WHEN I retired, I thought I would have plenty of time to do lots of things. Those things included blogging more, and blogging about the fun things I was doing in retirement. Those thoughts occurred to me back in November 2022. Here we are in September 2023, and this is my first retirement blog entry since I actually retired. Sigh. But I have great excuses, namely, I was busing doing those fun things. What follows is intended to be a series of entries, catching y’all up on what I’ve been up to.

The first thing I did was accept a last minute invitation from my sister in law to join her and her best friend Gina in one of our favorite camp grounds in Cherokee, NC. The conversation went something like this:

Debbie: “Hey, Eddie, do you want to visit Cherokee with me and Gina in January, about 3 weeks or so from now?”

Me: “Let me check my busy calendar(ducks as Debbie throws something at me) Why, yes, I am available”

So I drove down to this campsite that, in prior years, we’ve only visited in the middle of summer. Debbie got us a cabin, and we were able to just hang out and chill(pun intended, since there was ice in the creek). It was wonderful. I cooked my apparently famous enchiladas and rice for Debbie, Gina and the campground owners’ family, and was complimented on the food. We went to Joey’s Pancake House for breakfast(ok, maybe we went there twice). I made friends with Gina’s little dog, nick named Killer. And we read and napped. It was a nice vacation, and I am grateful for Debbie for instigating the trip.

Speaking of instigation, while we were there, Debbie booked the camp site for a return trip in July. More on that later.