9/15/09 - Jackson Meadow Recreation Area, CA - Things have finally slowed down around here. Not many campers coming in, although the weather is still nice. Since business is slowing down. I've had to lay-off some camp hosts and reduce the work hours of the others. We're now keeping our new store open only on the weekends. Even then, it doesn't make much money. I almost feel like we'd be better off closing everything now and leaving. It still costs a BUNCH of money just to keep thngs open for the few campers we get. But this is also the time of the year that maintenance can catch up on painting. We also enjoy the quiet campgrounds and actually have time off! We'll start closing the campgrounds in about a month, with the last once to close the end of October.
We've started making our winter travel plans. Last year, we sat still for a few months in Arizona. That was the first winter we didn't move around. This year, we plan to make a trip to Florida. But first, we'll be heading further north to Bellingham, Washington to visit our eldest daughter (Leslie). She and her family are moving up there any day now. We'll go there and spend a week, getting a grand baby fix, then head to Queen Creek, Arizona for another week with our youngest daughter (Cynthia). Then it's almost a straight trip to Melbourne, Florida. We'd like to get to Patrick AFB by the middle of December. Disney World has a Military Appreciation offer going on until December 23rd. Being retired military, Larry can get a FREE 5-day park hopper pass and Connie can get the same pass for half-price. We already took advantage of the California Disneyland offer earlier this year. It's been a few years since we've visited Disney World. Connie really likes Epcot Center.
We wanted to do some RV traveling this winter. SInce we're limited to the southern states for warmer weather, we figured Florida was a good destination. We enjoyed our last visit there in 2006. We plan to visit MANY military campgrounds and RV Parks along the way, to update the information and write reviews for our U.S. Military Campgrounds and RV Parks website. Besides Disney World, we also plan to attend the HUGE Tampa RV Show. We'll also be conducting our "4th Annual Website Users Gathering" for the Military Campgrounds website. We have a couple other winter projects planned that we'll talk about later. We figure we'll take about 45 days to visit Washington, Arizona and travel to Florida. Then stay in Florida for about another 45 days, then slowly make our way back to Northern California, via Arizona, for the next two months. As usual, all plans are written in "jello" and can change every hour. The only deadline we have is to be back in Northern California the first week of April for another season of working in the Tahoe National Forest.