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!