Planning the Mayo visit and where to winter…

We are slowly making our way to Jacksonville Florida for appointments made at the Mayo Clinic for our annual examinations. Getting established as patients was a chore involving a week back and forth of calls between the Mayo and our doctors back home for necessary paperwork and forwarding of records. If you desire to become a patient at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, start early!

Our current stop is in charming Charleston S.C. The name of the park is Lake Aire RV. This is a Passport America park with pull through sites and 30 or 50 amp and full hookups. There is a laundry, pool, playground, pavilion, creek and “lake”. The lake is very dry at the moment and although it offers “free fish and release”, we doubt there are ANY fish to catch. That being said, the wooded area and the creek make you feel as though you are not in the city. Our plan is to stay here until the 31^st then a night in Georgia then Jacksonville in time for pre-registration paperwork and appointments bright and early on November 2nd.

Beyond that we only know that we want to spend about three months in Florida. Maybe a month east of Florida, a month in the south then a month in west Florida. It sure is hard to plan ahead until we finish up at the Mayo. Since we are new patients to the clinic, we have no idea how long it takes to test and get results, etc. We are hoping that our delaying making reservations won’t impact us as all the snowbirds make their way down ahead of us! Again, if any of you know great month-long stays in Florida, we appreciate suggestions!

With the promise of good weather on the day we arrived, we ventured over to nearby Folly Beach. The beach is wide and long making it feel not crowded even though there were several families, joggers, college students and a honeymoon couple nearby. There weren’t many sea birds or boats to look at through our binoculars but it was still very relaxing to sit in the sea breeze and hear the sounds of waves crashing. We recently purchased some beach chairs ($6.00 apiece on sale at a grocery store) which was a great investment because we have used them a lot lately. The traffic was really thick to and from the beach and we speculated that if it was this bad in the “off” season, it must be gridlock in peak season! The town by Folly Beach had lots of inviting pubs and lounges offering great Happy Hour deals. We were too tired to stay longer to enjoy the establishments but made a mental note to maybe return one day. Travel days make us tired so it was nice to get home and relax watching the World Series.

Sharon guest wrote the above blog and also made me the very nice lunch above of Ham and Swiss on a Homemade Roll with a Parmesan Covered Baked Sliced Tomato… I think all your comments about how lucky she was for having me make her such a nice birthday meal, made her want to cook a nice lunch for me… boy thanks for all your kind comments!!!

Note: Pictures today are the remaining pictures we took at our last visit to Huntington Beach State Park the day before we arrived here.