Photo by The Joneses Here we are with our friends Marty and Peggy at the G & R wine & cheese event. A great time was had by all.
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We spent the last two weeks in the Thousand Trails Park - Orlando (Fla.), which is located on Highway 27 south of Bee’s Resort where we spent last winter. This is one of our membership campgrounds. It is a very nice park.

Our friends Marty and Peggy, who we met in Iowa and spent several weeks with in South Dakota and Wyoming, are staying in a park only a few miles from here. We enjoyed getting together with them, going to dinner, going on excursions, and playing cards.

When we were at the Escapee rally in Wyoming in July we joined a BOF called “Friends of the Mouse.”

A BOF — birds of feather — is a special Escapee interest group. This group consists of Disney employees (like Ralph and I) who meet in Florida during the winter months.

The first meeting was on Thanksgiving. We gathered at the home of Christine who works for Disney World as a recruiter and travels to many of the rallies recruiting retirees to work at Disney. This is how we learned about this employment opportunity.

Several years ago, Christine and her husband began to open their home — they have large place out in the country — for the “Friends of the Mouse” to get together for Thanksgiving dinner. This year there were 70 of us and did we have the food: three turkeys, two hams and everybody brought a dish — you’ve never seen so much good food. Nobody left hungry.

A couple weeks ago we went to the Lakeridge Winery with Marty and Peggy for a tour of the winery and wine tasting. One of many we have participated in the last year. This winery is located almost across the street from Bee’s Resort but we never made it to visit there last year — just too busy I guess. It really is amazing how busy we are; being retired and living in a motorhome you would think we have all the time in the world, but somehow that isn’t so.

Anyway, this winery is the largest in Florida. All their wines are made from Muscatine grapes, very sweet and lovely. I liked them a lot. The tour was interesting; every winery seems to have something that sets them apart from others. This winery calls itself, "a green winery", with much emphasis on the environment and recycling. They actually take back empty bottles and give a 25-cent credit toward another bottle of wine. They do this mainly to assure that the bottles are being properly recycled.

Last Saturday, again with Marty and Peggy, we drove to Eustis, a small town northwest of Clermont on Lake Harris for a Christmas festival. On the way we stopped at a German Bakery we had heard about. There, in this one-street town, Yahala stood a large building that looked like it belonged in Bavaria. It had paintings on it like the houses have in southern Germany and Austria. The bakery had German bread, rolls, delicious pastries all baked on the premises by a German baker. Outside was a big area with tables and a small stage, just like a Biergarten in Germany. They also serve lunch and have live music on Saturday during the day. It is too bad that this town is so far away (about 70 miles) or I know where I would spend most of my Saturdays.

The Christmas festival was nice, good food and the usual crafts. However, the Christmas parade was very unusual — it was a boat parade on the lake in the evening.

The boats were all festively decorated with lots of lights. I have been to many parades in my life — I love parades! — but this was a first for me. Quite interesting. On the way back we stopped at Mount Dora where Ralph and I had been last year to look at the millions of lights. I can never get enough of Christmas lights; I just love them.

Last week, at the park where Marty and Peggy stay, we enjoyed a wine and cheese party. The entertainer was MarcAnthony Roman. We had seen him several times last year when he performed at the Bee’s Resort and loved him. His songs are from the 60s and 70s, songs that we all can relate to and he puts on a great performance. It was great to see him again, to listen and dance to his music.

While I am writing this we already moved to another Thousand Trails Park in Wauchula, south of Orlando. We can only stay two weeks at a time in these parks and will move back to Orlando in two weeks.