten a late start and didn’t get down before dark. Coming off the summit of the mountains is about a 15 mile weaving drive with a 6% grade through a canyon. It’s exciting in the daylight and really exciting at night, following the trucks and being passed by the cars.
Our ‘campground’ for the night was a big lot that trucks and RV’s park in. We played truck stop roulette and sometimes we win at this and sometimes we’d don’t. This time we didn’t, we parked next to a truck that ran its motor all night. ALL NIGHT. ALL NIGHT. Uff dah. It did affect our sleep patterns but, at least we were awake early to make an early start.
No comments:
Post a Comment