http-equiv='refresh'/> Tin TeePee/Log Cabin: January 2012

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

An Unexpected Hike

Michael took Miss Emmi for a walk around the park this morning and I got us ready packing up some snacks.  Our destination was Trenton, Florida.  Looking at another campground and the quilt shop at Trenton.

We first drove to Old Town again and tried out the Nature Coast Trail, miles and miles of paved (yes, JB) paths following an old railroad bed connecting Old Town, Trenton and Chiefland.  Beautiful scenery and a bridge over the Suwanee River.

IMG_2047IMG_2051That walk, stroll, whatever was probably about 2 miles.  We then headed over toward Trenton to Otter Springs—readers Al and Karen are workcamping there and had recommended their campground as being nice and quiet.  Beautiful spot under many live oak trees, a spring feeding into the Suwanee River—we can launch the kayak right from the campground and a heated indoor pool!!!  And great ice cream bars in the office/store refrigerator/freezer!!  There was a nature trail leading to the river which the ladies in the office said was about a mile one way.  Off we went—well, I think we took a wrong turn—this is getting to be a habit!!!  Over an hour later we are back at the jeep—hot, sweaty and famished.  We did find the river.  Unfortunately we missed Karen and Al—they were off on an adventure.

On to Trenton to find the quilt shop and lunch.  The brochure we had mentioned a café  located within the quilt shop—should have know better!  Yes, it was a quaint little café with a menu that read:  quiche, salads, etc.  They did offer as a special a taco salad which my husband would have been happy to eat but they had just served the last one.  Dear Michael retreated to the car and I attempted to browse through the quilt shop—not happening, I was so hungry I couldn’t even think straight.

We left to find a burger spot—very good burgers and delicious milkshakes.  By then we were both so tired after our six miles of walking we pointed the jeep toward home.

IMG_2054Suwanee River at the campground.IMG_2057IMG_2060

Monday, January 30, 2012

A Little Of This And That

Hiking is good for us—yes it is—are we trying to convince ourselves, no we know how we feel after hiking four miles—great!  Off we went this morning to what has become again our favorite place, the Cedar Scrub Preserve.  About halfway through our walk we heard this little guy and were able to pick out which tree from which he was getting his morning snack.

IMG_2039-001Am I right Judy, he is a red bellied woodpecker??

IMG_2044-001Saw nothing else on our walk this morning, a good thing!

Michael worked on the taxes again—I began to dread the sound of “do you remember last April when you------?”  How in the world am I supposed to remember a week ago what I charged on the American Express much less almost a year ago???? 

My pizza dough frozen last week worked well today to make another delicious pizza—finally I’m successful in making pizza dough!  After lunch I worked on that blessed quilt fixing the rest of my mistakes—the rows are all done, now to sew those together and get the borders on. 

We took a break late afternoon and went into town for a couple grocery items—I wanted to make this soup I found in a magazine, Pasta Figioli—it has kale (which I bought at the produce stand last Thursday, white beans and various other things—my husband ate it!!!  and said, “it’s not too bad!”  Not a supreme compliment but at least he didn’t say, “could we not have this again!”

My friend Kelly from Kansas City after visiting us last summer sent Michael and I a collection of DVD’s entitled The National Parks, America’s Best Idea, a film by Ken Burns.  For the last four nights we have watched one of the almost 2 hour long DVD’s.  They are without a doubt awesome, we have both learned so much about our national parks—there are 58 national parks not counting national monuments.  The photography is stunning and the commentary very interesting—how our parks came to be is an incredible story.

Another beautiful day in Florida!

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Not Much Going On Today

Another four mile hike this morning and the only critters we ran into were two legged ones—a very nice couple just out for a stroll. 

We enjoyed a delicious lunch, oven fries, steak on the grill and a big salad.  After lunch I dragged out all my sewing stuff—it’s almost more trouble than it’s worth to sew in the motorhome.  I use the dining table and kitchen counter top which means in order to fix a meal everything has to be put away.

I am struggling with the current quilt project—poorly written pattern as usual, my poor choice of fabrics (didn’t use enough different colors), and poor piecing.  Poor piecing because I didn’t follow my original quilting teacher’s admonitions—never freehand cut triangles and expect those triangles to make a perfect square when sewn together.  There are several methods for making accurate half square triangles and this pattern does not ever mention using any of those methods.  The pattern never tells you what size your finished blocks should be.  It just tells you to cut a square and whack it in half diagonally.  Not gonna work—my blocks weren’t square, some of my points are off—it’s frustrating to spend that kind of money on fabric and not have an accurate quilt when you are finished.  GRRRRR

Michael worked on the taxes and I didn’t hear too much growling from his corner except from Emmi so things must be going OK.  Emmi sits on the back of the couch growling and snorting at folks passing by.  She doesn’t bark, just snorts and growls until one of us tells her to knock it off.

A couple walks through the RV park with Emmi and that’s about it for our day.  The folks who manage this park got wind that we were thinking of leaving—not for price, just for a change of scenery.  The banker dude whose bank now owns this park told them to make us an offer for three months that we just may find hard to turn down!!

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Saturday, January 28, 2012

Back To Hiking In The Woods

We decided this morning not to let a few snakes and alligators get to us rattlesnake hardened Montanan’s—off we went to hike our four miles in the Cedar Key Scrub Preserve.  Saw nothing but a few birds and some animal tracks.  

Several days ago Judy from The Patchwork Times posted a link for a bread recipe.  The recipe, Dee’s Health Bread came from the website Allrecipes.  Now, I’m not your normal bread maker—have never liked kneading bread.  I did use the Artisan Bread In Five Minutes A Day cookbook a lot to make bread but just haven’t ever gotten into the yeast and kneading thing.  The dough for the breads made using the Artisan recipes is kept in the refrigerator until ready to use, no kneading necessary.  RV refrigerators are not big enough to keep a large container full of bread dough—I tried it last year!

The recipe Judy used sounded so good I decided to give it a try—it is without a doubt the best bread!  I didn’t have any cracked wheat so I used a little more sunflower seeds and flaxseed.  And having only one oversized loaf pan I had to improvise a little.  Making half the recipe gave us three loaves of beautiful, tasty bread.  We gave one loaf to our neighbors Blair and Evelyn who always come out with dog treats for Emmi when we walk by.  The first loaf looked like this before I remembered to take a photo:

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I cooked the second two loaves side by side on a cookie sheet—a little deformed looking but still delicious—a keeper recipe.

Spent some time reading in the sun, it was a little cool and windy today but sitting in the warmth of the sun felt good.  The rest of the afternoon I spent sewing for the first time since leaving home.  At my last quilt retreat I made most of the blocks for a flannel quilt—today I finished making the blocks.

IMG_2021Gave Michael a haircut and that was about the extent of our Florida day.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Touring Around

Michael took Emmi for a walk around the park—it’s about 3/4 mile while I got ready to go.  We were off to see new sights today. 

First to Chiefland, Fanning Springs then Old Town.  No stops in between, in Old Town we took Highway 349 south and found our kind of campground.  Way out in the country (with a Verizon tower right across the road from the entrance) down a gravel road out to the Suwanee River.  The campground isn’t actually on the river although they do have river frontage—you just have to take this awesome boardwalk through the swamp to get to the river—about a 1/4 mile of boardwalk!  The camp host told us the owners built everything in this park themselves at night and on weekends including this boardwalk.  They both had day jobs while building the park.  No night lighting at all, just around the shower house.  Cable TV and WiFi but only in the clubhouse.  The price of $450 per month includes electric and the cable!!  OK, we like this one.  Very friendly campers—everyone waved as we drove around looking at different sites.  Suwanee River Hideaway RV Park.  And JB there is a 3 mile trail (not paved) through the forest around the perimeter of the campground.

Farther south we found another beautiful park right on the Suwanee River—premium river front sites with your windshield parked out over the water were $838 per month!!!!!  This includes cable, WiFi at your site (good thing, phones nor aircards work here) and electric.  A little steep if you ask me, this isn’t ocean front we are talking about here!  And while the woman who helped me in the office was super nice, no one was out of their RV’s and the park was fairly full in the non-premium non-riverfornt sites.  No, probably not the one for us.

On to Suwanee where we found lunch at a quaint little café—pretty good.  Then the going gets rough—we take a gravel road to Horseshoe Beach, another quaint little ocean front town with a series of canals with houses and boat houses.  From there we were going to try and find our way to Steinhatchee through the back roads—and as Al from the Bayfield Bunch said, there are no mountains to show you the direction you should be taking.  We drove and drove along these bumpy, narrow roads, through pine and swamp cabbage swamps--IMG_2011

Until finally we came to a locked gate!!!!  Nope, this is not the way.  Turned around, drove and drove getting back to the highway leaving Steinhatchee for another day.  After getting lost we decided a McDonald’s ice cream was in order.  We finally arrived home just after 5pm—whew!!

IMG_2013Islands off shore from Horseshoe Beach and some of the islands are big enough to have homes on them!  As you can see by the water, the wind was blowing here today, Florida must think we are homesick for windy Montana.IMG_2015

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I’m done for the day!

Thursday, January 26, 2012

A Haircut And A Parade

It was 65 degrees outside when we got up this morning—we are liking this Florida weather.  Windy all day but not as windy as our area of Montana was yesterday—90mph winds, portions of freeways and roads were closed, semi trucks blown off the road—nope not as windy.  The bay waters were very choppy though, glad we went kayaking yesterday.  Cedar Key has a great sidewalk system and we used those sidewalks to do our 4 mile hike this morning—works well!  IMG_1947Nice place for a rest stop.

Stopped at Sandy’s Produce stand and got some Plant City, FL strawberries—we have had some of these strawberries and some other kinds of strawberries.  The Plant City ones are the best.  We also got grapefruit, cantaloupe and watermelon.  I made homemade pizza last night—tried a new recipe for the dough and it was delicious.  Had leftover pizza for lunch.

I had thought about getting a hair cut using my friend Elaine’s hairdresser in Ocala.  But as usual I got antsy when the hair begins to get too long and didn’t want to go all the way to Ocala.  Since I needed some groceries I decided to just go to Chiefland, get groceries at Wal Mart and get my hair cut at a salon I noticed the first day we drove through there.  I hit it lucky this time—got a great haircut!

This afternoon we went into Cedar Key and watched the homecoming parade—yep, homecoming.  Seems Cedar Key doesn’t have a football team so they plan homecoming around basketball season.  For such a small town, the parade was fun--

IMG_1966School mascot—can you guess—the Sharks.

IMG_1988A different sort of vehicle for search and rescue around here.

IMG_1982We are in Gator land, too.

IMG_1996IMG_2001I think everyone in town owns a golf cart.IMG_2003Nice old car—beautiful paint job.

All in all a good day!  Tonight the resort was doing a chili feed—shouldn’t have gone there—enough said!

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

A Walk In The Cemetery And Kayaking

Someone here in the park told us about a boardwalk around the Cedar Key cemetery out to the water so off we went this morning—hopefully no snakes in the cemetery.  Of course we chose the day when the low tide was at its lowest—all we saw when we walked out to the water was mud and these two guys who eventually got moving again.  Michael said he sure would hate to see the inside of that motor—they churned mud and churned mud trying to get into open water again.IMG_1908I was taking the photo directly into the sun so the quality is poor but you can see all the mud churning up at the back of the boat—they are sitting in the only water out there, everything else is mud.

Still, it was a nice walk and we even got onto some sandy beach at one time.  The boardwalk circles around the cemetery—call me morbid but I love to walk through old cemeteries, looking at gravestones and wondering what happened to people.  Here are some of my photos I took, the oldest gravestone we found was a person born in 1820.IMG_1923IMG_1917IMG_1924

It was just such a nice warm (almost hot) day that we decided to go kayaking this afternoon.  It was great to be out on the water—we paddled all the way around the island you can see from the mainland.IMG_1927Backside of the islandIMG_1946Cedar Key off in the distance.

IMG_1931Old abandoned pier on the island

IMG_1934He looks like a statue doesn’t he?

IMG_1940Another wonderful day in Florida.  Trying a new pizza dough recipe tonight, update tomorrow.

No Elaine, the alligators don’t come into the park—“Buddy” guards the entrance Smile And Ron and Thelma, the name of this RV park is Cedar Key RV Resort.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Another Lazy Day

Days like this could become a habit—sitting outside in our lounge chairs, Michael painting, me reading and occasionally getting up to throw the ball for Emmi.  Chatting with our neighbors as they walk by—yep we could get used to this.

We did go downtown Cedar Key today and walk around some of the neighborhoods for exercise—less snakes and alligators  Smile

On the way in we noticed what seemed to be low, low tide, we’ve never seen the water this low.  Made us really think about what the two experts told us—only go out at high tide.  IMG_1893

We saw another dolphin while walking around downtown and these beautiful flowers:IMG_1897

It was a very warm and humid day today and by the time we got back to the jeep we were ready for those nice seats.  Stopped by Southern Cross Seafood and picked up some scallops for dinner and oh, my were they delicious.  I used a recipe from the Pioneer Woman  blog—YUM! 

When we drove into the park this morning “Buddy” and a turtle were sunning themselves—can a turtle swim fast enough to get away from an alligator??

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Another great day in Florida.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Walking, A Big One and New Friends

We decided to go back out to the Suwanee National Wildlife Refuge for our walk and ended up hiking close to four miles.  Our original planned route was closed off for a prescribed burn but we found another road that was doable.  We had hiked along probably for about 2 miles when we came to two ponds, one on either side of the road—murky, icky ponds.  While looking at one of these little ponds I heard something hit the water—turtle??  alligator??—I was all ready on edge when we strolled over to look at the other pond.  Michael noticed (can you hear the shark music) an object along the far edge of the water and said something about it looking like an alligator but it was probably an old stump.  Well, I zoomed the camera in for a close up and that was no tree stump:

IMG_1840IMG_1843-001That is one huge alligator!  Decided we had hiked long enough for one day!  YIKES!!

Today was Monday—time to strip the bed, wash the sheets and towels and try to vacuum up some of the grit and sand we seem to track in side.  Remember when we checked in to this park, found out it was in foreclosure, found out the laundromat consisted of only two washers and two dryers for 80 RV sites??  Well yesterday one of the camp hosts, Chuck stopped to visit and mentioned that the banker whose bank now owns this RV park was right across the street—Chuck suggested we voice our likes and dislikes about the park.  I told the man we really loved the layout of the park, the huge sites, the trees and I told him what I didn’t like—the non-heated pool and not enough washers and dryers.  I also mentioned that the back porch of the lodge, outside, wasn’t the greatest place for doing laundry. 

Chuck was grinning from ear to ear when he came by this morning to tell us the laundromat is being moved inside to a “conference” room and more washers and dryers are being added.  Ask and you shall receive I guess when the banker wants to encourage business!  And they are in the process of getting quotes for solar heating the pool!!

Jerry and Wanda are the folks from Mississippi traveling in a little Casita RV.  I’ve learned the people who own Casitas are close knit and call the little rigs, “eggs.”  Jerry writes a blog called EggRollings.  They along with their friends James and Brenda who arrived yesterday in their maiden voyage Casita are thinking of taking a trip to Alaska this summer in the cute little “eggs.”  Tonight they all invited us to go into Cedar Key, watch the sunset and have dinner—what a good time we had getting to know these folks better.  They can be blamed for all these sunset photos:

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A very enjoyable evening and a colorful sunset.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

A Low Key Sunday

Today is my dear sister Ann’s birthday—sounds as if they had a wonderful celebration lunch at Mom’s back in Arkansas today—Happy Birthday Ann, we love you!

I attended church this morning at the United Methodist Church.  A very nice, friendly bunch of people, a good service and a beautiful old building.  Michael went downtown while I was at church and took photos of some of the old buildings—he brought along his paints and is going to try painting again.IMG_2342IMG_2343

Back home I made lunch, we walked the dog, sat outside and read, visited with neighbors, just a low key Sunday.  This resort has a central location for a campfire and almost every night there will be people gathered around the fire—tonight we went down for a while and visited taking Ms Emmi with us. 

The people who came in later last night in a Country Coach motorhome are from New York, they own a campground on Lake George in upstate New York.  Still having teenagers at home they get away for a couple weeks in the winter months.  The two of them along with their corgi, Minnie, were down by the campfire and I noticed her wine glass—it was identical to the ones we have in our motorhome in what our little Arkansas friend Harley called the “Hollywood” cabinet (it has lights inside).  The glasses came with this 1996 coach when we bought it—I just thought the glasses were purchased by previous owners.  But I found out tonight, nope, all Country Coaches came with those same glasses in the same kind of cabinet—who knew!  All six of my glasses are still intact, Debbie says there are only two of the original ones left in her cabinet—her coach is a 2002.  Guess I will take better care of those wine glasses, the ones hanging from the top.  IMG_1834

OK, can you tell it was a very quiet day around here, a whole paragraph devoted to wine glasses.  But it was a good day in Florida.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

A Different Kind Of Day

We’ve been hanging out over here in the Forgotten Coast, Nature Coast, whatever coast they call it and have forgotten that Florida is a populated state!  Today we experienced some population.  There is a planned retirement village south of Ocala called The Villages.  There are 12 different quilt guilds within The Villages with over 650 members total.  The Guilds sponsored a “Quilting Marketplace” today at the Village conference center. 

Getting there we experienced a lot of this:IMG_2334And the cowboy in this family decided The Villages was a little too hoity-toity for him and his wife agreed. IMG_2326

My, my.  Even Wal Mart and McDonald’s have to conform to the rules with the signs. 

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No looming golden arches for this town!   I’ve never seen so many golf carts in one place, ever, not even in Mission, Texas!!  There must be many golf courses plus I think golf carts are the standard mode of transportation around there. 

The “Quilting Marketplace” was very well done, lots of wonderful vendors but like Paulette and her buddies just experienced at the huge Road to California quilt show, there were lines to get in and the vendor booths were packed.  It was not a pleasant shopping experience but I did manage to pick up another wool kit for hand stitching as we go down the road.  Michael and Emmi entertained themselves while I shopped and then we got the h**l out of The Villages. 

Treated ourselves to a Blizzard at the Dairy Queen in Crystal River.  We arrived home about 3pm and I went to bed—I had developed a “charlie horse”, muscle spasm, something very painful in my right leg and hip.  I slept for over an hour so I must have needed that—I don’t often take naps and felt much better.

A couple walks and ball games with the pooch then I made dinner.  I’ve become a convection oven convert—my roasted potatoes/garlic/onions/red peppers were delicious.  Served with grilled pork chops and coleslaw.

New rigs are arriving in our park daily—tonight another Country Coach pulled in and parked a couple spots from us. 

A different kind of day, think we will go back to nature tomorrow!