December 28-29, 2012 Wildwood, Florida

We are still at Alliance RV, now just waiting for the refrigerator door seals so we can get those replaced.  That and parts for the toilet. We found out that the water pump in the toilet needs replacing, $300! John asked how much a new toilet would cost and it was $800. RV toilets are really pricy I guess. We are just getting the innards, not the whole shebang. Friday we had to leave early so they could work on the bus. So we headed out to breakfast, then a movie- the Hobbit. We went to this place called the Villages for the movie. It is a gigantic retirement place. 90,000 people live there. It has three ‘squares’, which are themed. One is Victorian, one is western and one is south western. Many very expensive high end shops and restaurants. It is like a big theme park. Unbelievable. 39 golf courses, any size house you could want, and also a hospital, shopping centers- it has everything. The weirdest thing is that people drive around in golf carts on the roads with the cars. Very fancy golf carts. They have their own radio station that is broadcast on speakers everywhere. It has fox radio news on it.

Golf carts parked in front of the theatre, golf carts driving down the road

golf carts that look like cars, a canal and water wheel

The villages also have every medical specialty office you could ever need. Here is the lab, Much fancier than any lab I ever worked in. Today we got up early and went to the tractor museum. We couldn’t pass that up. It was very interesting.

It was  international harvester only. The lobby was set up as an international harvester dealership with parts and all. Here is our tour guide, Bill. He is demonstrating a manual thrasher, that was the first thing Mr. McCormick patented. In the beginning International made all kinds of things, like the fridges and freezers in the background. Here is one of the many buildings full of tractors. They had every model IH made. We had a very lengthy tour with Bill.

This tractor is for use in orchards, the wheel covers kept the branches from being trashed by the wheels. Here are some tractor pull trophy's that Stewart, the collector of these tractors won.

A few signs from around the buildings. . .

We had to rush back to the RV, we had a carpet cleaner coming. Here are our dining room chairs and carpet runner outside getting cleaned too. John is smoking a pork loin while we wait. I worked on my basket.  Yesterday we woke up to 36 degrees and ice on the car, last night it rained all night and we woke up to rain and 69 degrees, they day then cleared to a nice sunny mid 70’s.