We are now at the KOA in Davenport, FL in site 292 for a full month. We have nice neighbors from Maine staying in a Fifth Wheel. They spend the entire winter here. The campground seems to fill up on the weekends but empties right out during the week. We are here for a month and the adventures are plentiful.
We spend a few days checking out all of the campgrounds in the area to try to decide where we will stay next year. We find several to be full of year round and seasonal residents in older units very similar to what we found in Bradenton. We also find a few that are very attractive to us, nice pool and activity areas, clean and modern sites and facilities, and close to the excitement of Central Florida.
We met up with mom and dad on several occasions including a nice Valentine’s Day dinner at a nearby Country Club. I helped dad pick out a new TV set and changed it out for him. Mom bought tickets for a show in Lakeland that we all attended together, and we took them to the Epcot Flower Show one day. We discovered a new restaurant nearby named the “Nothing Fancy Café”, it is our kind of place, simple, good food and friendly service so we took mom and dad there for lunch one day when they stopped by.
Winter Haven provided the scene for three of our adventures during this trip. I am currently working on a major business management software project for Serrato Signs and need to use a laptop for some of the testing. I quickly determine that my old XP laptop is not up to the task and Ellen and I go shopping. We find what we need nearby but they are out of stock. There is one 30 minutes away in Winter Haven but the store closes in 45 minutes! We have them set it aside and off we go in the Mini hoping we find the place before closing, we just barely make it in time and take a more leisurely drive home. The second adventure takes us to the nearest AT&T Store (in Winter Haven) where we arrange for a new iPhone5s for Ellen and a new WiFi hotspot for Miss Adventure. We also consolidate our phone, hotspot and iPad accounts into one account that shares all of the available data.
Our third Winter Haven adventure is the best of all! My mom brought us a newspaper article about a ski club in Winter Haven that is putting on a free Water Ski Show featuring many of the acts from the Cypress Gardens shows of the past. Ellen and I found the show on a small lake near downtown and totally enjoy sitting on shore and taking it all in. It reminded us so much of the Meadow Lake Skiers and the fun we had with all the kids in the neighborhood. The kids are all grown up now and in their 30s and 40s with families of their own.
We did begin one other adventure while staying in Davenport, the quest to buy a custom Golf Cart. Central Florida seems to be the place to shop for a golf cart, we found and visited no less than 8 different companies that create custom golf carts starting with standard off lease carts that come from golf courses all over the country. They replace seats, wheels, tires, body panels, etc. to create the perfect cart. It was great fun shopping and the cost is far less than the Winnebago Tour. The biggest part of this adventure was trying to figure out how to get the Golf Cart, and the Mini Cooper into our enclosed Car Hauler Trailer. I managed to drive Bonnie, Elmo and Karl crazy as I forced them to trudge through the snow on 3 different occasions to get exact interior measurements of the trailer so I could set it up in my design software and see if everything would fit. We determined that everything could be squeezed in (Just Barely!) but chose not to buy the golf cart until later.
We spend a few days checking out all of the campgrounds in the area to try to decide where we will stay next year. We find several to be full of year round and seasonal residents in older units very similar to what we found in Bradenton. We also find a few that are very attractive to us, nice pool and activity areas, clean and modern sites and facilities, and close to the excitement of Central Florida.
We met up with mom and dad on several occasions including a nice Valentine’s Day dinner at a nearby Country Club. I helped dad pick out a new TV set and changed it out for him. Mom bought tickets for a show in Lakeland that we all attended together, and we took them to the Epcot Flower Show one day. We discovered a new restaurant nearby named the “Nothing Fancy Café”, it is our kind of place, simple, good food and friendly service so we took mom and dad there for lunch one day when they stopped by.
Winter Haven provided the scene for three of our adventures during this trip. I am currently working on a major business management software project for Serrato Signs and need to use a laptop for some of the testing. I quickly determine that my old XP laptop is not up to the task and Ellen and I go shopping. We find what we need nearby but they are out of stock. There is one 30 minutes away in Winter Haven but the store closes in 45 minutes! We have them set it aside and off we go in the Mini hoping we find the place before closing, we just barely make it in time and take a more leisurely drive home. The second adventure takes us to the nearest AT&T Store (in Winter Haven) where we arrange for a new iPhone5s for Ellen and a new WiFi hotspot for Miss Adventure. We also consolidate our phone, hotspot and iPad accounts into one account that shares all of the available data.
Our third Winter Haven adventure is the best of all! My mom brought us a newspaper article about a ski club in Winter Haven that is putting on a free Water Ski Show featuring many of the acts from the Cypress Gardens shows of the past. Ellen and I found the show on a small lake near downtown and totally enjoy sitting on shore and taking it all in. It reminded us so much of the Meadow Lake Skiers and the fun we had with all the kids in the neighborhood. The kids are all grown up now and in their 30s and 40s with families of their own.
We did begin one other adventure while staying in Davenport, the quest to buy a custom Golf Cart. Central Florida seems to be the place to shop for a golf cart, we found and visited no less than 8 different companies that create custom golf carts starting with standard off lease carts that come from golf courses all over the country. They replace seats, wheels, tires, body panels, etc. to create the perfect cart. It was great fun shopping and the cost is far less than the Winnebago Tour. The biggest part of this adventure was trying to figure out how to get the Golf Cart, and the Mini Cooper into our enclosed Car Hauler Trailer. I managed to drive Bonnie, Elmo and Karl crazy as I forced them to trudge through the snow on 3 different occasions to get exact interior measurements of the trailer so I could set it up in my design software and see if everything would fit. We determined that everything could be squeezed in (Just Barely!) but chose not to buy the golf cart until later.
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