Bye-bye Maryland, so long COLD!

Friday, 4 January 2013.  Well, here it is the New Year and we're still in MD.  But not for long!  We head south tomorrow morning and will be in Longs, SC, by Sunday afternoon.  We'll be at the Willow Tree RV Resort & Campground for a couple months.  Then we'll come back up to MD for a minor knee operation (scope job) on me, followed by a few weeks of rest and re-hab before we hit the road again in 2013.  We've had a wonderful time over the Christmas and New Year's holidays, especially with our two sons and four grandkids.  Just oodles and oodles of fun, laughter, and good food and drink.  And Santa was pretty good to us on top of that!  I notice my last blog posting was 9 December when we were at the Camp Meade RV Park.  We stayed there thru Christmas and then tried to head back to the Lost River campground in WV, but they were pretty much snowed in.  And it was also several degrees colder out there!  Instead we opted to stay at the Candy Hill Campground in Winchester, VA, just off I-81, and only about an hour from our oldest son, Kip's, place in Mathias, WV.  We had stayed at Candy Hill in the fall of 2011 and found it a very friendly place.  Still cold, which meant we couldn't hook up to water.  Filled up the fresh water tank in the RV and used that while we stayed there.

Our family holiday get-together / gift exchange took place at Kip's and included his wife, Tina -- our WONDERFUL hostess this year -- and their two daughters, Skye and Rayne; our youngest son, Jamie, his wife, Lisa, and their two sons, Ben and Luke; Lisa's mom, Susan and her friend, Tom; and Tina's cousin, Rick and his daughter, who live just across the road from Kip & Tina.  We had so much fun over those four days from 29 Dec thru New Year's Eve and New Years' Day playing board games, watching movies, and just enjoying each other's company.  We have ONE GREAT FAMILY! Oh, did I forgot to mention all the food?  Seemed like we had plenty of food always available.  It's always so much much to watch the four cousins get together.  You can tell they miss seeing one another more often.  Does a PaPa's heart good!l

Lynette & I said our goodbyes and drove back to Thurmont, MD, on 2 January, and dropped off our Winnebago motorhome for some periodic maintenance and some other work at Beckley's RV Sales and Service just outside of Frederick, MD.  We knew they would most likely need the motorhome for a couple days, so we checked into a nearby hotel in Frederick and hunkered down against the suddenly very cold and windy Maryland weather.  Beckley's finished up this afternoon, and after shelling out a "few" hundred bucks, we hooked up to their electricity and are spending tonight in their backyard.  As I mentioned earlier, we plan to hit the road for Longs, SC, tomorrow morning.  Hope to make the VA-NC border for an overnight stay before pulling into the Willow Tree Campground sometime Sunday afternoon.  And the sooner the better!  Its darn cold right now in the mid-Atlantic states!

Thought I'd close this blog entry with a few pics that we'd taken over the past several weeks.  We had a wonderful holiday season with our two sons and grandkids, and friends.  And we're looking forward to hitting the road again to see more of this good ole USA.

Snow at Camp Meade -- only about an inch or so.  But very COLD!

Took Luke & Ben out to feed the ducks at Ft Meade's Burba Lake.  Fun but was it ever cold!  That was the day when I began feeling poorly.  The things we PaPa's do for our grandkids!

Jamie, me, and Kip getting the gift exchange off to a festive start!

Amid the predictable gift exchange chaos, Skye tries on her new cowgirl boots, while Ben looks for some help from his Daddy with a new toy.  And believe me, it was chaos!

Our grandkids -- Rayne, Ben, Skye and Luke -- bowling over the holidays.  We were celebrating Luke's 5th birthday (12 Dec), and while a tad late, it was what Luke wanted to do and everyone seemed to have a really great time.  Ben -- Next time open your eyes!  Gosh darn, it's so hard getting a good photo of ALL FOUR grandkids.  Anybody else have that problem?

Well, I guess that's about it for this blog post.  Will pick things up again when we get to Longs, SC.  Meanwhile, we send our best wishes to everyone for a safe and healthy 2013.  May God bless and protect.