We were off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of oz... Darn, wrong adventure. This new trip took us to the wonderful city of Orlando, Florida.

Our goal was to bear witness to his daughter, the only daughter, graduating from college with a BA of Business Administration. Now I do have to back track a little, when she moved to Florida and she was then ready for college, her plan was for marine biology, but then she met a young man and plans changed. Oh well.

We had allowed for several days for this new adventure. Time to reunite with family etc.
Now let me tell you about Florida traffic, first there are the snow birds, you know those people who travel south during the winter months to avoid the snow. Then there are the people who are road demons, going in and out of lanes and hey why not just go from the extreme left lane to the turn off ramp. And did I mention the snow birds.?

Regardless, we were there for the time allowed. We stayed at the KOA and this time we avoided the pool. Sorry, children were everywhere.

The graduation ceremony for her group was held on a Thursday at nine am, apparently there were daily nine am and two pm groups over the five days of Thursday, Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Good planning on the school's part.

Now of course, we got there about an hour before and when all was said and done, the family and friends took up two full rows of seats and I believe there were at least fifteen per row. And for your information, it involved a lot of walking to get there. Heaven only knows where we parked, but we walked and walked. Fortunately, we didn't have to drive the semi, it was parked at the hotel where my sister-in-law was staying.

The ceremony started precisely at nine am and continued for three hours, but she did graduate, and we were all proud.

There were some scary moments beforehand and we were not even sure if she would get to attend the services.

About a month before, she was admitted to the hospital with small blood clots in her brain. Apparently, this had been going on for a while and she just fluffed it off to slight dizzy spells. The long and short is that her blood work was way out of whack, she has a small hole in her heart and a screwed up aortic valve.

Fortunately, her boyfriend's father was close to a neurosurgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, so off she went for an even more intensive checkup.

They finally figured out what was wrong with her and provided her with suggestions that she will have to follow for the rest of her life. She just turned twenty-one.

So now, she is off to Spain, where her boyfriend is from and his parents live there, we expect to hear wedding bells soon and we are so very proud of her.

Back to us- after the services we headed to the Gainesville area of Georgia for a new work project for Jim. Me, I just get to sit at home in the camper and watch others drive in and out. There is a humungous fishing pond, but I do not fish.

They did have an event for July 4th, on the last Saturday of June, I believe it was the 29th. Initially I thought the office staff were joking when they said the little town two miles away closed down to attend. But they were right. There were approximately four thousand people in attendance, above the full campground. It was loud, the fireworks were from nine to eleven pm and it was close to two am before everyone departed. Sunday morning the staff were cleaning up the park. With that many it was surprisingly clean.

At this point, we are still here, but from what I understand we will be moving elsewhere in a couple of weeks. To a new adventure... (smile).

To be continued.......