The Next Chapter

We celebrated Julie’s Mom’s 90^th birthday on Sunday, October 25^th. Although we couldn’t see her in person, we celebrated with her with a Zoom meeting. It included Mom (Grammy), all three daughters, all four grandchildren, and one great grandson. It was fun to see everyone in Taiwan, Columbia, Utah, Colorado, Texas, New York and Florida.

Last Friday, October 30^th, Julie and I finally closed on our new home in Latitude Margaritaville Daytona Beach. We purchased the new home last December. They began construction in June and finished the house in late-October. We began moving out of our motorhome and into this 55+ retirement community right after closing. It’s been quite a transition for us (and our cat Shasta) to move from our “house on wheels” for the past 7 ½ years to this house. We took delivery of some furniture last Friday and Saturday that we ordered last summer, so we would have a place to sit and a bed to sleep on.

On Sunday, November 1^st, we drove the motorhome from Titusville and parked next to the house to unload the rest of our stuff, mostly into the garage. Then we took the motorhome to a storage place to park it for the time being.  

We love it here in Latitude Margaritaville. It’s a very active community with nice amenities (fitness center, paradise pool, tennis and pickleball courts, on-site bar & grill, and a new beach club on the Atlantic). Latitude Margaritaville is currently adding more previously planned amenities, since they have sold 1,000 homes since they opened in 2018. They’re adding a lap pool to the fitness center, a small theater, a work and play activities center, and more tennis and pickleball courts.

Stay safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Back to Florida

We left Las Vegas on Friday, October 2^nd and headed towards San Antonio. We connected with I-10 in Phoenix and passed through Tucson, New Mexico, and Texas. Interstate 10 is 880-miles long across Texas.

We stopped in Castroville, Texas and met up with Julie’s sister Cindy and brother-in-law Terry. We hadn’t seen them since last January in Oceanside, CA at Camp Pendleton. They also full-time in their RV and travel around.

We made an appointment to see Julie & Cindy’s mom at her assisted living facility in San Antonio. It was good visiting with Bobbie and she enjoyed seeing us too. We all wore masks, social distanced, and sat outside for our visit. We felt really bad for Bobbie because her facility has been on lock-down since March to prevent any COVID-19 infections. Residents cannot leave the facility nor visit other residents, and have to eat their meals alone in their room. The good news is that there haven’t been any cases of COVID at her facility.

We left Castroville on October 10^th, spent two nights in Biloxi on the way, and arrived back in Titusville, Florida last Wednesday. We’re here at the RV park until November 1^st, when we unload our motorhome and put it in storage.

Last Wednesday we drove up to Daytona Beach to check on our house and deliver some New Mexico roasted chili peppers to new Facebook friends at Latitude Margaritaville. Bob and Maria used to live in Albuquerque and Julie connected with Maria. We really enjoyed meeting and visiting with them in person.

Our new house is coming along nicely. When we left Florida on August 1^st, our house was pre-drywall. Now it’s nearly finished and ready to move in. We drove up today, while most of the workers were off, and we could look around. We do a walk-through with the builder next Thursday and close a week later on Thursday, October 29^th. We start moving in on Friday, October 30^th. We just can’t wait.    

Stay safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Hunkered Down in Las Vegas

 

 

We thoroughly enjoyed our two-weeks at Lake Powell. We left last Sunday and headed to Las Vegas with our friends Kris and Jan. Well, technically, we were in North Las Vegas, at the Nellis Air Force Base campground for a five-night stay.

This year’s stay in Las Vegas was like no other stay. No trips to a casino, no buffets, no shows, no trip to downtown or the strip. We just hunkered down in the campground.

We saw some old friends that we met three years ago here at Nellis, Craig and Peggy, from Seattle. They’re wintering here in Las Vegas and then Tucson. Last night we enjoyed some Steve-o-Ritas and catching up. Craig follows my blog, so we didn’t have much news for them.

The other day we were talking with Kris and Jan about what we miss with COVID and the global pandemic. We all really missed going out for breakfast. So this morning Kris and Jan fixed a breakfast of sausage patties and pancakes, while Julie prepared a green chili and grits casserole. Everything was very yummy!

We’re all Broncos fans so we watched Thursday Night Football with the Broncos and Jets. The Broncos beat the Jets, 37-28.    

We leave Las Vegas tomorrow morning and begin our trip back to Florida. Our new home construction is nearly finished and we’re scheduled to do our walk-through in two-weeks on October 16^th and closing the following week on October 22^nd.

Stay safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Lake Powell 2020

 

 

We left Colorado Springs on Thursday, September 10^th and had a nice drive to South Fork for an overnight stay. We saw a few snow-covered peaks along the way. The next day we drove over Wolf Creek Pass on US-160. We were really surprised not to see any snow on the western side of the pass. The hills and valleys were all green.   

On Friday, we got to Cortez and the West View RV Resort around 2PM. The weather was warm and beautiful. We met Kris and Jan, our Albuquerque friends, and Marcia, Mike, and Stephanie, my sister, brother-in-law and niece for a two-night stay.

We all headed out on Sunday morning for the trek to Page, AZ and Lake Powell. We’ve been coming to Lake Powell the weekend after Labor Day since September 2001. About 10-years or so ago, it rained pretty much every day during the week we were there. The following year, we started staying for two-weeks to improve our chances for good weather.

Another sister Janet and her wife Nancy from Sacramento met us here on Sunday, September 12^th. We enjoyed that first week with Janet and Nancy staying with us at Lake Powell. That Monday evening, we all celebrated Janet’s and my birthday with Steve-O-Ritas and dinner. We had rented a pontoon boat from Aramark on Monday and Wednesday. The boats we rented were nothing like what the photo depicted. They were simply worn out.     

The second week of our stay at Lake Powell was busy with phone calls back to Florida to make arrangements to have our new furniture delivered. We learned last week that our new home walk-through is scheduled for Friday, October 16^th and our closing will be on Thursday, October 23^rd.

We’ve enjoyed our nightly get-togethers with Mike, Marcia, Stephanie and Kris and Jan. A few nights ago, I went old school and fixed Grasshoppers with vanilla ice cream as an after-dinner drink. It was Stephanie’s first-ever Grasshopper.

Last night, Mike, Kris and I wore our new Lake Powell tee-shirts for our traditional photo.  

Today, Julie and I drove over to the trail head of Hanging Garden Trail. We’ve been coming to the southern end of Lake Powell since 2009 and had never hiked this half-mile trail to see the Hanging Garden. It was a nice hike, even in the 90-degree heat.  

Stay safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Albuquerque to Colorado Springs

 

We had a nice drive up I-25 from White Sands to Albuquerque two weeks ago last Saturday. We stayed at the Kirtland AFB FamCamp for two nights. On Sunday morning we headed up the street to a small stand where they were roasting Hatch green chiles. These chiles are grown in Hatch valley, NM and have very good flavor. Hatch valley is known as the “Napa Valley” of green chiles. Julie uses Hatch chiles to make her special green chile. 

Sunday afternoon we visited our Albuquerque friends Kris and Jan. We enjoyed catching up with them and talked about meeting them in Cortez on our way to Lake Powell.

We left Albuquerque on Monday morning and overnighted in Raton, on our way to Fountain, CO to the Colorado Springs KOA. We took our motorhome into Transwest on Wednesday, with an 8AM appointment for its annual Freightliner chassis servicing. They finished around noon and we went back to the KOA and set up, leaving our cat Shasta in charge.

We took off for Westcliffe, CO to visit old friends Vince and Lisa. They’ve been hunkered down and doing well. We thoroughly enjoyed visiting with them and the haze finally cleared enough to see the mountains across the valley from their house.

We moved from the KOA to Cheyenne Mountain State Park on Friday. It’s a beautiful, quiet state park. However, we just can’t get over how expensive it’s gotten to stay here. $41/night for camping plus a $9/day entrance fee.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife do waive the entrance fee for military/veterans during the month of August and that saved us $36. Overall, it’s still a lot less expensive than the KOA with much, much nicer campsites! 

One of our major tasks on this visit to Colorado Springs was to clear out our 5x10-foot storage unit and load our stuff into a 7-foot POD moving container for shipment to Daytona Beach. Last Monday we got some boxes, packing material, and tape and headed to the storage unit. We repacked Julie’s 12-setting china set and another set of dishes. We also got rid of some clothes we won’t need in Florida (ski jackets, pants, gloves, etc.) with a donation to Goodwill. We went back on Wednesday and packed more loose stuff such as framed pictures. Our POD was delivered on Friday morning and only took us about an hour and a half to pack. Glad that’s out of the way.  

We met my daughters Kim and Jen and two granddaughters Audrey and Hannah for dinner on Tuesday night. We sat outdoors at Hacienda Colorado which has a great view of the mountains to the west. My oldest granddaughter Audrey is a Senior and youngest granddaughter Hannah is a Freshman.

On Labor Day we visited old friends Rick and Diana. Rick and I worked together at Scitor Corp. until 10-years ago when I retired in November 2010. They’ve made a point to see us in their travels to Las Vegas or Florida when we were staying there with our full-time RVing.   

Our new home construction is progressing nicely. The tile floors, kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room cabinets, counter tops, crown molding, and base boards have all been installed. There are still quite a few things to be done. We expect to hear from the builder in a week or so what they project our closing date will be. We’re currently thinking mid to late-October.

We leave Colorado Springs today and head to South Fork and Cortez, Colorado. We're on our way to Page, AZ and Lake Powell for two-weeks. We'll meet up with my sisters Marcia and Janet and their families and our friends Kris and Jan. It'll be different this year as we sold our boat in June, but we're renting a pontoon boat to go out on the lake. 

Stay safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius