Day 1 - Marathon, FL to Palm City, FL

YES, we are on the road after lots of planning and deliberation. Had to prepare for a three week trip... want to be comfortable with all of the creature comforts and those that we have become accustom to. Did you know Stone Crab season just opened in the Keys? So before we left town, I picked up 6lbs. of stone crab from Captain Karl... couldn't wait to return for that delicacy.

October 18th... We decided to leave on Sunday afternoon instead of Monday morning because we wanted to beat the rush hour traffic through Miami, Ft. Lauderdale & West Palm. Our plan was to leave as close to 2pm as possible... but with the trip to ER, we pulled out of the driveway at 4:05... not bad considering at one point... that moment when I saw Mom laying on the asphalt surrounded by people with an ice bag placed on her head. The days of planning flashed before me... we were NOT going to be able to go.

Now this whole cross-country trip was planned for Maye. Don't get me wrong, it's a trip of a lifetime for Drew and I too. We are so fortunate to have been able to travel and take the time to do it. But now we have Brigit and Riley (a rescued puppy mill Standard Poodle and her black Goldendoodle son) and we hate to leave them even for a few days. And Mom is at the point in her life that she can't or does not want to travel by plane on her own.

Maye is originally from Ogden, Utah where she lived most of her life, raised her family of five and adored her husband Spencer. Mom and Dad had been married for 56 years before he passed away of his third bout with cancer in 1996. It was quite a surprise to Mom when I told her I was leaving Utah to move to the Florida Keys in October of 1998. She visited several times and in 2001 decided to permanently move to the fabulous Florida Keys where she lives in a 1957 conch house next to me.

OK OK get to the point.... Mom isn't getting any younger and she really wanted to go back to Utah and not in a casket (those were her words, not mine). Well she also wanted to see her sons in Victoria, BC and Utah, her daughter in Idaho and while we're at it... she wants to play bridge with her girlfriends in Ogden... those that are still alive... come on, let's be honest. Add to that... her younger brother and a niece in Washington state, etc. etc. So we decided to buy a motorhome, take Maye on a cross country trip to visit friends and family in her 89th year. What an adventure it's going to be!

Back to Day 1 - Drew drove 206 miles in 4 hours to Palm City, Florida. We have some friends that own some property in Palm City that they are developing around some beautiful little lakes... it's going to be a water skiing community. We arrived after dark, unlocked the Masterlock bolt and drove in to a flat spot... all alone.

A nice bottle of Beringer voiginer, stone crab for dinner... settled in for our first night of trippin' in our KeyZRV.

Preface:

Preface – We must apologize… it’s day 5 and I can finally start our blog. You would think that there would be plenty of time to sit and type on the laptop but I think it’s almost been more work taking care of Mom, managing the abundance of “stuff” in the motor home, stepping over the dogs and working out the squeaks and rattles of a new “used” motorhome. We are traveling across America or should I say diagonal in a 31 foot Gulfstream Yellowstone Class C motorhome and it takes some getting used to. We hope you enjoy reading about our travels from Marathon in the Florida Keys all the way to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada… 7200 miles round trip. Let’s see how close we are to that. Please ignore the typos, spelling and grammar errors.

Oh and one last thing to mention… we were having a hard time thinking of just the right name for our blog. Well it just seems fitting to start out by Trippin’… on the afternoon we were going to start our adventure that we had been preparing for at least a month, Maye to you, or Mom to us, tripped at the Dog Park Barktoberfest event. She went down hard, landed her left hip, elbow and immediately got the largest goose egg on her forehead that I have ever seen. This was approximately 12:55 pm on Sunday, October 18th. Drew rushed her to Fishermans Hospital where they did a complete examination and tests. NO broken hip. NO fractured skull. NO broken bones. At 89 years old, Maye is one tough woman. By the time she was released, the egg had already started to drain into her eye and cheek. Lots of ice packs and we were on the road at about 4pm.