Our Travel Blog

The internet here is about as reliable us using 2 tin cans and a length of string to communicate. It was down totally all day Sunday. My apologies to Mum who apparently waited up all night for the non-existent episode of the blog 🙂

Sunday was Manatee Festival day in the local town of Crystal River. Festival is evidently defined by closing off the main streets in the town and charging to enter them. Once in side there was a whole slew of street vendors doing their thing. What I found more interesting was watching the people who attended, without wishing to be done for slander they appeared to range from the dungaree wearing trailer park dwellers to the wannabee upper class residents of the city.

There were dogs everywhere, some normal but a large majority of the smaller dogs, in particular yorkies were dressed in glitter coats, hats and sunglasses 🙁

The main reason for our visit there was to go on a boat tour of the local river looking for manatee. We took about a one hour trip on a dive boat and were not disappointed. We went into a small back channel and on the way there we saw a couple of the mammals. Once in the back channel they became more populous. The channel has designated manatee quiet areas where no humans or boats are allowed in, however we could see into these areas and they were full of the mammals. The channel itself also had a large population that were easily seen from the boats, which is not surprising considering they are around 10ft in length and weigh up to 3500lbs. The days animal viewing was rounded out by a couple of red tailed hawks giving a flying display above the crowds.

Manatee

This day was probably one of our laziest days yet. There was nothing to fix, nothing needed doing!

Although the day was bright and sunny, it was cool and windy (I know, nothing like the Ottawa wind chill warning of -35 to -40 tonight). I think the highlight of the day was going to get some milk!!

Tomorrow is slated to be warmer, and we plan to head out to the local manatee festival. If it is warm enough we may even get out on the river.

Late last night the rain started, it was pretty hard at times and was accompanied by thunder and lightning. For the most part the thunder just rolled around and the lightning was the behind the clouds type, there was one flash / bang that was loud, bright and close. After a few hours all calmed down and the rain stopped.

Fast forward to this morning, all looks good outside, have breakfast and check the Internet… NO Internet. Nothing unusual there, it goes on and off throughout the day.

An hour later, still no Internet….. this is getting serious :-). Lyn went off to do some shopping, and I did some stuff around the trailer. Still no Internet.

This afternoon we decided to visit Lyn’s birthplace, Inverness. It’s a town about 10 miles away. We took the scenic route in, through the back roads which wound their way through Golf Club estates. I say back roads, but in reality they were four lane divided highways (dual carriage ways for those across the pond). It is amazing how may of the roads are 4 lane, they wouldn’t even be busy if they were two lane, guess they have a good road building budget down here.

We got into Inverness, which is a typical town, big name stores on the outskirts, and the remains of a downtown area. We stopped in the centre of the town where there was an old courthouse, originally built in the late 19th century, the court house was surrounded by lawyers offices; Florida seems to be overcrowded with lawyers, there are offices everywhere, they advertise on the radio (and probably the TV) the billboards along the side of the road are full of lawyer adverts… it’s crazy.

We meandered back to the campsite and happened upon a quilt store, literally in the middle of nowhere, naturally we stopped. Lyn returned triumphant from the store with the usual comment as she waved a bunch of fabric at me “It was so cheap I had to buy some”

Back at the campsite we dropped into the office to pick up mail and ask whether the internet had been revived. Turns out the close flash / bang last night took out some of the internet hardware :-(, they were busy trying to restore it but weren’t willing to say when it may be back.

It came back about 8PM so someone must have been working overtime to prevent a riot. Seems everyone around here gets cranky when the internet goes down.

Another clear warm day, up to about 22C today. Other than doing the weekly shopping we stayed at the campground figuring the coast would still be fogged in. It was a day for doing small jobs that I had kept putting off while Lyn spent her time between the laundry and reading her book.

As the evening wore on the rains returned, and tomorrows forecast calls for the rain to continue.

The day dawned bright clear and warm. This was first day it has been sunny AND warm, even wore my shorts! An ideal day to head off and explore the beaches.

We headed south towards Weeki Wachee where there was a state park with a lot of activities plus a couple of beaches we had been told about. The temperature was 19c and rising. We headed to the beaches first, life was good, what could go wrong?

As we drove down the beach road there appeared to be smoke in the distance, as we got closer it looked more like a cloud formation, as we got even closer it turned out to be a fog bank. At the beach it was thick fog blowing in off the Gulf of Mexico and the temperature had dropped to 13c. Not particularly good weather for beach walking. We figured the fog would burn off in an hour or so, so we headed back to the state park. The parking lot was pretty empty, so we figured we’d have no problems with crowds. Of course the other explanation for an empty parking lot was that the place was closed. The second explanation was the correct one. After her recent faux pas in directing us to a flea market that was closed, followed by this one left me no option but to put my navigator on probation. I would have fired her, but would mean I’d have to navigate myself…. not a sensible solution.

We headed back to the beach, hoping the fog had burned off, in fact it had intensified and the temperature was down to 12c. Following an outdoor lunch we headed back to the truck for warmth. On the way home we passed another park at Chassahowitzka (where do they find these names). Here our luck changed, we went down to the river and saw 4 manatee in a natural habitat, some wood stork and cormorant.

On the way back to the campsite we passed a small bakery / donut store so stopped for a consolation snack. If this guy were to bring his donuts to Canada Timmies would be given a run for their money.!

Back at the trailer it was 21c, so time to sit outside and soak up some rays.

After the rains of yesterday, the temperatures have risen leading to fog this morning. Lyn went off to the craft group and I did some more of the Lancaster kit. Also tried to persuade the all singing all dancing remote control to work, but I have forgotten all that I learned about it last time I programmed it. May have to resort to the instruction manual soon.

Finished off the close dryer this afternoon, it’s quite snazzy with it’s bright purple rope, may even get a picture of it sometime.

I was sent this link by one of the Wednesday night pub group, should appeal to anyone with a love hate relationship with electronic gadgets and a Brit sense of humour. I have only seen half of it so far as the cr*p internet here dies before it finishes.

http://www.flixxy.com/my-blackberry-is-not-working.htm

Today was wet! The rain (which I gather is desperately needed) started during the night and went on and off through to lunch-time. During our walks around the area we had noticed that areas had been dug out at the low points, now we know why. All the water that runs down the roads, goes through a drainage system into these dug out areas. As the area is nothing but sand, sand and more sand the water soaks in after a few hours and the place dries out.

With the weather as it was, it was a stay at home day. I started preparing my tax stuff, doing some more of the plane kit, reading and generally nothing. Life is good!

No, not another bed-bug epidemic, this one is of the market variety. Lyn picked up some directions for a few of the local flea markets earlier in the week. We chose a couple to visit and off we set. Earlier Lyn had mentioned that there was one flea market that only opened on Tuesday and Wednesday. That was the first one we visited!

Onto the second one, this was about 10 miles down the road, just beyond the state park we visited last week. This was a LARGE flea market, for those in Ottawa it was way larger then Stittsville was in its hey day. There was pretty much everything there from a good well laid out kitchen supply store to some areas where it was so crowded with junk it was not safe to venture. Lyn managed to pick up some things she wanted, but thankfully the craft / fabric store was closed (hopefully she won’t read this).

We wandered back to the campsite, and for the third day running it was warm enough to have lunch outside. After lunch I continued on the plastic pipe clothes dryer, then took a rest after started to glue a piece that should have been screwed.

Like most evenings, the BBQ was put into use, I am not sure what the locals think as I am pretty much the only guy that goes out in the dark, and pretty much any temperature to BBQ each night.

Monday is Martin Luther King day so it’s a long weekend down here. Not sure how they celebrate this one, I’ll let you know if I find out.

Now that all the new electronics are wired in, I have been playing with our all singing all dancing programmable remote control for them. I’m making progress, but one poor design feature in the trailer is the placement of the home entertainment centre; it’s in a cupboard and as we all (should) know infrared signals from remote controls don’t travel very well through wood. The good news is that there is a socket on the centre to connect a remote infrared receiver, the bad news is that I can’t seem to find one.

Next on the to do list was some means for Lyn to dry laundry, clothes lines strung between trees are fine, if not frowned upon, provided there is something to support them. Our site is devoid of trees making the task a little more interesting. On our walks around the campsite we noticed a lot of people had white contraptions hanging from the ladders that most RV’s have to allow access to the roof. These contraptions, on closer inspection, turned out to be ingenious clothes drying racks made of white PVC tubing. A quick check of the internet yielded the plans, and $20 at Lowe’s yielded the bits required, including dayglo purple washing line to hang the clothes on!

Sports wise, today was a big day, it was the annual corn hole tournament!  I won’t go into details as what this is, but it doesn’t involve corn. If you’re really interested go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornhole

After dinner we took a walk over to the fire pit where a group of people had a campfire going and we joined them for an hour or so. Most of the campers here are from Michigan or Minnesota, with a few from Ontario, Maine, New York and a few other north eastern states.

I was really pleased to receive an e-mail from the city of Ottawa today announcing that there was an overnight street parking ban in effect.. made me feel really good. Enjoy your snow. Evidently Florida was the ONLY state in the US not to have any snow this week, even Hawaii got some.

This morning the new TV and stereo arrived, so I was kept busy trying to sort out the mess of wires left by the repair guy 🙁 . Got some of the work done, then it was time to head out to the wildlife park at Homosassa Springs, about 15 miles from here.

The area is actually a State park, and it is dedicated (with possibly one exception) to species indigenous to Florida. The exception being a hippopotamus that was on site prior to the State starting up the park. The area was previously owned by a company that provided wildlife for movies. So as the hippo was there before the State park AND the hippo had been made a Florida citizen by the Governor, it was deemed to be indigenous (only in the USA!!).

The primary purpose of the park is as a refuge for manatee, unfortunately there has been so little rain here in recent months, the water level was too low for the manatee to swim, however we did see a few of them in the pool area where rescued ones are cared for.

Just to stop Anne whinging, there are some pictures at the end.

Once back to the trailer I managed to get the stereo up and running, we now have full stereo surround sound in the living room, even discovered we have a sub-woofer somewhere (I thinks it’s under the stairs),stereo in the bedroom and stereo outside. The only small issue we have is that the radio station that we had been listening to is a lot weaker on this radio.

The TV checked OK as well, so all is good!

Ask Lyn about the “Techno Roll” next time you contact her.

CRANE BILL

AMERICAN EAGLE

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