Checking Out More Local Stuff

We used yesterday as a "discover more about town" day. After breakfast and watching a little TV, we went to town to check out some places we had seen while on other trips there. We started with the post office in Columbia that is only about 4 miles away. We wanted to find out if it would be easier for us to get a post office box there or have our mail delivered to the park. One advantage of having it delivered to the post office is we would have access to the PO Box 24/7, while we can only have park access during business hours. The other advantage to the post office is we would get our mail earlier in the day instead of waiting for delivery around noon. The big disadvantage is cost. It would cost us about $50 for a PO Box for 6 months. Right now, at least, we decided to stay with park delivery.

Following that, we stopped at the Social Security Administration office on the edge of town in Sonora. We wanted to check on when Josie can apply for her SS, and how much she would be getting. She can sign up in June, but her first check wouldn't be until September. The good news is that it doesn't pay for her to wait until she is 66 to receive benefits. With the married couple feature, she gets extra money each month to make her benefit equal to half of mine. It turns out that with that extra money each month, the benefit would equal the same amount as if she waited until 66.

We wanted to also check out the thrift store in Sonora, which is a huge Salvation Army outlet. There were some old clothes that we had boxed up when we went through everything a couple weeks ago so we dropped those off and checked out the store. It is a very nice store but they all look the same once inside. They all have the usual old style clothes, old furniture, old technology electronics and very used books. You can probably find some good buys though if you know what you're looking for.

While we were out we decided to make a stop at a familiar place since we were close - the casino. It is never easy passing one of those with Josie. We played $20 each and were able to play for over an hour and we walked out with our original $20 each. That should happen all the time.

We have two more days - today and tomorrow - before we start our regular work schedules. Right now, we don't have anything planned, but with so much to do around here we hope to get out and discover something new. Until tomorrow...