Yo Yos (06/22/21)

 
These days it seems like Paul and I are yanked in one direction, then yanked back in another, before we have had time to take a breath. Such was the case with our trip to Massachusetts.

We limped into Massachusetts in early June, having broken a leaf spring on the trailer somewhere between Virginia and Mass. I am always grateful that Paul is so handy that he can diagnose and fix many issues with our vehicles.  He ordered the part we needed and had it shipped to the RV park.

Our with plans were to spend time with our son, and family and friends. However, soon after we got there, Paul’s mom in El Paso started having some issues we needed to deal with. Not being sure if we could do it from afar, we made plans to head back to Texas, just to be safe (she has since improved to the point that we don’t have to rush back). 

We gave ourselves a few days to cram in as many visits as we could, and we did pretty well.

We saw our photo-shy son a couple of times, my brother and his wife, my sister, aunt, and my childhood friends….whew. All in a few days.

After we started the trek back, his mom started doing better so we slowed the pace down a bit.

One of the RV Parks we found along the way was Dixie Caverns RV. We only spent one night there but we arrived early enough to take a tour of the cavern.

Although we have seen plenty of caverns in our travels, this one was pretty darn good.

We took a southern route, partly because RV spots would be easier to come by, but also to go through Florida, so that we could stop and say hi to our friends Mike and Julie. We never have a bad time with them and a bonus this time around is that we met their long time friends Deb and Rick.

All too soon we were on our way again, but our next stop was another happy one for me.  A few years ago we spent some time at Myrtle Beach and I fell in love with the idea of swimming in the ocean without going numb-having grown up in the northeast, I only knew about frigid water temperatures. Although Myrtle Beach wasn’t on our route, Gulf Shores, AL was.

The state park we stayed in also has bikes that you can borrow- so we did that early in the day before it got too hot.  We didn’t go very far, only about 5 miles, but it was fun, anyway.

Once we were done with our ride we headed for the beach, where I spent most of the afternoon in the water.

Continuing our slow trek westward, our next stop was New Orleans. We elected to stay at the French Quarter RV Resort- a very pricy resort but it comes with some perks.  Our site has a private outdoor bar, complete with TV, and we can walk to Bourbon Street from here.

Announcing to our family and friends that we were headed to NOLA produced a frenzy of emails, texts and phone calls. Did we know that there was a potential tropical storm headed that way? Yep, we did. That’s probably why the RV park had availability on short notice. We kept an eye on the weather, knowing we might have to hunker down. We did get a fair amount of rain, but very little wind, as the storm shifted east. It was just enough to make it fun sitting outside watching the weather channel.

Knowing the storm was coming, we spent our first night in NOLA on Bourbon Street, looking for live music and Hurricanes (the drink).

Pat O’Brien’s was our first stop (for a decent Hurricane) before heading to other venues for the live music. We found several bars with music we enjoyed, so we had a great evening flitting around from bar to bar. Apparently Bourbon Street just recently reopened, so some of the venues were short on entertainment.

The next day we figured we’d better walk off some of those drinks. so we headed to the waterfront, about a mile or so away. Along the way we stopped at Musical Legends Park for some food and live music. 

We had a lunch of typical New Orleans fare- a frozen Hurricane, Jambalaya, and beignets. I guess we didn’t really walk off the previous night’s drinks.

Next stop: Texas.

St. Augustine, FL (03-14-13)

St. Augustine was settled in 1565  by Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a Spanish explorer. It wasn’t acquired by the United States until 1821.
 

Paul and I decided that the best way to see this city, whose roads resemble sidewalks to a truck as large as ours, is by trolley. We chose “the Red Train”.  They run continuously throughout the city, with the driver rattling off interesting information as he drives.  You can get on and off at will, exploring as long as you like. The bonus to this approach is that when we had a driver that spoke so fast we couldn’t understand him, we simply got off the trolley and waited for the next one.  Problem solved.

Being on the water, St. Augustine boasts both a lighthouse and a fort. Standing at the top of the lighthouse  affords great views of the beaches and the city of St. Augustine. During the Civil War, the confederacy ordered the light to be removed. The mayor had it buried and when the Union army arrived and demanded it, he refused to reveal its whereabouts.

The Fort is named Castillo de  San Marcos, and the current fort was built in the late 1600s after the previous 9 wooden forts burned down.  It is the oldest masonry structure in the U.S.  Built of locally available Coquina stone (shell fragments and quartz grains), the walls were painted white, with red accents, to match the Spanish flag. The 17 ft thick walls have never been breeched by fire power, and the fort  has never been captured by force- it has always changed hands through treaties.

The Spaniards inside the fort used an interesting psychological weapon when attacked.  After a day of cannon bombardment, they would sneak outside under cover of darkness and  re-paint any damage to the wall white again, psyching out the enemy.

The town grew further in the late 1800s when Henry Flagler, co-founder of Standard Oil,fell in love with the town and spent a lot of time and money improving rail access to the town and building luxury hotels. The early hotels were only open 3 months a year, and were so exclusive, if you rented a room, you had to rent it for the entire 3 months, regardless of how long you actually stayed in it. He hired Thomas Edison to run electricity throughout the hotel Ponce De Leon, but the concept was so new, the guests were afraid they would be electrocuted if they flipped the light switch.  Flagler hired almost 100 people to go from room to room, turning lights on and off for guests. This hotel now houses Flagler College.

Another of the Flagler hotels, Hotel Alcazar, now houses the Lightner Museum.  It was bought by Otto Lightner to house his many collections.  He was a “collector of collections”, which sounded interesting to us, so we checked out the museum.  

My favorite collection was of old musical instruments- mostly player pianos.  We were there in time to see and hear a demonstration of several of them.  I also enjoyed the old typewriter collection.  This one was made before the QWERTY keyboard design.  Other than that, it was just a bunch of…..stuff.  A collection of buttons, a room full of leaded glass, etc. We were in and out pretty quickly, not really having felt we got $20 worth..

We made a brief stop at the Presbyterian Church, also built by Flagler.  It was built to honor his daughter, who died in childbirth.  He paid for round-the-clock labor, so the church would be finished in time for the first year anniversary of her death.

This church is gorgeous, both inside and out.  We were hoping to take a tour, but instead, we arrived just in time for the weekly organ recital.  With hundreds of people in the audience, we decided the tour would be too crowded and moved on to explore something else.

 

Our trolley route took us down Magnolia Street, supposedly one of the most photographed streets in the world.  The Live Oaks that line the street make a stunning canopy over the road, which is actually much prettier than it shows in this picture.

With one of the museums we were interested in being closed for renovations, we had a spare few hours on our hands.  Paul was interested in checking out the  nearby Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum, so we made that our last stop in St. Augustine.

About half of the displays were things I not only had no interest in, but things I didn’t even want to look at.  I dodged past those to get to the things I found of interest to me. 

I enjoyed this display of a matchstick model of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. It took 3 years to build and contains 174,000 matchsticks.  The artist, Patrick Acton, used 3 gallons of glue to put it together.












Any boy would love to play with this display- the worlds largest moving Erector model.  It is 1/12 the size of the original Ferris wheel and stands 21.3 feet tall and contains 19,507 pieces.  It was moving the whole time we were there.

Believe it or not, this  portrait is made completely out of Lego blocks.

Last but not least, this was fun.  The idea is to read the colors.  But you have to say what color the word is, not what the word says.  It takes a little practice to be able to do it!

Originally, we planned to spend a week in St. Augustine, and there was certainly enough of interest there to keep us busy, but we couldn’t find an RV park that had more than 4 nights available, so we stayed the 4 nights, then moved on.

The Very, Very (Very) Slow Trek North (03-06-13)

I’m not sure you can really say we have started the trek north, since we are still in Florida and will be for another week or so.  The weather in Georgia, the next state in our path,  is starting to warm up, but we still have plenty of time.
We moved over to the east coast of Florida to see some “old friends”.  They’re old because we’ve known them a long time, not because they’re old! I met Les and Alane  when I started boating, 20 years ago, and we’ve been friends ever since. They sold their boat a few years before we sold ours, and split their time between Cape Cod,  MA and Boynton Beach,  FL.

Of course,  most of our visit centered around eating:

 In restaurants,

 

 At their house...

and at our house.

I wish I could burn calories vicariously because the only real activity that took place while we were visiting was tennis, and I wasn’t the one playing! 

Alane took up tennis several years ago and actually has participated in several competitions in the last week.  We were able to watch her play (and win) while we were visiting.  If Paul and I keep practicing, maybe next time I see her, we can play a game!

After a great, but, as usual, too short visit, we left our friends and moved north to Kennedy Space Center.  It was only 100 miles or so. I did say we were moving slowly!

Kennedy Space Center is one of those places that if you have a chance to see it, you probably should, but man, it’s expensive.  Basic admission is $50 per person.  We paid it, and made sure we got there early so we would have time to get our money’s worth.

Included in our admission was a 2 hour tour around the grounds, which took us past the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).   The building was used to assemble manned launch vehicles from 1968-2011. It is one of the largest buildings in the world and covers 8 acres of land. The flag on the side of the building is 209 feet tall.

Since the shuttle program has been discontinued, the building will be used by the commercial entities that will take over the task of keeping the space station supplied.  My favorite part of the day was actually a 45 minute 3D movie about the space station.  It covered everything from the station being built to every day life in earth’s orbit.  The fact that the U.S. went from a tense “truce” with Russia, to sharing responsibilities for the space lab, in my lifetime, is awesome.

We stopped to look at the Apollo building that houses a Saturn V rocket- a rocket that stands as tall as a football field is long.

The fuel alone weighs over 5 million pounds and accounts for 91% of the weight of the vehicle. In the 2.5 minutes it takes  the five F-1 engines to propel the rocket 40 miles above the earth’s surface, 534,000 gallons of fuel are burned. By the time the rocket leaves the earth’s orbit, it will be traveling at 24,000 miles per hour.

The Apollo space missions were “fueled” in large part, by President Kennedy’s speech to Congress in 1961 when he stated “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”  The Apollo missions got off to a rough start when the crew of Apollo 1 was killed in a fire while sitting on the launch pad. Even with that significant setback, though,  Neil Armstrong, Mission Commander of Apollo 11, walked on the moon on July 20, 1969, less than 10 years after Kennedy’s speech.

One building is dedicated to information about the robots that play a huge role in space exploration- traveling to places that humans can’t get to, and gathering information to send back to us.  My favorite robot in the building has nothing to do with real space exploration, however, and everything to do with one of my favorite TV shows!

Ft. Myers, FL (03-01-13)

I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised by the Ft. Myers area.  Of course, nearby there are the “exclusive” islands, such as Marco Island and Captiva Island.

Then, on the other end of the spectrum, there is “North” Ft. Myers.  That’s where we are staying- at a really inexpensive park- just to give my fellow RVers an idea- they accept Passport America with no limitations! ( Passport America is a discount program- most parks will only let you have the 50% discount for one or two nights,and never on a weekend.)  The park is nothing to write home about, but the site is level and the laundry is about 50 feet away.  Extremely convenient!



bald eagle being chased by an osprey

     
We took a day trip out to  nearby Sanibel and Captiva Islands, where we drove through the DIng Darling Wildlife Preserve.  A wildlife preserve is different from a national park in that  the national parks try to balance wildlife needs with the wants and desires of us humans. A wildlife preserve’s purpose its to be a refuge for wildlife.  They come first, and we come a distant second.  But of course, we all win, when the wildlife is protected.

Jay “Ding” Darling, a Pulitzer prize winning journalist and cartoonist was also a conservationist who was instrumental in starting the (now ) 530 wildlife preserves in the United States. Ding also designed, in 1934,  the first Federal Duck Stamp-.  the stamp is a required purchase for hunters who wish to hunt ducks and geese.  It is also considered to be a collectible, and 98% of the proceeds go to the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund.

This particular refuge, like so many others, preserves habitats for migrating birds. There are 4 Flyway zones in the United States, providing safe refueling spots throughout most of the U.S for these birds.  Fact I learned: most birds migrate at night, when the air is cooler. calmer, and more  humid.



There are many beaches along the shores of these islands, but unfortunately, Red Tide is taking a toll at the moment.  The bacteria causes not only the death of many fish, but can cause respiratory issues for people walking on the beach.  Paul  and I both coughed quite a bit while on the beach and decided it wasn’t worth spending much time there. 

There  was plenty of beach parking, and we were so excited to find special parking spots, just for people like us! There was a small car parked in one of these spots next to us, and I must say, I didn’t cry too much when I saw that they got a parking ticket.  It’s so hard  to park a dually, its frustrating when someone  takes one of the few spots that will fit us.  Of course, its even worse when people park small cars in spots that are designated “RV or Bus” spots.

Of course, Florida beach towns are well known for their food and music,  and Ft.  Myers Beach is no exception.  We met up  with Eric and Karla , who are fulltimers who we first met in Michigan two years ago.  We went out to dinner with them, and their friends Priscilla and Al.

High Tide

We had a great time, great food,  and listened to some awesome music by High Tide, a  local reggae band. We enjoyed the music so much, we bought the CD!

Paul and I have been trying to stay active and found a great excuse to get some exercise.  About 4 miles from where we are staying there is a Bald Eagle’s nest. A local Real Estate Company has set up a camera 6 feet above this nest, sending continuous feed, 24 hrs a day ( Eaglecam ).  I’ve been watching the eaglets on my ipad for the last few weeks, and it was a real treat to see the nest in person.  The first day we went to see the nest, we walked the 4 miles each way.  The second time, we drove, on the way to dinner one day, and the third time, we took our bikes.  I really enjoyed being able to watch the two parents come and go, and to see the young birds poke their heads out of the nest.  The youngsters are about full grown now, although they haven’t fledged (flown for the first time) yet. They are still being brought food by the parents.


the nest is in this tree, and the dead trees were where the parents were sitting.



both parents watch over the nest from nearby



getting ready to take flight.

  

eaglet stretching his wings in the nest



preening in the nest

  



watching over the nest





something caught their attention!

   




this is a picture taken from the webcam soon after the babies hatched.



a recent picture taken from the webcam