7-28-09 Tuesday (When Blogospheres Collide)

There’s a few things on my mind that I need to address and are all pretty much unrelated. The first one is a Happy Birthday to Jim. He will be another year older on Wednesday the 29th. Mine was June 23rd and other than Facebook, I never mentioned it in the blog so as to avoid a fuss.

I’ve read a few comments on the blog as well as Facebook regarding the end of our trip and the possibility of the blog. Thanks for the sweet words expressing dismay in it’s possible termination, however, I’ve never said it would end. I have no plans to stop blogging until it seems like the best thing to do.

Hmmmm, that’s only a couple of things. A few is 3 things. It would seem that as I performed household chores, I came up with a few thoughts, but then forgot one by the time I made it to the computer. Maybe I’ll think of it; maybe it will remain a mystery.

We made it into Florida! It’s kind of exciting. As we got several miles into the state, 2 things occurred that made us giggle. #1 – splat, splat, splat went the love bugs on the windshield. We forgot about that. #2- Water splashing up from vehicles in front of us. It was sunny but we just missed the afternoon rain. These 2 items are seasons for Florida. Oh no, there’s no Winter or Spring or such. It’s Love Bug season. For you non-Floridians, these are bugs that fornicate while they fly. They are all over, they don’t bite, they splat on cars. Then there’s Rainy Season. Each year you can just about set your watch to it. Torrential rain storms out of no where that are so intense you consider building an ark. The rain simply laughs at your wipers. It rains at about X o’clock and then the sun comes out like nothing ever happened. Scary is our Hurricane Season. We make sure our generators are runable, and bottled water plentiful. There may be more seasons but the 4th I could think of is Tourist Season. No, we can’t shoot them, even though many times we want to. They are helpful to our local economy. They come during their northern winter months, seeking our Florida warmth.

Above: We stopped at Walmart, I did some shopping while Jim got a haircut at SportClips. We fit into the spaces, didn’t we? I guess we’re compact.

Enough with the rambling about seasons and such. It’s time to meet with Alix and her sister Lisa! They picked us up, and off to the Columbia Restaurant. I don’t know if this place is world famous, or even country famous, but it certainly is Florida famous. The have many famous dishes including their Spanish Bean Soup. It’s so good, think soup Nazi from Seinfeld. We ate scallops (my first time), shrimp in garlic, and black bean cakes. All yummy. We also had the 1905 Salad which also lived up to it’s popularity. I had Steak Palomilla. All so awesome! Let’s not forget a pitcher of white and a pitcher of red Sangria. I think I covered it all! If not, head over to Casa Hice to read Alix’s take (this link will not work right away until she posts) on the evening.

Above: Garret – Alix - Jim

Above/Below: Left to Right (Jim, Alix, Garret, Lisa) in the RV before dinner. Not even a drink in us yet! You can tell it’s gonna be a wild night!

Above/Below: Our server, Jeff, was very photogenic.

Above: Sangria!

Above: Lisa shows off the Tapas (appetizers)

Above: A toast! When the Blogosphere creates friends!

Below: Dinner was so filling, we needed to rest in the Columbia lobby.

Above/Below: Alix comes to our home bearing gifts. S’mores!

7-27-09 Monday (The Breakdown)

It was almost like exercise today. I’m sure it counted as something. We took down the screen room today to ready ourselves for tomorrow’s travels. I think it was as much work taking all that shit down as it was putting it up. Undo the lights, remove the stakes from the ground, remove the Mardi Gras beads, whisk off dried mud, fold stuff, etcetera, etcetera. Sigh.

No, that wasn’t it. Jim gets an idea. Let’s wash the coach. So we scrubbed the awnings, the wheels, the exterior and then, oh yes, then why not the Jeep? So we washed that too.

After all that, oh and we skipped lunch, we met up with Al, went to the pool, swam around, chit-chatted and then decided on the Chinese Buffet once again for dinner. Hey, we skipped a meal!

Above: Here’s Al not being very Christian-Like.

After dinner we drove around with Al in his golf cart. Deeper into the woods are some beautiful mobile homes, and yes, I used beautiful and mobile home in the same sentence. Most had elaborate decks and lighting and are again… weekend get away cabins. If there’s anyone person I’d love to see these set ups is Tim. I know that Carl and Tim would love this kind of weekend vacationing.

Tomorrow we have dinner with Alix Hice and her sister Lisa! We’ll be in Florida soon!

7-26-09 Sunday (Alcoholic Church State)

Mixed emotions are getting stronger.  Soon we’ll see friends and family = yay; soon the trip will be over = boo.  If we can find a way to do this longer than we will.  We’ve had several people ask what our plans are.  The plans are pretty up in the air and are dictated by what ever Jim’s job hunt yields.  We’d like for him to get back into CitiGroup, then the location will follow and then my job hunt.  Job searching along our trip has been disappointing.  Jobs are lean.  We don’t know what we want to do when we grow up.

Today’s pool adventure was non-alcoholic.  I think they can’t sell alcohol in Georgia on Sundays.  Boy, if that isn’t church and state intermingling, I don’t know what is.  Anyway, so many people left early today that at noon, the pool was fairly empty.  The weekend weather has been great though.

For something fun and wild, we finished the evening by having dinner at Waffle House and then picking up a few things at Walmart.  Please, control your excitement.  I managed to.

7-25-09 Saturday (Tainted Ice Cream)

It started out OK.  The day that is.  I went to the pool. Jim was sleeping.  The pool bar was open.  I drank 2 peach daiquiris.  I had quite a buzz going.   I then did something dumb.  I changed drinks to a mudslide.  It was dispensed from a soft serve ice cream machine.  Good idea.  It tasted good.  I drank it.  For my 4th cocktail, I decided to switch back to the peach daiquiri.  I drank half.  I got tired of standing in the pool; I had been there for several hours.  I went to the shade and sat on a chair.  I then went into the hot tub.  I got overheated.  Back to the chair.  Jim was there.  I got up.  I went to the bathroom.  Then it happened.  I was sick.  The bathroom had a shower in it.  I decided to turn the water on.  I was going to sit at the bottom of the shower.   I felt sick again.  I missed the toilet.  How does something come out with such force?   Ewwww.  I sat on the shower floor for a short time letting the water cool me off.  I exited.  Jim guessed.  He was correct.  No prize.  I felt great.

We went home.  I surfed the net for a while and then decided to lay on the bed for a while.  I didn’t sleep; I just wanted to be horizontal.  Sometimes, vertical is over-rated.  We never went out.  Even though Jim didn’t drink, he didn’t feel like the bar scene this evening.  Perhaps I drank for two? 

7-24-09 Friday (Ready to NOT Golf)

The funny thing about this campground is that so many residents (permanent and annuals) have golf carts.  Most of them sit higher off the ground than average and sport larger tires.  They’re all-terrain golf carts.  We’ve seen one that looks like a tour bus, seating 6, another with Dukes of Hazard, General Lee paint, and more.  Al has been leaving us the key for his cart while he’s at work.  Jim and I took the cart out on some trails during daylight.  We’ve been told they run about 2 miles.  Some residents blaze the trails at night to see the wild baby pigs.  Hopefully I’ll get to ride along one evening and see for myself.

Above: This large freaky spider was on the golf cart.

 

Above: Another annual or permanent site tucked in the woods.

 

Above: Hmmmm, let’s check out the tent camper bathrooms… I gotta pee.

 

Below: Butterflies (as well as gnats) are abundant here.  This purple bush had about 10 orange butterflies.  In a different area I saw a couple of blue butterflies.  Segregation?

 

 

  

After our exciting wildlife tour through the woods, we went up to the pool.  Jim braved the cold water and enjoyed the hot tub.  Later in the day we went to the pool again, but this time the hot tub was way over 104 degrees.  It was scalding.  As usual, I bitched to an employee about it being cloudy again and illegally hot.  The chlorine floaty thing had been empty for 2-3 days.  He said he’d order some.  I can’t believe this stuff isn’t checked daily!  He said it was hot because someone turned the temperature up.  I explained that unless it’s broken, it maxes out at 104.  Maybe some don’t?  I give up.

The campground seems busier this weekend than the previous.  Some more annual site campers have returned to their weekend homes for a getaway.  Later on we went to the on-site bar/club.  We were disgruntled about a lot of crap here and didn’t want to go to the bar and give them anymore of our money.  I decided we should go anyway and not be martyrs.  Why ruin the time we have left here?  Sure we could mix cocktails at home, but where’s the fun in that?  Besides, tomorrow I plan to drink Peach daiquiris by the pool.  Last week I had 3 and they were amazingly delicious.  The pool bar is only open at Saturdays as best as I can tell.

Anyway, that wraps up the evening.