Mending Our Way Toward South Florida

  McGyver and I have been slowly working our way to the end supply of tissues, cold remedies and chicken soup…Whatever had a grip on ME, apparently lay in wait for almost a month.  For the last month (shortly after surgery), I have had a nagging cough upon exhale and just assumed it was just allergies…Well, we all know what the first 3 letters of assume are..Starting with that, and accompanied by a very full December calendar and not much sleep, I ended up with full blown CRUD…(I still think I had walking, riding, sleeping pneumonia/sinus infection…I still have the cough, albeit much looser)..Dennis, so far, has only the head cold part of it…and I think his constitution is much heftier than mine cause he had no fever, just a head cold…Since we have been here in Georgia, we have been pretty much relaxing and trying to get better.  The 80 degree temps in South Florida are calling our name, and we cannot wait for Saturday to be here..and us to be THERE!..

…A box of Vick’s Kleenex is just behind me in that photo on right…I should hang it around my neck… We are really enjoying our spot here.  This park is very well kept and the birds and water fowl are everywhere…except when I want to get a picture….

     

 

If you look veeeeery closely toward the other bank, you might see the Heron who was very reluctant to come any closer to me…I stood and watched him catch a gazillion fish over there, …so why would he move anyway, right??? Our little spot on this small bay is away from the wind and the water is very still and shallow.  I saw a Loon swimming and diving in the bay, but I was without camera so I just took a pic in my mind…I love loons…(obviously, Den does too…he married one..BATA BING, BATA BOOM!)…I’m slowly regaining my sick and depraved sense of humor…

There is only one thing I do NOT like about this campground…NO CELL PHONE SERVICE!..NADA, ZIP, ZILCH!! We show one or two bars, try to connect to a contact, and get the message “Not Registered On Network”…McGyver tries to explain to me that is just our AT&T phones and the bars mean nothing..we have no phone service, end of story!  But, being the stubborn part German I am, I just don’t accept that!??? WHY aren’t we registered on the network?..Is there some strange phone service here in the deep South that requires 2 soup cans and some string? Hey, I can arrange that…really!! I am stupified.

 

….Yep, we are most definitely South of the Mason Dixon Line!!…As you can see, Dennis isn’t feeling so bad that he can’t gather and cut up firewood…There is a ton of it here, and they do allow you to gather it, so McGyver is in Paul Bunyan Heaven !

This morning we took a walk  slow stroll to one of the campgrounds here that is closed for the winter.  It is called Pine Island, and you can see it in the lake on the first photo…  This place has some great camping spots on the lake, and even a swimming beach with a playground..All of the electric boxes at Pine Island CG are equipped with a nice light on the top, so it creates a nice soft light at each campsite after dark….Also, every campground has a laundry for $1.00 a load, and a fish cleaning station at every campsite (for all you anglers out there, this is the spot for YOU!)

  McGyver and I must have been VERY good this Xmas…or else we totally pulled one over on ‘Ol St. Nick…Our kids talked to him and came up some great gifts for us…As you can see, we received a KEURIG MINI coffee maker and 60 K-cups of various and assorted brews to try…We are technologically coffee challenged, so this is real learning curve for us, but we are it loving already!! Also, they gave us one of those digital picture frames, already loaded with bunches of pics of our family..This was in addition to some very wonderful steaks and marinated salmon filets from Omaha Steaks…AND, a gift certificate for…yet MORE Omaha Steaks!…WAHOO!!!…McGyver and I enjoyed a couple of the salmon last night and they were scrumpdillyicious!!!! Every year we tell the kids NOT to get us anything, and every year they just ignore us…Hugs to all of you guys!!!

  So, Dennis and I will be leaving here Friday morning and driving just South of Gainesville, FL.  Our destination that day is a place called Payne’s Prairie State Park…Saturday, we will boogy on down to LaBelle, FL.  Altoona South Campground is on an inland waterway that goes from the Pacific to the Atlantic..or the other way around…I really don’t care..All I know is that the weather there has been in the 80’s and we are ready for it..OH YEAH!!!!  Thanks to all for reading, and I promise I used hand sanitizer before I typed this blog…

“It’s the law: ‘A Southerner can get away with the most awful kind of insult as long as it’s prefaced by “bless somebody’s heart.”

                                                                           ~Ken Parker