Yesterday we bid adieu to our new friends, Steve, Misty, and Brianna. We spent a lot of time with them in the past few days, and it was great. We had an enormous amount in common, just as we did when we met Bobby, Danine, and Elise in Virginia. We may see them again tonight if they drop in on Ft Wilderness, or maybe as we pass by their home on the Florida panhandle in December.

Ft Wilderness is one of the nicest commercial campgrounds you can visit — it’s Disney, after all. From check-in to check-out, the experience is superb and convenient. It’s not overly “Disnified” with little Mickeys hanging from every tree, but there are free movies and sing-alongs every night, along with a full page of other amenities and programs.

Our friend Brett, and his sister Lori, pulled in a few hours after we did. Lori flew in from Colorado and they are parked right next to us in Brett’s Argosy 28 motorhome. The plan is to spend all day together chowing down at the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival (and riding plenty of rides, as Emma has reminded us).

Halloween dogs, from St Augustine. Click for larger

My latest bedside reading comes courtesy of Bobby (of Virginia), who gave me a couple of books he’d recently read. I just finished “The Professor and the Madman“, which is a fascinating account of the life of the major contributor to the original Oxford English Dictionary — who just happened to be insane and committed for life to a facility in England for having murdered someone. It’s also an interesting account of how the Oxford English Dictionary was made. It might sound like hearing about paint drying, but actually it is quite good. The creation of the OED (the first ever comprehensive English dictionary) was a massive project that took about 80 years and was done with 19th century technology. Reading it, I am reminded of how relatively easy it is to produce an 80 page magazine using computers …