First delivery and a mystery solved...

I mentioned that we have some orders that we are waiting delivery. When we got back from water aerobics this morning, my phone notified me that a message from Amazon was available...

It indicated that the package had been delivered... I went back outside to see if I could find it (we hadn't seen it when we came up), I didn't see anything... then I looked at the picture more closely... near a propane tank, near steps with grey carpet and white spindles, on a ceramic tile floor.... that's not anything that is on our lot...

Our lot is 807 Douglas in the Venture Out Resort. We had another package go missing back in December -- it was delivered by FedEx to 807 Merlin (one street in towards the middle of the community). Each lot has a sign with the lot number (but not the street name) and the name of the owners. In December, I ended up reporting to the sender that the package had never arrived (it was a check), so the sender notified their bank to put a stop-payment on the check and then they re-sent it, the second time requiring a signature. A few weeks later, someone from the Administration office came to our door -- with the original FedEx envelope -- the residents at 807 Merlin had arrived at Venture Out after the new year, and found a package not for them at the door. That time, we had looked all around our lot, and asked neighbors and looked around the front door areas of the houses that were not occupied, but we didn't think to look on other streets.

This time, we immediately thought that it might be at an 807 address on another street. I should mention that we've recently watched two Hallmark Murder and Mystery movies, so, with that amount of training, and a picture giving us a clue of what the "front door or porch" looked like, we headed out to do some sleuthing.

The picture identified that it wasn't going to be at an RV -- those are steps that go up into a park model, and probably an older park model. The tile floor implied an Arizona room, but one that wasn't fully enclosed. The dead leaves around the propane tank implied that it was a home not currently occupied. (See how much our viewing of Murder and Mystery movies had helped our observation skills?!?!? And you probably thought they were only for entertainment!)

We hopped on our bikes to be able to cover more ground in less time. Since before the package had been at 807 Merlin, I went there, but the house was a newer park model -- so that wasn't it. I saw another house on Merlin that had white spindles on the steps going up from the Arizona room into the park model (white spindles aren't very common here), but the flooring of the Arizona room was carpet, so that wasn't it (I had to spend a few minutes explaining to the next door neighbors of that house who were on their front porch why I was inspecting the home next door). Carl checked 807 on other streets further toward the center with no luck. We decided to check other houses on Douglas -- starting in the 900 block -- no luck. We came back up the 900 block on the next street to the outside, and we decided to check 807 Navaho -- one street out from Douglas -- no luck. We headed back to Douglas, and decided we should check the houses around us on Douglas more carefully -- we had looked, but we hadn't really examined each house around us. Sure enough, two houses down, 803 Douglas, we saw white spindles. 

Wowee -- there it is!

This neighbor (as well as the ones at 801 and 805) has not returned at all this season -- or, not while we've been here.

We were quite pleased with ourselves to have used our deductive reasoning and to have successfully tracked down the package! Though, I have to say, after we had checked all the 807 addresses, Carl said, "It may not even be at this resort!" -- I hadn't even thought of that possibility! Given that it was an Amazon order, and Amazon was doing the delivery, they would have had to make it good... but finding it made us use our brains and our bodies (as we biked around a number of blocks). It made for a fun diversion for our morning!

Do you think Amazon does this randomly to help senior citizens continue to work with their brains?