Florida – Butterflies, birds, and beaches

While it's winter in New England, we savor the sunshine in Vero Beach FL. This has been a restful month, mostly hanging out with Barbara’s dad, delving into a few projects, and planning some future travel itineraries. Stay tuned!

BUTTERFLIES

Right across from our trailer is a scruffy, blooming bush. It attracts butterflies. Butterflies often avoid posing for our pictures, but this particular bush allowed us to “capture” a few.

BEACHES

Since it is only a ten minute drive, we’ve tried to walk the beach as often as we can. Our routine is to walk together for 3/4 mile, then Barbara strolls back while Bill continues with a brisk, 3.4-mile walk.

Bill walking the beach

We love to see the various ways people enjoy the beach: sunbathers, swimmers, surfers, fishermen, volleyball players, shell collectors, joggers, walkers, metal detectors, and we even saw a powered paraglider. 

Forgot my telephoto lens camera.

BIRDS
While walking the beach we watch the shore birds run back and forth amidst the waves foraging for food. Bird watching reminds us of Barbara's mom, an avid bird watcher. We are total beginners at bird identification, but we just downloaded a bird identification app to help us along.

Royal Tern

Sanderling

Eastern Willet

2016 Year in Review

Without listing our Sudbury MA house, a couple offered to buy it and we sold it in May.

We didn’t find a new place – a tight market and hard to find what we wanted - so we are now unintentional full-time RVers currently in Florida. Between real estate searching we squeezed in little outings: hikes, letterboxes, and time with family and friends. 

In July while visiting family in Ohio and Florida we saw some of the premier aviation museums in the country. 

And we spent November as “Care-A-vanners” - RVers who volunteer for Habitat for Humanity (see previous post).

The girls share an apartment in Boston. Kate now works as a bartender in a German restaurant – Oktoberfest was busy! She loves the outdoors joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture Farm) where she worked in exchange for free produce. She mountain bikes with her boyfriend and did martial arts.

Carrie, a senior at Boston College majoring in Economics, traveled to El Salvador and Ghana in conjunction with Economic development classes and organized a youth leadership conference in the Philippines. She interned over the summer with Cornerstone Research, an economic consulting firm in Boston, and will work there after graduation.

We traveled back to MA around Thanksgiving. Here we are at the restaurant where Kate works.