Day 77-Day 85: Tuesday, November 20 to Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Port to Port: Tampa to Mound MN

Underway: 0:00 am      Motor Off: 0:00 pm      Miles Traveled: 00      Stayed At: Home

First Things First: First trip home (and back again).

Mile to Mile: This morning we traveled as far in about 3 hours by plane as we have traveled in the past 11 weeks. It’s a lot more fun doing it the “hard” (and slow) way though.

We were home for nine fun, busy and calorie packed days. After our smooth and uneventful flights we arrived home to a beautiful late, late fall day with temps in the 50’s and sunshine. Our home looked exactly as we left it except the leaves were gone and the lake level had gone down a few more inches. We even had time to do some minor yard work taking advantage of the nice weather. I guess our roses were still blooming a week ago. As is typical in Minnesota, though, wait a little while and things will change. I washed the car in shirtsleeves and sunshine the next morning and then the wind started roaring, the temperatures starting dropping (in 5 degree increments) and by early evening it was snowing and sleeting sideways outside the windows. By the next morning our bay of Lake Minnetonka had started to freeze over. Now it feels like we are back in Minnesota.

Our visit home was filled with family, food and fun. After some miscellaneous appointments we went to Mike’s mom Marty’s (Grandma G’s) house for our first home cooking of the trip – including a scratch made apple pie. A great start to our short visit home. Cindy baked the first triple batch of banana bread as soon as she woke up on Thursday – just in time for a breakfast snack. Our daughter Jessica flew in from California for Thanksgiving and surprised the Grandmas. Sarah brought Jess home and we had a great Thanksgiving feast at Mike’s brother Gary’s house. What a great party. Friday was lefse day – a tradition going back many years with the girls rolling out the dough and Cindy’s mom Shirley (Grandma A) flipping and stacking the finished lefse. Cindy’s college friend Barb and her Mom showed up too to participate in the fun. It’s just the beginning of the treats.

Saturday is traditionally Christmas cookie day and we can’t break tradition so more baking (and eating) ensued. Everyone was having brunch withdrawl since we left, so Saturday also became brunch day with more delicious homemade food with family. We actually went for a walk today so we burned off about 3 cookies – only 10,000 calories to go. Sunday was another baking day – Cindy cranked out another 5 batches of banana bread to give away. Oh’ and we went over to Scott and Sue’s house (Cindy’s brother and sister-in-law) for an amazing prime rib dinner and more family time with Jess and Sarah and the nephews and great nieces. We’ll need to add fuel to the airplane to get back to Tampa on Wednesday.

After working on a few projects Monday we met the girls for lunch before Jess left for California early Tuesday morning. We are going to miss them – thankfully it will be a little over a month before they come to visit us in Florida.

The week went incredibly fast and we were soon packing up the few clothes we brought with, packing many pounds of treats, closing up the house again and heading for Sarah’s apartment. We stayed overnight Tuesday and took the bus 5 minutes to the airport early Wednesday morning and flew back to Tampa.

We were incredibly lucky that our Minnesota friends Cliff and Caroline were in Tampa and driving home to Minnesota so they offered to pick us up at the airport and drive us back to Steinhatchee – an offer we would be insane not to accept. We had a blast catching up on all their news and sharing some of our adventures with them. They hope to do the Loop sometime in the future so they really appreciate the adventure we are on. After a long scenic drive (including stops at two West Marines and, of course, a Walmart), we capped the evening with a late dinner of chicken wings sitting at one of the picnic tables along the waterfront at Sea Hag Marina. We said goodbye and loaded all our piles of stuff onto Aurora and crashed a little lower in the water but happy to be home.