1/31/09 (Saturday): There's been another curve in the road of our Great Adventure, but I'm happy to report that life is still good.

The nodule on my lung proved to be a small cancer (the size of a dime). It was self contained and had not spread at all. The lymph nodes were all clear. I had it removed Thursday a week ago and am now at home (in the RV) recuperating. My mother- and sister-in-law were real troupers, allowing us to use their spare room and caring for us while we made preparations for the surgery. My son Mark was here all last week, supporting me in the hospital and transporting Wiley back and forth from his folks' house to the hospital. My son, Tom, arrives this evening (Mark left this morning) and he has the pleasure of transporting me to quite a few doctor's appointments next week. Family and friends have called, visited and emailed and offered help from all over the place. I feel extremely fortunate that I caught the cancer very early and have been surrounded by so much loving care. The prognosis is excellent. I may take a short course of chemo to help prevent a recurrence. I'll know more about that next week.

Now, I'm way behind in my blogging, so here's a condensed version of what I had planned before the detour of our adventure.

We were so sorry to leave our volunteer job at Gold Head Brance State Park. We really liked to other volunteers and the park staff and we had such a nice campsite! We've already talked to the ranger in charge of volunteers about the possibility of trying again later.









This is Gold Head Branch, the creek from which the park takes its name. It's a really pretty spot.


I'm getting tired, I'll call that it for now. Have a great week!

1/10/09 (Saturday): It's been a long time since I posted, I know. I've spoken with many of my readers, but for those of you that I haven't contacted yet, I wanted to share a little news. I was sick over Christmas with a cold that turned into pleurisy. One of the tests they did in the emergency revealed a nodule on my right lung. I'm in the process of having some more tests run and will keep everyone updated. We also discovered during Wiley's routine visit with the neurologist that the battery for his deep brain stimulator has gone dead. He needs outpatient surgery to replace it.

In light of all these doctor's visits, we decided that it wouldn't be fair to the good folks at Gold Head Branch State Park to continue there as volunteers. They're very dependent on their volunteers. Also, it's a 3-hour ride from there to the Orlando area. So we finished up our week there and moved to a park closer to Orlando where we're paying for two months. Then we hope we'll be able to go back to Boone as originally planned.

Blogs may be few and far between for a while, but I promise I'll get back to it as soon as I can. I'll post again when I have a better idea of the whole health thing.

1/3/09 (Saturday): We arrived late yesterday at our new home in Keystone Heights, Florida (Gold Head Branch State Park). We're pretty sure we made another good choice! We're not in one of the campgrounds. There are two sites set aside for Workampers all the way at the back end of the park, not far from a nice lake. The park also has some very nice looking cabins (not rustic, but right on the lake). It's a heavily wooded park with several lakes and lots of wildlife. If anyone wants to visit, give us a little advane notice and we'll see if we can rent a cabin for you. Here's a map of the area: Gold Head Branch State Park.

We're located about 6 miles from the town of Keystone Heights, which is a nice sized little town. Here's a link to some information about the town: Keystone Heights.

I haven't downloaded my Christmas pictures yet, so I'm going to end this blog and go exploring. We need to find an RV store, a laundromat and a Bank of America and I need to buy a few groceries.