Deebie & Stephen

Kel’s b-day orchids

new broadfork thanks to indiegogo

farmers just get better looking

so do the grandkids

and so does Nugget

Wednesday, April 3, 2013 – Happy Birthday, Chris!

waiting for a moss boa at Forage Market Garden

Thursday, April 4, 2013 – Happy Birthday, Niece Sarah!

hope it’s an old photo

J and I have an admission, one inspired by the current sodden conditions, temps that now propel J into his long-john bin, a Twizzler screaming out for an open box of baking soda, looming tax day. We’re tired of living out of our stealth RV! Time to return to Menlo and its reassuring peeling stucco.

Deebie delights

surreal solar power

where’s the grill?!

ladies in the ‘hood

yummo!

17 cents on eBay, free shipping

listening to Judy Collins in

Deebie’s yellow ‘vette

Two comfy nights on Deepwood Dr. weren’t enough to make us forget what it’s like to fall asleep to the peppering of raindrops and wake up to puckering over-seasoning! Deebie greeted us with the magic of her kitchen and the merry panorama of 6172. J reacquainted himself with a bathtub, and I started nibbling tasty delights. Didn’t have to twist our arms to stay a second night either!

he’ll kill me

computer class

Leaving Jax before the heavens opened, though, we stopped at Stephen C. Foster State Park in the Okefenokee Swamp. A bit of time travel with lots of Spanish moss and familiar tunes written by a man who never even saw the Suwannee River!

he changed the

spelling so it would scan

Crept up A1A way north of Palm Beach County, sometimes spotting the Atlantic, sometimes being reminded that “Lust drags you down to hell,” lest we forget here in Paradise that sin lurks just ‘round the corner! Joined the Easter revelers in Cocoa Beach, those pale-skinned Midwesterners and Nor’easterners baking themselves raw. Easter-weekend surfing competitions, sandy sunrises and a trip to the ER! What? J had a bout of upchucking. Cape Canaveral General welcomed him with an IV of fluids for rehydration, an EKG, a chest x-ray, and 3 pages of other tests. He’s okay and has begun to eat again, rather gingerly I must add! Right away next day his bare toes joined those other paleskins in the surf!

was this the culprit?

Canaveral National Seashore

where wild pigs

tear up the

landscape

White Springs, FL where

you can camp for 2 weeks and

study sheet music to “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair”

Blowing Rocks & Brian

Thursday, March 28, 2013 – Happy Birthday, Kel!

Amazing what you can pack into 48 desperate hours! It might be less than two hours from Homestead to Palm Beach Gardens, but it’s an intergalactic voyage away! From the produce fields and immigrant labor outside of the Everglades to the mega-mansions and jaw-dropping yachts of Jupiter Island (richest zipcode in America). The economic disparity is shocking.

this is what you

find in Homestead

Stopped off in Palm Beach County for nostalgia sake and to charge up our toys at the Jupiter Public Library. Our buddy Brian just happened to be there, too! What’s the likelihood of that happening?! Couldn’t muster the emotional strength to visit Sabal Ridge but seeing Brian certainly took off the edge.

Feeling pressured to soak up surf and sights, we left footprints on the beaches and discovered two nifty places we’d never been to before – Blowing Rocks Preserve and Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge. Cool temps made it comfortable for walking, although the winds launched picnic supplies and kept us Milwaukee-bundled.

Anastasia limestone acts as dune protector

during storms is best time to see 50-foot plumes

walked the Sand Pine Scrub Trail and

spotted 1 of 2 great-horned owl chicks

powdered sugar sand beach at refuge

An 18-wheeler almost clipped our open hatch on our boondocking overnight. The driver failed to gauge the room he had for a right-hand turn and uprooted a stop-sign, barreled into “our” hedge and came way too close to the Twizzler for comfort. Like “Freddy,” Busch Wildlife Sanctuary’s resident gator who’d hatched too soon, the semi driver was obviously “a little slow.”

pompano for someone’s dinner

an RV? Foreign plates!

Cow’s Horn Ciao

Royal Palm

barred owl

it’s been too

hot to cook

forget it if it’s after 3 am

ranger didn’t cover her mirror

and the cardinal fought itself

Monday, March 25, 2013

Tied the chairs to the Twizzler with the help of our picnic table. Left site 62 with evidence that our overflow tent had been up and running for almost 40 days. A record. I was sad to leave, but then we’re always loath to turn north. Our last night was unusual in that the group site was raucous well beyond 3 am, just the time when security turns off the phones for the night. The group was ticketed the next morning, however.

Had an aha moment the day before checking out. Decided to use my slogging shoes one last time in the dome Eth, Sarah, Sherri, Glenn and I had all to ourselves, plus the gator and snake. Found a cow’s horn orchid in full, glorious bloom! I can appreciate – and understand – the passion of orchid hunters.

Sarah, look

what I

found on

my last slog!

Since my previous posting J and I took in another Nike Missile Tour, this time with a young full-time ranger who knew the details but failed to inspire. Ryan will get there, though – especially if his job depends on it!

while J took

pix of the

Nike

I found more

orchids

weather stations on Research Road

and possums

and turn-offs

we have

used the

propane stove, though,

regardless

on a wet

morning hike ’round

LPK’s alligator

pond

Its local resident decided to get close and personal on Thursday evening. Campers in site 64 took potshots at the gator with a bb gun when it ventured nearby. Another couple from Wisconsin found the gator in their screened tent, attracted – they think – by the dog doo-doo they tossed into the palmettos. Security was informed but reminded the campers that they were in the gator’s territory. If they didn’t like it, they could move. Bravo!

a ligger’s gold

Homestead has assigned itself gateway to 2 national parks

our dome is almost completely

dry, E&S

rust from Nike parts is beautiful, too

and Robert’s papayas!

Still here, but it’s 16 in Milwaukee!

poisonwood is worse than poison ivy but 1 in 10 of us is immune

West Lake photo op

Saturday, March 16, 2013 – Happy Birthday, K!

Woke this long-sleeved morning to find the same young German couple (who’d spent an overnight last week) across the road from us again. He was first to roll out of the rental (they slept in that sedan last night) and told me they’d done a whirlwind tour of Florida, even spending a day at Disney World. (They left the Glades for that?!)

our dinner guests from site 63

Yesterday J and I did the Nike Missile tour again (the tour didn’t exist when we first came to the Glades) and we were lucky enough this time to get Ranger Leon for his unique perspective. He’s retired Coast Guard, sports a gray ponytail and is a history nutbar (O’s word), and so we got an unusually informative spiel leading up to a big surprise: the Park acquired one of those very Nike Hercules Missiles last November. One of the preserved Missile Barns is no longer empty. “I’m saving the best till last,” Leon said more than once. No wonder the Park has now gated part of the road to the site, which cuts off my nighttime panther troll, but oh well.

Those Nike’s took off with an instantaneous bang, far different from Apollo’s Saturn stately rise! They reassured the entire Miami area in the ‘60s, though it seems the Russians in Cuba had missiles, not bombers, and even the Herculi would have been ineffective against those.

just in case the button was pushed

Another drawback were the atomic bombs installed in 1/4 the Hercules. They were intended to bring down whole bomber fleets at once. Not emphasized was their fall-out on our own citizens!

bored GI painted the infantry’s real worry: mosquitoes!

Yesterday meant another Friday closed library, and so we drove south through the Park again, walking the boardwalk through the snarled mangroves at West Lake, picnicking at Paurotis Pond (in blinding sun, S&S), owl-checking (fruitless) at Mahogany Hammock, and finally sunsetting at Pine Glades Lake.

Monday, March 18, 2013

Balmy morning, much warmer than the last two weeks. Said good-bye to Ramona (22) and Philip (21), the delightful couple from Cologne who were off to NYC today (and had slept through their alarm!). Shared our dinner with them the last two nights, which J appreciated especially because he got to practice his German. They were endlessly patient and dear, so polite that I had to gently draw the evening to a close. Phil reminds J of E, and his going to NYC now will be at nearly the same age as E’s in 2005.

nabbed a signal at 62

Visited the Redland’s Farmer’s Market yesterday, hadn’t been back since meeting E&S in Big Cypress. Parking was a nightmare, as usual, but we managed to find space (next to a Lexus, no less) in a gouged-out field along with dozens of other vehicles. (Twizzler’s easy to find with its bulky cargo bag!) Bought 8 ears of sweet corn for dinner, and a cup of coconut slices, S, to give to Ramona and Philip. A squirt of lime juice and, voilà, dessert!

(I’m now huddled in the Twizzler, pecking this out on my iBook, the only way I can see its screen in daylight. J’s on his favorite (only!) bench in the jungle of the Gumbo Limbo Trail.)

School buses lumber in, disgorge their pent-up occupants, all of whom wear the same kelly-green t-shirts, damn rambunctious out of the classroom. Otherwise it’s sedate birders pulling into free parking slots, wearing long-lensed cameras, often puzzled why some cars wear flapping blue tarps, perhaps soon to find out what those commonplace black vultures have in mind for their car’s rubber.

take my word, they aren’t deterred

dog daze at the Homestead Library

my morning hike turn-

around point

Mahogany Hammock’s

raucous pileated

West Lake boardwalk

Grass Pinks & Plantains

how did a mahogany nut &

air plants find their

way to Oregon & Sarah’s magic touch?

Monday, March 11, 2013

Daylight savings time bumps back the evening ranger programs here by an hour. Can’t show slides of alligator scoots in daylight, after all, but we’ll have to squelch those yawns. I bet Ranger Kirk, the ex-marine who has two gator programs this week, will have to do the same. Cindy continues to punch in at the entrance kiosk at 7 by the clock, even though it’s now pitch black.

Stopped in at the hostel yesterday to take a much-needed shower. Still as laid back as ever. I had to search both floors for someone to whom to give my $5. Everyone is on the honor system, it seems, including intruders like me. J had begun backing up his computer, and so didn’t join me, making do with his own (obviously effective) whore baths in the campground bathroom. He did, however, decide a chicken taco at Rosita’s near the hostel was worth putting his MacBook Pro to sleep!

always forget to snap a photo before I dig in!

not Rosita’s but another taqueria O

likes, too

Sarah and Ethan immersed themselves in work as soon as they returned to Oregon, Sarah planting seeds, Eth with writing deadlines. Can’t wait to follow the evolution of S’s very own Forage Market Garden, her one-acre veggie plot and her go-it-alone (with E, of course) debut in entrepreneurial organic farming. I’m convinced she’ll triumph since she shows no fear of hard work and black earth under her fingernails.

S’s greenhouse flats

S’s unpaid farmhand

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/plant-a-seed-grow-a-farm

(If you’d like to put Ethan on the payroll! Hehe.)

Rumors swirl about privatizing the Everglades. Hard to fathom what that means, but some kind of “reps” are scheduled on Saturday to study the possibilities. I wonder what it might mean for us snowbirds. We’ve been camped here at Long Pine Key for 4 weeks and then some, far longer than any other campground near or far. Might see the last of our $8 nights, and the last of Cindy, who has no interest in returning next year if profit becomes the bottom line. Shudder the thought if airboats appear in Nine-Mile Pond or Ranger Kirk metamorphoses as a gator wrestler!

Grass Pink Orchid on the nature trail

mini plantains just my size

just J’s size!

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

After our spaghetti dinner, a bald eagle settled in one of our backyard trees. Welcomed by all us birders, but not by some of the birds. A bevy of crows set off a racket!

LPK’s resident attraction

and site 62′s

got this off Facebook

Daniel warned me of the Galinipper!

Oh, no. My donkey oven glove!

trail beauty

John Cameron, too

and Bronwen

Kailo’s already part fish!

tecnu & Christ

off in search of poison ivy!

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Stretched out a warm, sunny morning at site 62 after meeting J on his hike around the alligator pond. Mama cardinal surveyed the goods on the picnic table but found our ashy firepit more interesting. Rather than take in Leon’s second ranger talk of the week last night, J & I built a fire (with wood leftover from our visitors), surrounded by the scarlet blaze of sunset in the slash pines.

I think I used this one already!

Woke the other morning to the tell-tale squawk of a young great-horned owl. Peeked out my bedside window to find it perched in a dead tree directly overhead. Yesterday, J and I watched a crow land in a nearby tree and eviscerate its breakfast of a small fish, freshly pulled from the alligator pond, no doubt.

Library’s closed on Fridays, and so yesterday we stopped into BJ’s (the local Costco), where Homestead’s Verizon kiosk is. One of the reps reset the phone a few days ago, and in doing so the hotspot option was lost. Easily fixed, though! The local Verizon guys are extremely skillful!

Pitstop at Walmart afterwards for paper towels and ice. J bought some B-12 supplements that NYTimes says might improve his jerky gait. We’ll see.

Strolled around “historical” Homestead (sounds like an oxymoron to me) snapping photos of nothing in particular, although it’s always surprising to see relatively kept-up subdivisions just off Krome. There’s a rather elegant “Pioneer Village” right next-door to the dwindling storefronts. Wouldn’t palms make any street look elegant, though?! I revisited the antique store, happy to find the two old queens still in business and still able to locate that “Gone With the Wind” videotape.

last year it was closed down, too

because of mold

Returned to LPK and set up a chair in a pool of shade cast by the Twizzler. Reading Against Wind & Tide, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, her diaries from 1947 to 1986. I find them as captivating as I found May Sarton’s. She was once Lady Bird Johnson’s choice as an interviewer. Perhaps they shared similar domestic problems!

Thursday pre-dawn was too cold for comfort, and so we warmed up with a drive down to Key Largo. Spent several hours in the public library, where J found a stack of free philosophy cassettes. The find is so bulky, though, that we have to mail them back to Milwaukee if we want to live out of the Twizzler. (Once he digitizes them we’ll have yet more sleep-aids!)

if they dare

Picnicked in a small park on Florida Bay that we’d never have found had it not been for the Visitor Center. The town doesn’t make it easy to find free access to the water, but lots of opportunity to scuba-dive, especially if you’re hankering to see “Christ of the Deep!”

fancy meeting this

underwater!

And we were thrilled to see that Bogart’s alive and well here. Yet another Bogart Film Festival in May, drawing clueless tourists to the “African Queen” moored outside some motel, and his son on tap to field questions about a father he never really knew.

That evening J & I stopped off at Royal Palm for a nighttime stroll on the Anhinga Trail. What a show we got, too! A surge of roiling “eyes” on a feeding frenzy, but the gator banquet for our eyes only since the Ranger guide had not showed! Every once in awhile the boardwalk shuddered when too many gators competed for the same reed-swollen spot, whether for turtle, snail or bird it was impossible to tell. J’s new headlamp worked perfectly and he caught some of the drama on his iPhone.

enlarge this for

full effect

Heard that black bears have been spotted in the pinelands! Construction workers clearing Brazilian pepper off Research Road were treated to a sighting of two!

back to the OK Fish Market for

yellow-tail snapper and

salsa with

ingredients from Robert’s

mirror, mirror who’s the

fairest?

I choose coconut ice cream!

OK’s smoked salmon. Not as good as yours, S!

Baobabs & Baptists

Cindy’s kale, pea rice, hemp, flax & blueberry health drink but

we prefer this one, don’t we, Sarah!

K’s unfailing magic

and Sarah’s (when the stove works)

finally used

up the garlic

Eth!

thumbs down on the herb sticks, though

but the Dunker salad was delish

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Hiked through more tropics this morning! Finally had glommed onto the library pass to Miami-Dade County’s wonderful “Fruit and Spice Park.” (The pass we’d hoped to get in time for Eth and Sarah.) Fascinating tromp through what is the only tropical botanical garden in the country. Groves of mango, dragon fruit, lychee, longan, avocado, passion fruit and more varieties of banana than I knew existed. Weird grove of baobab trees whose noisy jealously of palm trees caused the gods to pull them up by the roots and shove them back in upside down.

don’t have growth rings

pineapple

this one’s for you, Ski

jackfruit

sausage tree

lipstick plant

sapote

Then a treat to us adventurers of a giant strawberry shake from the “Knaus Berry Farm,” owned by a family of “Dunkers,” German Baptists who close the store on Sundays. More nutritionally, a bag of organic lettuce and 3 herb sticks. No long lines on a coolish Tuesday!

Southern Florida weather has tanked since our visitors returned to Oregon. First rain and then cold, with wind for both. One LPK camper from Miami brought along a propane heater from Walmart, but she had to leave her windows open for ventilation. In the end she settled for her three dogs’ body heat.

Took in a talk by Elam Stoltzfus at the Miami Dade Community College yesterday, part of their lunchtime speaker series. He’s filmed a documentary entitled “Florida Wildlife Corridor” by wading, walking, kayaking and horseback-riding 1000 miles in 100 days, from Flamingo to the Okefenokee Wildlife Refuge in south Georgia. Also with him and his wonderful cameras were a bear biologist, a conservationist and a photojournalist, determined to  give all animals access to nature.

Sunday was cool and breezy, and as the library was closed we drove to Schnebly Vineyards to see how many new substitutes for grapes they’ve found. Opted out of another sparkling lychee wine tasting – I’ve inherited too many boat-sized glasses – and instead listened to a lone crooner without much of an audience. My energetic applause was dampened by the fashionable waterfalls.

We still regret that E&S just missed Vintage Everglades Day at Royal Palm last Saturday. The historical characters of Florida (portrayed by volunteers and park staff) were as captivating as last year’s. Heard passionate readings from the journals/books of Audubon, Willoughby and Hurston, and perhaps most fervent was Audrey Peterman, who has worked tirelessly to welcome African-Americans to the national parks.

Greg Reed, aka Guy Bradley

married to a ligger

Ernest Coe & Marjory Stoneman Douglas

J’s breakfast at the Royal Palm Grill where

we marveled at the skill of a short-order cook

painted on window boxes

studying moths just for the fun of it, Eth

cat scat?

I finished the longans

in line at

Robert’s for a fruitshake

California Dreamin’

always fertilizing

hankering for avocado vino?

really?