Travels with Gunther and Kara

This is ridiculous as Daffy Duck would say…just ridiculous. Make sure you’ve engaged your lisp and cartoony voice and that sentence will sound just right😊. The low temperature Saturday night was 39 degrees here in Fort Myers…thirty freekin’ nine degrees and tomorrow it’s only going to be 37…that’s within 4 degrees of freezing and most excruciatingly definitely absolutely positively not what we signed up for. Neil had to scrape ice off the windshield of the car before we could go to Mass on Sunday…he had to dig all the way to the bottom of the trunk to find the ice scraper first. This is completely udderly insane and absolutely unacceptable…we are in Southern Florida for goodness sake…temperatures here ain’t never s’posed to start with the digit 3 or 4 ya know. We like it when it gets all the way down to a bone chilling 65 with highs up to a blistering 75…much beyond that and we ain’t happy campers.

Neil’s been working steadily on his maintenance list…over the weekend he got the A/C units cleaned up on the roof, lubricated a bunch of stuff, and today he cleaned out the furnace blowers (they were pretty clean since we don’t use the furnace much, but ya gotta check and make sure) and rotated the tires on the Mazda 6 front to rear. The rear ones are in better shape and we had a little slippage last week when it was pouring so he moved the better pair up to the front drive wheels. He doesn’t have any jack stands or a floor jack any more so he used the little crummy scissors jack that came with the Mazda on the front and backed it up with a cinder block and chunk of 2×8 lumber just in case it slipped off while he was changing the tires. Jacked up the rear end with the hydraulic jack that comes with BAT…it’s a lot more stable. He jacked up one side at a time and flipped the tires front/rear then lowered away and torqued them correctly. After doing the other side Connie drove the car around the block and he re-torqued them to make sure all were seated correctly; and he’ll have to do them once more after they drive 20 miles or so to dinner (sushi) and back.

Connie got her part time job up to 38 hours for the last 2 week period and it looks like she’ll be up in the at least 30 range this period as she’s scrambling like mad to get enough spots for all of her students.

Early this morning (well, relatively early…it was 0920 by the time he left…but that’s about all the early we have these days it seems) he did get down to the eagle nest and got some really great shots of both of the adults as well as e3 and e4…these are eaglet #3 and eaglet #4 (this year’s brood)…don’t know if they’ll get actual names or not. Before I get to those I thought I would share a couple of interesting shots that came across our twitter feed and daily blog read list.

An photographer named Alessandro Cancian posted this one on his 500px page; the url for it as well as the rest of his work is http://500px.com/photo/31817649. He’s apparently got a fence post outside of his house and here is a shot he entitled “The Standoff” with a bird and a chipmunk squaring off over a bit of food that Alessandro left on top of the post. Neil thought it was a pretty interesting shot. 

I hate to tell you this…but we’re now up to the third post of the new year and I _still_ don’t really have much to say for ourselves. We have had two colder snaps here in the past 2 weeks with overnight lows below 50…it ain’t s’posed to be like that down here ya know.

Anyhoo; Connie has been really busy with work, she needs to do her timesheet for the past 2 weeks today and will be pretty close to her maximum of 40 hours for the period…she has students going out in a few weeks and is still way short on the number of clinical rotation spots she needs. She keeps having great ideas for how to get more but none of them have been put into effect yet…so she doesn’t know what to do at this point. She’s a working on it though…and hopefully will figger it out.

Neil has been steadily chipping away on his house maintenance list ever since the holidays were over…killed 2 days washing the house, changed water filters, lubricated this and that, re-stained some scratches on our floor and cabinets that we got from slides moving and doors popping open while we were moving. He’s still got about half the list to go but whatever day he picks to get out the creeper and crawl under the house he’ll take care of a whole pile of them. Won’t be any trouble getting them all done though.

He’s also been working on our spring and early summer plans…and has turned the dates and destinations over to Connie so she can pick out parks for him to make reservations at. We’re heading from here to Jacksonville then up to Charleston for a Saint-Saëns concert, then to Fairfax to visit some friends and have a 2 day excursion to Philly for another concert. After that it’s down to Midlothian to see their human kids for a bit then over to Sevierville for the RV-Dreams rally and a visit with Neil’s baby sister. Then on to Louisville for 10 days or so followed by 3 weeks of as-yet-undetermined stuff before getting to Junction City in mid June.

From there we’re headed off for a vacation…still working on the details but will post them as soon as we finish figuring them out. Connie’s high school friend Margie is working them up for us…we’re currently looking at probably about a 3 week break while New Horizons fixes some minor stuff on the house and then they’ll just park it in their lot somewhere…as long as it’s got power for the fridge all will be good and it won’t cost us anything for storage. Score!!

After that we’re doing the upper Midwest in some sort of fashion. Connie has her ASCLS convention in Chicago the last week of July…Neil might go with her or might just stay home while she’s gone. We’ll end up after seeing WI, MN and whatever else we might run across in Amana, IA for the New Horizons rally in mid September then make our way back down to Fort Myers in some fashion. 

I know that I posted our states visited, provinces visited, and countries visited last time…but as it turns out all 3 of them were incorrect.

For the state map I had our lone holdout of North Dakota as the state we haven’t been in…but Connie has been there already so that makes us having been in all 50 states. So I changed the map and we’ll keep track of all the states we’ve been in with the RV since June of 2011…up to 36 so far and we’ll hit probably 5 or 6 of the remainder this summer…but I’m guessing we’ll only make it up to 48 maximum as I know we ain’t getting the house to Hawaii and it’s unlikely we’ll get it to Alaska…that’s so far that we’ll just take a vacation up there sometime instead of the long trip up and back. We normally do about 8,000 miles per summer travel season and it’s over 4,000 miles round trip just from the Canadian border with Montana to the Canadian border with Alaska. Add in another 1,000-1,500 miles for the trip around Alaska and 5,500 for the round trip between Fort Myers and entering Canada in Montana and we would be talking 11,000 to 12,000 miles that season. While that is doable…it’s really a lot of driving and from Neil’s research the portion across Canada and Alaska is the hard part. We would need to do 5,500 to 6,000 miles between the end of May and the middle of September. Most of the roads up there have lower speed limits and there are lots of unpaved roads so 200 miles per travel day is about average. At that rate we would need 30 or so travel days and since there are only 110 days or so between June 1 and the middle of September we would end up driving way more days percentage wise. Still though…friends that have gone say it’s well worth it so perhaps we’ll reconsider things. I guess if we were to winter over in southern California two years that would cut the US portion of the trip down from 5,500 to 2,500…but it would still be a pretty travel intensive summer…not to mention the extra wear and tear on the house and BAT. So we’ll probably spend a month or so one summer and fly up there, rent a 4WD vehicle and see Alaska that way.  Here’s the revised States we’ve been in with the RV map.

Here’s the revised Canadian Provinces visited map…I missed New Brunswick before.

And finally the Countries visited map…missed Gibralter and Tunisia the first go round. It’s looking pretty good that we’ll expand this list on our upcoming summer vacation though.

I’m certainly glad I got that right now:-)

I keep reminding Neil to get up early and go get some eagle pictures but the eaglets are still too little to show up above the top of the nest…they’re bigger than Mourning Doves and smaller than chickens. They’re still only able to waddle about the nest and aren’t capable of feeding themselves yet…but they have gotten enough feathers that Ozzie or Harriet doesn’t have to brood them and keep them warm all the time. Neil just checked the eagle cam and they’re almost big enough to see from ground level…I’ll keep nagging him and hopefully he’ll get up early one morning and drive over for some shots. It’s only 4 miles or so from here but ya gotta get up early for best light and the adults ‘round here ain’t so good at that. In the meantime…here’s a shot of Harriet sitting right above the nest that I haven’t published before. You can see about the upper half to third of the nest at the bottom of the picture and the camera for the eagle-cam is on the limb to her left. You can tell it’s Harriet (a) because she’s bigger and (b) because she’s got that inverted V-shaped section of brown feathers sticking up into her white head area feathers…it’s just to her right from center. Neil did check the eagle cam and she was feeding the eaglets some fish this morning and their heads are almost up to the edge of the nest. As soon as they are walking around in another 10 days or so he should be able to get at least some shot of them.

Not much else is new…it’s only going to be about 60 today so Neil thinks he’s just going to do a couple of simple/easy jobs off of his maintenance list. Connie won $33 at Bingo at the Elks on Tuesday and Neil got his new membership card for the lodge here in North Fort Myers…this means he doesn’t have to push the buzzer to get in any longer, just slide his card in and the door opens. Dinner will be the end of the Rotisserie Chicken (Lemon Garlic flavor) that he got from Walmart the other day. We’ve discovered that those things taste pretty good and are amazingly economical. He only paid $4.80 for it and they got 2 full meals so far and chicken sammys for lunch yesterday…and has enough meat, the rest of the tasty skin, and all the gooey gelatinized chicken deliciousness from the bottom of the tray left over for tonight. We’re having it with some Farfalle pasta and he’s going to make some sort of sauce to hold it all together for dinner. Connie’s got Bingo here at the park tonight as well.

Our TV died last Friday…looks like it’s the power supply and Neil is still trying to figure out whether it’s worth fixing or whether we need a new one. It’s out of warranty of course but we figured if it’s less than about $250 or so for the repair we’ll have it fixed as it’s over $600 for a new one in 40” size and almost $1000 for the new one in the same 46” size as this one. We can’t really use the new 46 inched on our lift though…the size is slightly smaller and while it would physically fit the sensor for the remote would be behind the edge of the cabinet and we would have to get up to turn it on and off. We’ll have to wander down to the Walmart and look at a 40 and 46 side by side to make up our minds if we end up having to replace it…hopefully we’ll get the final word from the repair place today and know whether fix or replace is the right answer.

This paragraph and photo were added later…this is the best tweet I’ve seen in a long time. A big shout out to @mcfuckingduff (whoever he is), it was retweeted by one of Connie’s bike  racing podcasters and we both thought it was great. The tweet said

“Look at this fucking squirrel. He is completel *over* all your bullshit and has no more fucks left to give.

Cyas.

Not much to report for the past couple of days…we got a whole bunch more packages in from Amazon and Apple with stuff we bought…Neil’s new iPad Mini with Retina, a creeper to get under the house and BAT, some Maldon Sea Salt since we’re about out, and other tremendously exciting stuff like that.

It was pretty cold on Tuesday night…low about 39. Neil is wondering what this stuff is, Florida is supposed to be warm ya know.

Connie got some tickets to the Naples Symphony the other night…they were playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. It ain’t the Saint Saëns Organ Symphony…but they know both of those pieces pretty well and they were well performed. Connie thought the antics of the conductor were ridiculous…he did very little conducting and a lot of performing for the audience…including putting his hands underneath and flapping his elbows like chicken wings during the section of Pictures subtitled Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks. Neil thinks she gets way too invested in what the conductor is doing…he doesn’t watch the conductor much, thinks that professional musicians don’t need much directing anyway, and believes that the conductor’s actions are mostly performing for the audience anyway.

After some discussion…Neil moved his Elks membership from the Lodge up in Fairfax to the one here in North Fort Myers where we always go for Bingo and Taco Night…we picked up his new membership card on Tuesday at Bingo…Neil got roped into being the Bingo caller as the little old lady that runs it didn’t have anybody else to do it. We’ll be down here for at least two more winter seasons so we might as well be members of this lodge as it’s closer to being our ‘local’ lodge than Fairfax is…although we lived there for 30 years we weren’t members of that lodge until after we hit the road in the RV and are unlikely to ever live in that area again as it’s too cold and too expensive.

After our year in review post last time I was looking at our list of all the places we have been and figured out that we’ve been to 49 of the 50 states and 4 of the 13 Canadian provinces…here are a couple of pics showing all the places we have been. While I was at it I found a countries visited map page as well so I’ve also included one for the 16 countries we have been to. Guess we better get to work on the country list as we are way, way behind the 8-ball on that list.

I keep telling Neil to get up early and head down to see about getting ya’ll some more eagle pictures…but he hasn’t gotten himself a ‘round tuit yet…but I’ll keep nagging him. He’s after Connie to pick a day and let’s head off and do some Fun Stuff© but she hasn’t gotten her ‘round tuit either so I don’t know what I’m gonna do about them. Maybe I’ll schedule some Fun Stuff© and kick them out of the house.

Neil did finally figure out how to get our Weber Q120 BBQ grill to work off of the propane system in the house. The little bottles that you hook directly to the grill cost about 8 bucks a pound for propane and they’re always running out and you need to get a new one. So, when we got the rig built we had a low pressure (downstream of the regulator) connection with a grill quick disconnect run over to the curb side where it would be next to the patio. The idea was that we would just plug our grill in. Turns out that most small grills have a regulator built into the control knob…and you can’t have two regulators in the circuit or it won’t work right. He talked to a guy on one of his RV forums and found out the right couple of adapters to get; adding those to the grill ended up with a 3/8 inch flare connector and he found a hose with that connector on one end and the quick disconnect on the other end. He’s got the adapters and the hose is on order. Once that’s hooked up we can just run the grill off of our pair of 40 pound tanks in the house. Filling them only costs about 2.25 a pound which means we can grill more cheaply and won’t run out at an inopportune moment (like when the chicken is half done and the company will be here in 30 minutes or something like that).

Neil’s sort of bummed that Oklahoma beat Alabama the other night…but then Alabama didn’t play very well (granted a lot of that was due to Oklahoma playing very well). He’ll just have to wait ’til next year.

We were really hoping that Auburn would beat FSU and bring home a 5^th consecutive championship to the state of Alabama…but they lost on a last minute TD. Neil thought the pass interference call in the end zone that basically decided the game was a little ticky-tack with the way the refs had let the defensive backs on both sides manhandle receivers the whole game…he thinks that if they’re going to call the game loosely and let the players play to change that in the last minute of the game is unfair to both sides. Still though…FSU did drive the length of the field to score in the last minute of the game so you can’t say that they did not deserve to win…but dadnabbit the wrong team won.

I know that we’ve been sort of slack on pictures since arriving here in Fort Myers…but it seems that we’ve just been too busy to have much time for Fun Stuff© these days. What with two trips out of town for funeral and wedding, Connie being busy with organizing her students, cold and rainy weather and just general laziness…we just haven’t gotten out much. So, I had Neil dig through his Aperture library and pull out a few photos that you haven’t seen before…although they’re not of things that you haven’t seen before.

Here’s a Little Green Heron from our trip to Shark Valley in the ‘Glades last year

A Wood Stork from the same trip…they’re beautiful birds in flight but have a face that only a mother could love

A gator by the Shark Valley tramway…as you can see he’s about 4 or 5 feet from the pavement and we rode our bikes right past him.

An Eastern Bluebird at North Flats Nature Preserve over on Pine Island.

A Yellow Crowned Night Heron from one of our kayak trips through the marsh.

A Gopher Tortoise from over on Pine Island.

Harriet sitting near the nest while Ozzie watches over last year’s eaglets.

And finally a couple of shots from Canyonlands and Arches National Parks during our summer travels out west…in the second shot it’s about 1,500 feet down to the first level of the valley and another 2,000 feet or so down to the bottom and the cliffs across the far side are 8 or 10 miles away from where the photo was taken. Quite an impressive hole in the ground don’t you think?

Cyas.

Well, it’s that time of year again when I want to summarize what we did during 2013 along with put in the statistics for the number crunchers amongst our readers. I think I’ll add a few new photos this year though…otherwise it’s just a boring text post and who wants to just read that.

We started out the year at Seminole Campground in North Fort Myers and pretty much continued enjoying the warm weather. We did pop down to Key West for a few days to drink at Sloppy Joes, watch the sunset from whatever the name of that square is, and visit both the most southernmost point in the continental US as well as the other end of US-1…we had seen the northern end of that same highway awhile back.

We toyed with the idea of spending the winter of 13-14 in the Rio Grande valley in Texas but things fell through with our plans to get a site at Bentsen Palm Villages right near the border…essentially they announced that they would be going ownership only and that while they would take a reservation for the winter they wouldn’t guarantee it if somebody wanted to buy the site we had reserved. By the time that all got sorted out (and at least according to their new management after the guy that said that was fired) we had regrouped and made a reservation to stay at Seminole again. On further evaluation of what our planned travels are for the next two summers we’ll be spending at least 2 more winters here for a total of 4 before possibly over-wintering in the southern California area over the 16-17 cold season…although nothing’s written in stone yet, heck we haven’t even bought that Jello yet.

With our reservations made we headed out on Mar 1. We spent a week in Sarasota at the Sun-N-Fun Resort just to verify our suspicion that the “resort life” really isn’t our style (it isn’t), another week at Low Key Hideaway in Cedar Key, and two weeks in Gulf State Park AL near where Neil grew up. After that we continued on across the Gulf Coast to Texas where we had our first New Horizons Owners Group (NHOG) Rally in Kerrville TX in early May. We did the tourist thing in Texas…Dealey Plaza in Dallas and a Saint-Saëns concert in Plano then headed up through OK to Junction City for some warranty work (since all roads lead to Camp Horizons of course). We got part of our work completed but will have to visit again this May to get a structural reinforcement installed (see the all roads lead to Camp Horizons idea above) though. After that we headed west to Colorado Springs where we visited the Air Force Academy for 2 weeks, climbed Pikes Peak and visited a bunch of cool places like Valley of the Gods. We then headed up through WY and MT for our main attraction of the year in Alberta, Canada.

We spent the month of June in Calgary (another Saint-Saëns concert), Jasper National Park, Banf National Park then finally a week in Salmon Arm BC to the west of Banff about 200 miles or so. From there we crossed back into the US in late June for a week in Leavenworth WA which is on the east side of the Cascade Mountains outside of Seattle. From there we traveled to Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside of Seattle for a week…and that’s when our plans changed.

Our original plan was to hit all the national parks in WA and OR along with the OR coast in a big counter clockwise circle through those two states then head east from Redding CA in early September. We were going to hit Zion and Great Basin National Parks on the way to Utah where we were spending 3 weeks to see Arches, Canyonlands, Monument Valley and Antelope Canyon in Utah followed by heading back east for Fort Myers.

What happened instead was that Neil broke his foot.

We were parked on Lewis-McChord at the Travelcamp and were headed on July 1 across the lake in our Sea Eagle kayak…stopping by the Officers Club Marina for a beer then paddling back. Unfortunately Neil was paying more attention to getting money out of his wallet for the beer than he was to walking down the stairs from the bedroom and he slipped. Whapped his foot into the edge of the step and broke the fifth meta-tarsal…that’s the long bone from your little toe back towards the heel.

He was in a cast for 6 weeks and then in a walking boot for another 4…which pretty much killed our plans to visit and hike the western National Parks. Instead…we moved over to Graham WA near Tacoma and snagged a site with a view…Site 13 at Ranier View Campground. Naturally (since it has Ranier View in the name) we at least had a beautiful view of the mountain out our back window.

So instead of gallivanting around the Pacific Northwest we spent 12 weeks at Ranier View. We did still get out for some Fun Stuff© as you can see from the shots below. Neil even did a half mile hike (each way) with 200 feet of elevation change on his crutches…but it was a really cool waterfall so he was determined to go see it anyway.

Connie also ended up needing a D&C to solve a lingering but not serious issue on her part and we were finally deemed Free to Move About the Country in early September so we hit the road on Sep 18. We jiggered our reservations in Moab UT around so that we could still see Arches and Canyonlands at least and after leaving Graham went through Boise ID and Salt Lake City before arriving in Moab for 10 days of more Fun Stuff©.

Our original plan was to head back through Denver…but the snow and Chains Required warnings for the mountain passes west of Denver put the kibosh on that idea. So we headed south around the Rockies instead with stops in Durango CO and Albuquerque NM (although we were a week to early for the balloon festival)…then onwards for another stop in Junction City via way of Amarillo TX the Gunsmoke RV Park in Dodge City KS. From there  we headed east with stops in Branson MO, Nashville TN to see Neil’s sister, Auburn AL and another week in Cedar Key before arriving back in Fort Myers at Seminole site 100 again on 1 Nov.

We’ll have a 4.5 month rest period here with plans to leave again on 15 March. We’ve got a trip to Chicago for a Saint-Saëns concert in early Feb and maybe a weekend at Key West but will otherwise be non mobile until then.

Our current plans are to leave here and head for Charleston SC via Jacksonville; we’ve got a concert there in April and another one in Philadelphia so we’re going to go to Fairfax for a week then visit their human kids in Midlothian VA before heading to Sevierville TN near Knoxville for the RV-Dreams Rally in early May as well as another visit with Neil’s sister. From there we will have about 6 weeks to get to Junction City so we’ll meander through Louisville and a couple other places on the way. While New Horizons is fixing the house we’re planning on taking a 2 week trip to South Africa for a safari although we haven’t made a firm decision on that yet…it depends on whether New Horizons has an issue with parking the house there for 2 weeks then we’re making a circle through the upper Midwest…MN and WS before ending up in Amana IA for the next NHOG rally in September. Then we’ll get back here to Fort Myers by an as yet not even considered route.

One thing we did notice…we appeared to attract a lot of natural disasters this year…here’s a list of all the disasters you read about on the news that happened either the week after we were there or the week we were there. We kept warning people that there might be some terrible pestilence the next week as we were moving around

• The fertilizer factory that blew up in West TX
• The tornado that hit Moore OK
• The forest fire just east of Colorado Springs CO
• The localized flooding in Okotoks Canada that flooded the campground we stayed at 3 days after we were there
• The flooding in Alberta Canada that took out the Trans Canada Highway
• Neil breaking his foot in early July…luckily the disasters stopped after that

That’s about it for our year in review and current plans…so let’s get on with a few statistics.

• Countries visited: 2
• States visited: 23
• BAT Miles: 10,063
• RV Miles: 9,726
• Car Miles: 24,619
• Campgrounds stayed in: 42 (22 taking away the two extended stops at Seminole,the week in New Horizons parking lot and the 16 overnight only stops)
• Average stay length: 7.3 days (not counting the 3 periods in the bullet above, 10 weeks in Ranier View Park in Graham WA and 16 overnight stops)
• Average stay length (all campgrounds): 8.7 days, strange how 2 60 day long stays don’t affect the average all that much, but they’re countered by the 16 1 night stays
• Number of travel days: 40
• Average travel day miles: 243 (maximum of 398 and minimum of 26)
• Highest altitude reached: 14,114 feet (Pikes Peak…it was about 18 degrees in mid May)
• Lowest altitude reached: sea level (we were actually about 300 feet underground in the Molly Kitchen gold mine in Colorado but it was 800 feet underground at about 5,000 feet altitude)
• Closest that Connie came to a Grizzly Bear in the wild while not in the car: 30 feet. We got off of the trail and gave him the right of way
• Northernmost and southernmost points reached: Jasper Alberta 52.8731ºN and Key West Fl 24.5592ºN
• Easternmost and Westernmost points reached: 124.0536ºW and Palm Beach Gardens, FL 80.0642ºW
• Photographs taken: 8207 frames for 196 GB
• Photographs published: 2178
• Blog posts published: 179
• Blog views: 4900, busiest day was 14 May with 205 views
• Countries that visited our blog: 47
• Most viewed blog posts: Molly Kitchen Gold Mine, Edison and Ford Winter Homes, Rainy Day in Colorado Springs, Agnes Lake Teahouse Hike and other Lake Louise Area Adventures, and Neil is Bummed…The Running Streak is Over. I have no explanation for why these were the most popular. Teahouse and Lake Louise I can understand but Rainy Day in Colorado Springs is a puzzle.
• Blog Champion Commenter: Neil’s sister MJ followed closely by his brother Ron

All in all…a pretty great year for us. It would have been better if Neil didn’t break his foot as we missed a whole bunch of cool stuff in the west that we really wanted to see…but we’ll be back out there again one of these years and will hit some of this places we missed.

Cyas.

Well, Connie has been at it again. She was out under the awning Friday or Saturday and spotted our friendly RV Park Red Shouldered Hawk sitting on it’s dead tree across the way. Once again…she proved her excellent spotting ability.

Before I get to that though I gotta tell you about this cooking method Neil ran across this week. He was already aware of the method but happened across a web site in his travels across the interwebs…and the nice thing about this site is that it’s an easy/cheap method of doing this kind of cooking.

It’s called Sous-Vide which is a fancy French word meaning under vacuum. Essentially you seal your food in a vacuum bag and put it in a pot of hot water that’s much lower than normal cooking temperatures for longer than you would normally cook it…it’s primarily used for meats and fish. It’s impossible to overcook with this method.

When sous-vide is used in a restaurant they use a very expensive device shaped a lot like a fish tank. It’s got a heater in it and a circulating pump. The meat is put in a plastic bag that gets sealed with one of those vacuum sealing kitchen gadgets then the bag gets tossed into the water bath and it cooks for a long time (up to 72 hours in some places but typically something up to 5 or 6 hours maximum. These fancy restaurant quality gadgets have been reengineered for home kitchen use but they still cost upwards of $500 and since you need a lot of storage room for them they pretty much aren’t compatible with living in an RV. So…enter the poor man’s method…the web site he found this on recommended using a cooler as your container.

So…how does this basically work? It’s pretty simple really. You put the meat and spices in a bag…which in the poor mans method is just a quart (or half gallon or however big you need) Zip Lock bag. You really want one of the double seal types if you have it to make sure the water stays out but the seal will float out of the water once you’re cooking it and probably won’t leak anyway. You fill your container with hot water…a cooler will work just fine as it keeps the heat in…but in this case Neil used a 6 quart pasta pot without the pasta strainer in it since he was only cooking a half of a pork tenderloin. Dunk the sealed bag into the water, cover it…and voila…it cooks until done. In our experiment he cooked it for 45 minutes and it was perfectly done.

The only drawback is that you don’t get the nice sear on the outside of the meat that you really want…the meat is essentially poached in it’s own juices and has a sort of gray surface. Solution…again, pretty easy…just dry the fully cooked meat and toss in a very hot skillet until nicely browned. Again, in our experiment he seared it for about 2 minutes on each side and it looked just like he had cooked it in the oven…with the exception that it was perfectly pink and juicy all the way across the meat.

What kind of meat can you do this with? It works with fish, chicken, duck, beef, pork, just about anything you can imagine. The only thing is that thicker pieces like a roast will take longer but the pork tenderloin was done in 45 minutes or so and a steak or chicken breast would take just a bit longer.

How hot does the water need to be? Again, simple answer. Make the water slightly lower than the final desired internal temperature of the meat you desire since the searing process will bump the internal temperature up a bit, maybe 5 degrees for something as thick as a steak but less than that for a thicker piece like a roast. In our case, Neil knows that perfectly cooked pork tenderloin that’s done but still juicy and just slightly pink in the middle needs to be about 142-143 degrees (You do have a meat thermometer with a probe, don’t you? If not just buy one already. Neil has one that has both a probe for sticking in meat as well as one of those infrared scanner beam things to tell how hot a pan full of oil is without sticking the probe into the oil…it cost maybe 50 bucks tops.) So he made his pan of water 144 degrees since he was putting refrigerator temperature meat into it (he forgot to take it out to warm up…ideally you want to warm the meat to room temperature before starting.

He seasoned the pork with salt and pepper, added a little garlic, a splash of Sherry Vinegar, and a teaspoon or so of olive oil along with about 15 fresh rosemary leaves off or our plant that were chopped up with a knife. Put all of that into a quart size zip lock bag and seal it about 90% of the way across then squeeze out as much air as possible.

Once the water was at the right temp (he just did it on the stovetop and tested it with his probe thermometer) turn off the burner and leave the pot on the stove. Dunk the almost sealed bag into the water until it’s almost submerged; this forces the remaining air out of the bag. Finally seal the last bit of the top, drop the bag in and cover the pot. He set the timer for 15 minutes at a time and every 15 minutes he stirred the water around to equalize the temperature and then checked it. After the second 15 minutes the temp was down to 136 or so…so on came the burner for a couple of minutes until it was back to 144 and then off goes the burner and cook for another 15 minutes.

Take the pork out of the bag, dry it off, and sear for a couple of minutes to brown. Cut and serve; since it wasn’t cooked at a high temperature you don’t even need to let it rest like meat normally needs. The final product was browned but within a millimeter of the surface or so it was a uniform barely pink all the way across.

Steaks…if you like them rare then make the water 120 or 130 if you like medium rare. Chicken I would set to 148-150; don’t believe that “you must cook poultry to 160” stuff as that mostly results in chicken jerky and not juicy, flavorful chicken. 150 is generally fine for white meat, maybe 155 for a thigh but we don’t eat those much around here. Fish would probably be 125 or 130 but I would have to google to see what temperature you wanted to cook fish to.

The flavor was delicious, plenty of juicy inside and nicely browned outside.

Would we do it again…well heck yeah we would. I think he’ll do chicken next time although he frequently reads this internet place called foodwishes.com and Chef John from there says that a steak done this way is the best steak you’ll ever have. You have actually probably eaten many dishes cooked this way at a restaurant because they don’t have to worry about overcooking a dish. If you want 120 degree steaks you just leave them in the 120 degree water all evening and they’ll just stay there at a perfectly cooked temp and remain warm. They’ll never get any hotter than the temp of the water.

The cooler idea is for larger meals…Chef John did a whole prime rib in a 20 quart cooler filed with 125 degree water. He just came around every hour or so and measured the water temperature then added a cup or so of almost boiling water and stirred it around to warm the overall temperature back up. The cooler or pot method will let the water temperature vary by about 5 degrees but this won’t affect the final outcome, and the cooler will actually vary less in temp than the pot of water did as it’s insulated and the water isn’t really all that hot so heat loss is minimal.

Sous-vide…great stuff so go and check it out.

Anyway…on to the bird photos. This female (we think) Red Shouldered Hawk was perched on the dead tree across the creek from our site and then shortly after Neil walked over as close to it as he could get flew away so he got a nice couple of shots of her leaving the premises.

This is one of Neil’s favorite birds to photograph…well, any kind of Bird of Prey really…but the Red Shouldered is common and is typically around enough humans so that it doesn’t fly off as soon as it spots you…which makes getting a photo much easier.

It’s almost New Years…we’re having a pot luck tomorrow and Neil is making Connie’s famous Something Different Meat Loaf (the one with the graham cracker crumbs in it) for the feast. He also got some country ribs that we’re grilling on New Years Day itself. Tonight it’s pizza.

That’s about it for now, he’s working on a summary post for our year in the RV but that probably won’t go up until next week sometime.

Cyas.

It’s been a pretty busy week for us. Last Thursday we popped over to the Elks for Mexican night (and we’re going back for it again tonight)…then Connie worked some on Friday. The weekend was spent wrapping presents and generally getting ready for the holidays…with a side trip up to Punta Gorda about 25 miles north of here for a Seminole Campground sponsored trip on the local canals to see the Christmas Lights. We got up there about 1830 or so and had a beer in a pub at the Marina…Neil sampled a really great Milk Stout from the Left Hand Brewing Company that we’re going to try next time. Milk Stout is pretty much like normal stout except that it has some lactose (milk sugar) added to it. Lactose doesn’t get changed into alcohol by the yeast in the brewing process like the normal sugar in the barley does…so it gives the final brew a lot of hints of hot chocolate and cocoa flavor. Quite good actually. After that we went on the boat Good Times for a 90 minute or so tour up and down the local canals to see the lights the various homeowners had put out on the canal side of their houses. Lots of 4 million plus houses and nice big yachts moored in this area…we definitely couldn’t afford to live there even if we wanted to…but the houses are just way too big for us and we would rattle around in them after getting used to our 350 square feet house on wheels.

Connie had her final choir practice on Monday afternoon then Tuesday we headed off for the Christmas Vigil Mass…they don’t do Midnight Mass here, I guess the old people can’t stay up that late. There was a half hour chorale concert by the choir before Mass…the church was packed to the gills but things went off pretty well, except for the first song where the men and women forgot that they were supposed to sing *together*. We came home after Mass…our original idea was to eat at Hogbody’s but they were closed so we ended up with some Mushroom Stuffed Ravioli out of the freezer.

Went to bed early and got up early as we had to be back at church for the 0845 Mass…yup, the choir got to sing twice. Father Tom even had a different sermon than he gave the afternoon before…we really like this priest as he’s down to earth, really likes people and gives good sermon.

After Mass we came home and opened our presents…which mostly consisted of things we needed although Connie did get a nice new dress watch to replace her broken one and Neil got an iPad Mini with Retina to go along with his iPad Air. The smaller model is much lighter than even the air and since he reads books a lot on it will make a perfect book reading device for him and overnight travel computer as well…it easily fits in the pocket of his preferred outfit of cargo shorts.

Christmas dinner was a 2.5 inch ribeye steak. Since we were baking the taters, carrots, and ‘shrooms in the Breville oven he put it on the grill to sear then wrapped it in foil and raised it off the grill surface so it could more bake than just grill…otherwise it would have been burnt on the outside before the center was up to medium rare. To top off the beef and veggies he made a sauce with beef stock, wine, and mirepoix (that’s chopped carrots, onions, and pork fat…Andouille sausage in this case). All of that baked with the veggie and then he mixed in some previously roasted garlic cloves and a bit of steak sauce. Poured all of that over the beef and veggies and it was yummy…along with a nice bottle of Malbec wine (Malbec is a grape that almost exclusively grows in South America, mostly Argentina). Here’s a snapshot Connie took of our dinner.

Following dinner Neil built us a campfire out in our fire ring and we sat around watching the flames and eating Petit Fours. Once the fire died in we went in and watched TV until bedtime.

I’m also happy to announce that Ozzie and Harriet’s two eggs have both hatched…one on Christmas Eve and the second on Christmas Day. The chicks are named e3 and e4 so far…but I’m sure they’ll have names soon. You can check them out at Southwest Florida EagleCam. Neil will try to get down in a day or three and see if we can get some pictures of them, although the eaglets themselves won’t be able to be seen from the ground for probably at least 3-4 weeks until they grow a bit and start to move around a little more.

We had some email with Neil’s sister MJ and brother Ron yesterday and chatted with MJ as well. We also talked to their human kid Bryan and his bride Jen…Bryan hasn’t mailed his Christmas packages out yet…he was overcome by work he says. He’s moving into management a bit at Sears, he’s over all the cashiers and you know how that is during the holidays.

While I was sitting out on the patio writing this post Connie (she’s a great spotter) saw a hawk fly into the woods behind the site across from us; here’s a picture of a Red Shouldered Hawk sitting over in the woods. It’s a rear view only, it didn’t turn around and there’s a creek that kept him from getting any closer. It was literally 30 or 40 yards from us…across the road, through site 80, and then maybe 20 yards across the creek.

Here are some shots from our boat tour to see the lights. Sorry they’re not as well focused as they could be…but we were on a moving boat and it was dark. Neil did all he could by pushing the ISO on the camera as high as it would go. They will give you a sense of how gorgeous the show was…we really liked it a lot.

Cyas.

The weather was supposed to be nice today so we planned a day trip up to Myaaka State Park up in the Sarasota area about 60 miles north of us here in Fort Myers. We had an 0500 alarm set and got up, had coffee, had some toasted leftover cranberry-walnut bread (we picked this up from the Elks Lodge for a buck a loaf…it gets donated by the local Publix grocery and is normally like 4.50 a loaf or something…quite tasty) and hit the road shortly before 0700. We had some coffee on the road and had to deal with the usual number of buttheads who wanted to drive 90 miles an hour…but Neil refuses to get out of their way if he’s already doing the speed limit or better…and arrived at the park about 0820 shortly after they opened. We paid our 6 bucks entry fee and after a quick stop at the Used Coffee Recycling Facility or UCRF, you only rent the stuff ya know…we headed down towards our planned hike. 

Myaaka has a 2 mile loop trail with a raised canopy walk through some of the tree  tops for a couple hundred yards about 40 feet up…we went on that last time but the bird sightings are few and far between on that hike. So we headed for our favorite hike there…it’s a 2 mile out and back hike right along side a small tributary of the Myaaka River. This is the same place that we saw quite a number of birds on our last trip…so we were really looking forward to some great sightings today. Our expectations were rewarded…this is one of the most bang for the buck (birds for the buck maybe?) birding locations we know of. When we parked there were zero cars alongside the bridge but by the time we got back from our hike about 3 hours later there were easily 30 cars parked in the parking lot, alongside the road, and pretty much everywhere you could fit a car. We had a blast, talked to a few fellow birdwatchers, took lots of great pics and generally and a great time. 

We also got an email from our friends Lynn and Ed earlier in the week…they’ve ordered their new New Horizons Majestic for delivery next year. It’s pretty similar to our floor plan…but they did get a slightly longer bedroom section to allow a king size bed with nightstands and for a slightly larger toilet room as Ed is taller than either Neil or Connie and wanted a little more knee room. They’re looking forward to getting on the road and I’m sure that we’ll meet them along the road for a meet up one of these days.

With that…let’s get to the meat of this post…Birds!!! Our first finds, right from the bridge near the parking lot were a Wood Stork, a Pea Hen (female Peacock) and a couple of American White Pelicans. From far away the Wood Stork is really a beautiful bird while it’s flying…but up close it’s got a face that only a mother could love:-)

Next up we headed up the trail by the river and spotted a pair of young Red Shouldered Hawks (along with an action shot from one of them) and then an Osprey and a couple of Turkey Vultures across the other side of the river.

We thought it was strange that there were all of these Vultures (there were about a dozen in a small stand of trees around these two) were perched in the same place as an Osprey…strange bedfellows we thought.

Shortly after this the Osprey took flight and was clearly hunting over the river although it never caught anything…but we did get a couple of closer shots of it in flight.

Continuing on upriver, we spotted a Limpkin, Least Bittern, and Little Blue Heron with some breakfast in quick succession.

Next up were two different Black Crowned Night Herons…although we are completely in the dark about why these two have such different coloring. It’s not a male/female difference and the second one is the more common color pattern…we have no idea what the other one is although we are sure it’s not just an immature specimen as that coloration is completely different. The orange eye and black crown are conclusive identifiers but the first shot is the first specimen we’ve ever seen with that darker coloration.

We continue to be amazed by the recovery of both Night Heron species in numbers…when we were in Miami in college in the 70s we spent many a day out in the Everglades and I think we could count the number of Night Herons we saw in 4 years on one hand…we saw more than that just today.

Next up, Great Blue Heron, another Red Shouldered Hawk, another Least Bittern, Black Crowned Night Heron, and another Limpkin.

We spotted a Yellow Rumped Palm Warbler in the middle of the trail (there were literally hundreds of these but they’re really hard to get a decent picture of) and then a strange specimen of the Black Vulture species…we’ve never seen one with white feet like this before. Vultures do tend to poop on their feet and the very caustic contents tends to sterilize the feet and kill bacteria…we couldn’t decide if this was a normal coloration or just an extremely heavy poop coating.

We spotted this lizard (it is Florida after all)

And our friend Sparky’s favorite bird the Roseate Spoonbill (along with some Cormorants and a Wood Stork at the far right of the frame).

And our friend Cynthia’s favorite the Great White Heron.

By this time we had completed the out portion of our hike and were on the way back…shortly after the shots above we got back to the parking area near the bridge where we spotted another Night Heron under the trees

We then spotted another Great White Heron still with his breeding plumage…but noticed that there was also a Cormorant in the shot with a fish; the second shot is a closer crop so you can see the size of it’s lunch and in the next one you can see how swollen the neck is as that huge fish slides down into it’s gullet.

And finally one last Limpkin and another pair of Red Shouldered Hawks…these were in the same tree as the pair in the first photo but we couldn’t decide if they were the same pair or another one.

What a great day…it only got up the mid 70s by the time we were done so it was not hot, the park was not crowded at all once you got away from the parking lot…and what a day for spotting birds. Connie’s the chief spotter around here and she outdone herself today.

With that we hopped in the car and came home. Had some lunch, a short nap then Connie worked a bit on her students scheduled to go out on rotation in a couple of weeks. Dinner was a pitcher of beer and Taco Bowls down at the Elks…yummy. Connie went down to bingo at the park but didn’t win while Neil stayed home and worked on blog posts and watched TV.

Cyas.

Well, we didn’t do much this week s it turned out. On arrival back at Seminole after our weekend trip to Atlanta we discovered that it was HOT!. It was in the high 80s all week until Friday so we put the A/C on and didn’t do much at all. Neil’s plan for a trip up to Myakka State Park was overcome by Connie having some work issues she needed to solve, heat, choir practice, or something else pretty much every day…so we’re planning on trying that one again next week.

We did our usual Bingo on Tuesday night and on Wednesday night we decided that since Neil didn’t want to cook we would check out a place our neighbor recommended to us…Bubba’s Roadhouse and Grill. It’s about 15 miles from here, past where they went to the Bonefish Grill for their anniversary…but the beer was cold, the grilled shrimp and scallops were excellent and the conversation at the bar stimulating. Definitely worth going back to…although we’re not sure it’s worth the extra 30 miles of driving compared to popping to their local hangout Hogbody’s. We’ll work a return visit into a day when we’re over that side of town anyway to save the extra driving.

Neil did the computer club here in the park on Tuesday afternoon…he’s been appointed the ringleader/head helper/guy in charge…gives him something to do while Connie is off at choir practice. Connie went off to Bingo again on Thursday night…it started up in the park this week; and we found out about the Xmas Potluck next weekend so we’ll have to figure out something to take for that.

A couple bike rides, a 2 mile run, a trip to Walmart for groceries and to pick up gifts for the giving tree at St. Therese…and pretty soon what do you know…the week is gone by.

We did get up early Friday morning to go out and see the Geminid Meteor Shower…this is the biggest one of the year. Got up at 0330 and went out watching for awhile…it was the day before peak so we decided to try again last night but went to a different place. The good news is that going at 2300 instead of 0400 means that it’s a lot easier on your sleep cycle…the bad news is that the moon was still up (and almost full) since moonset isn’t until 0300 or so…this means that you can see fewer shooting stars than if it was really dark. Add in the light in the sky from the city to the south and it wasn’t the best but then it wasn’t the worst either. We spotted a couple of dozen last night before the cloud bank rolled and ended our night of shooting star gazing.

Neil felt bad about not having any photos to post…haven’t been to see any birds this week and it was too bright for pictures of the meteors last night…so I went through and picked out a couple of previously unpublished shots from the last 8 months or so.

Red Shouldered Hawk and Great Blue Heron from our last trip to Myakka.

A Great White Heron and a Black Crowned Night Heron from Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.

Black Billed Magpie from the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.

And finally a mountain river, gosling, and Osprey sitting on it’s nest from our foray into Canada in June.

We certainly had a great time in all of those places…and hopefully will get back to them again someday.

Today Connie has a work related phone call with her boss…neither of them could work out a good time during the week to chat…so Neil’s gonna go on a bike ride while that happens then cook some chicken for dinner. 

Cyas.

Thursday we got up and headed off about 0630 or so for the 50 mile trip up to the Venice Rookery…this is a National Audubon Society site with an island in a small lake that has a serious number of nesting Great Blue Herons on it. The island is only about 30 yards or so from shore so it’s pretty easy to get some nice shots…as you’ll see shortly.

Neil got too busy Thursday afternoon to get the pictures edited and posted before we headed off early Friday morning (left the house about 0500) for a 600 mile trip up to Atlanta GA for the funeral Mass for Connie’s brother Jerry. We got there about 1430 and had a short nap before heading over to the funeral home for the visitation about 1630. We missed a turn and ended up on a freeway ramp at rush hours…so had to go one exit and then double back. Finally got to the funeral home about 1715 and had a nice visit with Jerry’s wife Carol and son Ronnie. After the visitation we found an Irish Pub for a beer and dinner…the beer was good, the fried mushrooms were excellent and the bowls of French Onion Soup and Clam Chowder were mediocre at best. Still though…they got rid of our hunger and we went back to the hotel.

Saturday we had breakfast than went over to the Mass at St. Jude’s parish at 1000. Following the Mass there was a reception at the Parish Hall and we got back to the hotel about 1400. Connie was a bit down so we just sat around the rest of the afternoon then headed over to an Applebee’s close by for dinner and to watch the SEC Championship Game. We had a couple of pretty decent steaks and Sam Adams Winter Lager…the steaks were amazingly good considering it was Applebee’s.

Got up and on the road about 0800 this morning and drove through the rain for about 200 miles then it shifted to mostly cloudy and then mostly sunny for the past 300 miles or so home. Temp in Atlanta this morning was 45 but we were up to the mid 80s by the time we got home a little after 1700. We stopped at a Walmart right off the freeway up in Sarasota and picked up a pizza that we had for dinner.

Ok, enough of that sad stuff…let’s have some pictures from our trip last Thursday. Life goes on ya’ know.

First up, Great Blue Herons…two shots of mature birds sandwiched around a shot of a pair of juveniles. The latter are probably from last year’s mating season and are likely just hanging around their family group until they mature.

We then heard a bunch of squawking behind and to our left (away from the pond) and spotted a group of Sandhill Cranes coming in to feed in the grass field a couple hundred yards away. We hustled over there for some shots of them eating. Once the cranes left we went bak to the pond and spotted this mother and a pair of recently hatched chicks in the nest. We especially liked the Mohawk on the little guy.

A pair in some sort of mating ritual dance.

Another shot of the juvenile pair and a male still in breeding plumage.

We spotted this flock of ducks that we were not able to identify even after looking at Peterson’s.

And finally this Blue Jay with some breakfast in his beak.

After this we headed home since it was getting on towards 1000 and Connie still needed to get in a couple of hours of work before we packed for our trip to Atlanta. We were originally going to also go up to Myakka State Park again…but given the work and packing we had to do left that for another day. It’s supposed to be clear all this week so maybe we’ll head up there for a hike and some more birds.

We’re toying with a trip for next May…once we make a decision I’ll let ya’ll know what it is.

Cyas.

The good was Connie’s birthday…she turned mumble mumble mumble years old so after she worked for awhile She got dressed up and we headed out to Joe’s Crab Shack for dinner. Joe’s is about 8 miles from here and we got there before dark. The bar is elevated a bit and we had a very nice view out of the windows looking at the boats in the marina, the bridge, and the water traffic going by. No sunset photos though…we could only see to the North and East from where we were sitting.

Happy hour prices for beer was 3 bucks and appetizers were half off so we had a couple of Yuengling drafts and some crab stuffed mushrooms. Neil was still thirsty so had a Happy Hour Margarita for 3 bucks…can’t complain about that. The only problem was that it was a really big glass (like a draft beer glass) and they only put 1 drinks worth of tequila in it…this makes for a relatively weak drink overall. Oh well, guess that’s the way it goes.

After that we had a couple more beers and a couple of their special steamer dinners…Crab, Mussels, and Scallops for Connie and Grilled Crab and Shrimp for Neil. Both came with cute little crab bibs, red skin potatoes, and corn on the cob along with a whole roll of paper towels to wipe the mess off with. All of the food tasted great and Neil got a shot of Connie sitting at the bar and then one of her making like a chicken when the staff came around to sing Happy Birthday to her.  We passed on dessert and birthday shots though…didn’t need the calories of dessert and we had to drive home and figured that birthday shots were not too smart of an idea. Three beers each over a couple of hours with dinner is one thing but once you start doing shots ya tend to have more than one and neither of us looks good in DWI pinstripes so we stayed smart.

We headed home shortly after this…you can see she’s laughing behind her chicken beak cups. Grabbed a couple of shots of our Christmas lights on the way in from the car.

The bad news came when we got up this morning. Connie got an email from her sister Cindy that her older brother Jerry had passed away yesterday evening. Gerry was 20 years older than Connie and has been ill with aplastic anemia for the past 4 or 5 years and had no immunity left. He came down with pneumonia last week and went into the hospital…and was transferred to hospice for palliative care only. He passed away last evening with his wife Carol by his side. The funeral arrangements are in process but it is scheduled for Saturday…we’ll be heading up to the Atlanta area for the services later on in the week

That came as a downer on what otherwise would have been a happy day for her. Neil is taking good care of her though…and it wasn’t a sudden thing so to some extent we all knew it was coming albeit just not exactly when.

Cyas.