Tag Archives: Cafe Evergreen (Nokomis FL)

2016/02/25-29 (R – M) Sand Castle Stallions Port

2016/02/25 (R) Siesta Key

We were up at 6:30 AM this morning and did not have coffee or breakfast. We picked up Mara and Michael at 7 AM and headed west on FL-70 towards Bradenton. Our destination was an endodontic office in Lakewood Ranch were Mara had an 8 AM appointment for a root canal procedure. As we were coming into town Michael spotted a Dunkin Donuts. Location duly noted. I pulled up to the office building at 7:55 and we all went in.

The endodontist said the procedure would take about an hour. Michael stayed to wait for Mara while Linda and I drove back to the DD for coffee and something to eat. The DD was in a small shopping plaza next to a Shell station so I topped off the car’s fuel tank before we topped off ours’. I bought regular gasoline (10% Ethanol) for $1.56 per gallon. We were getting ready to leave DD when Mara texted Linda that she would be longer than originally thought. The tooth needed a filling and the dental practice next door just had a cancellation and could take her right away. That was fortunate for Mara as she and Michael are leaving on Saturday for a week long cruise. She also wasn’t sure she could get in to see her dentist before July, which was much too long of a time to rely on the temporary filling the endodontist had put in place.

With Mara’s dental needs taken care of we headed west on FL-70 to I-75 south to Exit 207 and then west to US-41. A short jog to the right (north) and back to the left and we were on Siesta Key Drive headed west to the island of Siesta Key. We drove through the town, which was very quaint (upscale trendy, actually) and found a place to park with public access to the beach. The Siesta Key beach is very fine white sands, reputed to be the finest and whitest of any beach in Florida. We walked quite a ways south from our entry point past the main public entrance and numerous lifeguard stands, all of which were staffed. The wind was strong and the waves were high and I took a few photos.

A group of Royal Terns face into the wind on Siesta Key Beach. Siesta Key, FL.

When we got back to the car we exited the island via the southern bridge and drove down US-41 to Venice. We found a parking spot, which is not easy in Venice, and walked around the historic downtown area, which is now a mix of quaint and upscale shopping and lots of places to eat. It is a very attractive area but there were a lot of people there.

We were just window shopping when we walked past the TableTop store. As the name suggests, they sell a wide variety of products used to set a dining table. We looked around to see if they had plastic wine glasses but did not see any. We were just about to leave when we spotted one. It was smaller than we wanted so we asked if they had others. They did, we just did not see them! They were not plastic, however, but were made of polycarbonate. That’s the same material used for contact lens blanks and motorcycle visors. It felt heavy duty and had a slight bluish cast. The sales associate assured us that they could be cleaned in a dishwasher and would not discolor, craze, or crack, and will not break even if dropped on concrete (although we do not intend to test that claim). We bought four of them at $15 each.

Mara and Linda play in the fountain in Venice, FL.

When we had seen enough of Venice we returned to the car and drove a short distance to Cafe Evergreen in Nokomis for linner. I had the veggie (vegan) burger and Linda had the vegan beet Rueben. Mara had the stir-fry noodle dish, which both of us have had before, and Michael had the Chana Masala. Our waiter, by his own admission, was having an off day but the food was good and we took our time enjoying it.

When we were done with our meal we were also done exploring for the day and I drove us back to Arcadia. On the drive back we discussed plans for tomorrow, which included Solomon’s Castle in the late morning, Hermann’s Royal Lipizzaner Stallions in the mid-afternoon, some before and after errands, and a picnic lunch. Back at the RV Resort we dropped Michael and Mara at her RV and then returned to ours. We watched our Thursday night CBS TV programs and had some popcorn later in the evening. We headed to bed at 11 PM, watched a few minutes of Charlie Rose, and then went to sleep.

2016/02/26 (F) Castle Stallions

Our two main attractions today were Solomon’s Castle, near Ono, Florida and Hermann’s Royal Lipizzaner Stallions near Myakka City, Florida. Both locations were within 25 miles of Arcadia and each other, so we did not have to endure an excessive amount of car travel.

We picked up Mara and Michael at 10:15 AM, stopped at the local Wells Fargo bank branch, and then headed west out of town. At the edge of town we headed north on FL-661 towards Ono. We turned onto CR-665 and five miles later turned off onto Salomon Road to the parking lot of Solomon’s Castle. We had the address in the GPS, but there were occasional old hand-painted signs confirming the route. We arrived just before 11 AM, when the “castle” opens for tours, but the parking lot was already crowded. We bought our tickets for the 11:30 tour and then strolled around the part of the grounds between the parking lot and the castle while we waited. Horse Creek runs through the property, much of which was wet.

Michael and Mara by the horse statute near the entrance to Solomon’s Castle. Ono, FL.

Solomon’s Castle was built by, and is still the home of, Henry Solomon and his wife. Henry, who is about to turn 81, is an artist who has been creating art objects for 76 years. Much of the main floor of the castle is an art museum, although the walking tour includes the living room and kitchen. Other living spaces are on the second floor and were not part of the tour. There is also a guest bedroom available to rent for $125 per night but I do not recall if an overnight stay included breakfast. There is, however, a scale “replica” of the Santa Maria that houses part of the onsite cafe and is run by Solomon’s daughter and her husband, who live in a separate house on the property.

Solomon’s Castle and his art are quirky. Although we did not get to meet him, we came away with an image of his sense of humor, and caught a glimpse of him in his workshop while we were walking the grounds after the tour. Solomon works in a variety of materials but mostly metal and wood, and mostly with discarded scrap materials including food cans, beer cans, and parts/pieces of automobiles. I took quite a few photos while we were there. I don’t know what our son’s professional opinion of Solomon’s corpus would be, but some of his pieces were interesting and we had to respect the sheer quantity of work he has produced. He seemed to have a particular interest in Picasso, copying several of the master’s works in wood montage.

Mara, Michael, and Linda on the grounds of Solomon’s Castle. Ono, FL.

From the castle we continued north on CR-665 up to FL-64, the Florida Cracker Trail, and then west about five miles to Wauchula Road where we headed south to Myakka City. At FL-70 in Myakka City we headed east about 1/2 mile and pulled in to a local park on the north side of the road that affronted the west bank of the Myakka River. The picnic tables were all bolted to the concrete slabs that served as the floors of the open-sided shelters so we ate our lunch in the shade. The air temperature was in the mid-60’s, and there was a breeze, so we ate with our jackets on.

After lunch we headed west on FL-70 to the other side of Myakka City were we turned south on Singletary Road. About seven miles down we found the entrance to the Hermann’s Royal Lipizzaner Stallions and Spanish American Riding School complex. Hermann’s is the home of a group of Lipizzaner horses that tour North America. The original horses were part of the 500 Austrian Royal Lipizzaner horses rescued by General George Patton at the end of World War II. Gabby Hermann is the matriarch of the current operation and the original horses were brought to the USA by her father. The Lipizzaner horse was first bred in Austria in 1565 from Arabian and Andalusian stock. Six lines were produced and new Arabian and Andalusian stock have been included in the breeding since that time to avoid the negative effects of inbreeding.

Gabby Herman exercises one of the Royal Lipizzaner Stallions in training. Myakka City, FL.

Hermann’s has open rehearsals (performances) every Thursday and Friday at 3 PM and Saturday at 10 AM when they are not touring, weather permitting. These are not “dress rehearsals” as the houses and riders are not fully costumed the way they would be for a show while on tour. They do, however, put the horses through all of their maneuvers. The rehearsals take place in an open air arena connected to the nearby stables with a pair of gated fences. There are bleachers on the two long sides of the arena and visitors also bring lawn chairs and set them up on three sides of the arena. We arrived around 2:15 PM and there were already people there. Admission was a $5 “donation” per person, but it was not optional. It was well worth the price, however, and we made an extra contribution at the end of the show.

We secured good seats in the last row of the one of the bleachers at the top of the stairs with our backs to the sun. That allowed us an unobstructed view for photography with light from a good direction. It was a good thing we got there early. Six fully-loaded tour buses showed up after we got there along with lots of passenger cars. The bleachers were packed and the lawn chairs were at least two deep around the fence. After the show we walked over to see the 17 day old colt and walk through the stables. I took photos and also snapped a few shots of the tour buses after chatting with the driver of a 2016 Prevost H3-45 with a beautiful deep purple paint scheme. I would sure like to have one of those to convert.

Five stallions work in formation at Hermann’s Royal Lipizzaner Stallions and Spanish American Riding School. Myakka City, FL.

When we were done at Hermann’s we drove back to Arcadia and stopped at Walgreens before returning to Big Tree Carefree RV Resort. We spent a little time at Mara’s motorhome so she could walk Linda through the various cat and RV chores that needed to be taken care off during the next week. With that done we stopped at the mail room. We had a slip in our mail slot that there was a package for us in the office but it was after 5 PM and the office was closed. We figured it was the shipment of Nutpods vegan coffee creamer but we would not be able to pick it up until Monday as we would not be around during office hours on Saturday and the office is closed on Sundays.

For dinner Linda made lentil potato burritos using various leftover ingredients that we wanted/needed to use up. I opened the bottle of Barefoot Moscato wine, using the cork puller that Mara gave us the other night, and we had some for dessert. We were both tired so we watched some TV, including the first of three episodes of a new Masterpiece Mystery series named Silk about barristers in England. We did not watch the second episode as we had to be up early in the morning and it was going to end too late.

2016/02/27 (S) Port Miami

We were up at 6:30 AM and left at 7 AM for Dunkin Donuts where we got something to eat and a couple of large half-caffe coffees. As planned, we were back at Mara’s motorhome at 7:30 AM. By 7:45 we had Michael, Mara, and their luggage onboard and were on our way to the cruise ship terminals at the Port of Miami some three plus hours distant.

The GPS wanted us to go south on FL-31 but we had already decided we would take FL-70 east to US-27 and then take that south/southeast as far as I-75. We stopped at a Marathon station in South Bay to use the restrooms and let Mara and Michael get some coffee. We headed east on I-75 to its end point at MM 0 and then followed whatever roads the GPS told us to use to get to Port Miami. When we were almost to the Port we deviated from the GPS and took the tunnel under the water to get to the cruise ship terminals rather than exit the highway and use the bridge. There was some temporary confusion, and minor tension, surrounding this but soon enough we ended up at Terminal F where the MSC Divina was docked.

Traffic was heavy and chaotic, but we found a spot at the curb and got them unloaded. A quick handshake and a hug and we were on our way. I never cease to be appalled at the incredibly pour traffic engineering we encounter at major transportation terminals. We did get a stunning view of the skyscrapers that dominate the downtown Miami skyline, but after a bit of driving around we managed to escape the island via the bridge and I was glad to be clear of the area.

Linda had researched vegan friendly eateries last night and selected one called The Kitchen. It was near Miami International Airport, not too far from Port Miami, and basically in the direction we needed to travel to return to Arcadia. She put the address in the GPS and we enjoyed a slow, late Saturday morning, drive through downtown Miami. We arrived around 11:30 and there were only a couple of other diners there. As is often the case, it was a slightly funky little place, but it had an entirely vegan menu with lots of interesting options.

The Kitchen is, in fact, the prep facility for a chain of local eateries, and plenty of other customers showed up while we were there. We had the tacos, which included plantains, and the nachos. The tacos were good, especially the plantains, but the nachos were outstanding. Both were made with vegan chorizo sausage. The nachos had a base of blue corn chips with beans, tomatoes, salsa, and cashew cream. It was also a big serving. For dessert we each had a coconut date ball and a gobi berry chocolate brownie. Yum. The Kitchen was a bit pricey but most of the ingredients were organic and the food was fresh and very tasty so we felt it was good value for the money.

We left at 12:30 PM and I turned the wrong way leaving the parking lot. It turned out we were on US-27 headed north so we stayed with that choice. The GPS wanted to put us on the Interstate/Tollroads but we knew that eventually it would put us back on US-27. There was a lot of traffic and frequent traffic signals, but we eventually got clear of the developed urban area. Not too far out we stopped at a roadside park with an airboat operation and switched drivers. Linda told me later that I napped for about an hour but my experience of the situation was that I nodded off and woke up repeatedly because of neck discomfort.

We got back to our RV resort around 3:45 PM and stopped at the mail room on the way in where I retrieved a box of magazines from BCM. The 3 PM Mardi Gras parade had just ended but some of the decorated golf carts and masked participants were still hanging around the activity building. I made a mental note that the Mardi Gras dinner started at 7:30 PM and we returned to our rig.

We turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi and got our local network online. I opened the box of magazines to see what was inside and e-mailed Gary to let him know what I received. Linda needed to attend to Mara’s cats, Maui and Sabra, and we both had several updates pending on our iPads and smartphones. We packed up the iPads and walked to the activity building where I set up our technology in the library while Linda went on to Mara’s Bounder to tend to her cats.

I got both iPads and both smartphones connected to the Internet via the resort Wi-Fi system, which can only be picked up at/near the activity building (which includes the office, lanai, library, dining room/kitchen, card room, and laundry room). The best reception is outside in front of the building, as the antenna is on the peak of the roof ridge at the front gable, but the reception in the lanai and library is very usable. There was one other person there using the Wi-Fi but she left shortly after I arrived.

The updates for our iPads took 500 MB and the smartphone updates took at least another 250 MB, so it was at least a 0.75 GB update session. Our 12 GB monthly Verizon data plan works out to about 0.4 GB per day, on average, so we are trying to do our updates using the park Wi-Fi and save our data plan for web searches, document/photo uploads/downloads, and other work we want and/or need to do from our motorcoach.

While I was updating our devices Linda got a text message from Mara and I was able to watch the latest OK Go video and play a few games. Kate sent me the link a week ago and I was waiting for a chance to use the resort Wi-Fi when there were few, if any, other users. I also downloaded the latest issue of The Gypsy Journal digital edition.

When I was done I packed up and walked over to Mara’s rig. Linda exchanged text messages with Mara. She and Michael are on the Holistic Holiday at Sea cruise for the first time. They had finished the opening session with Jessica Porter and Neal Barnhard, M.D. and enjoyed it very much. They had just sat down to dinner and we’re excited about that too. We enjoyed their enthusiasm and recalled what it was like for us the first time we went on this cruise. Linda packed up a few things to bring back to our coach. Mara made Broccoli salad last night and there was a lot left over that she wanted us to eat.

It cooled off quickly after the sun set and the overnight low was forecast to be 42 degrees F. We closed up the coach and then had some of Mara’s broccoli salad along with vegan Italian “sausage” for dinner. We finished the Barefoot Moscato wine, had a few grapes for dessert, and settled in to watch some TV programs on the local PBS channels before going to bed. We had spent 7 hours driving/riding in the car today and we were tired.

2016/02/28 (N) Cat Care

It was cool in the coach this morning and I stayed in bed, under the covers, with the electric heating pad on, until after 7:30 AM. The cats were persistent, however, and I finally got up and took care of their needs. I turned on the Aqua-Hot diesel burner and the zone control thermostats for the bathroom and the kitchen/living area and the electric toe-kick heater for the front of the bus. Linda got up at 8 AM as I was making coffee.

We had granola for breakfast, after which Linda packed up her laptop computer and gathered up papers related to work she needed to do. She took the car and drove to Mara’s motorhome to tend to the cats and then work there. She did not need to be online and figured the cats would appreciate the company, or at least get more accepting her presence and attention if she spent some quiet, extended time there. I stayed at our rig to catch up on draft blog posts and attend to our cats.

Last week I downloaded the free version of an app called “OfficeSuite (Free) Mobile + PDF” and have been using it to write the drafts of my recent blog posts. It works at least as well as the native iPad Notes app, better in my opinion (so far), and creates a native docx format Word document. It also works with various cloud services. Hypothetically that should save me the steps of e-mailing it to myself, selecting/copying the text from the e-mail, pasting it into a blank Word doc, and then cleaning up all of the junk caused by the Note app, which is considerable (numerous calendar hyperlinks). I say hypothetically because I have not yet set up or tested the cloud sync feature. That was on my “to do” list for today.

Around 11:30 AM it was getting warm in the coach under mostly sunny skies. I opened windows and roof vents and then put out all of the awnings. I continued working on my blog posts from the last four days and was finally ready to upload one of them via a cloud service. We have a Dropbox account but we also have OneDrive accounts as part of the Windows 10 OS on our notebook computers. I don’t normally use OneDrive but I thought this would be a good opportunity to try it.

I set up the credentials to allow the app to connect to the OneDrive account attached to my OS login. I then tried to move or copy the Word docx file for Wednesday’s blog post from “current files” to the OneDrive under Network locations but the OfficeSuites app would not give me the OneDrive account as an option. I checked the Help screens for information to assist me but could not find anything pertaining to this specific problem. The app has Pro and Premium upgrades available ($ and $$) but the feature chart indicated that interfacing to all five of the different cloud services was included in the Free version. Rather than waste time on this I called David Aungier to let him know there was an updated version of his featured bus article in a folder in my Dropbox and then kept working on draft blog posts.

At 1 PM I was getting ready to walk over to Mara’s rig to get the shower supplies from Linda when she returned in the car. We have been able to avoid removing the cats’ litter box from our shower by using the showers at the building by the swimming pool. That also keeps the shower water out of our grey water tank, allowing us to go more days between dumps. I got my towel and the soap from Linda and walked over to the shower house.

When I got back from my shower I trimmed my beard and shaved. It had probably been at least a month since my last beard trim and I was starting to look a bit scruffy. All cleaned up and feeling refreshed I dealt with a couple of e-mails and then returned to the issue of getting the OfficeSuites app to sync with one of my cloud services. It appeared that Dropbox might be the best choice so I established the connection to that account. Voilà! I was finally able to copy a local Word file to the folder I had previously set up in my Dropbox for blog post documents.

I proceeded to finish each post in turn and copied it to the Dropbox folder which immediately uploaded it to the cloud server. I checked my ASUS notebook computer to make sure the document had made it to the local hard drive. It had, which meant I could move it to where I keep the draft posts and start editing it directly. This was a big deal for me as I expect it to streamline the blogging process.

As I was working on all of this I realized that I had told Gary at BCM that I would review and comment on an article he had received from Lloyd DeGerald and would try to get it back to him by Sunday evening. Lloyd is a highly experienced, factory-trained, Webasto / Aqua-Hot service and repair technician and has worked on our Aqua-Hot in the past. His article was basically a terse service procedure consisting of a numbered list of steps. There were some things that I was not clear about so I added comments and highlighted them in yellow. I got the document e-mailed back to Gary, with answers to several questions he had asked, just as Linda was putting dinner on the table.

Dinner was an improvised dish of red beans and rice with onions, garlic, tomatoes, turmeric, and kale. I added a little extra Tabasco hot sauce to mine and it was a very good dish. After dinner Linda did the dishes and then we walked over to Mara’s motorhome, by way of the garbage trailer, to tend to the evening cat and rig chores. Maui stayed out long enough to get up on the hassock and show some interest in me. I let her smell my hand but when I tried to pet her head she swatted at me. Too much, too soon. She played with a cat toy that Linda shook around, ate her dinner, and disappeared into the bedroom. Sabra stayed out the whole time we were there, ate her dinner, and chased feathers that Linda moved around.

We walked back to our rig before 8 PM and watched a special about the Manners of Downton Abby on PBS. The overnight low was forecast at 54 degrees F so we closed the roof vents but did not close the coach windows all the way before turning in for the night.

2016/02/29 (M) Bonus Day

Last night was the Academy Awards but we did not watch the show. We had not seen any of the films and were more interested in a pair of specials on the Manners of Downton Abby about the role of the show’s historical consultant whose job it has been to make sure all of the actors were as authentic as possible in their speech and mannerisms.

We got up this morning between 7:30 and 8 AM, which seems to have become our norm of late unless we have an outing planned that requires an early departure. We had our usual coffee followed by granola with blueberries for breakfast. We doodled on our iPads for a bit and I finished my blog post for yesterday and uploaded it to our Dropbox. Linda noted that today was February 29th. In a month that is usually two to three days shorter than all the others it was like having a bonus day. I also enjoy the relative rarity of the event.

At 9:30 AM Linda packed up her computer and papers and walked over to Mara’s motorhome to tend to the cats. She planned to stay and work a while and was expecting a call from Dave at the bakery around 10 AM. I finished my coffee, got dressed, and settled in to work at my computer.

When Linda returned we walked to Walmart for a few grocery items before it got too warm outside. When we got back and had the groceries put away, we reconfigured the back of the car. After Mara’s arrival, but prior Michael’s arrival, we had reconfigured the back of the car. We had removed one of the rear seats and put the other rear seat down so Mara could go places with us. Most of the stuff went back in the car but in order to store the removed seat in the front bay of the bus and make room for some of the stuff from the car we had moved the air compressor and two of the four chassis stands to the passenger side engine bay.

Just prior to Michael’s arrival we reconfigured the back of the car again as we now needed four seats. To keep our stuff out of sight and protect it from the weather we bought a small tent, set it up behind the bus, and put everything in it.

When Mara and Michael return from the Holistic Holiday at Sea Cruise on Saturday Michael is going to rent a car to and get them back to Arcadia from Miami. He will be sticking around for another four weeks and they will need a car for most of that time as we are leaving Big Tree Carefree RV Resort a week from today. So today we put both rear seats back up, emptied out the storage tent, reloaded the car, and repacked the front bay of the bus.

As long as we were working outside I stripped out the bad silicone caulk between the new passenger side lower windshield and the gasket. I found a different product in one of our parts and supplies tubs and got it out. I did not apply it, however, as I wanted to let the rubber gasket relax and hopefully reform to the glass. In retrospect, it is painfully obvious that the Safelite installers did not know what they were doing.

It was a sunny day and by early afternoon the air temperature was 80 degrees F, so we put on our swimming suits and walked over to the pool. We stopped at the office to retrieve our package of Nutpods non-dairy coffee creamer and put it in the mail room until later. After a nice soak and vitamin D treatment we showered, changed into dry clothes, and walked back to the mail room to retrieve our Nutpods package and other mail. Being the last day of the month our electric bill was there along with an invitation to the Michigan reunion lunch scheduled for July 14 in Concord, Michigan. The Resort does have a strong sense of community, and people take that back to their home states/provinces when the leave.

I had a text message from Kerry Fear requesting payment for snowplowing services for February. Linda wrote a check and got it ready to mail.

For dinner Linda made stuffed poblano peppers and pan-grilled them. (We do not travel with an outdoor grill, either propane or charcoal.) The stuffing was rice, black beans, tomatoes, scallions, vegan sour cream, cumin seeds, and Daiya vegan cheddar cheese. So good. We had some Barefoot Riesling wine after dinner and fresh mixed fruit salad (bananas, strawberries, and blueberries) for dessert. I really like the way we eat.

After dinner we watched our usual PBS news programs followed by our usual CBS entertainment shows. I stayed up to watch Charlie Rose’s interview with Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Inc. I was getting ready for bed and turned on the fresh water pump. It normally runs briefly to build up pressure and then shuts off. This time it just kept running. That meant one of two things: either there was an opening in the system (faucet or leak), or the demand pressure sensor was not working. I shut it off, put my sweats and Crocs back on, grabbed a flashlight, and went outside to investigate.

It was almost midnight but there was plenty of light from the resort street lamps. I checked both sides of the utility bay and did not see any sign of a leak other than the small drip from the fill valve packing nut. I turned on the shore water supply and opened the valves to allow it to flow through the softener to the coach. Once the lines and softener were filled and pressurized I did not hear any further water flow, so I was somewhat confident that we did not have a leak in the system. I left the outside water turned on so we could flush the toilet and run water to wash our hands.

Back inside I wrote a sticky note not to turn on the water pump and stuck it on the toilet seat. Linda woke up right after I finally got to bed so I was able to tell her in person, but the note was still a good reminder. I watched Tavis Smiley’s interview with Tom Waters of Pink Floyd and then went to sleep. February 2016 had been a very busy, but very satisfying month for us.

2016/01/16 (S) – 2016/01/20 (W) A Capitol Experience

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2016/01/16 (S) Fort Myers Beach Marilyn

I got up at 8:15 AM, cleaned the cats’ food bowls, fed them, and then made coffee. I replied to an e-mail from BCM publisher Gary Hatt regarding which article he planned to run in March and which one in April. I then downloaded my photos from the last two days from my camera to my computer. Linda slept in and did not get up until 9:10. We both felt like we have had too much less-than-ideal food to eat the last few days and split a grapefruit for breakfast.

Our plans for the day revolved around meeting Linda’s sister, Sr. Marilyn, at noon at the Diamond Head Beach Resort and Spa in Fort Myers Beach where she is attending an educational conference and taking CPE courses to maintain her counseling license. The conference was being put on by her religious community, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Corondelet. Marilyn told us the resort parking was outside but the entrance had a relatively low bar over it so I took the ham radio antenna off of our car before we left at 10 AM for the drive to Fort Myers Beach.

Two hours should have been plenty of time to get there but we finally discovered the downstate traffic congestion that many fellow RV/snowbirds have mentioned to us. The trip down FL-31 south was an easy, pleasant drive through citrus groves and ranches. It ended at FL-80 where we headed west towards Ft. Myers. We had the GPS set for “shortest route” so it took us through town instead of putting us on I-75 but it was an interesting route and we got to see different parts of the city including downtown and McGreger Avenue, which is lined with large Royal Palms. It was also the location of the adjacent Henry Ford and Thomas Edison estates. In spite of the traffic we will probably venture back there at some point to see the estates.

Apparently everyone was headed to Ft. Myers Beach today as the last few miles to get onto the island took one hour. It was the worst traffic I seen in years. There is only one bridge connecting the north end of the island to the mainland and there are two lanes of traffic that funnel down into one. The lanes have a divider between them and are controlled by separate stop lights. We had never seen anything like it before. Linda texted Marilyn with a revised ETA.

Marilyn and Linda at the Diamond Head Beach Resort & Spa, Ft. Myers Beach, FL.

When we finally pulled into the parking lot of the hotel at 12:30 PM Marilyn was waiting for us. We paid for parking ($10), parked the car, and went directly to Cabana’s, the hotel’s beachfront bar/restaurant. Linda had a margarita and I had a frozen strawberry daiquiri. What can I say? I like fruit drinks.

For lunch Linda and I both had veggie burgers and Marilyn had the Portobello mushroom burger. The veggie burgers were mushy, as they often are, but the French fries were coated with something before being fried, probably flour, and were excellent. After we were done eating Linda and Marilyn walked out onto the beach where Linda took her shoes off and walked in the ocean. Our $10 parking fee got us a voucher for the same amount which we applied to the lunch bill.

We spent the next 90 minutes strolling a portion of Estero Boulevard, the main/only street that runs the length of the island. I took a few photographs and we wandered into a few shops but did not buy anything. We also walked out on the pier where we got a close up look at two Pelicans and a great view of the very crowded beach to the north and south. This place definitely had that upscale but slightly funky, seaside resort, winter getaway vibe that is one of the reasons people flock to such places.

The Beach at Ft. Myers Beach, FL.

We were back at the hotel at 3:30 PM. Marilyn had something to do at 4 PM so we took our leave and got back into the bumper-to-bumper traffic that was now moving slowly towards the bridge and off the island. But at least it was moving, and once we cleared the bridge traffic moved along much better. I changed the GPS to “fastest route” and it took us over different roads to I-75 and then north five miles to FL-80 where we retraced our earlier route (in reverse) to get back to Arcadia. At the intersection of FL-80 and FL-31 we stopped at a Publix supermarket and bought a couple of bottled drinks.

It had been a long day and I did not feel like working at my computer. We tuned in a program on PBS at 8 PM and doodled on our iPads. Linda was checking the weather and the forecast for overnight was starting to look ominous. When the program ended at 9:30 we went outside to retract our awnings and put our folding chairs and table away. We stowed the big patio awning last and it started to rain lightly as we completed that task. We left the TV on and watched the weather situation closely. I finally went to bed at midnight knowing that we would not got a full, restful night’s sleep.

2016/01/17 (N) Bad Weather

The cold front that swept across the Florida peninsula overnight was draped off of an intense low pressure system that moved from Texas along the Gulf coast shore into the Florida panhandle and eventually along the Florida/Georgia border and off into the Atlantic. The front, combined with a low level jetstream, raced across the area at 50 to 60 miles per hour triggering numerous thunderstorms and spawning a few tornados.

We had followed the development of the system closely before going to bed at midnight as both channel 11 and 20 had continuous storm team coverage. At 4:30 AM we received severe weather alerts on our phones. Linda’s phone has a loud klaxon warning sound associated with these alerts and we were instantly wide awake. We put on our sweats, so that we would at least be dressed in case we had to leave the rig, and turned on the TV.

Arcadia, including our Big Tree Carefree RV Resort, was in the northeast corner of a tornado warning box. It had started raining, off and on, well before midnight but as the storm front moved into our area thunderstorms came with it, one with Doppler radar indicated rotation. There was lightning and thunder, of course, and the rain became steady and very heavy. The wind really picked up but never became tornadic. We stayed up until 5:30 AM by which time the main storm front had passed. There were a few lingering cells behind it but the meteorologists gave the “all clear” for our area and we went back to bed.

The temperature was in the upper 60’s when we got up at 8:30 AM, rose slightly to about 70, and then dropped throughout the day as the front that triggered the storms raced off into the Atlantic opening the door for much colder air to flow in behind it, courtesy of the Polar Vortex that was plunging most of the Eastern U. S. and Canada into a deep freeze.

The rest of the day was uneventful with pleasant weather. My focus was selecting and processing photos from the recent Arcadia Rally 2016 for the bonus content section of the digital edition of the March 2016 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine. Linda worked on her counted cross-stitch project and went for several walks. I joined her for brief strolls after lunch and dinner. For dinner Linda made vegan chili from scratch. It was very good. We watched Downton Abbey on PBS after which Linda went to bed while I continued to work on photos.

2016/01/18 (M) The Capitol Steps

The air mass behind the cold front that swept out of the Gulf of Mexico, across Florida, and out into the Atlantic Ocean yesterday was noticeably colder and drier than normal for southwest Florida. The temperature overnight dropped to 47 degrees, so we slept well and woke to clear skies and crisp air.

Our day revolved around the 3 PM performance at the Venice Theater of the political comedy musical group The Capitol Steps. Venice is over an hour’s drive from Arcadia so we arranged with Steve and Karen Limkemann to make a day of it that would include lunch, photography at the Venice Rookery, the show, and dinner.

We skipped breakfast, showered, and dressed up enough to be presentable for the theater. We gathered up several layers of outerwear and I put the 100-300 mm zoom lens on the Sony a99v. We left at 10 AM and stopped at the Shell station in Arcadia to top up the fuel tank. Dunkin Donuts was right next door so we each got coffee and a blueberry bagel to split. I got a frozen coffee drink made with almond milk and mocha. I had never had one of these from DD and it was pretty good.

I had the GPS set for fastest route. It took us out FL-72 towards Myakka State Park, which I expected, but then took us south on County Road 769. Along the way we saw the usual assortment of citrus groves, ranches, and birds but also saw a Bald Eagle. CR-769 turned southwest and eventually intersected I-75 where we headed “north.” Although it was another 25 miles to the Nokomis exit, I-75 ran mostly east-west for this stretch so this route actually made a lot of sense. It was only a couple of miles from the exit to Steve and Karen’s place and there was a Publix supermarket along the way, so we stopped and bought them a bag of M&M’s to replace ones we had eaten on our last visit and were going to eat on this one. Not vegan, but a small indulgence.

We got to Steve and Karen’s place at Bay Lake Estates at 11:30 AM. At 11:45 we walked to Cafe Evergreen about 1.5 miles away, an easy walk on a sidewalk without having to cross any major streets. Cafe Evergreen is a small, all organic, restaurant with a good selection of vegetarian and vegan dishes. We both had salads for lunch and they were very good. Everything we have had to eat here has been excellent and the service has always been on a par with the quality of the food.

We walked back to Steve and Karen’s and visited until we left at 2:15 PM to drive to the Venice Theatre. Parking can be a problem in downtown Venice but Steve found a parking space on a side street near the theatre. We have enjoyed The Capitol Steps every time we have seen them and this show was as good as any. Laughter really is the best medicine.

Herons and Egrets at the Venice Rookery, Venice, FL.

The show was done around 5 PM. By the time we made our way to the restrooms and out of the theatre it was 5:15 PM. Steve drove us to the Venice Rookery where we bundled up against the chilly air and Steve and I got out our cameras. The sky was clear except for some thin clouds to the west and I took quite a few photos in the quickly changing light. Sunset was just before 6 PM and we stayed until 6:30 to watch bats emerge from their purpose-built houses atop tall, slender poles. We headed back to Cafe Evergreen where we had 7 PM dinner reservations.

Linda, Karen, and I drank lots of coffee, which was smooth and warm. Linda and I had stir-fried kelp noodles with vegetables served over a bed of couscous with an Asian style sauce. It was delicious and had a wonderful texture. We each had a vegan indulgence for dessert; cranberry pecan for me and chocolate peanut butter for Linda. It was a very satisfying meal.

We got back to Steve and Karen’s at 8:45 PM and decided to head for home. We reversed our earlier route and were back at our coach before 10 PM. We watched NCIS Los Angeles and went to bed, tired from a long, but very satisfying day.

2016/01/19 (T) VZW Data Usage

We left the windows open about inch yesterday, along with the kitchen ceiling vent (but no fan), so it would not get too warm inside from the sun while we were away. It was cool inside when we got home at 10 PM and we closed up the coach in anticipation of the outside temperature overnight dropping into the low 40’s. Last night was another cool one, literally.

Herons and Cranes at the Venice Rookery, Venice, FL.

There are only a few hot dishes that Linda makes for breakfast and most of them are a lot of work. The one dish that is relatively easy is oatmeal, and it is a great choice for a cool/cold morning. It stays warm long enough to eat it before it gets cold, is a hearty (and heart healthy) dish, and stays with you for quite a while.

Linda stopped at the resort office yesterday to see if they could cut the grass around our site while we were gone for the day. The awnings were up and our chairs/table were still put away from the weekend storms, so the site was clear. The office said they probably would not get to it on Monday as the ground and grass was too wet but when we finally left the coach today we saw that they had, in fact, mowed the area.

We have been on the go more than sitting still for the last week and needed some time at the coach to do things. I needed to wrap up work on two articles for BCM and settled in today to do that. Today (the 19th of the month) is also the end of our Verizon Wireless billing cycle. We do not have park Wi-Fi at our site in Big Tree Carefree RV Resort and have been leaving our Verizon Mi-Fi on continuously. We managed to use almost all of our 11 GB of data during the current billing cycle so I wanted to spend today working on photos for the articles and defer uploading them until tomorrow.

Before getting back into my BCM rally article I copied all of the photos that I took yesterday at the Venice Rookery from the camera to my computer. Linda tries to create a new postcard for Madeline every Tuesday and wanted a picture from the Rookery. My best photos were of individual birds or small groups but she wanted something that would give Madeline a better visual understanding of just what a rookery is.

I finally selected a photo with lots of different birds in lots of different positions, including some in flight. Linda logged into the PhotoCardApp on her iPad and determined that the post cards the company creates and mails out are 8.25″ by 5.5″, which is a 3:2 aspect ratio. That is also the native format of my Sony SLT-a99v. Using Faststone Image Viewer (FIV) I was able to resize the image to the exact size of the postcard. I then e-mailed it to Linda’s Gmail account which, in spite of our local area network in the bus, is the easy (only?) way to get it from my computer to her iPad.

While I was processing the image Linda looked up the term “rookery” and discovered that its meaning is more specific than we thought. While it is, indeed, a place where birds roost and build nests (typically in trees) it is actually specific to rooks, which are a crow-like bird. It has, however, become the generic term for a place where one or more species of bird roost, breed, nest, and raise their young.

Besides the main post card photo the PhotoCardApp allows you to create your own stamps. Creating a stamp costs two credits but once it’s created you can use it over and over for just the cost of the postage. (You get 30 credits for $25 and each card costs 2 credits to create, produce, and mail.) We do not have a lot of photos of the two of us together as one of us (usually me) is typically behind the camera. We have a nice head and shoulders photo that our son took that I use at the end of my BCM articles. I e-mailed that to Linda and she used it to create a personalized stamp. I found a second photo of us that someone took at the 2014 GLAMARAMA Rally so I processed it and e-mailed it to Linda to use for a second stamp if she wanted. We are both wearing our bright yellow GLCC dress shirts, so it is very RV specific.

We tried Facetiming with Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline Sunday evening but the connection was too slow so we talked on the phone. They were in Washington D. C. for a conference related to Shawna’s research and Madeline got to visit the Natural History Museum and see dinosaur skeletons. The PhotoCardApp also has a large collection of “stickers” that can be added to a post card, so Linda added an electronic dinosaur “sticker” to the one she was working on.

A Great Blue Heron at the Venice Rookery, Venice, FL.

The last couple of days there was some confusion between BCM owner/publisher Gary Hatt, the layout person (Jorge Escobar, in Columbia), and myself regarding which article they were running in the March 2016 issue. Gary cleared that up in favor of my article on the Arcadia Rally 2016. That, in turn, allowed me to move ahead with finishing that article today, which I finally did around dinner time. My only breaks were to eat lunch and go for short walks.

Linda worked on her counted cross-stitch project but took time out to go on several longer walks, including one to the local Winn-Dixie supermarket. She planned to make a bean soup for dinner and needed a few ingredients. The soup was based on a package of mixed beans and lentils she bought at a health food store in Frankenmuth, Michigan back in October. She added water, tomato sauce, garlic, onion, greens, chili powder, and turmeric. By the time we sat down to dinner the sun had set and the temperature was dropping so the hot soup was not only delicious but really hit the spot.

We walked over to the mail room after dinner. My new driver’s license had arrived. The registrations and tabs for the bus and car arrived a few days ago so as of now we are not expecting any more mail.

Back at the coach I turned on the electric toe-kick heaters and plugged in the Broan portable cube heater rather than run the Aqua-Hot. We put on our Tuesday evening TV programs but I was in a groove and turned my attention to selecting and processing photos to go with blog posts. I got through my images for November and December and the first few days of January by 11 PM when the last show ended and Linda headed off to bed.

We still had 1.5 GB of data left in our current billing cycle, which ended at midnight, although I was not sure in what time zone. I knew the data for my BCM Arcadia rally article was not more than 0.5 GB so I uploaded it before our data allocation reset. It’s expensive to exceed our allocation but there is also a “cost” associated with not using what we have paid for.

I turned the thermostats on the toe-kick heaters back and turned off the Broan cube heater. I turned on the electric heating pad on my side of the bed, set it to 4, and activated the pre-heat function. I finally got to bed around 12:30 AM and snuggled in under the blankets.

2016/01/20 (W) Cellular Options

I don’t know if the outside temperature got into the upper 30’s last night but even with the coach closed up the temperature inside dropped to 59 degrees F. Linda got up first this morning and turned up the thermostats on the electric toe-kick heaters. I got up a few minutes later and turned on the Aqua-Hot diesel burner and the three thermostats that control the zone pumps and fans on the heat exchangers in the house portion of the bus.

We had slept in a bit and were sitting around in our sweats while the coach warmed up when we realized at 7:55 that the Wednesday coffee was starting in five minutes. We did not feel like going over in our sweats or changing clothes so I made coffee in our coach like I do almost every morning. The problems (for us) with the Wednesday morning coffee, based on having been one time, is that there is no opportunity to socialize and it takes too long. It was well attended the one time we went so it apparently serves the needs of the resort management and most of the residents.

Linda used her iPad2 to check in on the world and I used mine to finish up my blog posts for the last few days. We eventually had granola with blueberries and bananas for breakfast, which is always a treat. Linda walked our kitchen trash over to the dumpster and then continued walking the park for her first walk of the day.

My original objective for today was to upload image and document files for my Arcadia Rally 2016 article to my BCM Dropbox folder, but I got that done before I went to bed last night. Although I have a lot work to do on several websites, including ours, I wanted to put the finishing touches on my featured bus article about Ronnie and Diann Mewbourn’s 1969 Model 07 Eagle bus conversion and move two technical articles from “proofreading” to “ready” status. Gary has not had Kathy proofread/edit any of them yet so that had to wait for another day. I also wanted to continue selecting/processing photos for my January blog posts but got distracted with system updates for my ASUS laptop computer.

I ran the CCleaner program and then ran the Windows 8.1 disk check utility. I ran it because MS Outlook keeps “encountering a problem and has to close” or stops responding. The check disk utility did not find any errors so I downloaded a new version of Defraggler and started it. I probably should have run it overnight as it ran all day and through the evening. I think I could have worked while it was running but I have always preferred to let disk defragmenters run without anything else tasking the system.

With my computer tied up and my blog post drafts up-to-date I had a little time on my hands. Linda is always up for another walk so we walked over to the CellularSales store, an Authorized Verizon Retailer located on an out lot of the Walmart shopping center. The shopping center is on the other side of Highway 70 so we used the crosswalk at the traffic signal for the shopping center entrance. This stoplight also serves the entrance to the 55+ community immediately to the east of our RV resort and is where we make our U-turn when headed east to head back west to the entrance to our resort.

The reason for our visit was that we became eligible for device upgrades back in April and wanted to check out what was available in smartphones and data plans. We were also looking for a new Mi-Fi device that Chris and Cherie (Technomadia) reported on in their Mobile Internet Aficionados (MIA) site. We usually work with Verizon corporate stores but there isn’t one in Arcadia. The store was large, spacious, very nice, and not busy so Toby was able to spend some relaxed time answering our questions.

The Mi-Fi device we wanted to see was the new Netgear AC791L but CellularSales did not have one and Toby was not familiar with it. They did not even have the Novatel 6620L and were still selling the Novatel 5510L which is what we have now and want to replace. We got our 5510L in June 2013 from a Verizon retailer in Gillette, Wyoming and our friends at the RV Mobile Internet Resource Center (MIA) consider it obsolete and no longer even report on it.

We also looked at new phones and learned that the Samsung Note 4 and Note 5, along with the Galaxy VI smartphone, do not have removable batteries. Toby viewed that as a negative and we agreed. The Galaxy V smartphone, which does have a removable battery, would still be an upgrade over our Galaxy III phones. It has a larger screen but not as large as the Note devices, which are almost too large to hold up to your ear. Toby also showed us the new LG phone which was very nice but again did not have a removable battery. It’s the newest competitor to the Samsung Galaxy S VI. We will do more research before deciding what, if anything, to do. The AC791L, in particular, appears to be available online without a contract and at a better price than in a retail outlet.

As long as we were on the other side of the highway we stopped at Walmart and bought a loaf of Italian bread to go with our soup for dinner. When we got back to our coach the disk defragmenter on my computer was still only part way through the disk and indicating the time remaining as “> 1 day.” The temperature outside was near perfect, not too warm or cool, so Linda got out one of our chairs and sat outside reading while I stayed inside and took a nap.

I got up a couple of hours later and wiled away what was left of the afternoon. We have been keeping an eye on our male cat, Jasper, who has lost little patches of fur from several spots on his back, and finally decided that we should get him in to see a vet. The closest one is on FL-31 less than a mile from our RV resort and is the one that folks in the resort recommended. Linda was looking for reviews online but could not find the clinic so she drove over in the car to get the name and phone number. It turned out that she had found the veterinarian’s name but he used to work out of his house at a different location. We plan to drive out towards Lake Okeechobee tomorrow but will call the veterinary clinic first and make an appointment for Friday.

The Venice Rookery at sunset, Venice, FL.

As the sun sank in the western sky the temperature cooled off quickly and we closed up the coach. Linda heated the rest of the soup she made yesterday and we sat down at 7 PM to a simple but delicious dinner of soup and bread. We turned on the TV after dinner, watched Jeopardy, and then switched to PBS to watch the Wednesday night nature/science programs.

The last 10 days have been very busy and somewhat intense for us. We had been to the woodcarvers expo in Punta Gorda, visited with Steve and Karen, met Ron and Mary at Myakka State Park, visited with them again at our RV resort, attended the Tampa RV Supershow in conjunction with strong weather, visited Marilyn in Fort Myers Beach, dealt with severe weather again, followed by a long day of working on photos for my BCM rally article, had a long day visiting Steve and Karen in Nokomis again and seeing The Capitol Steps at the Venice Theatre, eating at Cafe Evergreen twice and then visiting the Venice Rookery to take photographs before returning home, had finally had another really long day yesterday selecting/processing photos and placing them in my BCM article. Looking back at all of that we were probably due for an easy, low activity day, and one of the nice things about retirement is that we can usually have “do nothing” days whenever we want.

When I checked my computer it was still showing 17 hours to complete the defragmentation so I went to bed.

2016/01/06 (W) -10 (N) Websites, Woodwork, and Wildlife

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2016/01/06 (W) Filtered Article

The temperature dropped into the mid-50s last night and made for excellent sleeping conditions. Never-the-less, Linda was up at 6:30 AM and read quietly until I got up at 8 AM. I used the last of the current batch of coffee beans yesterday so I opened four fresh bags this morning, a half-pound each of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe (regular and decaffeinated), Seattle Blend (regular), and Sweet Dreams Blend (decaffeinated). Teeko’s Coffee and Teas back home roasted and vacuum packed the beans for us in 1/2 pound amounts so they would stay fresh through the winter. I made a full pot of the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe (half-caffe) and Linda prepared toast and grapefruit for breakfast. One of the things we bought yesterday at Joshua Citrus was orange marmalade so Linda opened it and we had some on our toast. It was not as bitter as most orange marmalades I have tried and I liked it.

Charlotte Harbor Event and Conference Center, Punta Gorda, FL.

Tonight was the weekly Powerball lottery drawing and the amount was approaching 400 million dollars so we agreed that we should buy a few tickets. Since there was a possibility of rain this afternoon Linda wanted to get her walk in early so she walked to the Winn-Dixie supermarket in search of lottery tickets. The Winn- Dixie is in a shopping plaza with other stores on the same (south) side of US-70 as the Carefree Big Tree RV Resort about 1/2 mile west towards downtown. There is a very wide sidewalk along the south side of US-70 that is used by walkers, bicyclists, and folks in golf carts, from our resort and the much larger adult community just to our east, to get to the shopping area just west of us. The Walmart is immediately across the street, with a stop light and crosswalk, but golf carts cannot go there as far as we know.

I’ve needed to change the water filter under the kitchen sink for a while so today I finally did. I installed the GX1S01R GE Drinking Water Filter housing in fall 2014 to replace the Everpure unit that gave me no end of difficulty whenever I tried to change the filter cartridge. It turned out that neither of our two filter wrenches fit the housing and I had to get my large slip pliers out to get it off. The inside of the housing was dirty so I boiled some water in the microwave, added a small amount of dish soap, cleaned it thoroughly, and rinsed it out.

The GE drinking water filter element is a Class I media (0.5 – 1.0 micron) that reduces or removes more things than most filters, including: MTBE, VOCs, Chlorine (taste and odor), Lead, Cysts, Mercury, Turbidity, and Asbestos. The capacity of the element is listed as 500 gallons* (*depending on water conditions) and the useful life is listed as 6 months. The filter feeds a special drinking water faucet in the kitchen sink that is only used for cleaning food and cooking so I doubt that we run anywhere near 500 gallons of water through it in 6 months, or even in a year. Given how we use our motorcoach, and the cost of the filter elements, I will probably change the filter once a year. To that end I wrote the date on a piece of Frog Tape and attached it to the housing.

I continued to focus on my article for BCM about Ronnie and Diann Mewbourns’ 1969 Model 07 Eagle bus conversion. I thought I might get it done by lunch but I did not get back to work on it until after 11 AM. I worked on it most of the rest of the day and into the evening and still did not get it finished. By 9 PM I had the photos selected and processed but deferred integrating them into the article until tomorrow. I will then upload it to our Dropbox and e-mail Diann that it is available for review.

Lunch was left over black-eyed peas, fresh fruit, and hummus with sourdough pretzels for dipping. Dinner was salad and pan-seared tofu with caramelized onions in BBQ sauce with fresh strawberries for dessert. We went for walks after both meals and Linda got in 10 miles today.

If we watch TV at all on Wednesday evening it is usually PBS and so it was tonight. Nature was on cross-species animal bonding, Nova was on an archeological investigation of WWI trenches and tunnels, followed by a two hour program on the CERN LHC (Large Hadron Collider) and the search for the Higgs bozon particle and other, possibly more elementary ones. It was after midnight by the time I got bed.

2016/01/07 (R) Jam Session

We were both awake around 7 AM. Linda read for a while and got up around 7:45. I drifted back to a light sleep and finally got up at 8:15. By the time the coffee was ready to drink it was 8:45 AM. Linda washed off some blueberries and poured our cups of Joe.

Linda bought 10 tickets yesterday for the Powerball lottery. Our $20 investment returned $4. The good news was that no one won and Saturday’s drawing will likely approach $700 million. I know the odds of winning are astronomically small, but any non-zero chance to win even a piece of that pot seems worth another $20. After all, you can’t win if you don’t play.

Linda by the signposts at the Charlotte Harbor Sheraton Four Points Hotel, Punta Gorda, FL.

We had granola with fresh berries for breakfast. I then e-mailed the Geeks on Tour to see if we could arrange a meetup. That’s the name of Jim and Chris Guld’s business and they are currently just up the road at the Thousand Trails Preserve (RV park) in Zolfo Springs. They are full-time RVers who do seminars and in-depth training classes on a wide range of technologies at RV rallies, parks, and other venues. You can find them here: http://www.geeksontour.com. They also do a weekly podcast and have an extensive catalog of video tutorials.

I spent the morning and early afternoon finishing my BCM article on Ronnie and Diann Mewbourn’s 1969 Model 07 Eagle bus conversion. I uploaded it to a folder in our Dropbox for them e-mailed them the link and some instructions. I also sent the link to BCM publisher Gary Hatt.

We had hummus with sourdough pretzel nibblers and fresh fruit for lunch around 1 PM. Our plan for the afternoon was to go watch a practice session of the Royal Lipizzan Stallions. The U.S.-based stallions’ facility is just up the road in Myakka City and they have practice sessions open to the public at 3 PM on Thursdays and Fridays, and 10 AM on Saturdays. They ask (charge) a $5 donation per person. The facility has bleachers but you can bring your own chair. We had planned to go today because the forecast for this afternoon was pleasant.

We want to order some fresh citrus fruit from Joshua Citrus here in Arcadia and have it shipped to our children in Michigan. It will be much more economical for us to have it shipped to one place and Meghan agreed to receive it and distribute it. We were going to stop there on our way to see the Lipizzaners but at 1:15 PM it was still overcast. I wanted to take photographs so we decided not to go and will visit the facility another time.

With the change in our plans we took a long walk around the resort. I then had to figure out something else to do. I was tired and decided to take a nap. The sofa was not available as Linda was working on her counted cross-stitch project so I curled up on the bed next to Jasper (the cat) and dozed for a couple of hours.

For dinner Linda fixed a side of mixed grains, steamed some broccoli, and sautéed a package of Gardein Orange “Chicken.” The orange chicken is a soy-based dish and it is very tasty.

After dinner we turned on the TV and I worked on the bonus content photographs for my article on the recent Arcadia converted bus rally. Perhaps because of the distraction from the boob tube, was trying to clean up a slightly complicated situation I had created for myself, was just not in the humor, or some combination of the three, I found the work a bit tedious. I stuck with it long enough to get it better organized and then stopped at a somewhat logical point and watched TV.

2016/01/08 (F) Touring Geeks

There was rain in the forecast for overnight and I heard the first few drops before I went to bed just before midnight. The rains came in earnest sometime between 4 and 5 AM and it rained hard around 7 AM. I was awake at that point and decided to get up and check for leaks. Fortunately there was no sign of the leaks we had during the last rain event. I fed the cats, plugged in the charger for our Verizon Mi-Fi, and made the coffee.

Bruce by the signposts at the Charlotte Harbor Sheraton Four Points Hotel, Punta Gorda, FL.

After checking the user manual we determined that it is OK for the Mi-Fi to be plugged in and charging while it is turned on and operating. The issue with the device is that it really wants to be unplugged from the charger once the battery is fully charged and can overheat if left connected. Since we do not have a usable RV park Wi-Fi signal at our site it simplifies our online life if we can just leave the Mi-Fi on with the Wi-Fi Ranger connected to it. The Mi-Fi battery is very slow to charge, especially when the device is turned on, but it eventually reaches full charge. The battery will not even operate the device for 12 hours but it will operate long enough to get through the night. What I am still trying to figure out is when to plug it in during the evening so that it is fully charged just before we go to bed. That is a trial and process. Once I have it figured out I need to make a habit of plugging it in when I get up in the morning and again at the right time during the evening.

After a little more discussion I e-mailed Jim Guld to confirm plans for a visit and dinner this afternoon. We settled in with our coffee and iPads for a while and finally had breakfast at 9 AM. Linda had two frozen toaster waffles she wanted to use up so we had those with peanut butter. I also add a little apricot preserves on mine. We split one of the Ruby Red grapefruits we bought at Joshua Citrus the other day. Yum.

With company coming later today we took showers. While Linda was getting her shower I copied recent photos from the Sony SLT- a99v to my ASUS laptop. An updated version of the Play Memories Home software was available, so I downloaded and installed it. After I showered, shaved, and got dressed Linda cut my hair. We then cleaned the coach, putting away things that did not need to be out and sweeping/mopping the floor.

With the cleaning of ourselves and the coach completed, we went on an errand run. After dropping off a small bag of trash our first stop was the Winn-Dixie supermarket. We then drove to the Turner Agri-Civic Center to drop off recyclable plastic. We swung by El Pirata Mexican restaurant to check out the menu and then drove to Joshua Citrus Company. While I picked out some Sugarbelle oranges and Ruby Red grapefruit Linda ordered a three tray box of mixed citrus fruit that included Honeybelle tangelos, Meyer lemons, Navel oranges, and Ruby Red grapefruit. The box will be shipped to our daughter and she will divide up the fruit with our son. That arrangement allowed us to send more fruit at a lower cost than shipping to two addresses. Our final stop was at Walmart for a few food items we did not find at Winn-Dixie.

Back at our coach I spent some time updating the Participants Database for our FMCA Freethinkers chapter (FTH) website. I also spent some more time trying to recall just how I set up the WP-Members plugin for the SLAARC website so I can recreate it for the FTH website. I was not able to do that in the time I had available and I think that might be due, in part, to changes that have been made in newer versions of the plugin. I set up a WordPress User for Linda using the WP-Members registration form and it did not work the way I remembered it in the SLAARC website. Apparently I am going to have study the user manual in detail.

Christine Guld called at 2:30 PM to let me know that she and Jim were on their way to our resort. They arrived around 3 PM and we quickly settled into an easy conversation covering a wide range of topics. Jim and Chris are the “Geeks on Tour” and do technology training (edutainment) at RV rallies and other venues. They have seen and done a lot of things and are interesting, fun folks with whom to share time.

At 4:30 PM Jim drove us to dinner at Magnolia Seafood and Grill in downtown Arcadia. The restaurant was almost empty when we arrived and we got a nice corner table by the front picture windows. Today was Jim’s birthday and we enjoyed sharing it with him and Chris. We lingered over dinner for almost two hours and by the time we left people were waiting in the lobby for a table. I don’t like to wait for tables, but it’s usually a good sign when a restaurant is that popular. Everyone said their meal was excellent. Jim drove us back to our coach and dropped us off. There was a music jam back at the Thousand Trails Peace River Preserve in Zolfo Springs starting at 7 PM. They wanted to cap off their evening there and we certainly understood.

We walked over to the resort office and picked up our mail. My driver license renewal paperwork was there but nothing else. Back at our coach we turned on the TV. PBS/Create was airing the Las Vegas BeeGees concert from 20 years ago (again). With that as background we doodled on our iPads and eventually went to bed.

2016/01/09 (S) FTH Website Work

Our plan for today was once again to go watch the Royal Lipizzan Stallions practice session at their facility in Myakka City. Fog moved in last night and was still thick by the time we finished breakfast at 9 AM. That was when we needed to leave in order to get there and set up our chairs in time for the start of the session at 10 AM. For the second time this week we decided to defer this event to a future date with better weather.

Black Crested Night Heron at the Peace River Wildlife Center, south of Punta Gorda, FL.

Linda resumed work on her counted cross-stitch project and I worked for a while on photos for the BCM article on the Arcadia Rally 2016. No one won the Powerball lottery on Wednesday and by this morning the top prize had exceeded 800 million dollars, an all-time record for any lottery in the U. S. Linda needed a few grocery items for our dinner and we wanted to buy a few more lottery tickets so we walked to the local Winn-Dixie supermarket to take care of those errands. It was approximately a one mile round trip and on the walk back the cloud cover broke up into partly sunny skies. Back at the coach we opened all three roof vents, turned on the exhaust fans, and opened the windows wider.

Linda settled back into her counted cross-stitch project and I turned my attention to our FMCA Freethinkers website. I checked the SLAARC website (WordPress) to see how I set up the quick registration page through the WP-Members plug-in and then set up a similar (hidden) page for the FTH website. I cleaned up a lot of other things on the website as well, including the member directory. This work occupied the rest of the afternoon except for a lunch break and a brief walk.

Lunch was grilled “cheese” (non-dairy) and tomato sandwiches–very messy but very good–with grapes and orange slices. The walk was brief because we stopped to visit with a couple from Ithaca, Michigan. While we were chatting we watched low, thick white clouds moving towards us from the southwest against a dense, dark gray sky. A couple of drops of rain was our early warning to return to the coach.

We got back before the rain started but once it did we closed the roof vents and reduced the window openings. The forecast a few hours earlier had a chance of a thunderstorm at 9:15 PM but by 2 PM it was raining hard and an old leak around the bedroom exhaust vent/fan reappeared. I also found a small leak at the lower outside corner of the new lower passenger side windshield. We were both pretty discouraged at these continued leaks having hired people to fix them. The heavy rain continued off and on for hours prompting Linda to track it in her iPad and eventually turn on the TV. Lee County, which includes Fort Meyers about 45 miles due south of us, was under a tornado warning. Arcadia is in Desoto County, which is the next one north, but the weather here was not severe, just wet.

While Linda was preparing dinner I e-mailed the members of our FMCA Freethinkers chapter to let them know that the public portions of the chapter website were now open for viewing and that I would be e-mailing each of them a unique username and password for the Members Only area in the near future.

For dinner Linda made a quinoa dish with julienned carrots, diced green onions, grated ginger, edamame, diced cucumber, and diced bell pepper. She served it at room temperature and it was another fabulous dish.

After dinner Linda put on the Bengals-Steelers NFL playoff game while I started generating the usernames and passwords for the Freethinkers website. I finished that work in about 90 minutes with the process of creating users automatically sending an e-mail to each member with their login information. With that done I settled on the sofa with my iPad to finish up blog posts while we continued to track the weather. The frontal system responsible for the wet/severe weather stretched from out in the Gulf of Mexico ENE across the Florida peninsula and was drifting to the east as storm cells raced along it. Fort Meyers got 3″ of rain and sustained some wind damage from a rare January tornado. The system was due to pass over Naples between 9 and 9:30 PM. Our friends, Barb and Chuck, are there so hopefully they will just get rain like we did.

We did not have any more rain after dinner so we opened the roof vents and turned the exhaust fans on. The forecast for Arcadia kept changing through the evening with the probability of rain around midnight bouncing up and down. By the time we went to bed it looked like we might be done with precipitation for the night.

2016/01/10 (N) Wood Art

We made it through the night without any further rain or threatening storms and got up around 7:30 AM this morning. We got dressed right away but I did not make coffee. Our main objective for today was a visit to the Florida Winter National Wood Art Expo and Competition (FWNWAEC) in Punta Gorda. We gathered up raincoats, camera gear, and a list of addresses for places we might visit, and headed out around 8:15 AM. We stopped at the Dunkin’ Donuts in Arcadia for coffee and bagels and then continued west into downtown where we picked up US-17 and headed south to Punta Gorda.

The island at the Venice Rookery, Venice, FL.

We had a pleasant drive down and arrived at the Charlotte Harbor Event and Conference Center in Punta Gorda just after 9 AM. The FWNWAEC opened at 9 AM so our timing was good. The parking lot was mostly empty so I got a spot near the building and we finished our coffee before going inside. Admission was $7 each and we got wristbands that allowed us to come and go all day if we wanted to.

We spent a couple of hours looking at all of the wood carvings on display and I photographed a few of them. There were also lots of vendors selling tools, materials, supplies, and finished products. At one of those tables we met John, who heads the woodcarving group at our RV resort, and learned that there will be woodcarving classes at the Turner Center February 8-11 and another exhibition there on February 20. He invited us to stop by when the woodcarving group meets at the resort on Thursday mornings.

By 11 AM we had seen everything we wanted to see. On our way out of the building the ladies at the entrance table were explaining to someone else some of the other things to do nearby and I heard mention of a Farmers Market. I asked about its location and got directions. Before leaving the event center area we walked the grounds around the Convention Center and Tiki Bar that is part of the Sheraton Four Points hotel next door. We then headed south on Retta Esplanade through a nice area of wonderful homes on our left and waterfront parklands on our right. There was a very large craft fair in progress but we passed it by in favor of finding the Farmers Market.

The market was inland a few blocks and was located in a smaller, but lovely, park where the vendor canopies were spread out along a winding pathway that led to a historic house which was open for visitors. There was also a group of about eight musicians with guitars, fiddles, and such. Linda bought a large Miatake mushroom after we sampled some and decided it was one of the best mushrooms we had ever tasted. We found another vendor selling turmeric in root form. She said it would keep for months so Linda bought a large piece. At another vendor she bought sesame seeds and flax seeds, so the market turned out to be a good stop.

From the market we continued south in search of the Peace River Wildlife Center. It was a small, private facility but had quite a collection of animals, mostly birds, that were being rehabilitated (if possible) for release back into the wild or living out their lives’ (if release was not possible). A small donation was requested on entrance and willingly paid. Most of the birds were in enclosures that made them difficult to photograph but the pelican area was open, and wild birds came and went, so I was able to get a few photos there.

From the Wildlife Center we drove back north into downtown Punta Gorda and the headed northwest on the Tamiami Trail across Charlotte Harbor towards Port Charlotte. Our destination was the Earth Origins market in Port Charlotte which was, conveniently, located on the east side of the Tamiami Trail. I say conveniently because the Trail was basically a 20 mile long strip mall. It was six lanes divided plus left and right turn lanes, and choked with cars, so having the store on the side of the road we were already on was definitely convenient.

We were done with our shopping by 2:30 PM and realized that we were only 36 miles from Steve and Karen Limkemanns’ place in Nokomis (near Venice). We called and got Karen on the phone. Steve was out riding his bike but was due back soon. They had no plans for the rest of the day so we headed their way. We had been to their mobile home park (Bay Lake Estates) two years ago but had not been there since they bought their own place this past March. It took about 45 minutes to get there, by which time Steve had returned from his bike ride. We got a tour of their new place, which was one of the newer units in the complex and very nice. We also walked up to see a unit that had caught fire and completely burned. It was stunning to see how little of it was left. The unit next door did not burn but the vinyl siding facing the fire melted and sagged. Most RVs are built much the same way as mobile homes and park model trailers and they do not do well in fire situations.

Before going to dinner we decided to drive to the Venice Rookery. We saw a sign for it driving up and wondered just what it was. It turned out to be a large pond with an island that was a favorite resting and nesting area for egrets, herons, Anhingas, and other birds. The island provide natural protection from land-based predators and locals told us that a large alligator protected them from any threat that might try to swim across. I took what photos I could but had not planned on doing wildlife photography and did not have the correct lens(es) with me.

The temperature had been moderate during the day and our shorts had been appropriate clothing. The best time to view the birds is apparently at sunset when large numbers of them return to the rookery. As the sun sank towards the tree tops it got decidedly chilly and we finally had to call it a day. We will be back on the 18th to see The Capitol Steps at the Venice Theater and made plans to return to the rookery with appropriate clothing and photo equipment.

From the Rookery we drove directly to Cafe Evergreen for dinner, an organic restaurant not far from Steve and Karen’s winter home. The Café is not specifically vegan but always has some nice vegan selections. Linda and I both had roasted beet Reuben sandwiches. She had an edamame salad as a side and I had baked sweet potato “fries.” We both had lots of decaffeinated coffee but no dessert as we were quite full by the time we finished our meals.

We went back to Steve and Karen’s place and visited a while longer before finally leaving a little before 8 PM. Linda wanted to see Downton Abbey at 9 PM and we figured we had an hour drive to get back to our RV park in Arcadia. The GPS wanted to take us south on I-75 but we went north 10 miles and took FL-70 due east through Myakka River State Park. About half way to Arcadia we encountered an accident scene and had to wait for 15 minutes before we could continue our trip. We got home a few minutes after 9 PM so we were still able to watch the show. The Abominable Bride episode of Sherlock was rebroadcast following Downton Abbey so we watched it again.

The weather had cleared out behind the strong cold front that pushed through the area yesterday and temperatures overnight were forecast to drop into the upper 40’s. We closed down all the windows before we went to bed. I turned on the electric heater pad on my side of the bed before climbing in. It had been a long day and neither of us felt like reading or writing so I turned off the lights and we went to sleep.

The Phase Place

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Tag Archives: Cafe Evergreen (Nokomis FL)

2016/01/16 (S) – 2016/01/20 (W) A Capitol Experience

2016/01/06 (W) -10 (N) Websites, Woodwork, and Wildlife