I can’t believe I haven’t posted in a week…I could make up this story about how the hurricanes kept us busy or how we were feeding the homeless or something like that…but in actuality I just haven’t had anything to post about. Neil keeps checking the eagle nest down the road and occasionally we’re seeing the eagles. I just checked the Fort Myers Eagle Cam at http://www.dickpritchettrealestate.com/eagle-feed.html and Harriet is sitting on the nest and laid her second egg yesterday. With the normal 36 day incubation period for Bald Eagles; this puts the hatching right around Christmas. It won’t be a White Christmas though…first off this is Florida and second off eaglets start out sort of a dingy gray color.

Tuesday was Connie’s first day at her new choir…she’s found the female equivalent of her old choir director Bill Miller from Saint Andrew…this lady had a binder and singer number for her when she showed up, did sectional rehearsals, and basically runs things the same way Bill did…so she’s very happy. And when she’s happy…we’re all happy ya’ know.

Neil ran down this afternoon and did manage to get a few decent photos of the adult eagles though. He didn’t stay too long as it is really hot and humid out there.

Harriet sitting on the nest calling to Ozzie who is sitting on another tree about 40 yards to the right from the nest.

Ozzie answering her.

A horse in the field below the nest.

Ozzie surveying his domain after he went down to the pond for a drink.

And finally a couple of shots as Ozzie goes to the nest for shift change. His turn to sit on the eggs while Harriet goes off for some dinner and girl time. She left shortly after this and flew south towards the river…Neil last saw her circling over the wooded areas close to the water so she was looking for something to eat.

Just a few shots to keep ya’ll going until we can get out to the swamps and find some water birds; hopefully one day next week.

Yesterday was Neil and Connie’s 37th wedding anniversary…Connie worked a bit then we went off to Bonefish Grill for dinner. Connie had her usual Seared Ahi appetizer as an entree with garlic mashed taters; Neil had Grouper with Lemon Butter sauce and Scalloped taters. Both were outstanding…and the restaurant brought them a nice special occasion thing with some chocolate covered strawberries, whipped cream, and Happy Anniversary spelled out on the plate in Hot Fudge Sauce. Pretty tasty and a lot fewer calories than most restaurant desserts.

Neil finished up our final Travelerspoint.com map for this year’s travels…we ended up with 7,666 crow files miles from the Travelerspoint map, 9.703.6 BAT odometer miles and 31 stops with BAT and the house…and probably another 4000 or so with the car with all of our trips. I’ll have and end of the year summary post later on but since he updated the map I figured I would go ahead and give you the number. The 31 stops doesn’t include 11 stops that were just overnight stays in a multi day move. You can check out the map if you’re interested…there is a link to it on the right top side of our homepage that shows the list of stops and our overall track. Next year will probably be a bit shorter as our current plans (Neil’s still fleshing them out) will likely take us to the DC area via Charleston, back down to Richmond to visit their human kids, then over to Knoxville to see Neil’s sister and attend the RV-Dreams rally in May. After that we’ll head back out to Camp Horizons to get a frame thing on the house fixed…they found a slight issue during our visit last month but did not have time to get to it before our scheduled departure…they need to weld in a reinforcement member in the frame to eliminate some flexing in the side wall. From Kansas we’ll likely head north about the first of June through Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan before heading back to the Amana Colonies in Iowa for the New Horizons rally in September. After that we’ll mosey back south again…we’re thinking of coming down the Mississippi River then across the Gulf Coast with arrival back here in Fort Myers for our third winter on Nov 1 or so. We contemplated heading out west and staying in southern California next winter…but given our long range plans to hit the Northeast again in spring 2015 decided that staying on the east coast would be more efficient. We didn’t get to see much of the Northeast on our first trip up there the summer of 2012 since we didn’t leave the DC area until well into July.

Dinner tonight was wings and beer at Hogbody’s…we didn’t feel like cooking.

Cyas.