Chapter 23, Florida – Clermont

Hello dear readers, Lady Wanderingwise is checking in with you from the lovely Windsor neighborhood of London. But more on that later. First, let me fill you in on the last two weeks.

We spent the whole time at Clermont RV and Golf resort, about 40 minutes NW of Orlando. I wish I could recount how we spent every day on the golf course, but alas, it was not meant to be.

Honestly we spent most of the time preparing for our trip to Europe. Starting with a bang and getting our Covid Vaccines, which promptly wiped me out for a day. Then, there was a flurry of Amazon ordering as we checked, and rechecked our packed suitcases for adjustments or additions. Then there was the weather, which was pretty set on stopping a lot of golfing outside. Fortunately, we were on the border of the “big polar freeze” so we had no snow, but it was rainy and cold enough to encourage indoor activities.

Dale and I did get out for nine holes one afternoon, and I joined the ladies social league for another afternoon of nine. I was lucky enough to play the whole course. And it was fun to get a taste of the social life there.

Speaking of retirement social life, we took a serried tour of The Villages. If you have not heard of this, it’s THE retirement village of central Florida. Like our former home of Trilogy, only this one has 70,000 homes, cover 58 square miles, has its own zip code and, it’s still growing! I swear they would like to have the entire eastern senior population move there. It was a fun and impressive visit.

Our forays out to do touristy things included a trip to the Presidents Hall of Fame, a ride to the top of the Citrus Tower, an evening out watching a musical review by Ron Seggi, a man we had never heard of, who hooked us with his “ties” to American Bandstand, and of course Disney.

The first two were interesting. The Citrus Tower, erected nearly 20 years before Disney moved in, was one of the first tourist attractions in Florida. Its intent was to give visitors a Birds Eye view of the vast Citrus Groves of the area. Then the big freeze in 1984 wiped out the groves, the Turnpike made getting to the area easier from Orlando, and now all you get to see is the suburban world Clermont has become. Right next door is the Presidents Hall of Fame. One man’s collection of wax figurines and other memorabilia of all the American Presidents. Unfortunately, many showed the wear and tear(melting) associated with being housed in Central Florida, and a few were a serious stretch of lookalikes, but it was entertaining anyway. There was a pretty impressive White House replica too. I could have wandered through there a lot longer. But when Dale saw mostly a big doll house, he was done.

The Ron Seggi show was entertaining as well. He’s 87, and has been in the music business forever, including some role with Dick Clark and American Bandstand. He really wasn’t too bad, performing tunes from 50’s, 60’s and early 70’s. The audience was pretty near his age, and I think I had more fun listening to the ladies next to me exclaim “Oooo I love this song!” at the beginning of each number. Don’t know if we felt the need to repeat that show, but it definitely served as another example of how the senior set “owns” Florida!l

And when it came to Disney, we opted for a one day, one park pass to Disney Hollywood Studios. You bought your tickets for a specific day, so we tried like heck to find the day that the weather would cooperate. We failed. It was cold and pissy rainy, but I bought myself the expensive lightening pass which was affordable only because Dale doesn’t to the rides so we only needed one. Kind of a shame. I assumed there was more to see and do that did not involve rides. But he was a trooper, watching me enter and exit each ride. The crowd was light for Disney, quite sure the cold and rain had something to do with that…..so I think the longest I waited for any ride was 15 minutes. As a result, I rode them all! The Star Wars rides were fun, to Toy Story rides made me giggle, and the tower of Terror and Rock-n-Roll coaster made me laugh so hard in fright my stomach hurt. We had lunch at The Brown Derby and made it home by dinner. Perfect day of adult Disneying!

We ended our stay with a driving service meeting us at the campground and taking our “home” off to the dealer for some exterior work and a few other punch list items, and to conveniently store it while we are overseas. We are off to England, Rwanda (gorilla trekking!), Spain and Italy, St John’s, then to Washington State and Arizona before we are back “home” and continuing our travels up the east coast. We traded our “up-sized downsize living” for 2 months out of carry on luggage!

After watching our home drive away, we headed south to Miami. We had a night in a casino resort (nope this time we barely left with some of our money) then spent the next day touring Everglades National Park and Biscayne National Park. (41/63 parks visited) We capped the day with a visit to The Art Deco District of South Miami Beach then off to the airport.

We are in Windsor for two nights to acclimate to the time zone before heading to Rwanda to begin our trek. Dale found us the Best VRBO apartment right across the street from Windsor castle. We spent some quality time touring the castle ( I went in twice!) and actually had tears in my eyes when passing by Queen Elizabeth’s final resting place. We wandered through the town, over to Eton, sampling the pubs and restaurants and capped it off with the Evensong service at St George’s Chapel. We both would recommend visiting Windsor like this, not just as a quick day trip from London. And if you do, look for the Cecily Spa and its associated apartment. It was lovely!