Great Wedding Last Weekend

I couldn’t talk about this until now, sorry about that but the bride put the keebosh on any word until now. Neil’s niece Hillary and her intended Jordan decided to have a short notice wedding last weekend in Mobile AL where Neil grew up. We drove up on Friday 600something miles and since we left early and gained an hour on the time zone change arrived about 1400. We got settled into our room at the Malaga Inn and headed off to the post rehearsal party since Neil’s sister (mother of the bride) sort of wrangled us a last minute invite. We stopped by for a bit but felt like third wheels since we didn’t know anybody so went back to the hotel after about an hour or so.

Saturday we lazed around until time for the ceremony at a local park. Neil was going to take photos as requested by his sister but it turned out that only the professional photographer was allowed to take pictures so thats why there ain’t any here. The mother of the bride was lovely (and cold) in her lace dress and the bride was bridely. The officiant was…different from any we have ever seen, but then the one at their human kid Bryan’s wedding was sort of different too. Guess it’s that whole generation X thing.

We headed off to the reception where Neil reprised his normal wedding reception role as the evil uncle. Had some ribs and pulled pork with a beer and then we gracefully (well, as graceful as he ever is) headed out. We found a nice local bar named The Haberdasher where we sat and had a pint of Murphy’s draft. It’s even better than Guinness and rarely found this side of the pond. Yummy.

Sunday we hit the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception for mass about 2 blocks from the hotel then headed home. Connie really liked the music at Mass. After a stop in Tampa for dinner at an Outback we got home about 2100 and were tired so we left unpacking for Monday.

This week we been working, Connie at the job and Neil on house maintenance, installation of our new Direct TV over the air receiver which lets us get local channels for the networks instead of being stuck with NY or LA affiliates, and some computer maintenance. We decided to skip turkey again this year (imagine that) and are having pork with cranberry wine cream sauce, sweet taters, and Not Pumpkin Pie for dessert. Ifn it tastes as good as it smelled yesterday when we were making it I will pass along the recipe details. It’s cool today so we got some firewood from the office and will sit around the fire this evening. We have tentatively scheduled a trip over to Shark Valley in the Everglades for next Thursday so we can get some bird pics and Neil is going to run down early tomorrow and see if we can get any more pics of the eagles. Neil started running again this week after his broke foot finally feels whole again. The good news is that his foot feels fine…the bad news is that starting running again for the first time since early July hurts…a lot. He’s been riding all along but that’s a whole different thing than running, different muscles and he’s got to work on getting his aerobic fitness back.

CYAs.

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The Blushing Bride Made it to 37 Years Yesterday…and Eagles Pics

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

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

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

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

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Ozzie answering her.

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A horse in the field below the nest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cyas.

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And the Results Are In…

Thanks for all the comments about the question in our last post; the results are in and for some reason 66% of you want to see the ordinary and mundane stuff as well…although several readers said don’t kill ourselves posting daily. Daily isn’t much of an option here in Seminole for the winter…I try to post 4 to 5 times a week during the spring/summer/fall travel season but I’m thinking that twice a week is probably about right when parked for the winter. I will post bird pics and other Fun Stuff pics when they happen; as a matter of fact we’re planning (if it don’t rain) on heading out to Shark Valley in the ‘Glades on Friday or Saturday to see what’s available to see. It might be a little thin on bird population since the water is probably still pretty high out there. We’ll at least see some gators but aren’t sure how many birds we’ll see this early in the winter season.

We had a slow Veterans Day…after the weekend’s convincing victory by Alabama over LSU we just sat around in the zero gravity recliners all day…didn’t do much at all. Tuesday Connie was supposed to go to choir practice but the lady never called her back…they finally connected on Wednesday and she’ll be heading down to St. Therese for practice on Tuesday afternoons at least until after Christmas.

Anyway…we’ve been getting used to our new iPhone 5s’s and iPad Air’s…both are so much faster than our three year old ones that we’re really liking the additional speed and capabilities We were planning on upgrading both of them this month or next anyway…but with Target offering a 200 dollar store credit for each of our iPads that are worth 70 bucks or so from ebay or gazelle.com we jumped on that. Our old iPhone 4’s are going to gazelle.com for 70something each as well; and we’ll just use the Target gift cards at the Super Target grocery the next couple of weeks instead of heading out to Walmart.

We’ve also been getting packages from Amazon just like it was Christmas…lots of stuff we’ve had on our list to get over the past couple of months so we’re ordering it all this month. We have an Amazon Prime membership which gives us free 2nd day shipping for almost all items so ordering it from them and having it delivered to our door is even easier than running down to the Home Depot and getting it ourselves. Nothing too exciting…a grease gun, more bungee cords, RV cleaning and preservation supplies, water filter cartridges…we’re really going deep into the want book on these purchases I gotta tell you.

Today we spent all day cleaning the house. Normally it only takes us an hour or so to clean the counters, dust, and vacuum/swiffer the floor…but with the summer of travel done we did a good deep cleaning to get all the dust out of the hard to reach places. Started about 1000 or so and didn’t get done until after 1500…and we wuz tired afterwards. Still gotta put the new lights up underneath the house tomorrow…and then wash the house, BAT, and car but we’ll spread all of that over several days.

We were going to make spaghetti sauce for dinner…but Connie didn’t feel too well and Neil was lazy so we just had breakfast for dinner instead…hash made of onions, ‘taters, red bell peppers, and Italian sausage with some fried eggs and cheese tossed on top. Add some Habanero Hot Sauce and it was mighty tasty. Don’t know if I told ya’ll about this Habanero Hot Sauce or not; one of the Low Key Hideaway regulars named Jason gave us a bottle the other week when we were there. It’s not really any hotter than Tabasco but has a lot more flavor…so it tastes like more than just hot. We were eating it on some chicken and grilled oysters at the Low Key Hideaway…I complimented Jason on his taste in hot sauce and he insisted that Neil take the bottle. We bought him a beer at the Tiki Bar and called it an even trade.

Connie’s off to get her hair, nails, and toes done tomorrow…lots of sandal weather down here so having nicely painted toes makes her happy…and when she’s happy the rest of us are happy.

The Tide’s playing Mississippi State this week…they’ll have to be careful not to have a letdown after the big victory last weekend…but I’m guessing that Nick Saban won’t be letting that happen. Glad to see that this year’s team is finally rounding into the typical Alabama squad…play great defense and control the line of scrimmage and just run, run, run the ball until you break the other team.

That’s about it for today…I’ll try to remember to get Neil to carry a camera when he heads out on a bike ride tomorrow…he almost always sees some herons and hawks on his bike ride through the countryside and having some pictures would be great. In the meantime…here are a couple of shots of some of the locals…a mature female Anhinga and a ’gator although these were taken in January before we left for the summer.

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Cyas.

Posted in RV, Travel | 2 Comments

Lazy Sunday and a Question

Today was another beautiful day in paradise. We headed off to St. Therese parish for Mass, Connie wants to try a different choir this year. They were supposed to sing but didn’t so she will have to call and chat with the leader tomorrow. We then stopped by the library for some high speed internet since our new iPhones needed 2GB each of maps for the GPS app to work. After that he made us a breakfast burrito out of scrambled eggs, leftover mashed taters from last night, bacon and cheese. Mighty good I tell ya. Here’s the recipe for the mashed taters that Connie found and we tried! really creamy and rich tasting. We were afraid it might have a strange flavor but it tasted nothing like mayo and was really delish. If you need more just double or 4x the recipe, we quartered it originally since we didn’t want to eat them for days.

1 lb potatoes diced, we used Idaho and it fed 2 plus enough leftover for the burritos
4 T butter or margarine
1/4 cup mayo
Milk to taste
Bacon, cheese, whatever else you want to throw in

Boil potatoes in salted water until done, drain, and mash with your tater masher.
Add butter and mayo and mix well. Add milk and mix to your desired consistency, we used about 2 T or so.
Add whatever other goodies you are putting in, mix, and eat.

Essentially it’s just adding mayo to your normal recipe and cutting back on the milk…the mayo greatly enhances the creaminess.

After the burrito Neil went on a bike ride and had a nap down by the pool. Dinner is chicken of some sort, he hasn’t figgered it out yet.

I got a question for you…while we are parked for the winter do you want to hear about the mundane stuff in our life every day or two or would you rather just see weekly posts or whenever we have some Fun Stuff to talk about?

CYAs.

Posted in RV, Travel | 6 Comments

Catching Up on the ToDo List

We didn’t do much this week, Connie worked a bit and we went over to Pine Island on Thursday. She worked in the morning and then we went out for errands. Ran by Target where we scored 200 bucks each for our original iPad 1’s which was way better than the 70 gazelle.com would give us. It came in the form of Target gift cards but we already spent 75 of it on a new watch for Neil (his sprung a leak and isn’t waterproof anymore) and a new pillow. After that we went to the Apple store down in Estero and picked up two new 64GB iPad Airs. They didn’t have any iPhone 5s in stock so we go those (64GB AT&T) on Friday from the AT&T store. Then we drove over to Pine Island where we visited the Ragged Ass Saloon again. Two beers each and dinner…we had homemade Italian Sausage Stuffed Banana Peppers and Bacon Cheese Potato Skins. Quite yummy and we were pleasantly full when we left. Came home and watched Stanford run all over the highly favored Oregon Ducks. Oregon is all offense and didn’t show any ability to move the ball against a good defense (something you rarely see in the Pac-12) or prevent a solid running team from ramming it down their throats. Stanford looks an awful lot like an Alabama team…great D, run the ball, and don’t make mistakes. Goes to show what would have happened to Oregon in the BCS against an elite SEC team.

Friday as previously noted we got our new iPhone 5s’s from the AT&T store so we have pretty much upgraded all of our technology tools in the past year.
Dinners this week were chicken a coupla nights and some crab and cheese pasta combo last night.

We also got in a bunch of stuff from Amazon
-new rope lights for under the house
-a nice metal folding table for our BBQ grill
-a device that let’s us get local TV channels on DirecTV instead of just the NY or LA ones.
-picnic tablecloth clamp hold downs
-new hanging stands for our sign and a hanging plant
And some other assorted minor stuff

Neil got out and took a pic of the house win our newly installed sign holder and plant stands.

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That’s about it. It’s been pretty hot this week, we had to turn on the A/C most of the week as it was in the high 80s although it’s cooler today.

Dinner tonight is a steak and some veggies (squash for Connie and sautéed carrots for Neil) and a new recipe that Connie found for mashed taters. I’ll tell you about if if it’s a keeper.

CYAs.

Posted in RV, Travel | 2 Comments

Throttling Back for the Winter

We’re starting to throttle back and get into winter mode here in Seminole Campground. Neil spent Saturday and part of Sunday getting outside things setup and we sat down this morning and ordered 300 bucks of stuff from Amazon that we’ve been needing. We’re planning on a Fun Stuff trip probably on Friday and will have Bingo at the Elks tonight and Mexican Night at the Elks on Thursday…we’re looking forward to visiting with our friends there after the summer on the road.

Neil also has on his list to wash the house, car, and BAT and to do all of the annual maintenance on the house…we’ve got a spreadsheet from the New Horizons Rally back in the spring and it’s amazing the number of things that need maintenance when you subject your house to an earthquake every time you move it. He’s going to spread the maintenance out of the next 5 or 6 weeks though…got to get in some bike rides, hikes, and doing other Fun Stuff.

I did want to pass along the really, really great recipe he invented for Jambalaya last night…this was mighty, mighty tasty and pretty easy to make to cook as well. The ingredient list, particularly the protein part, is highly variable as well. He made it with Andouille sausage and leftover Fennel Marinated Chicken Breast but you could use chicken wings, shrimp or pretty much any other protein you like to have. Here’s how to make it…the recipe below served two quite comfortably but it’s easy to just scale it up if you have more mouths to feed.

1 medium onion chopped

2 T celery flakes (or maybe 1 rib finely diced if you like that better…Neil doesn’t like the texture of cooked celery so always uses flakes instead)

1 can chopped green chili’s from the Mexican aisle (these aren’t too hot)

1 link Andouille sausage (about a hot dog’s worth) chopped however you like…Neil split it lengthwise and then cut into half moon shapes about 1/8 inch thick

3 or 4 chopped garlic

1 can (the 4 oz or so size) V8 (use Tomato if you like)

1/2 t Smoked Paprika (can use Cayenne if you don’t have Paprika; although cayenne is a little hotter)

Protein of your choice…he used about 4 oz of leftover cooked Fennel Chicken…chopped into small pieces

1/2 c dry white rice…you can scale this up to about 3/4 of a cup of rice without adding more of anything else except liquid

1 V8 can of wine (he used about 1/4 can red and 3/4 of red but whatever you have is fine)

water if necessary (add maybe 1/4 cup at a time as needed until the rice is done.

Condiments of your choice: we used Habanero hot sauce (great flavor and not as hot as one might think) and cheddar cheese but chives or chopped raw onions or sour cream or broken up corn chips or whatever you like works.

 

1. Sauté onion (and celery rib if you used that) in about 2 T of EVOO until translucent, adding a good pinch of salt and some freshly ground black pepper. When partway cooked add the chopped Andouille so that it will brown and then add the garlic about 2 minutes or so before it’s done so the garlic doesn’t burn. Add the chopped chili’s once the remaining veggies are done. The goal is to have all done at the same time. He also added the celery flakes about 2 minutes after starting the onion…this is about 10 minutes total.

2. Stir in rice, adding a little more oil if necessary so it doesn’t stick and toast for a couple minutes.

3. Add protein of your choice (if it’s shrimp or seafood wait until the rice is done), the V8, Paprika, salt, and  wine.

4. Set over low heat and cover, simmer until rice is done. Scrape the bottom every 8 or 9 minutes and add more water as necessary.

5. Put in seafood if you’re using it enough before the end so it’s done; shrimp take about 4 or 5 minutes to cook and fish/oysters/clams a little longer.

Serve in bowls with condiments…nothing else needed except a glass of wine or a beer.

Cyas.

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And We’ve Arrived in North Fort Myers FL

Thursday on our last day in Cedar Key we pretty much just lazed around most of the day. Went out and had a nap in the recliners in the shade, Connie did a little work via email on her iPhone, and then about 1700 or so we headed off for a night out. After driving downtown and negotiating around the closed streets for the Halloween Party at the Island Hotel we got to the waterfront and headed into the Raw Dock Bar and Grill. We had a beer each…Neil had this really great chocolate/coffee stout named Midnight Oil and Connie stuck to a local Red Ale that I can’t remember the name of…Connie had a bowl of Clam Chowda and Neil had a half pound of steamed peel and eat shrimp. Once that was done we came home and since Connie was full we passed on our original idea of a Pizza from Island Pizzaria and Neil just grazed a bit. Along the way we had another beautiful sunset in Cedar Key.

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It’s really hard to get enough of those pinky orangey Sky Blue Pink © views…we were especially taken by the vivid blue reflections we were getting. After that it was TV and then off to bed.

Friday morning we got up, packed up, hitched up, and hit the road about 0930 for our 250 mile drive to North Fort Myers. We stopped for lunch at a Hess station along US-98 and picked up a Quizno’s sub that we carried on another 30 miles or so until it was lunchtime…by that time we were on I-75 and we stopped and ate. Once that was done we continued south and arrived here in North Fort Myers at the Seminole Campground about 1500 or so. After checking in we drove around to our site 101…it was really hot and we were both tired plus Neil had slept crooked the night before and his back hurt so we just did the minimum setup of utilities. After that we hit the pool for a quick dip to cook off then we ran one errand down to the CVS (cokes and drugs we needed were on sale) then we went to Hogbody’s Bar and Grill for dinner. After a couple Redneck Red Ales each (they were excellent) we had a set of 16 wings…8 each of Caribbean and Sesame…then came home. We watched some TV…Hawaii 5-0 and Blue Bloods are among our favorite dramas) then it was off to bed. 

This morning we got up and after Coffee and breakfast we finished setting up the site for the winter. Here’s a shot of our finished setup in site 101…the only thing we don’t have up yet is our sign but that’s because we need to go to Home Depot and figure out a better way to hang it.

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We have a couple of new additions to our setup…but we only use them when stopped for a long period as they’re a pain to get setup. You can see in the photo above we have a thing called a Sunblocker hanging from our awning…it’s staked down on the outside. We also have the Sideblocker hanging from the forward edge of our awning; it’s not staked down so we can walk around it. Both of these are mesh construction so they’re relatively waterproof but the wind goes right through them. They keep the sun off of the patio area…here in Seminole after about 1300 or so the sun comes past the front of the house and shines directly on the patio…having the screens up makes the patio much more like a screen porch and reduce the temp sitting in our recliners or camp chairs by at least 20 degrees. Neil also unloaded our bikes from the car, set up the grill, and all that jazz…he learned from his previous running into the kingpin to deliberately setup the area under the front of the house as an outside storage area and not a passage area…not walking through there will keep all of us from bonking our noggins.

After our setup was done Neil hit the pool to cool off while Connie had a shower and washed her hair…after that we just sat out under the awning until it was time for the football games to start…at that point we went in and watched the GA/FL game followed by the Auburn/Arkansas game.

Tomorrow is Mass at 0900 and a grocery run on the way home…then we’ll either clean the place (it’s pretty dirty) or else goof off and clean on Monday morning…don’t know which way we’ll jump on that yet.

Cyas.

 

Dinner tonight was Fusili pasta with Caramelized Onions, Pecans, Bacon, and Garlic…along with a couple glasses of wine.

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Lazy Days on the Waterfront

I would like to tell you about all the super interesting things we’ve done this week…but the list of super interesting things contains…nutten. All we’ve done mostly is laze around. Connie worked a little, Neil went on a couple of bike rides, we sat in the zero gravity chairs outside and listened to podcasts in the shade, we went to the Tiki Bar in the evenings, and ate easy to prepare stuff.

So far this week for dinner we’ve had Pork Picata, a steak, some chicken that a local guy named Jason grilled outside the bar, and last night we just grazed on whatever we could find in the fridge. Tonight we’re going whole hog since it’s Halloween and will probably have a pizza unless we decide to hit the raw bar downtown.

The Tiki Bar is closed today since Pat and Cindy (the owners of the Low Key Hideaway) are going downtown to visit friends and hand out candy in their neighborhood…so we’ll be on our own. Neil settled up our tab with the bar last night and today he’ll probably run down to the library to get some internet and will fill BAT with fuel for tomorrow’s journey south. We’ve got 249 miles to go tomorrow…23 miles north on FL 24 to the intersection with US-98 then about 50 miles down 98 until it runs into I-75 then the remainder straight down 75. It’s about a mile and a half from the exit to the park and we’ll be in site 101 at Seminole Campground again. Neil sent Bryan the address yesterday and he’s going to get us a package of mail off. We’ll probably rest over the weekend then next week will start in on our list of things to do…we’ve got some periodic maintenance on the house to get done and a list of minor things to fix or order or replace. Maybe later on next week we’ll get the kayak wet or head out for a hike…we were going to paddle this week but the locals recommended against it in an inflatable since then oyster shells would rip it whenever you touched the bottom.

We did have a pretty nice sunset last night and also spotted first a pair of Roseate Spoonbills out on the mudflats at low tide…then we spotted a pair of Ospreys over on the nesting platform that Pat built. It’s sticking out of the boat they had hauled in for atmosphere and they’re hopeful that the Ospreys will nest on it this year, since they’re sitting on its lot and it’s about time for mating season then it’s likely that they will do so.

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Neil went out this morning and took a few snapshots of the Hideaway. Here is the RV parking area; this will be reconfigured in a couple of weeks to have 3 wider spots instead of the 4 they have now. New grading and gravel, new landscaping, and all new utility hookups are also going in.

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Here is the area behind our site…we spent a lot of time this week in this swing and in our recliners moving them around as necessary to stay in the shade as the sun moved through the afternoon. After that is the Tiki Bar…we spent a lot of time here as well.

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Here is a panorama view taken from just past the Pool sign on the dock there to the left of the Tiki Bar. You can see the boat that was in the nighttime picture the other night, the Osprey nest platform over the top of it and off to the right the mudflats (although it’s not low tide right now so they aren’t mudflats at the moment). The hanging/swinging chairs out on the dock also had our butts in them some this week.

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All in all…quite a nice place for the week and actually reasonably cheap. Daily rate is 40 and weekly is 15% off so we paid 238 for the week plus another 120 or so in beer and wine at the Tiki Bar. Haven’t spent anything extra on food as we’ve been eating in and on what Jason makes…he comes over 2 or 3 days a week and cooks for whoever is here in the Tiki Bar/RV sites/hotel. This has really turned into one of our favorite spots to be and I imagine we’ll continue to come here whenever possible…although probably not for more than a week or so at a time as the slow pace of goofing off starts to get to us after about a week.

Cyas.

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We’ve Arrived in Cedar Key

Well, we’ve arrived in Cedar Key FL and are safely parked in site 1 here at the Low Key Hideaway…and it’s finally warm! Yea! After our time in Nashville we left early Wednesday morning and after 310 miles arrived in Auburn AL. We ended up going to the wrong RV park though…we went to the one that we originally wanted to stay at on the north side of town…but when Neil called them he couldn’t get ahold of anybody to make a reservation (or maybe they didn’t have a pull through available, he can’t remember) so we ended up making a reservation at the campground on the south side of town near the freeway. Unfortunately; he bold faced the wrong park in the Travel Notes file…and hence picked off the wrong address for Google Maps…this error carried over to the GPS directions so we showed up to the wrong place. Once we got sorted out where we actually needed to be we punched the new and correct address into the GPS and headed for the correct destination. We got stopped in a bit of traffic and construction but got there OK and got parked. We headed over to Opelika for dinner at Country’s BBQ…it was just as good as we remembered and the decor of the place hasn’t changed a bit. We even had enough leftovers that we saved them for dinner on Friday night.

The only picture we took in Auburn was of the first home we purchased back in 1983 at 117 Carter Street, it hasn’t changed much since we sold it.

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Thursday we got up and after another 175 miles arrived in Tifton GA (or maybe Enigma GA, it was identified as both by various combinations of Google Maps and our various GPS devices) where we parked at the Lakeside RV Park (didn’t see any lake though)…which was run by a through and through good old boy from Georgia. We had some leftover chicken that Neil pan fried with Panko crumbs on it from Tuesday night in Nashville so that was dinner. We had a nice (huge) grass site in the middle of the field so it was easy in and easy out.

Friday morning we got underway for the 198 mile trip to Cedar Key…about 90 miles down I-75 then the remainder on US-119 which was mostly four lane and then the last 28 miles on FL-345 which is two lane, narrow, and twisty. We got here about 1330 and Cindy in the office was at lunch…we had decided to just park and wait until she got back but she heard us out front and went ahead and registered us. There were 3 open sites when we arrived and the RVs for the other two sites arrived within 15 minutes of us so we all went ahead and got parked. Cindy wasn’t very familiar with helping RVs back into the sites so Neil gave the other folks a hand while Connie (and their wives) blocked traffic for us. Once all of that was done we got unhitched and setup for our week…we don’t plan on doing much as we did all of the hikes here last time so we’re mostly going to just goof off. 

Here’s a shot of our site 1 with the Tiki Bar (well, at least the edge of the roof) and of our backyard which as you can see pretty much looks over the water.

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Today Neil updated his Macbook Pro to the new version of Mac OS X Mavericks…it was released last week and he downloaded it but didn’t have time to back up, get ready, and do the update until today. While that was going on we watched ‘Bama roll over Tennessee 45-10…they scored 21 points in the first quarter and were up 28 – 0 at the half. They finally had to punt well into the third quarter but it was pretty much another stellar game on both sides of the ball. Next victim is LSU in two weeks.

Our internet here is pretty slow…no wifi and even the air card barely has any signal…so Neil’s going to drag the laptops down to the library on Monday to post this unless he gets lucky this evening or tomorrow.

Dinner tonight was some Pork Piccata with a side dish of Farfalle pasta with Olive Oil, Italian Spices, Panko crumbs for crunch and grated Parmesan on top. Pretty yummy and we’ve got leftover pork and sauce for some sandwiches for lunch tomorrow.

Sunday we went to Mass and then a bike ride…followed by lunch and football. After wandering over to the Tiki Bar for a brew we came home and had some broiled fish for dinner and then Neil grabbed some sunset shots to make you jealous of our spot here in warm, sunny Florida. He also grabbed a couple of shots after dark; both are about 30 second exposures in pitch black…the first one captures the derelict fishing boat off of the beach, the boat itself was almost invisible to the naked eye it was so dark but the long exposure gives it a nice orangey appearance which fits in perfectly with this weeks Halloween. The second one is of the Milky Way galaxy overhead; it’s the bright strip from lower left to upper right with the dark band in the center. The Milky Way is the galaxy we are part of and it’s a large spiral galaxy. The bright stripe is looking into the disk of the galaxy, the dark band in the center is composed of interstellar dust. It’s usually pretty hard to see this sight due to light pollution, it’s better here but we’re really not far enough from civilization to get an excellent view of the galaxy itself…I’ll try again in a couple weeks by driving out into the middle of the Everglades.

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Cyas.

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Old Hickory Lake Hike

Monday was a pretty good day. Neil did the laundry in the morning while Connie worked…she’s got her phlebotomy students going out this week and has to finish up all of their clinical packets, binder stuff, and make sure they’ve got all of their paperwork submitted properly. Once that was done and Neil was back from the laundry he made a couple of wraps for lunch and then we headed off for a short hike. Our destination was about 12 miles away…the Corps of Engineers has a dam there with a lake named Old Hickory Lake. We checked out the dam, watched a tug push a barge of coal into the lock heading upstream, and went on a mile and a third hike around the three loops of the Old Hickory Lake Nature Walk. Since it was the middle of the day and we were pretty close to civilization we didn’t see much in the way of wildlife but did have a nice walk in the woods and Neil got a couple of pictures of the pond at the far end of the loop. We got a glimpse of a fish of some sort (trout probably) eating an insect off of the surface but it was too quick for a picture. Since it was a nice non windy day…Neil took pictures of the reflections of the trees and sky in the pond since it otherwise didn’t make a very interesting photograph.

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He’s also playing around with some new plug ins he got for his photo editing application Aperture…they allow you to change the look of photos, reduce noise, increase sharpness, and mess with the colors in the picture. He likes the reflections in the second one better but the top portion of the water just underneath the shore he likes better in the first shot…but the second one was framed without much of the trees in it so he wasn’t able to include them which would have balanced the reflections a bit.

After our hike we came home and rested then headed out for dinner…we figured that we ought to head into town at least one night and hit up the honky-tonks. Our first destination had live music and we found a spot at the other end of the bar where it wasn’t too loud…but all they had was beer in bottles so we left. Our second stop had no music but did have 70 beers on tap…and Saints be Praised Murphy’s Stout was one of them. Yum. We had a couple pints of that and also some really good wings that were roasted instead of deep fried…they were really meaty and had a smoky/hot/sweet Chipotle sauce on them. After that we wandered the strip for a bit…but didn’t find any place else worth stopping at…Connie was looking for some soup but never saw any of the sign boards that attracted her. We came home and had a little piece of salted caramel freezer pie…it was leftover from Sunday when MJ was here. We watched TV and then went to bed…listening to it rain pretty steadily all night.

Today is more work, another hike, and Neil is going to listen to Apple’s big announcement…they’re supposed to introduce new iPads and we need to replace our first generation ones with some that aren’t ready for the Smithsonian. Tonight we’re having some Panko Crusted Chicken with lemon/garlic sauce then we’ll pack up the outside stuff and hitch up…we are leaving early tomorrow for our 300 mile transit to Auburn AL where we’ll have dinner at Country’s BBQ.

Cyas.

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