I haven’t done one of these in a while. It’s been a busy summer that seems to have flown by. I’m glad, really, because the heat is not my thing. I much prefer the shoulder seasons of spring and fall. Our summer was pretty warm in the mountains. We used our air conditioner more than I ever have before, and our electric bill shows it!

I didn’t get out geocaching as much as I would have liked, but I put a good dent in my town totals this summer. I focused on Maine and Vermont, since those states will likely be cut off to me sooner than southern New England. I have a busy fall in terms of travel, but I’ll find geocaches in a few more towns in those states before the snow moves in, then I’ll focus on the southern part of New England.

If I ever needed anything to convince me I could never live in Florida, going to Disney World in August did it. This was our bi-annual trip with the whole family. We usually take it in April, but because my grandson was born in May, we had to push it back a few months. I’d much rather go in April! The heat was unbearable and nearly every day it rained for several hours in the afternoon. I didn’t stay for fireworks any night, either. Even the pool was not that refreshing. The plus side was I spent a lot of great time with the family together and I rode the new Guardians of the Galaxy ride five times!

While we were there, I noticed a lot of people coughing, sneezing, and sniffling in the line queues. Now, my sinuses always act up when I’m in air conditioning a lot, so I wasn’t terribly concerned, but I wasn’t really surprised when I did a COVID test on Monday morning and it came up positive! My son and I went to the hospital for PCR tests which confirmed my positive, but Danny was negative! My husband came home from work that afternoon and tested and he was positive too. We’ve all had four shots, and I can say I only really felt bad for two days, and then it was light flipping a light switch and I was better. On Monday and Tuesday, I was blowing my nose constantly and coughing, and on Wednesday morning that was all gone. I have some slight congestion still, and that’s it. If we hadn’t tested I don’t think any of us would have thought we had anything other than a bad cold. My biggest concern is Danny & I are headed to the UK on the 13th and boarding a transatlantic cruise on the 23rd. Thankfully, we’ll be clear to cruise.

I wrote earlier this summer about losing a friend from high school. That hit me harder than I thought it would. Perhaps that was because I had my own brush with death earlier this year. It really jolted me and we decided to throw caution to the wind. We always planned to buy a camper and drive around the United States once we could fully retire. However, life is short so we took the plunge now.

The camper will sleep up to 9, but the main things are that it has a bunk area for my son, so he has a bed that doesn’t have to be set up every night. We’re going to take it on an overnight next weekend as a test run, and then a weekend in October before going to Tennessee for a week in November to visit my daughter and her husband. For now, we will mostly travel in the spring and fall; probably a month each time. Once we can collect social security, we can re-evaluate. We can also take our dog with us when we travel now too!