Rural Volusia County

Since Saturday we've stayed at Gary's nephews/wife's land in rural Volusia County. It is quiet out here. Except for the hum of the generator, dogs barking(kennel nearby) and small airplanes flying over head. (Fly-in community nearby). They are going to love living out here once their home is built. In the meantime..Thanks Bubba and Anna. We appreciate your hospitality very much.

We've enjoyed our first experience with boon-docking with the Cameo. We've kept our batteries charged using our little Honda 1000 generator. It cost us about $19.00 in gas to run it over the past 4 days. We've had a little bit of rain this weekend..not enough as usual.. just enough to make the sand stick together. I think we brought a pound of sand with us when we moved to Thousand Trails today.

Yesterday afternoon we went over to New Smyrna Beach. This is a small town with 13 miles of beautiful beach. The beach suffered a lot of damage from hurricanes a few years ago, but has rebounded for the most part. They have a very nice downtown business district with a park right on the beach. There is also a park at the end of Peninsula Dr that allows dogs on the beach( on a leash). There has been a LOT of building in the area in the past years. We started coming to this beach about 15 years ago. It once was a very small town with miles of undeveloped shoreline. Now, once you leave the older business district on the beach side and travel south there are miles of new condos and houses. Like much of Florida these days.
We went to the dog beach. It cost $3.50 for the day.

We parked and started off on the boardwalk.

It turned out the beach was over a half mile away across the scrub. A very nice walk on a cool day. I don't think I'd like to do it in July heat.
I saw this palm as we walked along and thought it looked interesting..


Ellie wasn't real sure about the ocean. She definitely isn't a water puppy. However she really liked taking a nap in the sand.
































There was an excellent view of the Ponce Inlet lighthouse. http://www.ponceinlet.org/














This morning when we awoke, we learned there had been a terrible accident on I-4 at US-27. Thousand Trails is on 27 and the accident caused I-4 to be closed until at least tomorrow. The pictures on the TV were horrific. 4 have died and over 3 dozen others were injured. When we arrived at TT this afternoon (coming in from the North), we could see the smoke billowing up from the accident site. My prayers go out to all of the families and emergency workers affected by this tragic event today.

We settled into our site late this afternoon and went for a walk in the Palmetto woods. Very different from NC woods, but just as nice.
Time for bed..tomorrow we go to the job fair over in Lakeland. Learning something new!!! Good night to you all. Love, Deb