Hanging around Alva a little bit longer

This is post number 248 to this blog, almost 200 of them posted once every day of our journey since we left Douglassville, Pa on Sunday June 8, 2014.  This will be the last post which will be religiously sent each day.  We will continue to post, but only as we come across easy to access free WIFI on the road. 

Today we dropped our Verizon Broadband package from 30 gigs to 15 a month, saving almost $125.00 a month in the process. But to stay under 15 gigs we can’t keep using Verizon cell towers to post to the blog every night.

Never fear, we will still post to Facebook all of the pictures we feel our followers might be interested in, and we will post blog articles in more detail when free WIFI is available.

However we have not seen enough response to the Book Blog which we’ve been posting just as regularly so that will close now.

Let us know if you will miss it and if enough folks want it, perhaps Mona will bring it back.

The impetus to make this change is today’s decision to actively pursue a possible contract to purchase a mobile home in Oak Park, less than a mile from Alva UMC. We can’t discuss any details or show pictures of the home at this time as the owner is very unsure about selling it at all.  But they have set a price, so they are that sure at least.

I can say the home is a triple wide with spacious neatly trimmed tree shaded lawns on all sides. The interior has had many upgrades and the large Lanai/Florida Room faces considerable open space. If it comes on the market it will be sold with all furnishings as is, possibly including the CLUB golf cart now in use by the owner, and definitely including the large flat screen HD TV & Surround Sound system (ahhhhhhh).

No rush for us. As each day passes we are more sure this is where we will soon call home base, and if not in this house, then in another.

After beginning this possible purchase process we relaxed ourselves by going once more to one of the nicest Laundromats we’ve been anywhere in these contiguous United States.  Then a really delicious pizza and bruschetta lunch was enjoyed by all next door to the pretty laundry.  Next we discovered Franklin Lock, on the Caloosahatchee Waterway, about eight miles down stream from Alva and Oak Park’s marina.

Here the US  Corps of Engineers maintains a truly pristine campground, nature park, and lock system for all water traffic across the state of Florida and a white sand beach.

Today we saw turtles in the water (stay clear, they snap) and Mona thought she saw a manatee.  They sometimes come up river even east of Alva.

We saw only small recreational craft use the locks, in both directions, today, but they were fun to watch go through as we sat and read on the beach.

We will be hanging here at Alva UMC  a bit longer still.  We now need to purchase 8 new high capacity coach batteries and 2 new commercial starter batteries for the engine & genny.

We’ll get the sporadic cycling of the water pump in order then, and the TV antenna fixed, as well.

There’s a Camping World nearby that offers a 10% discount to Good Sam folk. I’m a good Ken, most of the time, but I always carry a Good Sam Card.

Stay tuned!

-Ken