Day9 22Feb25 - Goofing off in Orlando

On Saturday we went back to the Marriot Grande Vista in Orlando to hang out with Tom and Lori another day.  

We arrived around 10AM and went to the pool to hang.  It was still a bit cool but the pool was warm, the hot tub warmer and when the sun came out it was really warm. 

It was nice to soak up the heat of the sun after having such a cold winter up north. 

After sammiches for lunch we decided to seek out the mini golf place we drove by when going to dinner on Thursday, Pirate's Cove.  

We had a great time, there were some cool holes. 

You don't realize how "not golf" it really is until you hit your first ball in the water......and it floats! 

Regardless, we had so much fun on the first 18 holes, we did another 18 holes on their second course. 

For June and I one of the coolest things was most holes had a plaque giving some history on some pirate character. Ordinarily this would mean nothing to us, but we have been watching the series 'Black Sails' and many of the characters are the subject of the plaques on the holes, kind of cool. 

This is Anne Bonnie, they did a good job depicting her in the series. 

If you want to watch Black Sails here is a link to the trailer.

Black Sails Trailer

Some of us did not behave and had to be put in the stocks for a bit. 

After our strenuous 36 holes of golf, we went back to Tom and Lori's place and cooked dinner. The hotel provides grills and Tom grilled up pork chops, chicken and veggies.  It was a feast, but after 36 holes, we earned it...wink wink.  

It was a great day of fun in the sun with friends, we left around 1945 and headed for the Cracker Barrel in Lakeland, FL which is just outside of Tampa. I tried to get a campground, but on a Saturday night in Florida in the winter....it is hard.  The campgrounds don't even bother calling you back, we really don't care but it seems to be the state of our world, no common curtesy.  The Lakeland CB is great, just off the highway, easy access, good parking, gotta luv CB. 

If anyone has read this far, here is a tidbit of data completely unrelated to the blog. You can skip to the end of this post. :-) 

When we left home on Friday February 14th, I turned the hot tub from its usual setting of 102F to 80F since we will not be home. The hot tub sits in our garage which is heated to 40F, it is butted up to an overhead door which makes that area a bit colder. I monitor the temperature and power usage of the hot tub and can do it remotely.  I was somewhat amazed at how long it took the hot tub to get down to 80F.  

It took over 7 1/2 days.

I know, who cares, but I find it interesting and it tells me a few things.  I don't need to worry about it during a power outage (don't waste my battery backup capacity on the hot tub), since it will probably take several weeks to get to freezing. I also often wondered how much of the hot tub heat contributes to the heating of the garage, given how long it takes to cool, I would say it contributes very little, if any. 

How much does it cost to run a hot tub?  

Ours is about $34/month @20 cents per kWh for electricity in VT. VT has about the highest rates in the country, so check your rate and scale accordingly. 

OK, sorry for that diversion, but I had to record it somewhere. 

Sunday we will make our way to Fort Myers to visit John and Liz, it has been 5 years. We used to see them almost every winter, I blame Covid for messing up our lives.