On our way south from Orlando to Naples we needed a place for our picnic lunch.  When we saw the sign for ‘Little Manatee River State Park’ we thought we’d turn off the highway to find it.  After a short detour we found ourselves paying a park ranger $5 to enter the park and he gave us a map.  The park was only quite small so we found the picnic area and playground easily...

Recently we celebrated our 300th day of world travel.  Yep, 300!  We were lucky to be staying with our friends, the Beaton Family, in Orlando and were able to enjoy real American pizza and a delicious celebratory cake with them.  Thanks to Dot for ordering such a great cake.  We had a great 300th day at Universal Studios and are counting down the days until we return home...

Hi!  We haven’t dropped off the face of the Earth; we are just knee deep in theme parks!  We have one more day of Disney and one day of Universal Studios ahead of us; which will mean we have tallied a total of five days of Disney and two days at Universal Studios.  We will need a holiday from our holiday after that!  Will add photos asap. Keep you posted on our next...

Happy Thanksgiving!

I will add the link for my blog in The Chronicle as soon as it is published online.  Here is the link …

http://www.thechronicle.com.au/story/2011/11/25/celebrating-thanksgiving/

Today we celebrated Thanksgiving in America with my first Rotary host family, Gary and Edie and Edie’s 94 year old mother.  We started the day watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving...

Here is my article, for ‘The Chronicle’, all about retiring in Florida at ‘The Villages’, where our friends live.  This is truly one of the most amazing places to retire.  I so want to live here one day!  Check it out.

http://www.thechronicle.com.au/story/2011/11/23/retiring-florida-style-karina-baigrie/

Dot and I headed over to the military base to buy discounted Disney tickets.  We got some groceries whilst we were there so we could eat all our own food in the parks today. Our trip to the base and back took about an hour; Steve got the boys ready; I made sandwiches and we raced out the door.

First stop, Animal Kingdom. We had plans to meet up with Dan, my friend...

We arrived on Thursday night and settled ourselves into our house stay with our friend Debbie’s parents and sister, Dot, Ed and Karin.  We had no plans initially on what we were going to do until Sunday so we used Dot’s council.  It was great to have someone go to the trouble of researching ticket options and prices for me since I am usually the one that does all the hard...

Here you go Nanny, a photo showing where Harris’s teeth fell out from.  Can’t believe he lost two in one week – the first in Mandan, North Dakota when he was 9 and the second in Waterton Lake, Canada when he was 10! What a busy week!

Time to swap currencies again and put aside the US dollars and whip out the Canadian loonies again, we were going back to Canada!  We had the best ‘free’ breakfast at our motel with make your own waffles; biscuits and sausage gravy and all the other breakfast regulars.  Today would be just a short day of driving compared to our last 2 days of trekking across North Dakota...

We rose early so we could say farewell to Sandy and the kids as they rushed out the door for work and school again. Some schools in Bismarck had a late start today following Halloween but not in Mandan.  I’m sure teachers hate the day after Halloween as the kids probably can’t focus on anything else but post Halloween talk and how big their candy collections are; speaking...