I’m Eating My Words

Remember when I said the other night, “we are going no farther south than where we are right now.”???  Well, I’m eating those words—we moved southwest today, back to Cedar Key.  In spite of our best efforts we did not find a RV park in this area that could even begin to compare with Cedar Key.  The park we visited yesterday “way out in the country” while private and quiet had some other issues which made it unacceptable to us—we did not feel safe out there.  Plus you must drive past multiple dairy/veal farms in order to reach the RV park. 

So, here we are again—the park is very busy, there is a rally starting Thursday consisting of retired military and many rigs have begun to arrive.  We have an awesome site for about a week to ten days—it is one of the owned spots—the owner is arriving soon and would like his spot—imagine that!  So we will move right next door. 

And, this is starting to be kind of freaky—we were out walking Emmi soon after arriving, looking for RV spots we might like for when we have to move from our current one when someone says, “are you Mike, and you are Janna!”  It was Joe from Joe’s Journey.  He left a comment several days ago saying they were sorry to have missed us here at Cedar Key.  Joe noticed the motorhome as Mike was driving in but couldn’t decide if it was pink or not.

A funny thing happened yesterday evening (Sunday) at the little grocery store in Trenton, Michael was with me and had picked up a bottle of wine for drinking on Valentine’s Day.  At checkout the nice young woman said to him, “sorry sir, no alcohol on Sunday.”  I grew up in the south, I know about dry counties and no alcohol laws on Sunday but Michael had never heard of such a thing—the cashier and I got a good laugh at his expense!

And here’s another reason for leaving Otter Springs—hundreds of squirrels—when we came home last night I smelled propane and so did Michael.  He turned off the tank connected to the grill and came inside.  This morning while packing he noticed this: dang squirrels ate a hole in our propane hose!!!  We had noticed the squirrels jumping up inside the engine compartment of the jeep and were a little concerned, we are now thinking it was a good thing we got out of there before the little varmints ate something really important.

Bacon, lettuce and tomatoes for dinner, YUM!  We are ready for warmer weather again and I think it is coming!

Everybody Left

The campground where we are located, Otter Springs in Trenton, FL is a county operated park.  Friday a lot of campers began arriving—people with 2 rigs, 2 tents, lots of kids and dogs.  The folks parked near us were a LOT quieter than we expected but as Al and Karen said, they had little kids, they had to go to bed early—plus they had a very tiny camper.  But today, everybody but the regulars are gone again.  Ah, peace and quiet!!  But, dang cold!  It was 28 degrees this morning and we walked in coats and down vests, what’s up with that Florida???Tonight it is supposed to get even colder and the way it feels outside right now I can believe it.  A cold north wind blew all day, too, but at least the sun was shining!

We got in a nice 4 mile hike and homemade pizza for lunch before we took off on another drive.  Visited another RV park in Williston about 40 miles from here—oh my, very fancy, schmancy!  But sardine-ville!  And almost $700 a month.  Drove way out in the country past dairy farms and hay fields to a older park with a newly developed section.  Big plans in the works, huge RV sites just like Cedar Key, pool, spa, new clubhouse, pet walk, etc.  Some of the sites in the newer part are ready for occupancy at a great rate—but man, you are way out in the country! 

Well, I may be eating my words tomorrow, maybe not???

Cowboy Goes To The Beach

Came up with a really wild idea this morning, jumped in the jeep and headed off to see the Atlantic Ocean!  Took a lot of scenic back roads across Florida before arriving at an ocean front park near Jacksonville.  It is much cooler and extremely windy here in our part of the US today—the beach was both those things, cool and very windy.  Not very many people out on the beach but there sure were a lot of people everywhere else! 

We didn’t get back home until close to 6pm, that was a really wild idea and a long day of driving! 

Lows in the 20’s tonight, wind chills in the teens—who turned off our Florida heat??  Water in the tank, hose unhooked, we are ready.  As we drove along today, noticed lots of people had covered their plants with cloth and plastic sheets.  Many of the azaleas are blooming as are many other flowering trees and shrubs, some trees are beginning to leaf out—a hard free could sure mess up spring!

Meeting With Friends

We’ve had a couple comments lately, readers stating they felt like “stalkers.”  Please don’t ever feel like a stalker, we love comments and we love getting to know new folks even if we never meet in person, Mary Lou!  It’s great to have so many readers!

And we have received several comments from folks thinking we should go farther south into Florida.  Let me be blunt—we are not going any farther south than we are right now, period, end of story.  Southern Florida may be beautiful, I’m sure it is, I’ve been there in another life but there are way too many people running around down there for us to find it enjoyable at this stage in our life.  If you’ve read this blog for very long you will know we live in Montana miles and miles from anything, no grocery store, no gas station, no restaurant, no nothing!  We cannot see or hear any neighbors from our home and we love it that way.  When we travel we enjoy those same kind of areas, low key, quiet, far from the crowds.  Our way of life is not for everyone—and that’s OK, it is what makes this world interesting! 

I’m subscribing to Patchwork Times Judy’s method for knitting!  She says when learning to knit (self taught) she would knit along, not like it, rip it out and start over.  Last night I was knitting along, noticed I had a “hole”, decided I didn’t like it then ripped the whole thing out!  Took me a while to remember how to cast on, eventually watched a U-Tube video and was back on track.  I look at the whole process as practice!  May take me a while to get those socks made!

This afternoon about 3pm we headed for Stumpknockers—yep, that’s the name of a restaurant near Ocala on the Withlacoochee River where we were meeting our friends Elaine and Mark for dinner.  Elaine suggested we meet at 4:30pm so we could beat the crowd—we drove into the parking lot it was packed!  Popular place!  We managed to find a table outside where we enjoyed a great dinner and wonderful conversation with our friends.  It’s a quaint little place right beside the river with lots of outdoor seating.

Today was a good day! 

A Road Trip

After our hike this morning we headed off in the jeep for the gulf towns of Steinhatchee and Keaton Beach about 60 or so miles from where we are staying.  Someone had told us about a great RV park in Keaton Beach where you could park with your windshield facing the gulf. 

Well, obviously as The Bayfield Bunch Al says, RVers are different!  You couldn’t have paid us to stay in that RV park.  I could have reached out the window and passed the salt to my neighbor plus the park was filled with a bunch of older trailers which hadn’t been moved in a long, long time.  No, we are staying put right where we are!

Both Steinhatchee and Keaton Beach appear to be summer towns with lots of nice beach front houses and many of those houses are for sale.  We think the economy has probably hit these little coastal towns hard—we saw only a couple of restaurants in Steinhatchee, we chose the pizza place and had mediocre expensive food.  There was one hot dog stand in Keaton Beach.  We did not see a grocery store in either town just convenience stores. 

The drive was scenic and the little towns were scenic, just not a lot going on.

We stopped in Chiefland for a few groceries—we ate the last of our eggs this morning.  Came home, unloaded, played ball with Emmi, now we are relaxing. 

This one’s for you Karen, it was parked in the Wal Mart parking lot in Chiefland.

Learning A New Skill

Michael and I both were complaining about the chill in the motorhome this morning that is until we fired up the laptops and discovered it was 12 degrees at home in Montana.  OK, so we won’t complaining about our 44 degrees.

Well I sort of proved you can teach an old dog new tricks—I spent most of the day learning to knit socks from this sweet lady, Mariam. 

I have knitted in the past, a continuous scarf I never finished and long, long ago in another life I knitted a sweater from ribbon.  Do I remember anything, nope!  So we started from scratch with Mariam teaching me to cast on and by the end of the day this is what I have, the beginnings of a pair of socks:I think I can do this, I think I can do this!

Michael held down the fort at home and baby sat the dog.  When I pulled up at the office a lady was getting into her Volkswagen.  She asked me if I was “Emmi’s Mom?”  Well she met Michael and Emmi out on one of the trails today.  She is Winston’s Mom—an adorable little Yorkie.  I can remember Winston’s name but for the life of me I can’t remember her name.  I’m bad about that—dog names I can remember, people not so much.  Not sure what that says about me!

A good day in northern Florida.

A Home Day

Well, maybe I should be vocal about things which bother me more often!!  I am so gratified by the number of kind comments I received from readers after I sounded off about a negative commenter who has a blank Google profile—no way to respond to him or her.  Thank you all for reading this blog and for being so kind!  We appreciate it greatly!

We walked out to Little Otter Spring again this morning.  Sunday as we were floating along on the Suwannee and nearing the spot where Little Otter Spring flows into the Suwannee we heard people talking along the bank, couldn’t see them or really hear what they were saying.  Then we heard a big splash—were they actually swimming in that hole where the spring comes up????  Well today we got our answer—see the rope Michael is holding, they probably were swinging out over the spring and dropping from the rope, fun back in Arkansas when we were kids but not in Florida where they have alligators in rain puddles much less a spring with murky, mossy edges—you couldn’t see an alligator lurking under all that yuck!!!  Not me, nope!!  If I go swimming in Florida it will be in that nice concrete pool with clear blue water right across the road from our site. 

Would you go swimming in that???

Chicken on the grill for lunch and while lunch was cooking I made a batch of bread—baked one loaf and froze the dough to make two more later. 

Michael has been tinkering with the motorhome all day—he changed our water filter and tried to find the source of one of our strange problems.  We have decided that most motorhomes and especially this Country Coach were meant to be parked and hooked to 50amp power.  Asking the electrical system to do anything out of the ordinary causes problems.  But no, that doesn’t mean we will never boondock again—this coach will just have to learn!

When I use the washer/dryer I must switch between the electric hot water heater and the washer/dryer.  There is a toggle switch which allows me to chose which one I want to use.  Well, sometimes I want both—hot water and the washer/dryer (greedy, aren’t I).  So, I will kick the hot water heater on using the propane switch.  Every time I do this we momentarily lose power—long enough to kick off the microwave clock but just that quick second or two in the time it takes the igniter to light the propane.  Weird!!!  And, no, my handy, dandy husband did not find the source of this problem yet.

And that is about it for our day in Florida.   We saw this little guy while walking this morning, Emmi really wanted to say hello to him but Michael picked her up so she couldn’t torment him.

 

And Emmi—one of her favorite spots—she can see outside and watch all the hundreds of squirrels.