Left St Augustine this morning and made a quick stop at the Daytona Flea market to pick up some grapefruit and oranges (tradition).
Temps got into the 80's (I promise this is the last photo of the van temp :)
Arrived at Orange Lake and as usual the staff were very co-operative in setting up convenient units for us. Terry & family are staying in the unit that he purchased Christmas week on eBay and Chris and I have a unit next to them. These are recently refurbished 2 bedroom units in West Village that we'll be staying in this week. Next week we move to a 3 bedroom unit in East Village.
Click here to view our unit.
West Village Unit
Once we got settled I contacted my brother Bud and Mardi who have been here for a week after spending Christmas in New Orleans. We met up and went for dinner at Miller's Alehouse for some excellent food and great company. We spent a few hours catching up with each others news before we left to pick up the kids who were arriving at Lakeland Airport.
We had never been to Lakeland Airport which is a Domestic airport. Their flight was arriving from Niagara Falls (NY) airport. It was very refreshing to see after all the years of dealing with Orlando International.
When we arrived the first two rows were short term parking and the last three rows were long term parking (free of course). Once inside we went to the front desk and asked the gentleman (wearing a muscle shirt and sporting a colourful palm tree tattoo) what time he expected the Direct Air Flight from Niagara. He pulled out his smartphone, checked his app and said that it would be 30 minutes late (no flightboards). I asked if the plane was full. He yelled to the lady in the nearby office "Mom, how full is the plane?". She yelled back "Only 40 passengers" (on a plane that holds 150). Evidently though, it had been a very busy day. "5" planes had landed today with a total of 500 passengers!!
We then went upstairs where we joined a number of others in the screened in porch with a full view of the runway and watched the plane come in and taxi to right in front of us!!
What a refreshing and awesome experience.
Terry told us that the pilot requested that all passengers sit in the back before takeoff to properly balance the plane!
We are now all back in our units ready to take on the coming weeks.
Oh by the way, Moe was wrong, I checked with Terry, the planes don't still have ashtrays in the armrests!!!!
Thanks for tuning in!
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