After living in Rover for over 2 years we are starting to feel like a change of pace. Travel in 2022 looks like it will continue to be challenging. Covid cases are higher now than anytime in the past. It is highly unlikely that we will be able to go to China to visit family this year. Borders are opening and closing unexpectedly. So we are considering taking a break, settling down for a year and perhaps try for overseas travel next year. Perhaps send Olivia to a regular school for a while and take a break from homeschooling as well.
We were all had the sniffles, cough and a sore throat so we spent most of the day just hanging out in the RV and doing some homeschooling to make up for the missed days on our Keys trip. In the late afternoon we went to look at a couple of rental houses Orlando but they did not pan out.
The next day was more of just hanging out and doing more homeschooling and in the afternoon we went to a free Covid testing facility. All of our results came out negative. In one way it was good that we did not have Covid. In another way though it was bad since our symptoms were very mild and a very mild case of Covid would have boosted our immunity further. Also now we had no idea what we had. I guess it doesn’t matter since we don’t feel that bad, just some runny nose, sneezing, coughing and sore throat.
After some discussion we decided to head back to Houston. While Orlando was nice it is difficult to find a short term place to stay. The RV Parks are full, apartment rentals of less than 6 months are crazy expensive and Airbnb is also expensive. It should be easier to find a place to stay for the winter in Houston which is a much less touristy city. For our farewell dinner we went to Medieval Times. We all had a good time eating with our hands, yelling Huzza and rooting for the knight with our color. The food was surprisingly acceptable for what was certainly mass produced tourist food.
The next day Holly changed her mind and wanted to look one last time for a place to stay in Orlando. I booked us a couple of apartments to look at and scheduled our mail to be sent to a local Fedex office. After doing our normal homeschooling we went to look at a furnished apartment which was renting for $1,600 a month. It was a rather run down place in an older building and we did not particularly like it. Immediately discouraged, Holly changed her mind again and wanted to go back to Houston. However I had already scheduled our mail to be sent to Orlando so I suggested we keep on looking until the mail arrived and then if we still didn’t find anything we could head to Houston.
I got a mail shipping confirmation the next day and immediately noticed that they had sent the mail first class USPS. This was a big problem since the Fedex office would not accept US postal mail and there was not even a tracking number so our mail was basically lost in the wind. I called our mailing service but since the mail had already gone out there was nothing they could do other than to refund us the $2.98 for the postage. I called the Fedex office and they said they would reject the mail but could not guarantee anything.
There was no point in waiting for the mail so we left Orlando and started heading to Houston. We got as far as Tallahassee before we parked at a convenient Cracker Barrel for the night.