Back at Lakewood Retreat

We enjoyed our time at home seeing family and friends in December. We will miss our kids and grandkids while we are gone.

Saying our goodbye's.

Because of our early 6:28 a.m. Wednesday flight out of Winnipeg we asked Julie to take us to a hotel on Tuesday night. Our organization hit a bump when we arrived at the hotel and realized in our departure from home we had forgotten our small backpack with our snacks and entertainment for our flight. Oh well, we would manage without. Thankfully nothing major was left behind. Our camera would have been good to have but we will manage with our phones.

The sunrise as we near Minneapolis. We were surprised that Minneapolis had hardly any snow.
Approaching Tampa airport. Thankfully there was no snow; only green grass.

Our flights were good with clear skies and a tail wind giving us ample time between flights in Minneapolis and arriving in Tampa 30 minutes early. A text message to our volunteer friends Dave and Carol made their pickup at the airport quick and easy.

We left our snowy blowy Manitoba and came to our RV home which was somewhat warmer all though we woke Thursday morning to 5C, and by Saturday to highs of 22C.

Our arrival back at Lakewood Retreat required us to get the power back on for the fridge to cool, so after a while we took a ride into town to pick up basics like milk, fruit and veggies.

On Thursday we joined the rest of our crew of volunteers which are currently 6 couples and 1 more couple arriving on the weekend. We are all parked in a row in the campground and someone called it volunteer lane. The couples are from Indiana, New York, Ohio, Ontario and Manitoba.

Jim and I installed window coverings for 4 windows in the Cardinal apartment #1 Thursday morning. In the afternoon we set up two shelving units in the camp laundry building.

Friday morning we made a shopping trip to Costco in Wesley Chapel for Jim's much needed supply of almond flour, nuts, dried fruit and a bunch more items. Turned out to be an expensive grocery bill, with adding 33% exchange and 1 1/2% bank fees. Ouch!

We found out Costco would not accept our US dollar Mastercard, only Visa, so we had to resort to our debit card.

Stan our retired botany professor and co-volunteer spends his days working in the woods. He brought us these oranges and grapefruit as our welcome. The 5" diameter grapefruit was good but filled with 64 seeds. He has marked the wild trees that have edible fruit.

We enjoy the Florida sunshine and warmth as we walked the grounds hearing the calls of the birds. Jim has been plagued by a ticklish throat and a hacking cough for the past two weeks and is anxious to be over with it.