Last days of our Florida "vacation"

March 22 - This past week found Wilmer and Bob doing more dry walling. They have been doing this most of the time we have been here at Keystone Heights. This house had been vacated so it had been torn down to the studs. Then Wilmer and Bob had the job of drywalling after the initial plumbing, electrical work, etc. had been done. They will not finish it before we leave but they got all the ceilings done and some of the side walls. Good thing they were both even fussy about measurements because you can see that each sheet they put up had to have many openings in it. The ceiling was the hardest part but even that had numerous openings. Probably good they didn't finish because then they would of had to go on to mudding which isn't much fun. The apartment will not be finished until someone buys it so the new owners can have some say in how to finish it. We have had so many people ask us to consider living here and not just coming for a few weeks. While the place has merit as a home base it is the wrong direction to go to be closer to family. The Park's median age must be 80 or close to it so few drive a car. However, it must be the "in" thing to have a golf cart and take that every place on the Park grounds. This is a scene outside of church on a Sunday morning. First it seemed humorous but since most of the people do not leave the Park unless someone takes them to the doctor the golf cart makes sense.

We have enjoyed the church experience here and the director of the Park of the Palms said to us at noon lunch that he was glad to see we felt comfortable with blending right in with the people of the church and worship with them. The reason for the remark by him was that he knew we were from a very different background than the Brethren but we still worshipped with them. We were fortunate to be here with the Bible Conferences although the last speaker was a hermeneutics "nut" and we were disappointed with his presentations. The rest were all so very good. We do eat our noon meal with the Park people on Sunday. It is a buffet, so to speak, and rather expensive but they feed us lunch Mon.-Thur. for free so we feel we want to give back something.

We chose not to go see the space shuttle take off but we could see part of it right from the Park. The picture is not spectacular but it was a thrill to see. Those that went to Titusville that night could see the shuttle's take off right from the ground but it took almost 6 hours of driving to see that and we chose to get a more distant look.

On Friday we toured with the group. We went to Devil's Millhopper State Park. It is basically a sink hole that has developed in the middle of the marsh and brush. It is a geological occurance that is now 325 feet deep and 500 feet wide. Surface water, over time, has weakened the limestone and created crevices that have developed into this sink hole. As we usually do, we took our lunch along. We are getting pretty good at fixing these picnic lunches, will it be warm enough when we get to Iowa so we can picnic in Children's Park? Probably not.

This 70's baby has a much bigger crop of hair now. A few other things have changed in the last 36 years as well. We won't go into all of them, okay? You fill in the blanks.

We work Mon. and Tues. and then are finished here. Then the cruise as I said last week and then head north and west. We are going to stop at Carl on Tuesday, we are looking forward to visiting with him once again.

Hope you are all doing well. We won't have an address for a few weeks but we will always try to have internet and email access.

Love to all,

Dad and Mom/Wilmer and Marilyn