COLLIER-SEMINOLE STATE PARK December 2015

Once we rescued Foster and the RV from their temporary stays in Fort Lauderdale, we drove on down to The Keys for a week at Curry Hammock State Park near Marathon, FL.  It was a very wet and rainy stay with some parts of the campground flooded. As it turned out, rain and flooding would continue to follow us during almost all of our stay in southwest Florida. Not really wonderful as it also brought out the mosquitoes.

We had taken a volunteering position at Collier-Seminole State Park just 8 miles east of Naples. We began there on Dec 7th and stayed until late March.


 It was a great chance to spend a chunk of time in SW Florida and see that part of the state. I worked in the campground office one day a week and Paul helped with maintenance at the park.

The unusual thing was that the park was under renovations and the campground was closed to the public! It was just the construction crew, park staff and 10 residential volunteers through the winter months, with an occasional day use visitor. Nice and quiet. We did have the weekends free to check out the beautiful beaches all around us.

It's a little surprising that our first time seeing a hockey game would happen while we were in Florida, but we had a chance to join other volunteers for an evening game that was honoring the Florida State Parks. Fun and surprisingly, quite cold inside the arena.

Naples was quite different from the image I'd had of a quiet little beach town. It might have been that a while back but it has now grown to be a city of shopping centers, beachside high-rises and often crowded six lane roads to get most anywhere. But it felt wonderful to enjoy getting to the beach to ride our bikes and watching some beautiful sunsets.

 And, since it was Christmas time, we had fun watching the annual boat parade in Naples.

 Being only 4 hours south of Tampa my sister and her husband, Steve, came for Christmas and stayed a few days to see this part of the state. Even Foster had a new Christmas toy.

It is a very different feeling to be traveling and living in campgrounds when holidays come along. There are none of the usual traditions we'd had back in Ca.  But with new surroundings come fantastic new experiences instead. New Year's Eve in Naples was just that...a most wonderful Viennese New Year's Eve with the Naples Philharmonic! For years we've listened to the Vienna Philharmonic live performance on PBS and that night I felt as though I was sitting right in Vienna itself;  two hours filled with Strauss waltzes, formal attire, bottomless flutes of champagne, delicious buffet after the concert followed by dancing to a jazz combo until the clock struck twelve, made this a most memorable way to welcome in 2016!

FROM FLORIDA TO FRANCE & BACK November 2015

Rain followed us for days as we traveled through Georgia and into Florida, finally reaching sunshine and dry skies at St. Augustine. A few days at the Elks Lodge there then on to Hillsborough River State Park with visits to my sister's in Safety Harbor.


Our final destination was Fort Lauderdale where we  stored the RV and left Foster for a couple of weeks. We were flying to Paris for a 2 week river cruise along the Seine.

 Our trip began November 13th with an over night near Charles de Gaulle airport in the town of Roissy and a lovely walk to town after checking into the hotel. Exhausted from flights and time changes we went to bed early only to learn of the terrorist attacks on Paris later that night.

It was a somber beginning of our bus trip from the airport to our first stop at Caen and the Memorial Center for History and Peace.

Already these amazing peace signs with the Eiffel Tower were left along our route.

Later that afternoon we arrived in the darling fishing village of Honfluer to board our Grand Circle river boat, The MS Bizet.  The following morning we had a guided walking tour of the town with the rest of the day to explore on our own.

The boat sailed along the Seine with stops along the way providing for day trips to see the landing beaches of Normandy,

Rouen, Vernon, Guyon, Conflans returning us to Paris.

 A very cold afternoon we took a bus ride to visit Auvers-sur-Oise, the town where Vincent Van Gogh painted and is buried. All around the town are locations where Vincent painted and a poster of his painting nearby.

What I loved so much about this trip was being able to stay aboard the ship and use it as our hotel for 3 nights in Paris. Such a wonderful location!! We'd walk to the metro station and be in the center of Paris within 10 minutes. One morning we took a bus tour of the city passing by several of the locations where the terrorist attacks had taken place and where now the areas were filled with flowers and notes of remembrance. The Bataclan Theater was among them.

 The view of our river boat along the Seine. How lucky were we!

From Paris we took the train south to Bordeaux to spend a few days with my brother, Peter. We arrived just before Thanksgiving in time for a traditional turkey dinner together

 Peter and Richard love restoring this beautiful 400 year old chateau. Though it was cold and damp, we took walks along the fields looking at the other farms nearby on our way down to the Lot River.

We said good bye on the 29th, took the train back to Paris and spent anther couple of days seeing more sights.

Nov. 30 the Conference on Climate Change opened in Paris. On another side of the city we came across an installation of 10,000 pairs of shoes representing people who could not march because of orders by authorities after the attacks earlier that month.

We returned to Florida December 1st.

                                                          VIVA LA FRANCE
.