St. Augustine

Castillo de San Marcos

Greetings from St. Augustine.  St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States, founded in 1565.  We know this because we all learned it in grade school and because everyone here is eager to remind you.  The old fort (Castillo de San Marcos) is the focal point of the old city.  There were nine previous wooden  forts built on the same spot but all nine burned down.  The current stone fort was built in 1696 when apparently Spain finally got the memo, no more wooden forts.  After a 90 minute trolley ride around the city we set out by ourselves to get a closer look of what we viewed as the city’s highlights:  The St. Augustine Cathedral Basilica, Flagler College and of course, Castillo de San Marcos.

Conveniently, we were able to bike from our campsite which is in Anastasia State

Park.  The Park has a beautiful white sand beach that goes for miles.  After searching the beach for any of the speedo boys from Hendricks College and finding none (see earlier post), I decided to go for a swim in the ocean.  The water was cool but fortunately the huge waves allowed me to acclimate to the water very quickly.  I had a blast but the adventure was exhausting.

We discovered a great treasure which was within biking distance from our campground, a Dollar General, a pawn shop and a thrift store – my kind of mall!

We had to leave the park for the weekend as alas, there was “no room for us at the inn”.  We ventured 30 or so miles down the coast to a hotel in Palm Coast for the weekend .  We spent a sunny Saturday at Flagler beach, swimming and strolling the boardwalk, before returning to Anastasia on Sunday.

After re-establishing our camp we made a return biketrip to the old city.  We took a guided tour of Flagler college mostly to see the priceless Tiffany windows in the dining hall and the equally priceless chandeliers.  Flagler College was once a luxury hotel, The Ponce de Leon.  In the gilded age, the Uber rich would pay todays equivalent of $100,000 to stay for the winter.

We found an outdoor aquatic center in St. Augustine and once again did a little lap swimming.

We break camp this friday and plan on heading to Savannah.

The Villages

The people who attend the 4:00 Saturday Mass in The Villages look pretty much like the people who attend the 4:00 Saturday Mass anywhere else.  The difference with The Villages is that ALL the people in The Villages look like the people who attend the 4:00 Saturday Mass.

Here is an example:  Last week I was grocery shopping at Publix.  When I was paying the cashier, the bag boy asked me if I need help getting my bags out to my car.  The bag boy was old enough to be my father!  And no, I didn’t.

Here is another example:  You may remember the video arcade game, Frogger.  The goal for the player is to get the frog safely across the road while dodging traffic.  Cathy and I played a similar game at one of The Villages’ many pools.  There were 16 senior citizens walking from pool side to pool side.  It took Cathy and I a great deal of planning and patience to negotiate all 16 just so we could make it to the deep end of the pool.  We should have gotten extra points for being able to avoid the old guy who was water walking, refusing to look up while doing his crossword puzzle in the pool!

But it’s too easy to criticize the Villages.  Jokes abound about the golf carts on the roads and how everybody is afraid to buy green bananas.  My cousin said that every time they hear a rescue squad siren in their area, people wonder if there will be another home on the market.  However, The Villages is more than that.  The weather there is ideal, it is safe, clean and it seems that everything is well cared for.  There are pools, pickelball courts, tennis courts and golf courses everywhere.  The is also entertainment and social clubs to suit most people’s tastes, even if they are geared to “people of a certain age”. 

While there last week, we enjoyed our visit with our friends from Sister Bay, Dick and

Bev, Patti, Lloyd Kolb & Cathy

Penny Schiller and we also managed to sneak in a visit with some more of the Kolbs, Lloyd, Bev and Patti.  We sincerely enjoyed spending time with my brother, Bill and our hosts, Bill and Karen Early.  We had a good time and look forward to a return visit after three more weeks of being on the road. 

We are off to Anastasia State Park in St. Augustine!

Karen & Bill Early

Bill Blaney

  

A Visiting We Will Go

We’ve not had any major excitement since our last post.  We did travel to

Darrell Kolb's Birthday

Bradenton to visit Cathy's Uncle Darrell and go out to lunch with Darrell, Kathy, Mary and Kathy's daughter, Laura.  We also drove to Sanibel Island to visit Marilyn Maglio, a longtime friend of Cathy's.  On our way back to our campsite we stopped in Siesta Key to see Faith and Kathleen Powers. 

However most of our days are mundane – wonderfully mundane but mundane.  We take long walks, we go to the beach, we bike, we make some pretty good meals and we sleep like newborns.

Much of our fun comes from daily life.  Here are some examples:

EXAMPLE #1  There is a familiarity that many southerners use, Hi Hun, God bless you dear etc.  So Cathy was only a little surprised when the man next to her said, “Good morning sweetheart, how are you this morning”  Cathy, being Cathy, turned to him and said, ‘Great, how are you?”  Only then did she realize that he was talking to his wife or girlfriend using his bluetooth earpiece.  At least he knew that Cathy was having a great day!

Sunshine Skyway Bridge

EXAMPLE #2  Here is a photo of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.
ME:  In 1980 a 600 foot cargo ship hit the bridge.  Seven cars and a Greyhound bus fell into the water and 35 people were killed.
Cathy:  Why would you tell me that while we are on the bridge?

EXAMPLE #3  Cathy and I had biked to the beach the other day and we were lucky enough to see some dolphins.  Our picnic was interrupted when my phone rang.
KAREN FROM DESOTO PARK:  “Hi, Kenneth?  This is the Karen at DeSoto Park calling.

East Beach Fort DeSoto

  You were supposed to be off your campsite today by 11:00 a.m. (It was 12:30).
ME:  No, No, No, we have the site until tomorrow.
KAREN:  No, No, No you had the site until today.  We packed up and were off the site in less than an hour, our personal best.

EXAMPLE #4
CATHY:  Thanks for fixing the brakes on my bike.
ME:  It would be a good idea if you didn’t use them unless you have to.

EXAMPLE #5
STRANGER:  Man, how ‘bout that flu epidemic.
US:  That’s why we have chosen to live in the woods.

EXAMPLE #6
ME to Cathy with a frequency that has become annoying:  “Can you believe this is our life now?”

Marilyn Maglio & Cathy

Cathy, Faith & Kathleen Powers

A Visit to The Villages

I have a bad habit.  When I put the trailer on to the car, I balance the hitch on the ball.  When I am done winding up the wheel, I bump the trailer and the hitch falls onto the ball with a small “clunk”.  The clunk gives me confidence that the two are solidly together.  However, if one were to forget the bump part of the process, the entire 1500 pound trailer will crash to the ground where nobody but Mr. Universe could lift it again.  In a related lesson we have learned that having three adult size people balance themselves on the back bumper of a camper makes such a lift do-able by a mere mortal.

We took a scheduled trip to The Villages to visit my brother, Bill.

The Villages is an enormous retirement community of about 150,000 senior citizens.  Bill is currently dog sitting for Bill and Karen Early in a beautiful home they just bought.  This is my third time to The Villages and I think The Villages are full of golf courses, pools, bike paths, golf carts (seemingly as many as cars), tennis courts, pickle ball courts and clubhouses.  It also seems to be, at least by this outside observer, to be culturally non-diverse and politically conservative.

We had a great time with Bill, enjoyed some bike riding, swimming and good meals.  We extended our visit by a night as heavy rains were pelting our campground. We look forward to a return to The Villages after our stay in St. Petersburg and again in March when the girls plan to join us.

Here is a photo of a wind surfer.  I took the photo last week but for some reason I was reminded of it yesterday as I tried to put up the clam in a wind storm!  Our new campsite is directly on the water and while it provides world class views, it fails to provide any protection when the winds are gusting.  Before we had a chance to tie down the canopy which hangs over the trailer door, a wind gust flipped the canvas and all 5 poles on to the top of the trailer!  Only Dorothy, Aunty Em and the people of Kansas can appreciate the experience.

Thanks for following us on this adventure.
Ken and Cathy

Fort DeSoto

Our time in Panama City Beach included visits with Don & Marilyn King (Jackson School) who showed us around the Sea Side area and Sylvia and Lou Nyberg (Egg Harbor) who came to visit us and go out to lunch.  Both were on very cold days but both visits warmed our hearts.

Marilyn King & Cathy
 

Since our last entry, we packed up and moved to St.

Ken, Cathy, Sylvia & Lou

Petersburg.  To be more exact, we are at Tierra Verde, Fort De Soto County Park.  The park is beautiful.  Our campsite is 40 yards from the water and the weather has been wonderful. 


We wandered out of the campground today to find the YMCA in St. Petersburg for a little lap swimming.  It is HUGE.  You can probably guess what a huge pool looks like at 11:00 a.m. when it’s located in the middle of a retirement area.  To paraphrase Bob Hope, “It made us feel so young, It made us feel there were songs to be sung…”.  I was once again lap swimming like I had before the speedo boys from Arkansas ruined my self image.

4:00 Shrimp & wine

Fort De Soto is another park recommended to us by my cousins. Thank You.  The park has super bike trails, miles of white sand beaches and beautiful vistas. 

Fort DeSoto beach

Camper at night

We’ll be driving up to The Villages this weekend to visit my brother, Bill before returning to this park on Sunday.  As it turns out weekends in beautiful parks are busy and there was no room at the inn for us. 

It's not home, it's Destin

Dear Friends and Family,

Before we left on this extended adventure we told many of you that if there comes a time when this is no longer fun, we’ll just come home.  We told each other that this trip should not become an episode of Survivor, where we are just “getting by” but are no longer enjoying ourselves.  Well, we were enjoying ourselves when the temperature was in the 60s & 70s.  We bundled up when it went down to the 50s and 40s.  We even hunkered down when the thermometer was in the 30s but when the weatherman said we’ll be in the 20s with a high of 32 we threw in the towel and packed up, not the camper, just an overnight bag and headed to Destin which is

about an hour or so from Panama City Beach.  We slept wonderfully last night in a Fairfield Inn and pulled the covers up a little closer when we looked at our phones and saw that it was 23 degrees.

At some point we realized the refrigerator back at our campsite was no longer keeping the food cold but was keeping the food from freezing.

Please know we are safe, warm, happy and grateful for a warm place to stay.

Ken & Cathy

Panama City Beach Update

If any of you are wondering how we are doing, this post might answer some of your questions.

The campground:  St. Andrews State Park is located in Panama City Beach. It is a beautiful place although the campsites are closer together than I like.

The Camper: It is small.  We sleep in it and we eat our meals in it.  While sitting at the dinner table we can easily reach into our dorm frig without getting up from the table.   We “hang out “ in our clam.

The  Clam: is our salvation.  It is where we watch TV and read at night.  It is VERY comfortable.  We have some artificial grass (astro-turf) as a floor, a couple of comfortable chairs, some lamps, our TV, a space heater and our tablets.  The clam is a 6 sided kitchen tent with walls and measures about 12 x 12.

Internet:  The state park offers Internet for about $5 per day but we have had no need for it as our Devices work well using our cell phone data package.

Temp:  The highs have been in the 60s and 70s.

Sleep: We have been sleeping wonderfully.  We often sleep for 9 hours.  We have a small commode in the camper which we bring out before we go to bed and put into a little closet during the day.

Activity:  We have  been taking very long walks almost every day.  We have only

been bike riding twice.  Today we went to an aquatic center to do some lap swimming before returning to the park for a 2:00 lecture in the nature center. It turned out the aquatic center is a huge outdoor heated pool!  The air temperature hit 74 today so it was  very  comfortable. We have also attended a Humphrey Bogart film festival, Casablanca, Maltese Falcon and Key Largo for $7.50 each.

Swimming:  Anyone who knows me knows that I swim quite a bit.  I enjoy it because swimming is one of those things that is uniquely solitary.  You don’t really notice

anyone else and therefore you’re not really competing with anybody else.  In your mind you can tell yourself that you are doing great!  Your looking good and feeling good!  You are the best swimmer in the pool!  That theory got shot to hell as we shared the pool with the Hendrix College swim team from Conway, Arkansas.  The men’s team, which is apparently sponsored by speedo, refused to be impressed that I could go 8-10 hours at night without going to the bathroom or that my shoes still have shoelaces.  No Velcro on this guy’s tennis shoes! Maybe if I had told them that I was at the ice bowl.

At one point their coach pointed to me and told his team, “look, you see what can happen….?”  I dove into the pool and assumed he finished his thought by saying, “If you practice, practice, practice”.

 The good news is that they are going back to Arkansas on Saturday and I’ll once again be comparing myself to the “reach and stretch” water group in the shallow end.