Move to Florida????

Well, we're still here in DeFuniak Springs, keeping active with all the ongoing activities. Yesterday morning was the pancake breakfast. For $2 you got two big, fluffy pancakes, two sausage links, orange juice, and coffee! An added treat for this evening's hot dog night is karaoke and also a few of our neighbors will be strumming their guitars and beltin' out some country music. It don't get no better than this! We kid about some of these things, but we actually find them quite enjoyable.

Some of you may be curious as to the title of this post so we'll take some time to fill you in on our upcoming plans. We will be staying here in DeFuniak until January 3, and then travel back to the KOA in Denham Springs. As it stands now we have a reservation for one month, but still do not know how much longer we'll be staying. We have a few doctor appointments scheduled and are in the process of getting a couple others on the calendar. We hope to have all of those appointments finished by the end of January.

At some time between February 1 and April 30 we plan on changing our legal residence to the state of Florida. Why, you ask? The driving factor behind doing this is our health insurance. When our COBRA runs out on April 30, we will be eligible for a medical conversion policy to Cigna healthcare, which presently administers our health benefits. There are 4 states in the entire country that do not allow this conversion, and you guessed it....Louisiana is one of the 4. If we remain in LA, because of our pre-existing conditions, we will likely have to enroll in the Louisiana Health Insurance Association. This insurance is available to LA residents who have been denied health insurance for any reason. It is expensive, has high deductibles, limited choices, and just plain scary. By "moving" to Florida, we can get the conversion and have been informed that the cost will about $1,000 per month. A little bit more than what's in our budget, but obviously necessary.

In an effort to re-balance our budget we have spent the last few weeks trying to determine the most economical (cheap) way to continue on our travels. The second major expense that we incur each month are campground fees. Although we are only paying $375 plus tax per month here at Sunset King RV Resort, that amount will rise to almost $1,000 per month in Denham Springs. We have found since we left, and although KOAs are consistent and generally nice, staying at them has run about that $1,000 per month. We have investigated a number of different programs to help control this cost, and we have recently purchased a membership at the Breckenridge Lake Resort in Crossville, TN. We made this purchase so that we could utilize Coast to Coast Resorts for only $10 per night. They have campgrounds in almost every state, and although they are generally not located as close to major metropolitan areas as KOAs, there are many located within 30 or 40 miles of areas we would like to visit. The purchase price of this membership was $46, a $125 transfer fee, plus a $32 annual maintenance fee. In addition we paid to join Coast to Coast, which has an annual membership fee of $89.95. The program allows us to stay 14 days for free at our "home resort" in Crossville, TN. The $10 per night fee is available at all the other campgrounds and allows us up to a 7 night stay twice per year at each resort. The day we were making the decision, the resort here asked us if we'd be interested in a membership from them. Their membership included all the same benefits but was priced at $2,000 with a $250 annual maintenance fee. It is our understanding that some resorts sell their memberships for $4,000 - $5,000. So the $46 plus the $125 transfer fee sounded like a pretty good deal to us!

We have also stumbled across a company called My RV Mail, which for $12 per month supplies a Florida legal address and runs a mail forwarding service. They also allow you to view your mail online, delete anything that you do not want, and have the rest forwarded to you anywhere in the country for $4.05. So it looks like we will sign up for that service, change our billing address on the few items that still go to our P.O. Box, and when we leave Baton Rouge, have the mail from our box forwarded to this company. We will use this address to register our vehicles, for our drivers licenses, and for voter registration. It just so happens that this company is located about 20 miles down the road in Crestview, FL.

Another issue we hope to resolve while in Denham Springs is the issue of our storage unit. Most of the items in storage are considered collectibles and probably need to be listed on eBay. We only have a few large items, a dresser, chiffarobe and mirror that belonged to Russ' grandparents, and some glass tables that we purchased in Houston. We will need to go through the unit and determine what items we will try one last time to sell, what items we may take with us to eBay during the coming year, and whether we want to stay long enough in Denham to eBay our Dept. 56 Christmas in the City collection. It looks right now, that we will need to continue paying the $65 per month storage fee for another year. Not sure we want to hassle with it right now.

The last issue is to determine which items we have brought with us that it doesn't look like we'll use. We also have some items in storage that we may want to bring with us on our next trip. Speaking of our next trip, when we leave Denham, we will either come back to DeFuniak for a couple months, or if we stay longer in Denham, we will head north from there. We are leaning toward a trip along the East coast in 2008. We would like to visit some Civil War and Revolutionary War sites in GA, SC, NC, and VA. We're also hoping to see friends in Charleston, SC, spend some time in Savannah, GA, and Washington, DC. We will, of course, stop to see both of our sisters in DE and NJ. Hopefully we can get up and visit New York City, Cooperstown, and Niagara Falls. We also have plans on making it up to Maine, and back to St. Louis for the Missouri/Illinois football game in late August. At the end of the year, we may end up at Walt Disney World, since the FL resident annual pass is pretty reasonable! Plus there are about a dozen Coast to Coast resorts within 30 miles of the castle. 12 resorts x 7 days x 2 visits = 168 nights! Nothing like Disney World in December!

That's all for this week. By the way it was 82 degrees today!