Happy Thanksgiving

OK, so I know I said we would spend the Thanksgiving week on the the Space Coast parked at the Cocoa Elks, but instead we are parked at Millennium Coach, just off the St. Johns River in Sanford, Florida (map). Millennium has a spacious customer parking area, complete with 50-amp power and water, with room for perhaps two dozen coaches.

Good friends and fellow nomadic bus-dwellers Ben and Karen, who met us for dinner Monday evening, had extended a very gracious invitation to join them for Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant in Orlando. They are here at Millennium having some work done on their bus, and Tuesday they secured permission from the company for us to come join them here for a few days so we could spend the holiday together. It was very generous of Millennium to agree, and after Ben called us with the good news, we fueled up at a nearby station and headed north to Sanford.

In a short while we'll all pile into Karen's super-cute Mini Cooper and head down to the Drunken Monkey Coffee Bar to enjoy the "Thanksgiving Dinner for EVERYONE" which includes vegan and non-vegan options. And many thanks to Ben and Karen not only for inviting us to join them but also for providing transportation.

Since we had a water spigot available and our two buses are the only rigs here, we set the hot tub up yesterday and enjoyed a nice soak last night, after a nice dinner at Efe's restaurant on the lake near downtown, serving authentic Turkish cuisine. None of us had previously dined at a restaurant claiming to be Turkish, but fans of other Mediterranean cuisines will find many of the offerings familiar. The four of us split a large appetizer sampler, which really would have been enough for dinner on its own. Louise and I also shared a lamb sis kebap, which was excellent. The place was nearly empty and I would definitely call it a hidden treasure.

The invitation to come up here and our consequent decision to do so instead of heading to Cocoa now seems prescient, as NASA has since delayed the shuttle launch until no sooner than December 17th. We'll probably stay right here until the end of this weekend, then we are again somewhat at loose ends until the Nordhavn Open House in Stuart on the 10th. We may still drop by the Space Coast on the 7th to watch the COTS-1 launch, though I suspect it is not nearly as spectacular as a shuttle.

All of us here aboard Odyssey wish you and your families a very happy Thanksgiving holiday.

Photo by kate e. did, used under a Creative Commons license.