Travels with Gunther and Kara

Yeah…I know I’ve already said it a couple of times…but dang it there just still ain’t much going on. No worries though…tomorrow is Friday and we’re headed down to the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. It’s late enough in the dry season that the water will be lower and the water birds will be more abundant close to the boardwalk.

So…I’ll hopefully have some more photos of various things tomorrow and will do another post then. However…sinceI dun already started this one before I ‘membered that we were going out tomorrow I’ll just keep at it.

We’re continuing to work on our final few reservations and such that we need for the upcoming travel season…Neil’s having trouble getting hold of the place we’re planning on staying in CT in September. We’ve also got a symphony concert up in Sarasota this Sunday and will be meeting our friend Robert for dinner afterwards. 

Our list of pre-underway checks is up to over 20 items…but most of them are ticky-tack and will be easy to bang out. He’s included all of the “order this stuff before you leave so you’ll have enough for the summer” things as well as maintenance, checking fluids and the like so that when we hit the road we’ll not have to worry about any of those…in fact he just thought of and added 3…no make that 4…more things while I was writing this very paragraph.

Connie’s off to an Ladies of Elks lunch thing this morning and we’ll likely skip the tacos at the lodge tonight as we’re most likely going to head down and have the fish dinner tomorrow night. Neil took out a steak form K&J’s that we’ll cook either tonight or Saturday. We’ve mostly been buying our meat at Costco for the past couple of years but some friends down here turned us on to K&J’s and we headed up…saved a bunch of money over what we normally would spend for the same amount of meat at Costco and so far the pork tenderloin was excellent last night. They are located about 35 miles from here so you need to save enough to pay for the gas…but last week we got our normal 1 package of pork tenderloins, 6 of the largest chicken breasts we’ve ever seen and 8 steaks…along with a bunch of fresh produce…for 86 bucks…our normal Costco bill for that much meat would have been 125-135 so we’re clearly ahead of the game on cost. The steaks aren’t quite as thick as Costco’s although I’m sure they would cut us some thicker ones if we asked…but they’re ribeyes for $5.99 a pound and that’s quite a bargain.

Just a couple of photos for ya today…although the actual shots are from his eagle visit a week or so ago he processed them in a new-to-him processing application. He’s still using Lightroom to manage his photo library but kinda likes the processing features in his new application Luminar 2018 a little better. Luminar doesn’t do any photo library management yet…that’s coming in an update later this year…so he’ll try that out when it’s available as he really doesn’t like paying Adobe a monthly 10 bucks subscription fee to use Lightroom…he would much rather just buy his software outright because the subscription stuff quits working if you end the subscription.

First up is a shot of M15…although on further review as they say he’s really not as satisfied with this shot as he could be…the eye just isn’t quite as tack sharp focus as it should be. He’s still learning the ins and outs of his new camera though…and he had it on Group Focus for this shot instead of Single Point Focus and the camera focused on the needles in front of him…Neil should have changed to Single Point instead of Group and put it on his head…and he should have used a slightly higher ISO or lower shutter speed so he could get a smaller aperture and hence a bit more depth of field…I’ll make sure he works on this tomorrow at Corkscrew.

Here’s another shot of the blown over by Irma tree…only this one I’ve included both the originally Lightroom only edited version as well as the Luminar only edited version…the Luminar version has a little more pop and brightening up the shadowed portion on the lower right was a lot easier/better in Luminar.

Ok…on to interesting things found on the net.

Think you know how politicians will treat you…this is most definitely the way to help you do that.

Medication.

Why one should always remember to wear underwear.

Pro tip…how to tell your twins apart.

Bit harsh for a sympathy card…doncha think?

And finally…instant karma.

Cyas.

The two eaglets down at the local nesting site are 68 and 69 days old today…which means they’re right at the beginning of the two week period during which they should fledge the nest…which means they take their first flight. Since they’re now big enough to hop around the nest…Neil got up at the ungodly hour of 0500 this morning so that he could be there just about sunrise to get some photos.

He arrived and got set up a couple of minutes before 0700…and had just missed M15…the male half of the mated pair…fly off towards the south in search of breakfast…shoulda got there 5 minutes before and he could have gotten some shots of that. He did observe Harriet…the female adult…perched on an upper branch and she stayed there until without moving until he left about 0930. The babies…E10 and E11 based on hatching order…but then they’re really not babies any more as they’re almost as large as the adults…were hopping around the nest, up to what’s called the veranda and also to another branch over the nest and almost continuously stretching and testing their wings…from the way they almost lifted off on the downbeats they’re getting pretty close to fledging.

About 0820 or so M15 returned with a single small fish which was immediately claimed by E10 as it’s a little larger…from their size with only a single day in between hatching E10 looks to be female and E10 male as it’s smaller. He then had a conversation with Harriet for a couple ofd minutes and flew off for more breakfast…heading west. He returned after Neil came home with some sort of mammal road kill and fed E11.

Once he got bored and came home he made a couple of chicken sandwiches out of leftovers from Sunday and then Connie headed off to choir…she’ll pick him up later for dinner and Bingo at the Elks.

On to the photos.

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie…that’s amore.

And here’s the amore part…a couple of likely mated wood storks that flew by.

One of the eaglets on the nest.

Then one of the storks came back and landed on a nearby tree…stayed a couple of minutes and departed. Neil got a nice sequence of it’s somewhat ungainly takeoff roll…definitely STOL (short take off and landing) capable but not pretty…and again, a bird with a face that only a mother could love.

More eaglets.

And mom…although Neil walked around the nesting tree about 90 degrees clockwise and took this one from the street side instead of the church parking lot where he was for the rest.

This is a tree just inside the posted No Trespassing area where the nest is…it was a casualty of the Hurricane Irma back in the fall.

The head of the local branch of the Hell’s Angels.

M15 right after he dropped the fish off that E10 claimed…Neil didn’t see him coming so didn’t get any cool flight shots of him today.

A family portrait of the eagles…Harriet at upper left and M15 to the right…with E11 off to the far left and E10 is just barely visible to the left of the main trunk…he’s head down and butt up at this point eating the fish.

One of the horses in the posted area with the nest.

Nothing much else going on here…we’re down to our last 2 months here at Seminole and our planning and reservations for the upcoming travel season are pretty much done. We’ve got a list of pre-underway tasks going and will be checking them off as we do them…maintenance and preparation for departure mostly.

Interesting things found on the net.

Commentary on the current “ban guns” debate. Funny how progressives have a different way of reading the Constitution depending on which part they’re reading. If it’s the 2nd amendment…they want to parse it and figure out a way to enact “sensible gun control” despite numerous affirmations by the Supremes that the amendment distinctly grants an individual right to own. Progressives ignore that and continue to try and nibble around the edges. However…when it comes to voting rights…which by Constitution are limited to citizens…when states pass laws to require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote and proof of identity when voting…they get all up in arms and demand that no laws can be passed that infringe on this right. Funny…we have to have an ID to buy booze or drive but not to vote…I’m even OK with requiring presentation of an ID to buy a firearm…but not in favor of registering all of them with the government…which pretty much makes presenting an ID to buy an exercise in futility.

She’s the Queen…she can move in any direction.

So that’s why they died out.

Pro tip for cooking kale.

Cannibalism at it’s finest.

Don’t speed in Michigan…they have some serious potholes.

God Bless the USMC…when there’s a crisis that needs solving the President wants to know two things…where are the carriers and where are the closest Marines. 

Ya’ call that a pothole?

Evil at it’s finest.

And finally…more truth.

Cyas.

Well…I wish I could say that really cool stuff happened in the last 18 days…but then I would be fibbin’…so I won’t say that. Instead I’ll just admit that nuttin’ really interesting happened and bore you with the details of the mostly minor stuff that we been doing.

Mostly…it’s just been day to day living…choir practice, Bingo, bike rides, cooling dinner and normal life stuff.

We did get to spend last Sunday evening at the emergency room at Gulf Coast Medical Center. Connie started feeling bad last Thursday afternoon and was pretty sure it was another diverticulitis attack…her last full one was back in 2003 or so. She’s had a couple of kinda sorta it was coming on over the years since but has usually been able to control it with more fiber and forcing fluids. She was feeling worse on Friday but decided to try and make it until Monday morning then call her GI doctor for an appointment and evaluation. That worked pretty well until Sunday when she decided to have Neil take her in as it was just hurting too bad by evening.

Long story short…it was actually a pretty decent ER visit by time standards…we arrived at 1815 and were on the way home shortly after 2100 including evaluation, a CT scan to verify the diagnosis, and getting some prescriptions to get filled.

Long story longer…the PA she saw actually gave her two antibiotics…one was Flagyl which is well known to mess up your stomach. The second was Cipro which is contraindicated for retina surgery patients…that was listed in her record with Lee Health but prescribed anyway…we did not get the Cipro filled. Second was the Tramidol they gave her for pain…it’s contraindicated with Cipro…but then we didn’t fill the Cipro so that was still OK. Next morning…she called her GI doctor and they told her to cease and desist taking Cipro and take the Augmentin they were prescribing instead as the second antibiotic.

She’s on the mend…the diverticulitis is getting better and the nausea medication is keeping her from tossing her cookies…and she’s quit taking the Tramidol since it messes with her head and the pain is better. She’s of the opinion that the cure is almost worse than the disease…she’s not in pain any more but feeling sick to her stomach all the time sucks she says.

Wednesday we drove over to West Palm Beach to get her dependent DoD ID renewed…it expires next month. It’s a little Naval Support Center where we went and they actually had more security than the Pentagon back in then days when Neil worked in the 5 sided puzzle palace. It’s only good until she turns 65 in 2019 as is Neil’s ID…so we’ll both need renewals in 2019 once we become Medicare and Tricare for Life eligible.

We got another overdue bill for her cataract surgery last March…it’s a paperwork drill and we’ve now talked to Bascom Palmer 4 times trying to get it resolved. The problem is that even though we’re Tricare for insurance and Bascom Palmer is a Tricare in-network provider…the surgery center in Naples was newly opened when she had her surgery. Tricare had already paid for the vitrectomy she got in October of 2016 over in Miami…and rightly collected the Tricare co-pay in March 2017 when she had the cataract surgery…but then Tricare rejected the claim. There were two problems…first was that the Naples surgery facility had no federal facility number assigned yet and second once they did the facility has to be activated with Tricare. We’ve ben round this with Bascom Palmer billing folks 3 times before today including a 3 way phone conversation with Connie, Bascom, and Tricare…and explained to Bascom that they need to fix the problem to get paid. We’re making progress…they now have a facility number but it’s still not activated. So Neil called the Patient Services folks instead and spoke to them…supposedly Giovanni will be chasing this down and getting it fixed and the claim resubmitted. We won’t know unless/until he calls us back and says it’s fixed or until we get the next overdue bill notice next month.

In other news…well, there really isn’t much other news. We cancelled a lot of planned activities this week due to Connie’s not feeling well…in fact we cancelled pretty much everything but the trip over to West Palm to get her ID and visit her mom and dad’s graves…but then we had an appointment for that and she wasn’t driving so feeling miserable in the car is no worse than feeling miserable at home.

The eaglets E10 and E11 are still growing as you can see in the screen capture below…one of the adults is on the right side and the babies…although they’re not babies much at this point just about 58 days after hatching…are in the center and left. They should be fledging (taking their first flight) in another 14-30 days.

Neil’s been following a couple of ongoing discussions on his favorite RV forum at RV-Dreams…the first one is this ‘expert’ who claims that he’s going to buy his RV solar panels directly from China and thus get around the ‘outrageous’ markup that the suppliers here in the US charge and that with this 400 watts of solar and ‘massive’ (according to him) battery capacity of 400 amp hours will enable him to live completely off grid without a generator in the southwest where he can get a campground for the entire winter for a cost of $550…total. He’s been told that that’s not enough solar or battery capacity…and that parking for $550 a year might be possible but then you have to get water and dump tanks somehow…but his mind’s made up and he doesn’t want to be confused by the facts. The second one is this guy that says his inverter manual tells him to turn it off when he’s not using it to ‘increase it’s lifespan’. Again…he’s been told that turning electronic equipment on and off is far worse than just leaving it on…and that whatever loads are running off of the inverter usually won’t work at all without the inverter on because of how RVs are typically wired…but again he doesn’t want to be confused by the facts.

Interesting things found on the net.

This is what happens on your “Welcome to Heaven” tour.

Proof positive that technology…while it may be complicated…ain’t necessarily smart.

Scottish words of wisdom.

What happens at your IKEA job interview.

Supposedly…these are actual tenant complaints to the council in the UK.

I’m confused…seriously confused.

Math nerd humor.

And finally…the most ridiculous politically correct (or politically incorrect or perhaps even stupid depending on your point of view) apology ever goes to New York University (NYU) as described on this web page.  No picture…but for those who don’t follow the link the cafeteria there served watermelon flavored water and collard greens for lunch one day during Black History Month. One of their snowflake students complained to NYU administration that this was “racially insensitive” and “stereotypical”. NYU has publicly apologized and lambasted Aramark (their food service provider) as being inexcusably insensitive. Aramark in turn has fired all employees involved…including the head of food service…because of their “longstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion.” Seems to me that some people are just looking for things to be offended over.

Two comments on that web page illustrate the absurdity of this argument. The article itself refers to deferring to black students to determine what is valid to serve during Black History Month. The first comment says that it’s insensitive to focus on traditional black culture food selections and simultaneously says it’s insensitive not to focus on them…and the poster is confused. The second one asks if this means that it would be insensitive to serve bratwurst and sauerkraut during Oktoberfest or Potato Soup on Saint Patricks Day.

Inmates running the asylum I tell ya…way, way, way too damn much political correctness. Even the commenters on the article that admit to being black/brown/African American/race descriptive term of your choice think this is stupid.

Cyas.

Apparently I’ve been derelict in my blogging duties…but there’s a reason Ima tellin’ ya.

It’s that whole nuttin goin’ on thang I say…just nuttin goin’ on atall.

Either that or I need to start this post with “Pardon me internet for I have sinned…it’s been 2.5 weeks since my last post.”

The real problem is that there just isn’t much goin’ on while we’re parked for the winter here in warm (well, now it is) Fort Myers. It ain’t like we got all sorts of Fun Stuff© to keep ourselves busy with…and it ain’t like we’re traveling every few days so there’s no put away, hitching, moving, unhitching, and putting things back out to keep ourselves busy…and you can only say we’re just ambling on through the winter so many times.

Our friends Bill and Linda Napier did spend a week down here after the Tampa RV Show…they were over at Cypress Trails Resort across the river…so we had dinner with them and fixed trailers just about every day. Neil made burgers, halibut, and ham/chicken gumbo on the days he cooked and Linda did steaks one night and pork tenderloin another night…there musta been another one but I forgot to write it down…we went out for sushi one night and Bill/Neil went over to the Nauti Parrot one evening while Linda/Connie were eating hot dogs at the Elks Quarter Auction. Linda also brought over home made brownies and apple crisp for our dinners. 

Beyond that…we fixed Bill’s fan, got some parts shipped into us for them, fixed our hydraulic brake reservoir leak, and fixed our black tank level sensor…well the last one he did the day before they arrived so it doesn’t count. We also significantly increased our ice cream usage as we were feeding 4 instead of just the normal 2 of us.

Beyond eatin’/fixin’/visitin’…let’s see what other interesting stuff we’ve been up to.

• Dumped holding tanks
• Regenerated water softener
• Bingo at the lodge and park
• Taco night at the lodge
• Grocery shopping
• Laundry
• Nails done
• Skipped the symphony concert this past weekend in Sarasota…there was crummy music on the program and it wasn’t worth an afternoon and 150 mile round trip…so we donated the tickets back to the orchestra to re-sell and we’ll get a couple bucks off our taxes
• Continued gathering tax paperwork
• Replaced the control board in our broken living room ventilation fan…this partially fixed it’s issue as the fan now runs. The raise/lower motor still doesn’t work but the AirXcel folks are sending us a new motor and gear assembly for it at no charge. Hopefully that will solve the problem.
• Continued working on planning for the upcoming travel season.

Yeah…as you can see it’s just been a thrill a minute ‘round these parts.

Tomorrow we’ve got a busier day planned…Neil has an oil change appointment for Li’l Red in the morning and Connie has choir practice after lunch…it starts and ends early this week. Then instead of bingo at the Elks Lodge we’re heading over to the St. Therese Mardi Gras dinner and dance…yeah, I know it ain’t Mardi Gras until next week but that’s when they scheduled it. 

Anyways…on the travel season planning front as I reported last time Neil had figured out how to recover from his “can’t get 537 miles across Newfoundland and still make an 1145 ferry” miscalculation…he figured that we would just catch the longer (and more expensive overnight) ferry instead. Connie suggested that we leave St. John’s Newfoundland as scheduled and just make a 2 day trip back across the island to Port aux Basques and catch the ferry one day later than planned…then take that day out of our first stop back on the mainland. Since the overnight camping stop, fuel, and shorter ferry save money compared to the longer overnight ferry…that requires you to either buy a cabin as well as vehicle passage or else spend the night in a deck chair…that makes more sense anyway

We’re down to about a half dozen parks that we haven’t finalized yet…he’s got email or voice mail or web forms filled out for all of them and we’re just waiting to hear back…he’ll likely double check on those this week.

The super bowl was yesterday…apparently the Iggles won…we didn’t watch it. We did review the supposedly good Super Bowl commercials this morning and they were uniformly poor in our opinion. The Tide ones were at least amusing…well, some of them anyway…and the Danny DeVito M&M one was almost amusing. The rest of them…not so much. And Philadelphia got trashed last night…who woulda thunk that. I can never understand why people riot when their sports team loses the game…much less than when the team wins.

Interesting things found on the net.

You’ll never look at Australia the same way again.

Not all heroes wear capes…our kinda guy.

The way nice countries fight wars.

Basic helicopter rules…the only one I would add is that there is no such thing as a gliding helicopter.

Cyas.

We’re in Florida…southern Florida…and it was 31 freaking degrees this morning. Way too cold for us but with with the fireplace and furnace we’re surviving. To hear them talking on the news last night it was hazardous to human and animal life out there. Really? At 31 degrees? Sure…it’s cold for southern Florida and way colder than we want to be but the weather folk on TV are carrying on just a mite much I think.

Anyway…Connie’s off this morning for the Ladies of Elks luncheon as our lodge is hosting this month…so Neil’s home working on travel plans. Connie finished up with the schedule for this summer yesterday…we’re reprising our cancelled 2016 trip to the Canadian Maritimes. She had done a whole bunch of research back then and a lot of the things we want to do are limited to certain days…so we just made sure we got to the first stop over the border on the right day of the week…that way all of the previous planning is still good. We’ll head out from here and stop at Savannah GA on the way to Midlothian to see grand baby Alex then after a stop in Boston we’ll bounce up the ME coast and cross into Canuckistan in early June and after touring around New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and eastern Quebec we’ll cross back into ME in mid August…after that we’ll bum around ME, NH, VT, CT, and MA before heading southward in mid October for another stop to see Alex and then our normal end of the travel season stop in Cedar Key FL at the Low Key Hideaway before arriving back in North Fort Myers on 1 November. It’s only about 7,000 or so miles towing this year which seems short but on reviewing our past travel seasons while it is less than our average of just over 9,000 towing miles per year. However…our average is somewhat skewed by the almost 15,000 we did in 2015 on our Alaska trip…without that our average is a shade over 9,000…so I guess it is a short year.

After I wrote the above…Neil discovered we had a slight malfunction in our planning…long story short is that in order to catch the ferry back to the mainland from Newfoundland in mid July I had us driving  537 miles in one day…and that just ain’t likely to happen. Fortunately…it’s a relatively easy fix…we’ll just catch the ferry in Argentia instead of Port aux Bacques to come back the night before our original plan…and spend an extra day at Cape Breton Islands National Park to make the schedule come out the same. Dumb mistake on his part…but at least he figgered it out before it was hard and required changing reservations and such.

The eaglets continue to grow…here’s a screenshot from today…you can see they’re considerably larger than they were 3 weeks ago at hatching.

Looking forward to our friends Bill and Linda arriving on Saturday for a week or so…he sent us a photo their neighbor took of their house in NC and it’s got 3 or 4 inches of snow on the ground…I’m thinking they’re glad they’re here and not there.

Ok, on to interesting things found on the net.

A couple weather related ones…

Although this particular one was for the British…it’s pretty much what the weather folks said last night on TV.

Australian road sign

From the personals…but he doesn’t want any weirdos.

What wedding RSVP forms would say if they were honest.

Yeah…still truth here too

Cyas.

The football season is over as of a couple of days ago…Jan 8 was the Championship Game. College football only ‘round these parts…the NFL is dead to us. It’s always been pretty much an afterthought for us but with the taking a knee crap and management’s refusal to enforce the existing rules about what players are supposed to do during the National Anthem…well it’s dead. I saw on the news that the playoffs are going on but we don’t even know…much less care…even what teams are in.

The real football playoffs started off on New Year’s Day with the Rose Bowl pitting Oklahoma against Georgia in the afternoon and Alabama vs Clemson in the Sugar Bowl in the evening. After the conference championship games earlier in December…the Playoff Selection Committee picked the top 4 teams and seeded them. Oklahoma, Clemson, and Georgia were all obvious choices being conference champions but the fourth seed came down to a choice between Ohio State, ‘Bama, and the University of Central Florida as a slightly more distant option. The committee selected Alabama…which caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the press corps…even though the committee carefully explained why they made the decision they did. What it came down to was that Ohio State was a 2 loss team with one of those losses being by 31 to an unranked team…vs Alabama having 1 loss to Auburn who finished at 10-3 after the SEC Championship Game. In addition…the OSU boosters wanted to discount ‘Bama’s win over Florida State who ended up at 6-5 or something like that…but FSU was ranked in the top 10 at the beginning of the season and unfortunately lost their QB late in the ‘Bama game and with no real backup they struggled offensively. UCF was discounted because although finishing the regular season undefeated they played no highly ranked teams…although they did upset Auburn in their bowl game. The committee’s charge is to pick the 4 best teams for the playoffs regardless of conference championships and it turned out to be hard to discount a team that was ranked at the top the entire regular season until losing the Iron Bowl to Auburn.

An any event…the field was set and the Rose Bowl was a thrilling game with the lead going back and forth…Georgia finally won in double over time to advance to the championship. ‘Bama vs Clemson was more of a defensive struggle with Clemson basically stymied offensively while our offense put up 2 short TD drives after turnovers and scored another on defense with a pick 6.

The championship game…which most of you probably watched anyway…was another classic contest…’Bama was outscored and out gained in the first half but came back with a strong second half and overtime. They missed a field goal to win on the last play of regulation and in overtime scored a TD after Georgia kicked a field goal…final score 26-23 for ‘Bama’s 5th national championship in the last 9 years with Coach Saban tying the late great Bear Bryant’s record of 6 championships.

Coach Saban has a potential problem though…he pulled the starting QB who is primarily a runner who throws the ball adequately when we’re throwing on our terms at halftime and put in the true freshman backup…Georgia’s coach Kirby Smart was ‘Bama’s long time Defensive Coordinator and put together an excellent game plan which was to basically stop ‘Bama from running the ball and force QB Hurts to throw…which just isn’t his forte. The backup is not as good a runner but a far superior passer…throwing 2 TD passes in the second half and the game winner in overtime. Although I’m sure it’s not a QB controversy in his mind…the talking heads and headline writers are certainly trying to make it one. Must be a real struggle…figuring out which of your two very good QBs should start…maybe he’ll decide to play both of them and alternate series as each has strong points the other doesn’t. Jalen Hurts can throw adequately…he only had one interception all year…and is an outstanding runner and the freshman Tua Tagovailoa is an outstanding passer and better than average running QB…they’ve got complementary skillsets and I’m sure Coach Saban will figure out how to make best use of both.  

It’s a long time until September when the games start up again…but we’re so looking forward to it.

Our local eaglets seem to be thriving…at least they’re both growing rapidly and they’re a bit over 2 weeks old today. Here’s a screen capture of Harriet and the two eaglets sitting on the nest this afternoon. One is sort of huddling underneath momma and the other is down at the lower right corner of the nest.

Not much else going on here…we ordered ourselves a Sleep Number bed which arrived today and will get installed by Neil tomorrow. Also ordered a couple of new folding chairs for our dinette…one of the originals broke so we bought the better quality ones that New Horizons is now providing. Our LR ventilation fan broke…the control board failed but we have a new one on the way. We also had a failure of our black tank level gauge sensor…long story short is that Neil was in idiot and broke it…but again we have a new one in hand and installation of the sensor, new fan board and whatever other trailer projects come to mind.

Ok, on to interesting stuff found on the net.

Meanwhile…in Florida.

Meanwhile…in Scotland.

Truer words never spoken.

Shark stepped on a Lego.

Obviously Boeing has a critical design flaw in their plane.

The To Do List.

It’s a tragedy I tellya.

Ya think?

I was confused but now it’s become clear.

And finally…this is a shot from the Balloon Fiesta we attended last fall…not one of our shots but taken from one of the balloons after liftoff. We recognize a bunch of those balloons so it was obviously taken this year…based on the perspective it’s very nearly overhead from where we were camped while attending.

Cyas.

Well…another travel season (and calendar year) is in the books. Yeah…I know I said that last year and I’ll probably say it again next year…but heck, it’s true so why not go ahead and say it.

We opened 2017 with Connie still having eye problems. She had undergone dual eye surgeries back in late 2016 to correct her detached retina and then to remove the scar tissue and her vision improved after those surgeries…but then got worse again. Another trip down to the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Naples to verify that the common side effect of a vitrectomy had occurred…sure enough…it did and she had a cataract in her one working eye. 

So…we went ahead and she had cataract surgery…much less stressful than the first two…and by early May she was good to go so we headed off for our summer’s travels on May 15.

Our first real stop was Camp Horizons in Junction City KS to get the slide seals on our rig replaced…the intense sun of 5 winters in FL resulted in deterioration of the exposed portions of the driver side seals…those are the ones that face south when we’re at Seminole Campground in North Fort Myers. While we were there we went ahead and had all of them replaced as well as our electric cord reel which was showing signs of impending failure. We spent 12 glorious (not) days in Junction City before heading west for some actual Fun Stuff©.

We transited across CO and into northeast UT…we thought about stopping at the National Parks in CO but decided since they were all pretty much located on or close to US Route 50 decided to leave them until the 2019 travel season when we’ll reschedule our Route 50 trip to include (at least what we’re thinking as of now) a drive westward from Boston to OR on US Route 20 then back eastward on US 50 from San Francisco to Ocean City MD before heading back down the east coast at the end of travel season 2019. Given that decision…our first real stop for the summer was Arches National Park in Moab UT…we were there in 2013 but it was just after Neil recovered from his broken foot and we missed many of the hikes we wanted to do…he just couldn’t walk very far that fall. 

From Moab we headed south and visited Mesa Verde NP in SW CO, Four Corners Monument, Monument Valley, Lake Powell on the Colorado River, Grand Canyon NP, Bryce Canyon NP, Cedar Breaks NM, and Zion NP…all pretty much in the desert SW in the middle of summer…yeah, I know…not the smartest time of the year to visit that area. I gotta tell ya…it was hot but that actually wasn’t the worst part of the summer temperature wise. 

Next…we headed north to Salt Lake City and then Reno NV before continuing on into northern CA where we visited Mount Shasta SP and Lassen NP…and the hottest weather we had all summer was the week we stayed in Redding CA…112 degrees several days and this was actually most of two months before the fires in that area.

After a stop in Canyonville OR for a week we continued on up to Salem OR where we were on the edge of the total solar eclipse path…then onwards to Port Angeles WA on the Strait of Juan de Fuca west of Puget Sound…where we spent 10 days in Olympic National Park. We caught the solar eclipse in late August outside of Salem OR…we weren’t quite in the totality path so Neil got the best photo of it he could.

Heading eastward…we stopped in Coeur d’Alene ID to visit our college friend Joe Claxton and his bride Nicki…then in Missoula MT and West Yellowstone MT to visit Yellowstone NP and Grand Tetons NP. 

Continuing eastward…we arrived in Spearfish SD for the every 18 month NH Owners Group rally. At the completion of the rally we departed in company with our friends Bill and Linda Napier to Longmont CO to visit Rocky Mountain NP and then Colorado Springs CO before arriving in Albuquerque NM for the Balloon Fiesta…where we spent 5 days boondocking, running the generator in the morning to recharge batteries, and watching hot air balloons of all shapes and sizes inflate, take off, and land.

After 5 days…we had all had enough of hot air balloons so we bid adieu to Bill and Linda as they were continuing south into Arizona for missionary work related to their church back in NC. We headed east across I-40 and were mostly in transit mode with stops in Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Jackson MS (although we did stay 2 nights in Jackson to visit the Vicksburg Battlefield) to Foley AL where we stayed for 5 nights before continuing onto the Low Key Hideaway in Cedar Key FL for 10 nights…then continued on to North Fort Myers where we pulled into our site 101 at Seminole Campground on November 1.

First up on our arrival was getting setup for the winter of course…we sandwiched that around choosing and buying the latest addition to our family…Little Red the Mazda CX-5. As you know…we started full timing with both a truck and a car but donated the car in May 2016 when Connie suffered her detached retina. We’ve been a single vehicle family since then…and both of our thoughts on 1 vs 2 vehicles have changed. Previous to her surgery…Connie was firmly in the two vehicle camp but her experience traveling in the truck with Neil the past 2 seasons has changed her mind and she would have been happy to stay with just the truck. Neil on the other hand…was originally in the 2 vehicle camp but not as firmly as she was. After spending 2 travel seasons with just the truck…he can see why a lot of people like to travel that way. However…from a “the big truck is a pain to park” standpoint he’s of the mind that having the car in addition is worth it and from an economic standpoint having two vehicles isn’t much more cost than having just the truck. Sure…there’s extra gas, insurance and maintenance on the car but that expense is mostly made up by the drastic reduction in annual mileage on the not very efficient truck. For instance…we’ve put almost 40,000 miles on Big Red since picking him up in May 2016…but only 10,500 of them have been towing…the rest were either Fun Stuff© miles during travel season or daily driver stuff last winter. The additional 25,000 miles work out to about about 2,000 gallons of diesel where in a car it would have been about 900 gallons of gas…considerably less fuel cost for the not towing situation. The single vehicle still wins out overall dollars wise…but it’s only a couple hundred bucks a month tops and unless cost is the driving factor the convenience of parking wins out in his opinion.

We quickly got into our regular winter routine…choir practice an Elks bingo on Tuesday, Tacos at the Elks on Thursday most of the time, and at least 1 (sometimes 2) other nights at the Elks along with bike rides, grilling, eating dinner with our friend Jeff on most Sundays, and just generally enjoying the warm weather.

We did take a quick trip in early December up to Midlothian VA to see the human kids Jen and Bryan new house…but mostly to see grand baby Alex who had his 3rd birthday the week after we were there. He’s right at the great age where he’s old enough to have a conversation with and to be able to help you with various things…but still young enough to be interested in having a conversation and helping with things. We’re planning on stopping by in early May on the way north to the Canadian Maritimes and he’s excited about coming over and spending the night at granny’s house.

Our travel plans for next season are pretty much firmed up from a high level point of view…we’ll travel north starting May 1 with stops in Midlothian for grand baby time and Fairfax VA for financial guys time before continuing up to Boston again and then up the coast of ME on US 1 to the border. We’ll cross in mid June and spend until about Labor Day in Canuckistan. Mostly we’ll follow our aborted plans from 2016 that were overcome by the eye surgery…with some minor rerouting due to crossing the border near St. Andrews on the coast instead of farther north…and including the ferry trip for 3 weeks or so over in Newfoundland. We’ll add a couple weeks to the schedule to pick up some of the areas we passed on originally before getting back into ME in early September. From there…we’ll watch the leaves turn and attend New England fall festivals until it’s time to head first for Midlothian to see Alex again and then another 10 days in Cedar Key FL before arriving back in Fort Myers on November 1.

Alabama’s football team had another pretty successful season…losing only to Auburn in the Iron Bowl during the regular season but still was selected for the playoffs.

Stats for the year

• States visited: 25…we’ve now parked overnight and done something in 49 states…I’m pretty sure we ain’t getting the rig to HI anytime soon
• Big Red miles: 21,955
• Towing miles: 9,207 miles on 39 towing days
• Car miles: 3,418
• Campgrounds: 29
• Northernmost and southernmost points: Fort Myers FL (26.721138 N, 81.810228 W)  and Cape Flattery WA (48.385567 N, 124.726170 W) Cape Flattery is the northwestern most point in the lower 48 states.
• Easternmost and westernmost points: Fort Myers FL (26.721138 N, 81.810228 W)  and Cape Flattery WA (48.385567 N, 124.726170 W)
• Connie Meets the Town Drunk: 0
• Bicycling miles: 545 on 44 rides during the 6 months we were in FL…there were only a couple during the travel season
• Hiking miles: 28 on 16 hikes…this came from Neil’s tracking program but we didn’t always use it…there were actually more like 30 hikes…I’ll try to do better
• Photos taken:12,246 for 443 GB
• Photos published: 926
• Blog posts published: 60
• Blog views: 5,068…no blog comment stats as WordPress stopped sending the summary out and I’m way too lazy to add them up myself

That’s about it…glad you could ride along with us. I’ll keep posting the rest of the winter here in sunny and warm (well, actually pretty cool the early part of January 2018 when I’m typing this)…but there won’t be nearly as much Fun Stuff© as there is during the travel season. That will start up again on May 1.

Cyas.

We’ve been well entrenched in Christmas preps since we arrived back from visiting grand baby Alex…between putting up decorations and extra choir rehearsals…not to mention the running around and getting presents for the various charity giving trees we support at the Elks and St. Therese Parish…then add in all the normal stuff like bike rides, groceries, bingo, Taco night, campfires and whatever else have you…well it’s been a pretty busy couple of weeks.

Neil bought himself a new camera…he started with a Nikon D7000 which became Connie’s when he bought his D7100. Anyways…the D7000 was about on it’s last legs as some of the switches weren’t always working as they’re supposed to. In addition…he discovered that there’s a design limitation in the size of the image buffer in the D7100…what that means is when he’s got the shutter set for continuous high speed release where it’s supposed to take 6 frames a second you only get about 7 or 8 frames when shooting RAW (which he does for image quality) before the buffer fills and hence the frame rate slows way down. Not really ideal for getting action sequences of birds in flight or whales jumping or any other fast paced action. So he started looking for a new one…quickly deciding to stay with the DX sensor size rather than the full frame sensor size due to cost…a full frame body costs well over $3,000 just for the body and he would need all new lenses since his are all DX sensor lenses…and he’s not willing to spend that much money. The second thing he was looking for was better performance at higher ISO numbers. While the D7100 is fine up to about ISO 400 it starts to get a little more noise in the sensor beyond that and higher ISOs support higher shutter speeds which support better freezing of the motion of the aforementioned birds in flight.

He decided on a D7500…and also traded his 18-200mm lens for an 18-300mm lens…he’s still got the telephoto we call the Bird Lens of course…but the zoom is his everyday walking around lens and he takes probably 90% of his photos with it…and another 100mm on the long end means he’ll have to pull out the Bird Lens less for routine hiking excursions.

He went down yesterday to the eagle nest…didn’t see much of either of the eagles but mostly wanted to check out the new camera body, new lens, and also test how well the various additional autofocus modes the D7500 has work for action shots like birds in flight.

M15 (Harriet’s mate) sitting on a tree. He left about 5 minutes after Neil got there and he didn’t even have the Bird Lens out yet so this is with the 18-300 zoomed all the way out.

Horses in the field below the nest tree.

Harriet poking her head out and looking around for M15’s return…this was 2+ hours after he left and he never did return before Neil headed out for a haircut.

Cattle egret under the nesting tree. I’ve never been able to figure out why the eagles don’t prey on these…there are dozens in the field and they don’t move that fast so I would think an eagle wouldn’t have any trouble catching one.

Since there weren’t many eagle photos…here are some shots of a group of Wood Storks that were circling overhead. It’s quite a beautiful bird when flying…and from a distance…but up close it’s got a face only a mother could love.

OK, on to interesting things of the week…I found some Christmas related ones for ya’.

First up…here’s some edumacation for you non-southerners…ya know that nut that one makes pies and pralines out of? Well…ya’ll Yankees are forever mispronouncing that word so I found a good explanation for ya.

Say it with me now…the nuts are pronounced pee-khans.

This is how Santa tests reindeer for flight use.

And this is a hipster Nativity scene.

Reindeer deodorizers.

If only…

You know what this is…doncha?

It’s a UFO on tape of course…can’t believe ya needed me to ‘splain it to ya.

Here’s an explanation of the US tax system done by an Economics professor…only he explains it in beer.

I’m not sure what they expected to find here.

Cyas.