Christmas Greetings, 2017

         Christmas, 2017- The Payette Family of Titusville, Florida.

Merry Christmas to our friends and relatives from Alice and Bob! Having family and good friends is the best blessing, and we are grateful for ours.

We feel very blessed in our Florida home, and love the lifestyle and climate here in Titusville. The regional theaters (Titusville Playhouse, Henegar Theater, Cocoa Playhouse, Melbourne Civic Theater etc) and Big Band concerts in Melbourne keep us busy on weekends along with monthly camping excursions in our motor home.  I try to keep our Blog reasonably current, and you’re invited to take a look if you are inclined….at http://bobpayette.blogspot.com/. There are links to most of our photo’s you can peruse from the Blog if you’d like….you’ll have to sign it with your Google account for full access. You can “subscribe” to the Blog if you’d like our postings automatically forwarded to your email account.

Our health is reasonably good and we’re still glamping with the motor home, at least monthly.  Unfortunately our camping Good Sam Chapter was closed out this year….too many people getting old, tired and unable to participate :(.  A group of us still camp and travel together unofficially...our next jaunt being a week-long excursion to the Pensacola area in the Panhandle the 2nd week of January.

Merry Christmas to you and yours, and if a visit to Florida’s East Coast is in your plans contact us so we can get together! David and his fiancee Ashley have purchased a home here in town, so we have our guest room back. Our Town home is under an hour from Orlando International…..a straight shot down Interstate 528 with little traffic☺.  We also hope you have a healthy and wonderful 2018….so Happy New Year!

Bob and Alice Payette

r.payette2@gmail.com    alicepayette@gmail.com Best phone or text contact for Bob:  860. 460.7945 -  For Alice:  860.912.7160

Leaving late morning for Tomoka State Park in Ormond Beach, FL

We're heading out noonish for Tomoka State Park in Ormond Beach FL and we'll stay there thru Thursday.  https://www.floridastateparks.org/park/Tomoka . The weather looks to be excellent...we really haven't had any cold yet this year, but it's been "autumn" cool where we can keep the slider open at night for fresh air with the a/c ot kicking in.  It IS nice to be heading out camping after Thanksgiving, and we'll be going out every month at least once thru the summer. Back home in CT the rig would be winterized, and we'd be making plans for our snow-birding excursion for the winter. We don't miss the drive out of the Northeast in the middle of winter....that was always anxiety producing. The idea of getting caught in a Class A motorhome towing a car in the mountains of Pa during a snowstorm always made me a tad anxious...

Thanksgiving was nice.  David and Ashley and their two pooches were over for the day.  The only negative was there was a bit of a dog commotion when someone walking their dog by our unit caught the attention of Ashley's dog, who barrelled out thru the screen door of the Florida room.  I was up first and made sure there was no dog riot, but Ashley tripped on herself and did some damage to her foot.  She went to the ER the next morning and she's now on crutches.  Bummer!

Next month we'll be camping back to Jetty Park in Port Canaveral.  That's only a half hour away from the house but one of our favorite camps, right on the open Atlantic.  You can see the cruise ships arriving and leaving right from the campground, and The Cove area of the Port is right there with excellent restaurants.

Update December 2nd:  Short Video Clip from the Tomoka State Park campout. https://photos.app.goo.gl/blrejs9whgFRhlCG3

Veterans Day Concert - Melbourne Big Band

Attended the Veterans Day concert at Melbourne Auditorium last night with Mel and Dotti Fringer....excellent performance!

Post camping group activity......

Reservations: 1-5 of 5▲ Previous | Next ▼
Reservation Number Status	Type	Location	Reservation Details	Total Fee: Balance Due
Reservations: 1-5 of 5▲ Previous | Next ▼
2-34616638 FL Confirmed See Detail	Site	Tomoka State Park	Site: 097Sun Nov 26 2017 - Thu Nov 30 2017 (4 nights)	$60.70 :$0.00
2-34617083 FL Confirmed See Detail	Site	Big Lagoon State Park	Site: 051Mon Jan 08 2018 - Fri Jan 12 2018 (4 nights)	$51.30 :$0.00
2-34619082 FL Confirmed See Detail	Site	Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park	Site: 029Sun Feb 04 2018 - Thu Feb 08 2018 (4 nights)	$50.70 :$0.00
2-34612943 FL Confirmed See Detail	Site	Lake Manatee State Park	Site: 005Sun Mar 04 2018 - Thu Mar 08 2018 (4 nights)	$55.98 :$0.00
2-34602170 FL Confirmed See Detail	Site	Fort Clinch State Park	Site: 014Thu Sep 20 2018 - Thu Sep 27 2018 (7 nights)	$107.71 :$0.00

After the closing up of the Good Sam camping chapter we're trying to move ahead with a camping schedule on our own. We'll start off with the Florida State Parks in November.  In December we've booked into Jetty Park which is operated by the Port of Cape Canaveral.  Some of our friends from the old group will be meeting up with us at some of these campouts.

Wal-Mart online grocery ordering....

 Update after pickup 10/19/17:  Walmart sent me an email at 9:30a saying my order was ready. We had downloaded the App and clicked on "We're on our way" and when we got there they were coming out of the building with our order.  He loaded it nicely in the trunk, answered all my questions, and we were on our way in five minutes.  The eggs were NOT cracked, the bananas were perfect, the frozen food was frozen nicely....and we were given a nice gift basket of stuff that is useful. We definitely will be using this service!!

Original Post: We do a lot of our grocery and staple shopping at Wal-mart, sharing with Aldi's and Publix and BJ's Warehouse....and yesterday, for the first time, we ordered groceries online with Walmart.

You go to Walmart/grocery and create an account http://r.wmt.co/gMSNg if you don't already have one and pick out what you want to order...i.e., 4 bananas, 1 gal of 2% milk, the various cat foods, pharmacy products...you name it.  You see a complete description of each item with photo's.....so if you search for say toothpaste all the toothpaste they sell scrolls down with pricing and detail.  It actually very civilized...you can do it from a phone, tablet or notebook computer.  After you finish shopping you "check out" and pay for it with your preferred credit card, and set up a "pick up" time at the store.  We're going to pick our up order this morning between 10 and 11 (they'll email me when it's ready, and I'll respond when we're leaving to pick it up).  They load it in the car and off we go to home. The price you pay is the same as if you shopped in the store...no packing fees at all.

This is a "test" for us....I purposely chose some things that will give us an idea on how their packers do.  Eggs, produce, things from pharmacy and frozen foods....a good variety to see how it's packed (are the banana's right, any eggs cracked, how hard is the ice cream?)

I also purposely "added to" the order after we'd closed it out and paid for it.  They let you do that up to 12 hours prior to your scheduled pick-up, and I went in and added about 5 items.  Once you do that it's just another debit hit to your card and the new order is combined with the old....very slick. :).

Most of us have shopped on Amazon and found it to be very seamless, and I think Wal-mart could be onto something with this grocery business.  What we're losing is the extended walk and exercise through the big-box store, the waiting in line, the parking hassles... We'll do our walk outside at the town marina-park area and let Wal-mart pack the groceries.  Could be a win-win!  This is rolling out country-wide...just came to Titusville starting today and we're on it like white on rice :).
Please use this link if you decide to try the service....it will help the starving Payette's of Titusville: http://r.wmt.co/gMSNg

https://grocery.walmart.com/help#about-walmart-grocery

We just got back in this afternoon from points North....

We spent the last week in Saint Augustine (Stagecoach RV) and Jekyll Island Ga....the Florida part with four couples associated with our former Space Coast Sams Chapter and the Jekyll Island portion with Mel and Dottie Fringer.  Here's a Google Photo's link to my snaps and video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/R6Q7ebbt9ds4EJbD3 .

Pulling the plug on our camping group, Space Coast Sams effective November 1, 2017

Very sad times.  Yesterday I convened an emergency meeting of our Board of Directors of our Good Sam Chapter Space Coast Sams.  Due to a lot of "perfect storm" events we concluded it was no longer viable to keep the Chapter running, and we voted for dissolution.  Our Wagonmaster lost his rig in a recent tornado (Hurricane Irma), our Treasurer is moving to Atlanta Ga to be closer to family, and we lost more members to health than we can replace.  Time to turn out the lights :(.