Orange Lake Florida In Our Rear View Mirror

Today appears to be our last day in Florida. We had planned to leave yesterday but the storms in northern Florida and Alabama kept us here for one more day. Since we had most everything packed up on Thursday, today was a leisurely day. I grilled pork steaks for lunch. We had planned on having them last night for dinner but we were talking to friends until late. I don't like BBQing in the dark - we had already taken down all the outside lights. We ate at a local restaurant instead.

We had decided not to take our fire pit home with us since we didn't have room for it. Pam and Dennis had hauled it from Missouri to Georgia for us in October. Since it was still new and in the box, we put it inside for the Georgia-Florida leg of the trip. We gave it to Joe and Marilyn. Unbeknownst to us, Joe put it up for sale in the park-wide garage sale today. He sold it bright and early this morning for $20. The four of us decided to take this money over to the Jai Alai joint to bet on the horse races in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Joe and Mark won quite a few races; unfortunately all the winners were the favorites so they didn't really win any money; nor did they lose.

The winds today have been insane. All the awnings in the park have been put up, except for the people wishing that they would blow away. Some people have even brought in the slides on their trailers. Even though it got to 91 degrees, the clouds and wind kept all but the die-hards out of the pool. We just biked around the park saying goodbye to everyone. Finally the bikes had to be disassembled and put away.

It was an interesting dinner we had. I thought I still had a pound of hamburger in the freezer; I was wrong. Mark found two slices of salami in the fridge; I found a new head of lettuce and a few veggies so I made a small salad for Mark and a very large one for me. We then headed up for the final Prime Country Cuts evening to listen to old country music and to say goodbye to those that we missed earlier today.

Tomorrow we're heading off to our first stop in Robertsdale, Alabama which is about 35 miles east of Mobile. Monday morning we'll get up early to get through the tunnel which runs under Mobile Bay, heading towards a night in Tunica, Mississippi. Then on Tuesday morning we're off across Arkansas to get to Mom and Dad's lake house where we'll be leaving the trailer for about a month so we can do work on their house. On either Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday we'll be driving into St. Louis to give our kids a GREAT BIG HUG. We miss everyone and can't wait to get there; we hope the snow that they are getting tonight will be gone, as we do not miss that!

No internet for a few days. We'll send a final blog once we get home.

The First To Say Goodbye

Since we got rained out Monday, Mark and I went up to Gainesville and played at Ironwood Golf Course yesterday. Even though we swore we wouldn't go back after the last episode, we gave it another try. Fortunately it wasn't real crowded. Of course, I hit the ball a million times at least. I forgot how to golf after the first eight holes. It wasn't fun, but I kept at it.

One strange thing we saw while in Gainesville - there's an election day next week and there are signs at numerous intersections "Protect our children - keep men out of the women's restrooms. Vote NO on Amendment A." I was never close enough to get a picture, but this just seemed too bizarre.

We then made our final trip to Walmart before leaving here on Saturday. It was sunny and bright in Gainesville; when we got back to the RV park, a mere 25 miles south, it was very cloudy and very windy, thus we didn't go to the pool.

Today I eased on in to my morning by not getting dressed and leaving the trailer until 11:00. Of course, I woke with a killer sinus headache and had to lounge in the recliner for a few extra hours after getting up at 7:15. We got to the pool by 12:30. It was very cloudy so we only stayed in the water for an hour. Mark headed back to the trailer (banjo practice) while I lounged about listening to all the ridiculous conversations around the pool. One of the regular bikini clad chunky women went around to all the grandparents who had grandkids in the pool, and told them the kids were not to jump or splash. This woman wasn't even in the pool and the kids were quiet and at the opposite end of where she was sitting. Apparently the grandmothers didn't care for this woman because the kids just kept playing. Good for them!

At 4:30 we left for the final spaghetti dinner with Joe and Marilyn. The crowd is thinning down - in numbers; not weight - at the church so we didn't have to stand in line. As always it was all delicious.

We are saying goodbye to Jim and Betty today as they are headed back to Ohio in the morning. We will miss them. They are looking at parks in Arizona next year while we will most likely be in Texas. I'm sure our paths will cross again some day.

Our bike ride to the Jai Alai netted us $5.83 on a horse race - woohoo!

Tonight we had the final camp fire. The winds finally quit around 7:30 so we could enjoy without the fear of burning down the entire park. Jim and Betty arrived just after we started the blaze.

Before the last group left at 11:15, we had quite a crowd.

Rainy Days and Mondays

We're starting to wind down in Florida. I'm trying to use up most of the canned goods and the meat in the freezer. Every little pound out of the trailer will make for a better trip north on Saturday. This makes for some interesting meals. Sunday I used up the last of the Bisquick for our weekly pancakes. Lunch was a trip to Terry's - a sports bar about 15 miles away, to collect on our beer/burger bet with Steve and Eileen. Steve is a Cornell alumni and his alma mater lost to Mizzou last Friday. Unfortunately, we have yet to see either game Mizzou played. Hopefully next weekend's games will be televised wherever we happen to be on the road. We went to Terry's Bar with Steve and Eileen and Bob and Rachel who had never been there either. Steve had been raving about the ribs, unfortunately they are only served on Tuesdays. The wings and buffalo chicken salad and Mark's burger were wonderful. It's probably good that we never knew this bar existed up until a week ago.

Since we had all this food around 3:00pm on Sunday, it was a find-what-you-can dinner. I opted out of all food; not quite sure what Mark ate. I do know that I woke up this morning with my stomach growling!

We had to set the alarm this morning for 7:00 in order to make our 9:15a tee time with Joe and Marilyn. Joe was the only one who had ever played this course so we were looking forward to something new. We weren't even 2 miles from the park when it started drizzling. We just kept driving farther south, and it only got worse. The highlight of the new route to a new course was all the spectacular equine ranches. I think we found where most of the money is in Ocala. By the time we arrived at Stone Creek by Del Webb golf course it was pouring. We all got out of our vehicles and said, "We're not playing in this." We went inside to cancel our tee time and headed to Sam's. Even though I'm trying to lighten the load, we needed bottled water and coffee.

While the State of Florida has been begging for rain, and is in a severe drought, we were hoping the drought would last until Sunday, after we leave. Fortunately it didn't really rain all that hard, nor all day long. It only got to about 70 and windy which made us feel like we were already back home. We only biked for about 10 minutes. Two of those 10 minutes were spent riding to the Jai Alai to bet on a horse race. While waiting for the race to start, I picked a dog in a different race and Mark placed a bet on yet another dog in the same race. He who always poo poos the dog races ended up winning $7.40. I like watching the dogs because they always crash and burn - the horses never do that. Unfortunately my No. 4 dog crashed today, along with four other dogs. Of course Mark's dog placed.

Tonight we went to John's birthday party in the rally hall.

John and Frances had invited quite a few of their friends. They had ordered pizzas and brought the beer. It was wonderful.

Mark and the birthday boy. His tee shirt says "My Indian Name is 'Running with Beer'"

John in his new hat. It's too bad we didn't see these at the flea market last week.

We're hoping for better weather tomorrow - we have a 9:22am tee time, then it's time to start packing up stuff.

Almost Homeward Bound

It's been a few days so now I must try and remember what we did since Tuesday's posting. Nothing stands out so it must have been a few boring days.

I do know that the weather has been kind of strange. We've been in the pool once since Tuesday, and that was only for an hour. A "cold" front came through - the highs are near 80 and lows in the 50s. The blanket is off the bed and the furnace hasn't been on for a couple of weeks. The wind has been gusting to 35mph, making our biking around the park more strenuous than we like.

We have become known as "that couple always biking" and "the pool kids." Since Mark's heel has been hurting since October, he can't walk around the park so we ride. We ride over to the Jai Alai to bet on a trotter that some new friends from Ontario own. They always let us know when Whatever Lola Wants runs. Last night we placed a show bet on her and she came in second. That netted us about $5.

Every evening we ride down to the lake to see if the small gators are hanging out. They haven't been around lately - I guess they don't like the white caps coming in to shore.

Tonight was the "Farewell Dinner" put on by the park for all the RVers since most people will be heading home in the next couple of weeks. Last year's farewell was wonderful. This year it had the makings of being such a fiasco that we gave our tickets to Wayne and Judy. At 9:30 this morning, many in the park headed to the main hall to "reserve" their table for tonight's dinner/entertainment that didn't start until 6:00pm. It got quite ugly when we heard others saying they just removed the reserved signs and put their own stuff down. Only 200 could eat inside, and the rest had to eat out in the wind. We didn't want to get in the middle of it all. We headed to Ocala to get Mark a new pair of tennis shoes. He's also been wanting Long John Silver for dinner so that's where we went while 400 other people ate free food in the park. We were so stuffed after eating, but I was craving ice cream. There just happened to be a Brewster's right down the road from LJS so now we are extremely stuffed.

Today we spent most of the day trying to figure out what we are going to do in the next couple of weeks. Mark's Uncle Bill passed away last night. We always knew we would head home once he died to attend the memorial service. We just didn't figure he would die so soon but at least he is no longer suffering. After hem-hawing around most of the day, weighing all of our options, we've decided to leave Florida when we had planned to - next weekend, and make a slow trip to Kimberling City where we will leave our trailer for about a month. Our trip to Texas will just have to wait for another time. Michael was kind enough to offer up free airline tickets, but we just couldn't figure out a way to make it all work. This must have been a sign that it's time we go home. We're leaning towards going to Texas for the 2009/10 season, so we'll meet up with our Winter Texan friends in December.

Mark at the lake tonight, standing on the condemned dock.

Orange Lake still hasn't filled up since the huge sink hole opened up in it a few years ago. We've seen pictures of this dock from four years ago. The water was to the top of the dock then. It's got a long ways to go to get there again. It's only come up about a foot since we left here a year ago.

This is where I was tonight instead of the free entertainment. As you can see, I had the place to myself. Mark was kind enough to come sit with me for the last half hour that I was up there.

Spasms, Stings and Sneezes

Yesterday we golfed again with Joe and Marilyn at the same course we've been going to for the past couple of weeks. We were all alone until the 17th hole when we met up with the men's group that had gone out an hour before us. Joe and Marilyn were suffering from allergies. They had loaded up on Benydryl before we left and that just made them very groggy. We did ok until Mark twisted his back again on the 17th hole. He did better, because his back went out on the 5th hole last Friday. I guess he needed more than two days to rest the back.

We headed to the pool after golf. There were three kids in the pool then, and the crabby Michigan lady was on the side, out of the water. She's learning!

Today was our only good shot at rain for the week, and we didn't get a drop. We're all hoping for rain to get the pollen out of the air. Everything is coated in yellow. Everyone in the park is on some kind of allergy medicine. I only have the sinus headache. I went to bed with the headache last night, and almost 24 hours later, it is almost gone.

We visited with Jim and Betty most of the morning. Mark volunteered to spray all the fire ants in their yard. These little buggers are a pain in the behind. Their bites hurt for weeks. Fortunately, I've avoided them this year (I'm knocking on wood.)

This year St. Patty's day passed us by - no corned beef and cabbage, and no green beer (or any other color). There's always next year.

Let's Light This Candle

Saturday was my day to "ease into the day." I didn't even get dressed until almost 10:00am. After two pots of coffee and reading my book for a couple of hours, we headed down to the Marion County flea market. I needed to go back to get one more pair of bifocal sunglasses. It appeared to us that every single person in central Florida was at the market. This made no sense since it was about 85 degrees and sunny out. We walked through about half of the market, sampling all the fruits and vegetables to tide us over until we got back to the trailer for lunch. Our afternoon was spent at the pool.

After pancakes this morning, I got out the iPod and headed out for a walk. I hadn't walked in almost two weeks and I hadn't been to exercise either, since we always seem to golf on Mondays and Fridays.

It got ugly at the pool today, and I'm not just talking about the grossly obese women in bikinis (yes, we have a few of those, and even one man in his black speedo.) A lady showed up with her teenage daughter and her son who was probably around 10 years old. Immediately a crabby old woman from Michigan began yelling at the kid, telling him he couldn't splash. This led to a loud confrontation between the mother of the child and the crabby old woman. The kid wasn't really splashing, the woman just thought the pool was hers, and kids weren't allowed. Most everyone in the pool disagreed with her, including her husband. We left shortly thereafter.

Tonight we all gathered for the Discovery shuttle launch. Mark, Bob, Joe, Marilyn, Don, and Vivienne an hour before launch time.

We saw more than we thought we would. Mark used the binoculars and said it was great using them. I had walked to a different area taking pictures and didn't get to try out our Christmas gift from the kids.

Starting To Wind Down

Today was just like yesterday. I was at the pool for 5 hours each day. This is why we come to Florida. Yesterday Mark went golfing with the guys while I did paperwork. I realized on Tuesday that we never received our Personal Property Declaration form for St. Louis County, which is always due the end of March. I ended up calling the office in Clayton, and gave them the info on the phone. It seems the Post Office is still not delivering mail from the Department of Revenue. We never received our 2008 Personal Property bill either - even though they claimed they mailed it to us three times. Anyway, we're set until the bill shows up in October. I also had to track down the water bill since it never arrived either.

Today we went up to the pool at 10:00am. This allowed us to get a lounge chair. There's a group that every day they scarf up all the chairs at 10:00, even though they don't show up until noon. One gal puts clothes on every chair, so all of her friends have a seat. How high schoolish these 70+ year old women are!

Mark is at banjo lessons while I am getting dinner ready. I'll be grilling steaks tonight. We'll be emptying out the freezer so we won't have all the extra weight in the trailer when traveling over to Texas in a couple of weeks.

As I watch the news (Wesh2 NBC) I have come to appreciate the fact that we are leaving in 17 days. We are sick to death of the news on "The Case Against Casey Anthony." This 22 year old woman has been in jail for months for the murder of her 2 year old daughter. For each half hour news story, this takes up at least 10 minutes. It's always something about Casey's lawyer, dad, brother, etc. I remember hearing this back home last year and we didn't realize it was all taking place in Orlando.

Last night we were going to gather for the shuttle launch, but it was scrubbed. It appears that now the launch will be on Sunday evening. We were all hoping for the 9:20p, full moon launch.

Doing the Chores

Monday morning we had a 9:51am tee time with Joe and Marilyn at Lake Diamond Country Club just south of Ocala. The weather was perfect, our golf games were fair at best. Since the course wasn't crowded, we got back to the park by 3:00 in time to cool off in the pool.

After dinner I did laundry since we were running out of clean clothes plus the beach towels were getting kind of gamey! While I did this, Mark gathered with all of our friends. It's been a while since we all had an outdoor social event in the evening. We made arrangements to gather again on Wednesday evening to watch the shuttle launch scheduled for 9:20pm.

After owning this trailer for almost two years, we've discovered that the bedroom slide is not installed properly and is slightly out of square. The allows the sun to shine through in between the slide gasket and the trailer.

Mark decided to take a look to see if this was something he could fix on his own. This required us taking off the mattress and emptying out underneath the bed so he could have a look at the mechanism underneath.

After trying for about an hour, and even a call to the Cedar Creek plant, it was determined that this is NOT something that he should be fixing himself. Apparently Cedar Creek will fix this problem for free at the factory. It just doesn't seem so free when you have to get the trailer to Shipshewanna, Indiana for the repair. We will think on this for a while longer before making any decisions.

Today Mark washed the trailer while I stayed indoors trying to get rid of a killer sinus headache. By lunch time the headache was gone so we headed to the pool just after eating. It was very crowded, but the small kids stayed away until around 2:00pm. There are several grandkids in the park this week visiting grandparents. Sunday they were obnoxious at the pool (playing Marco Polo - ugh), but were tolerable today. We left around 4:00 to get in the A/C for a while, but returned at 5:30 for another hour. By this time most everyone was gone and we had the pool to ourselves. Feeling guilty for not exercising or even walking much these days, I swam for about 20 minutes and did a few water aerobics exercises. Mark floated around the pool making sure no one got in my way.

Neither one of us wanted to sit through karaoke tonight, so we headed to St. John's Seafood Restaurant. I had 30 fried shrimp and Mark had the stuffed flounder. It turns out, I didn't swim enough to offset what I was going to eat tonight.

Friendly Fire

I started writing this Saturday evening, but the internet went down, so this is Saturday's blog.

This morning we stopped by Jim and Betty's trailer at 8:15, and they followed us down to Silver River State Park for a pancake breakfast and concert by Sweetwater Bluegrass band.

Since we were coming to the pancake breakfast, we didn't have to pay the $4 entrance fee into the park. The breakfast drew quite a crowd.

The bluegrass band was very good. The banjo player is the guy teaching Mark to play banjo on Thursday evenings.

Jim and Betty enjoying their pancakes:

When the band took a break, we decided to walk the 1.2 mile River Trail to show Jim and Betty where the river was, and what the canoes looked like in case they wanted to return another time.



When done walking, we then made the obligatory stops at Walmart, Sweet Bay, and then the fruit stand. Since we only have three more weeks in Florida, we must get all the strawberries we can. After a quick sandwich we headed up to the pool. It was very crowded, as anticipated. After 3 hours we headed back to the A/C so Mark could practice his banjo.

Mark also decided to see if Wii bowling would work outdoors. After setting up the little tv and all the Wii equipment, Joe and Bob came down to try it out. It was decided that it will work perfect, so we just have to decide on a night to Wii bowl.

We had invited our neighbors Ron and Brenda along with Jim and Betty to a campfire since it's been so long since the last fire. It was a perfect night - millions of stars out, a bright moon, and only a slight breeze. Friends of Ron and Brenda showed up along with Joe and Marilyn. It appears everyone loves a fire.

We also remembered to "spring forward" and woke up at 8:15 this morning. We'll be off to the pool for most of the afternoon.

Florida Weather At Last

On a scale of 1-10, today was a 10. An absolutely perfect 80+ degrees, no clouds, and perfect swimming weather. Mark and the guys left to golf at 8:30 this morning, and I went to exercise. After that I came back to the trailer and made a new batch of Dave's Famous BBQ Sauce.

After Marilyn and I went to the Dollar General, we each ate lunch and then met at the pool. The water was warm today, and very crowded. Yesterday the heater had been turned off the night before because of the cold weather, so no one got in the pool. There was quite an uproar in the park about this. We're surprised the manager of this park even showed his face yesterday after everyone confronted him about the pool. It was in the upper 70s yesterday, but the water temp was only 70 also. Not ideal for winter in Florida.

I stayed at the pool until 3:00 this afternoon. When Mark got home from golf, we both headed back to the pool so he could cool off. The pool was mostly empty by then since most in the park head to the closest Catholic church (about 5 miles away) for the fried fish during Lent. We went last year, but it's just too early to be early dinner - 4:30pm. We'll eat early for the Methodist free will offering spaghetti, but not the $7/each Catholic fish. Instead I made us a burger.

Jim and Betty came by and we all went to bingo tonight. Jim won the first game, and I won the second. Since we were sitting next to each other, the whole room thought we were married, and were quite the lucky couple. We just laughed. We each won our respective bingos by ourselves, so we each got $36. Mark and Betty were shut out, even with their St. Christopher good luck coins. I think they need trolls next week.

I finished my perfect day by doing laundry after bingo. I had the joint to myself, which is what I prefer.

Love On the Fly

Golf at last. We had a 9:51a tee time with Joe and Marilyn at Lake Diamond golf course in Silver Springs. Marilyn and I started off wearing ear muffs because it was so cold. We all had on long sleeves and long pants to start. Eventually the wind shirts came off and it turned out to be a fabulous day.

There was lots of wildlife on the course today. A large heron and lots of ibis. There were signs that alligators and dangerous snakes were around the water, but we never found any of them.

Joe and Mark on the 17th tee box.

While we were all on the 18th green, Joe told me to look at the lower limb on pine tree. On a previous green there was a hawk by my ball, but Joe had scared it away so I didn't get a picture, so at last I found one.

About 5 minutes later while we were all putting, we heard all this ruckus from the hawk. It appears as if a male hawk showed up, and they decided to make wild, but very quick passionate love on the tree limb right by us. (Steph - I know you can appreciate the humor in this.)

We made it back to the park in time to go to the spaghetti dinner at the Methodist church. Yummy as usual.

I attempted to go play euchre, but it seems they changed the day to Wednesday. Just as well, I was too tired to play.

Frozen Sunshine

Today was yet another freezing day in the Sunshine State. We (the weather people) believe the record cold in FL will be over after today. We hope so - we're golfing at 10:00 in the morning.

Yesterday and today were lazy hang around the park and bike ride days. Although yesterday I did get in a two mile walk, where I tried jogging again. I'm getting better at it, but certainly not ready for any mini-marathons. We also stopped in the Jai Alai for just one race - this time we were not winners.

I had a lot of free entertainment while sitting in my lawn chair reading this afternoon. A couple pulled in right across from where I was sitting, and the man tried backing in the 5th wheel. At one point he had the darn thing parallel parked. About 40 minutes later he finally got it in the spot somewhat straight. This is always entertainment for those of us who are already set up. This guy kept getting out and walking back to talk to his wife. I never saw him yell, but I can imagine that he wanted to. These spots are not small either - at least 50 feet wide, which is about 20 feet wider than most RV parks in the country.

Tonight we went to karaoke again. The highlight was Tom and Donnie singing, "It's Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night of the One Who's Been Chewing Your Ass Out All Day Long." Our good friend Marilyn joined in tonight and sang "Am I Fool Number One". She got a little help from hubby Joe and did great. We are not karaoke singers. We have done it in the past, usually after quite a bit of alcohol. Now we just tell everyone here that our past singing is what caused us to leave a park in Texas!

Please Butt Out

With absolutely nothing in the RV to eat this morning, we headed down to Ocala in the rain for breakfast and a visit to Sam's and Walmart. It was a perfect Waffle House breakfast - I had a pecan waffle (what else?) and an egg, bacon, cheese burrito (first time I tried it; not the last.) Mark opted for a waffle and scattered/chunked.

Our next stop was Sam's right next to the Waffle House. Since it was only 9:30, it wasn't crowded yet. Even though we were stuffed, we still opted to try all the freebie samples that were being given out. This Sam's makes chicken salad out of the leftover roasted chickens that they have left at the end of the day. This was a sample and the marketing ploy worked - we bought a container of the stuff. I wish our Sam's at home would do this.

The only aggravation in the store was this 70+ year old couple who tried to butt in front of us while we were trying to check out (because "we only have two items." The guy with the portable scanner was scanning us and the butt-in-liners tried to get in front. Needless to say they moved to a different line. I swear - I will NOT do this when I am old. This is not the first time this has happened to us. I don't think we look like pushovers, but we must.

Next was the trip to Walmart. I guess the rains kept everyone home because it was not crowded. I had my very lengthy list organized by location of merchandise, so we zoomed thru there in much too quickly. If you're going to spend $117 in Walmart, it should take longer than 10 minutes to do so. But alas, we now have food for the next week. Of course, upon returning home we realized we forgot a few items.

Since I haven't been posting too many pics because I just haven't taken any, I'm including one of the "treasures" my sister had hidden in our trailer.

I found this treasure hidden in the plates in the cabinet. It was taken in December 1991 at our house. This was a "gift" that Mark had made for Dennis. It involved a piece of pantyhose and some "hair". I just don't remember where we got the hair - a dog, the barber shop??? I had found this picture at home a year or so ago and mailed it to Pam with the "why?" on it. She hid it with the other note. Those were the days. (I'm sure mass quantities of alchohol were involved.