Journal of Monday, February 29, 2016 -- Another New Grandbaby, and a Trip to Florida

First, forgive me if I repeat myself.  We are driving, and there are a lot of things to look at.  Remembering what I just wrote will be a real strain on the ol’ brain diodes.  But here we go:

Early last Monday morning found us loading the Jeep in preparation for our trip to Florida.

Victoria brought some baggage downstairs – including her teddy bear that Kurt gave her for Valentine’s Day.

((pause))

It’s as big as she is.

(We left the bear home.)

We were going to Daytona Beach, where my quilt w as in the AQS (American Quilters’ Society) quilting show.  We planned to explore here and there, and, coming home, we would follow the Gulf coast to New Orleans, then head north.

The quilt show made a good excuse for going to Florida in the wintertime, don’t you think?  I’m not sure I could’ve gotten Larry to go in that direction without a halfway good excuse.  He thinks the only way to go, when one is contemplating vacations, is to the tall mountains.

I didn’t much like Florida when I went there a couple of times with my parents.  Once we were taking an underpar couple and their two adopted sons to visit her parents.  That was a trial by fire, let me tell you.

As we drove through Nebraska and down toward Kansas City, the sky was full of snow geese, Canada geese, and every type of duck imaginable, everywhere we looked.

That night, we stayed in St. Louis, somehow winding up in an inadvisable part of downtown in a Days Inn near the Mississippi River, a mile from the Gateway Arch.  The room was nice, but it was in a not-good-at-all location, and we were too naïve to know it until we were already signed in.  There wasn’t another soul (or vehicle) in the parking lot when we checked in, but as we started getting stuff out of the Jeep, a police car came prowling slowly down the street and turned down the front avenue.  Then, seeing that we were getting baggage out of the Jeep, and noticing the bikes on the rack at the back, they pulled into the parking lot and came to talk to Larry.  There was a white female officer at the wheel, and she was accompanied by a black male officer.  They told Larry not to leave anything in the Jeep, and asked him what he was going to do with the bikes.

“Take them inside, if they’ll let me,” he replied.

They told him that there have been a number of break-ins in the area.  I thought it would be best if we’d find another place to stay; but by the time I heard this news, Larry already had most of the bags loaded onto a trolley. 

Soooo... after getting permission from the motel manager, we hauled bikes up to our third-floor room, plus every other loose item in the Jeep, including the manual.  We were on the third floor... and the elevator was really fast.  Our window looked out onto the Jeep, and its alarm was set.  The vehicle was plumb empty; we even took the Kleenex box out.  :-D

Upon getting into our room, I looked at reviews online, and saw that some people who'd stayed there had had their van stolen a couple of months ago.  Others had their room safe broken into when they were absent from the room.  A number were totally delighted with their stay and gave the place 5 stars.

There were abandoned warehouses and factories with windows broken out all around the area – and some with their lights on, housing who-knows-what.

If the manager hadn’t’ve looked so Indian, he’d’ve been a dead ringer for Asa, the security guard at the bank on the Andy Griffith show.  He was forever falling asleep, remember?  Well, that manager was no more animated than Asa was, neither physically nor mentally.

Ah, well; I figured, with Larry relying on his Saber pocketknife and me relying on my charming smile and Victoria totally preoccupied with a phone call from Kurt, we were good.

I pulled out the food and fixed sliced cracked-pepper deli-sliced turkey and provolone cheese on bagels.  We had potato salad, apples, and cranberry juice with it.  So nobody was hungry, at least.  I edited the day’s pictures and posted them:  Day One

We awoke to find...

...

...

...

...

... the Jeep still in possession of its wheels (and even its tires).  Breakfast was scrumptious (waffles, omelets, oatmeal in a huge cooker with all manner of toppings to put on it, toast, yogurt, juice, milk, etc.).  We were the only ones in the eating area, the entire time we were there.  In fact, I’m not sure there was another solitary soul in the entirety of the motel. 

Before leaving the city, we drove through the downtown area and looked at the 630-foot Gateway Arch.  The interior of the Arch is currently closed for renovation, but it’s the outside we really wanted to see anyway, along with the old Courthouse Rotunda.

Policeman were everywhere, stopping speeders, jaywalkers, spitters, untied shoelacers, you name it.  Their budget must need bolstering.  On a sidewalk over a warm-air vent, we saw a couple of homeless people sleeping, wrapped in quilts.  Pathetic.

We took note of the elaborate detailing on many of the historic buildings there.  They must’ve cost a fortune, even back when they were made, maybe 150 years ago.

Here’s the St. Louis skyline.  It’s a little surreal, because it was a bit foggy, looking across the Mississippi toward the west, so I cranked up the contrast and the saturation.

Leaving St. Louis, we headed toward Memphis.  It was soon pouring cats and dogs.  I was glad we had new tires that had a good strong grip on the road!

By a quarter ’til four, we were driving toward Chattanooga – but they were having flood warnings there!  Perhaps we would take another route.

I’d planned our route to take us through Paducah as we headed southeast, but after informing the navigator (that’s Larry) where to turn after leaving Cape Girardeau, I got busy editing pictures and writing (typing, that is) in my journal, and he missed the turn, and I didn’t notice until we were a good 50 miles south.  Well, I didn’t want to waste two hours of our scanty time, so I readjusted our route.

By 5:30 p.m., we were almost to Columbia, Tennessee, and it was pouring rain again.  We’d been through some really pretty country, all hilly and wooded.  Wish we could’ve seen it better!  It was getting quite dark.

We stopped in Lewisburg at the Walking Horse Lodge.  It was too dark to see anything, still raining a bit, and we were missing out on all the beautiful ‘mountain’ scenery (notice the quotation marks – Larry doesn’t call them mountains, when they’re not at least two miles high).  And we were tired.  So we stopped.  We again put our bikes in the motel room, just in case.  The next day, we got a padlocking chain that better secured them to the rack.

The last 45 minutes of driving, we were on an almost-one-lane asphalt lane through the woods, over hill and dale, and there were big, beautiful ranches with lovely homes and big barns here and there along the way.  I was sorry we couldn’t see better... I know it was beautiful.

It was supposed to rain in the North Georgia mountains the next day, and there were flash flood watches here and there.  St. Louis had been issued a winter weather warning – they were expecting ice, and then up to 5 inches of snow.  There had been tornadoes through the south, and at least three people had been killed.

Things were just barely starting to get green in Lewisburg.  There were a few fields of winter wheat that were brilliantly green... so pretty, against the dark green Georgia pines and the bright rusty orange of the winter’s dried grasses.

There’s no shortage of trees in the Kentucky Appalachians.  Huge pines and evergreens cover the craggy hills and valleys.  Beautiful country, really. 

Here are Tuesday’s photos:  from St. Louis to Lewisburg, Kentucky.

Wednesday by shortly after noon, we were going over the Nickajack Dam, somewhere southwest of Chattanooga.  It was raining, but it sure was pretty there.  I don’t mind cloudy days; it’s easier on the eyes.

I got an email from AQS – they’d posted a list of semi-finalists.  I clicked on the link... scrolled down... and there was my name.  Shortly thereafter, they published a list of winners.  My name wasn’t there.  I expected no more – the quilting isn’t good enough.  The feathering isn’t perfect, because the thickness of the many seams atop gridded fusible pellon made it somewhat difficult to make smooth circles.  I’m pleased enough to have made the semi-finalist list.

By 1:30 p.m., we were southeast of Chattanooga, heading into the North Georgia mountains.  Yaayyy, we were off that ferocious Interstate south of Chattanooga!  We were in the Kowoota Wilderness Area.  ‘Wilderness’?  Not very wildernessy, still pretty urban, if you ask me, with all sorts of strange and unique pieces of humanity scattered about.

We went by a huge Planet Fitness Center, and Larry asked, “Wonder what kind of aliens are in there?”

In southern Tennessee, we stopped and walked a short distance by the Ocoee River.  It was flowing fast and hard after all the rain, really roaring and tumbling over the big boulders.  That was in the Cherokee National Forest in the North Georgia mountains.

It misted... then it rained... then went back to misting.  There were flood watches and warnings here and there – but the rain was making waterfalls gush down the sides of the cliffs right onto the roads, pretty spectacular.  Other smaller rivers and creeks besides the Ocoee were roaring, too.

Victoria got more excited over a cute little Nissan Juke we met than over the waterfalls.

The rain was the same storm system that had brought tornadoes to some of the southern states and snow and ice to the northeast a couple of days later.  We were north of the worst of it the first day, then on the southern edge of it the second day, before having sunshine the rest of the time.

We went by a church called ‘Hot House Missionary Baptist Church’.  That sounds pretty funny...  ‘Hothouse’ is the name of a little town just a couple of miles south of the intersection of the Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina state lines.

We arrived in Blairsville at 3:30 p.m.  Appropriately enough, we immediately saw lots of police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks, all with sirens blaring.

Victoria offered her explanation:  “They must have lots of cats get stuck in trees around here, and it must be National Cat Day, as they’re all in such a big hurry to get them down.”

Just goes to show, someone always knows the answer.

And then it snowed!

This photo was taken at the Tesnatee Gap, elevation 3,138 feet.  Just as we pulled into the overlook parking area, the wind threw billows upon billows of snow over the mountains.  Wet, heavy snow – it sunk right through the ground when it landed!  

Well, that is, the temperature was too high for anything to stick.  It didn’t last long.  Seemed odd to me... different from what I’m accustomed to, at home or in the Rocky Mountains, somehow.

Not far to the east was the 4,783-foot Brasstown Bald, Georgia’s highest mountain.  We saw it – dimly – through the fog and rain and snow.  There was a cloud swirling around the top of it.  So pretty.

There are runaway-truck ramps in those mountains.  We laughed when we saw these, because the incline wasn’t nearly so steep as many of the roads in the Rockies – yet there were two runaway ramps in just about a mile!  What’s more, we smelled burning hot brakes all the way down.  Someone didn’t know how to keep his brakes cool on a mountain road.  Sure hope he gets a few pointers about that before he tries the big mountains, or he’ll endanger his own life and others, besides.

That evening, we went through the pretty little ‘Swiss’ mountain town of Helen, Georgia, and ate supper at Paul’s Steak House, right on the Chattahoochee River.

I had yummy clam chowder soup and an enormous chef salad.  Larry had a thick, tender rib-eye steak, green beans flavored to perfection, and a baked potato.  Victoria had fried flounder, green beans, and a loaded baked potato.  For dessert, we shared small pieces of key lime pie and chocolate/peanut butter pie.  Oh, and they brought us a little loaf of 12-grain whole wheat bread fresh out of the oven, on a cutting board, with a bread knife, with real butter, to eat while we waited for them to cook the food.

Directly across the street was a little boutique called ‘Grandma’s Comfort Quilts’.  But we were in a hurry... and I think it was already closed, in any case.  I’m not real fond of shopping anyway, so I’m not unhappy.  

Then on we went, due southwest.  Out in someone’s front yard in Baldwin, Georgia, was a hand-written sign:  “Used Motor Oil for Sale.”  You don’t see that just any ol’ place.  I immediately wrote to a couple of friends and asked if they wanted me to bring some home to them, for a souvenir.

In our neck o’ ze woods, there’s someone who puts used vegetable oil into a keg in the box of his pickup, and runs that in his modified motor.  He goes to the restaurants around town, and collects it!

Soon we were going through Athens on the Macon Highway.  I sure wish it would’ve been bright enough to take pictures of those enormous, gorgeous old homes that lined the streets!  I’ll have to take a look on Google Street View.

We continued driving until Larry got sleepy.  I edited pictures.  I have to remember not to brighten any of my pictures when I’m editing after dark, though, because I turn the light down on my laptop, so as not to bother Larry as he drives.

We stayed in Madison at the Hampton Inn that night, 430 miles north of Daytona Beach.  It was one of the more expensive motels – but it didn’t have a refrigerator or microwave, and the beds were only doubles.  Howd’ya like that?  (But they did sport 'organic' bedding, including down duvets.  That was nice.)

The southe’n drawwwl there is so pronounced there, sometimes tourists and natives can ha’dly unnastan’ each uthah.

Meanwhile, many ladies from online quilting groups were coming out of the woodwork, souls who, unbeknownst to me, lived along our projected route, and inviting me for tea and crumpets.  But I had to give them my apologies and regrets.  We barely had time to hit the east coast at sunrise... the west coast at sunset... one of the best Naval and Aviation museums in the world... and one worthy lighthouse.

Here are photos from the first part of Day 3 of our trip to Florida:  Day 3, Part 1

And these are from the second part of Day 3:  Day 3, Part 2

Third part, also Day 3:  Day 3, Part 3

Thursday, we continued southeast, through Dublin, Waycross, and on into Florida.  We got to Jacksonville, Florida, at 4:00.  It seems they call cemeteries ‘memorial gardens’ down there. 

Larry got himself a bottle of juice at a convenience store.  “Refrigerate after opening,” he read on the side of the bottle.  He frowned.  “You mean, I can’t even drink it?!”

Everything along the road we’d taken into the city looked junky.  Especially all the junkyards.  ha  People weren’t used to the chilly weather (it was 61°) – they were wearing parkas, fur-lined mittens, mukluks... while I was regretting putting on a long-sleeved thin top that morning!  Blood must run sluggishly in the deep south.

We have some friends who live in a southern (i.e., warm) state, and they shiver if it gets below, oh, 75° or so.  We call them Weather Wimps, and they call us Hot-blooded Eskimos.

Victoria wanted to try a southern delicacy:  boiled peanuts.  We’d earlier seen handwritten signs near roadside stands:  “Peches!”  “Boiled Penuts!”  [sic] and [sic]

So when she found a big bubbling pot of them in a store, lidded dishes and a big ladle nearby, she came to an abrupt stop.  “I gotta have some of these!” she declared, and went to spooning some into the dish.

We got back out to the Jeep – and the silly girl pulled up Google on her iPad and typed in, “How to eat boiled peanuts.”  She found multitudes of detailed instructions, complete with photos.  She tried one... gave me one.

I ate it, trepidaciously.  Then, “I’m full now,” I announced, as Teddy used to do when he was little, upon spying something he didn’t like, or thought he wouldn’t like, never mind whether or not he’d tasted it, or whether he’d even had anything to eat or not.

Larry finished filling the Jeep, and climbed in.  Victoria gave him a boiled peanut, along with a quick tutelage on eating said treat.  “You have to suck it out, so you don’t dribble it all down the front of you!” she told him.  “And don’t tip it!” she added.

He tipped it.  And he dribbled it all down the front of him.  He wanted another (though he does think they wasted the peanut by not making it honey-roasted instead of boiled).  “I’m not giving you any more,” Victoria told him, “until you’re at a picnic table with a bib!”

We drove through St. Augustine, said to be the oldest city in the United States, about the time the sun was setting, and looked at all the old buildings with their Spanish and Mediterranean architecture styles.  As we were heading out of the old part of the city, we watched the drawbridge rise over the Matanzas River, and a tall, tall sailboat, sails furled, pass majestically underneath.

A little farther down the coast, just after the sun went down, we walked on a boardwalk near the ocean and listened to the tide going out.  We saw deer on the little strip of land between the Halifax River and the Atlantic. 

We ate supper at Alfies Restaurant, overlooking the Atlantic, and then got a room at Coral Sands Inn, right on the Atlantic Ocean, in Coral-by-the-Sea, Ormond Beach, Florida.

Friday morning found Victoria scampering around all over the place, taking pictures and reveling in the roar of the ocean.  I got pictures of the sunrise over the water from our third-floor deck.  I decided higher was better, and went on up to the fifth-floor deck.  Quite a sight, it was!

Then off we went to the Ocean Center Auditorium, where AQS was holding their quilt show.  I’m so vain, I not only took pictures of the quilt, then had Larry take pictures of me with the quilt, I also took pictures of other people looking at and taking pictures of my quilt!  :-D

What beautiful quilts we saw!  I took many pictures; I’ll post them when I can.  I got to see a lady who won one of the second place ribbons – she was standing right there beside her absolutely gorgeous quilt.  I heard someone compliment her, saw the ribbons she had on her name tag, so I asked if that was her quilt – it was, it was hers!  She was a pretty lady, and so gracious.  Her quilt was a spectacular design – made of teeny-tiny log cabin blocks. 

After I thought I’d seen everything I wanted to see, we exited, got on the Kennedy Freeway, and headed toward Cape Canaveral. 

A quilting friend, upon hearing this news, wrote, “That’s it???????????????  Just the morning?????????  You drove ALL THAT WAY to spend a measly morning there?  Oh, you’re fired!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

haha  I had to read that to Larry, and then he was laughing, too.

Well, see, they don’t let any exotic birds into the Ocean Center auditorium, nor any alligators or crocodiles, nor yet any armadillos, neither!  So I gotta go, uh, somewheres else.  

I promise, though, I rushed around at twice, nay, thrice, the speed everyone else was going, and I saw almost everything once, and several things twice (by accident), and one or two things thrice (on purpose).

We just never have a long enough time for our vacations, and when we want to explore everything there is to explore, we have to rush.

It was again 61° – and the natives, as usual, were in hoodies and galoshes and scarves.  We, on the other hand, were dressed in short sleeves and flipflops.  (Uh, Larry doesn't wear flipflops.)

We saw an armadillo alongside the road, and then pulled into a viewing point and looked at the manatees.  This water is not the water of Grand Lake, Colorado, let me tell you.  It’s muddy and murky, whereas the waters of Grand Lake are crystal clear, even where the water is 20 feet deep.

I got a picture of one... ---- well, sorta.  You can see a hint of a snout, and the shape of a back.  And since the sign said ‘Manatee Viewpoint’, well, then I reckon it was a manatee.  Where else would a manatee show up, if not at a manatee viewpoint, I’d like to know?!

In the trees beside the viewing platform, a Myrtle’s warbler warbled, and a mockingbird mocked.  Unless it was a catbird, just catting around.  I’d look in my bird book, but it’s way over there ((pointing)), and I’m here ((jabbing a finger at myself)).

As it turned out, we were too late to go to Cape Canaveral.  BUT!!!—we had other things to do:  we needed to pick up a winch.  One must make a stupid trip to Florida worth some value.

Yep, Larry was perusing Craigslist as we drove along, looking at items in the various cities we happened to be in at the moment, and he found a winch that he wanted for his pickup.

So off we went to Melbourne, Austral-------- uh, Florida, where lived the man who was selling the winch.

And then!!!! ----- I got a message from Dorcas:

“William Trevor!  He is here!  Momma and baby doing fine.  7.7 lbs. and 21 inches.”

Yes, Dorcas and her husband Todd have a new baby, their first (Todd has three grown children of his own).

We were relieved to hear this good news.  Dorcas had been at the hospital over 24 hours, and we were getting worried.  I think it was a long, difficult siege for her.

I think their beautiful little baby looks a lot like the adorable Gerber baby.  And that's pretty adorable.  J

In looking for a motel and not having any luck the first few tries, we learned that there was some sort of a festival going on somewhere, and not much was available.  We took note of the name of a grill we passed:  Squid Lips.  Would you like to eat there?

We finally found a place in Sebastian called Captain Hiram’s Resort, and they gave us their ‘last room’.  As many times as we manage to get ‘the last room’, you’d think they were specifically saving them for us.  I wonder how many times they say that to people, just to make them appreciative?  We made the reservation by phone when we were about 15 minutes away.  Five minutes later, they called back and announced that they had made a mistake, and had reserved a room for us that had already been taken. 

“But we have one more,” the man said, “although it has been under renovation, and doesn’t have two queen beds.  It has one queen bed, and we can put a roll-away in it, though.”

I agreed to this, although I wondered if a better room might not have been just around the next bend.  Victoria was unimpressed with the rollaway bed; they’re never anything spectacular.

Saturday morning, I was up, showered, coiffed, and ready to head out with my camera to find something to shoot by a quarter ’til six.  Larry and Victoria were still sawing logs, never mind the fact that his hideously loud and obnoxious alarm had gone off no less than half a dozen times.  I shellacked my curls a bit, and trotted out.

Here is an armadillo who was totally unbothered by our presence.  He was grabbing grasses and leaves, jerking them out of the ground with such vigor, it was making popping noises as the stems broke off.

After leaving the motel, we drove through Ft. Pierce Inlet State Park and walked down to the beach.  We watched a gopher tortoise walking along beside the lane, pulling out grasses and eating them.  It was funny to see – he’d open his mouth wider’n his head, snatch a bunch of grass, and, with a little snap of the jaw and twist of the head, he’d yank off a mouthful, with an odd snnnnnooshshshhhhhhhhh noise.

He eventually got a bit nervous at the impromptu photo session, and scurred as only a turtle can scurry behind a small bush.  But only his head and front feet were behind the bush; the rest was sticking right out in plain sight.  I laughed, and he actually jumped -- then high-tailed it to some taller grasses nearby where once again he wrongly assumed he was hidden.

We collected seashells on the shore at Ft. Pierce.  Larry collected the most, saying they were for the grandchildren.  

We departed eastern Florida a little later that morning, cutting west across the Florida peninsula on Rte. 70 toward Lake Okeechobee and on to the Gulf Coast side.

We stopped at the Lake for a bit, walked out on a pier, and watched the fishermen, the seagulls, the great white herons, the white egrets, the terns, the storks, and the fish.  A friendly black lady caught a fish... decided it was too small... so she detached it from the hook and pitched it over her shoulder into the water on the other side of the pier, whizzzzz ker-SPLLLOOOOOSH!!!! so fast that had I not stopped momentarily to watch the show, I’d’ve been sporting fish-in-the-face, I would’ve!  hee hee

We saw many large cattle ranches.  Sometimes there were humongous Brahma bulls in the pastures, sometimes funny-looking cows with fluffy wigs and little short horns that stuck straight out from the sides of their heads.  What are those cows?  Mop-top moo-moos?

Cattle egrets and ibis and pelicans and various kinds of seagulls abounded.  We saw Sandhill cranes, too, and a field of cattle in all colors of the rainbow.  Well, that is, all colors of browns, blacks, and whites.  

There were huge stork nests on the tops of many of the telephone poles.  Quite the sight! 

By afternoon, we were almost to Sarasota.  I got some souvenirs in Sarasota when I was about 10 – a water globe (a little plastic novelty thingy with a marlin in it) and a book of short stories and southern recipes.

After getting to Bradenton, we crossed the Sunshine Skyway Bridge to St. Petersburg, and then went for a walk on St. Pete’s Beach.  It was cold and breezy.  My eyes were watering, tears running down face, sand sticking to the tears (and, as you can see, hair standing on end).  This, I discovered, upon returning to the Jeep an hour later.

Despite the raw wind, we saw wedding photography in process right out at the water’s edge – with the bride in a gown that needed a heavy woolen cloak over the top of it, both for warmth and for modesty’s sake.  After a long enough time had passed that I wondered if the bride was going to be in the hospital for hypothermia on her wedding day, they departed for a house farther up the coast, and I saw that the bride certainly had been cold, even in the warmth of the moment:  she was now wrapped in a large, red blanket.

We saw several people kitesurfing.  One kept getting a little too carried away with his hotdogging, and ka-splooshing right into the water.

But he was right back up surfing again in seconds.

Larry thinks it was a girl, particularly because you can see in one of my pictures that she’s putting her hand down to catch herself, haha.

The lower the sun sank, the higher the waves crested.  I kept snapping the shutter button.

And then... there’s always some kitesurfing publicity clown who has to throw himself and his paraphernalia right smack-dab into the middle of the picture.  :-D

Before leaving, Victoria and I walked into a ladies’ room near the beach.  One side had doors that opened into ... nothing but empty rooms.  Dressing rooms.  Victoria had never seen such a thing.  “They’re blank!” she said, making an amazed face.  hee hee

We continued north from the peninsula that is St. Petersburg and on through various suburbs of Tampa, which has a population of around 353,000, about halfway in between Omaha and Lincoln.  It sure seemed to take longer to get through that city than it takes to get through Omaha, though.

Well, we’d walked on the beach and watched the sun rise over the Atlantic.  We’d walked on the Gulf Coast and watched the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico.  We’d eaten supper in a couple of cute little seafood restaurants on the Atlantic shore (they did not charge a cute ‘little’ price).  And we’d been over the beautiful Sunshine Skyway Bridge in St. Petersburg over Tampa Bay, on our way to St. Pete’s Beach.

By late evening, we were on Hwy. 19, heading north toward Tallahassee, planning to stop when we got tired.  After a couple of hours, I looked on Google maps for motels and cottages.  We hadn’t yet stayed in a cabin or cottage, and most of the time we enjoy them.  So I chose one by the wide Homosassa River, called, and, once again, got ‘the last cottage’.  It even had two bedrooms, something Victoria has been petitioning for since the day we left home.  I happily told the man to reserve it for us.

Five minutes later, my phone rang.  It was the man from the Homosassa River Retreat, telling me that some people whom he’d thought weren’t coming, ... were coming.  (Later, his story underwent a revision, and he admitted to looking at the wrong page in his reservation book.)

We wound up in the little cottage that was closest to the Homosassa River – about 15 feet from the edge. 

It was tilted. 

The cabin, not the river. 

It was so tilted, the water came out of the faucets crooked, and when I laid a water bottle on the kitchen floor, it went rolling to the other side of the kitchen, picking up speed as it went.  haha We locked the door that night, so that if anyone tumbled out of bed, he or she wouldn’t go rolling right out and land in the river, ker-sploosh.  The man who owns the cottages told us that the manatees come up the river at daybreak every morning.  

Early Sunday morning, there was a Great Blue heron standing just outside our cabin door beside the Homosassa River.  When I walked out at sunrise, a fine golden mist covered the water, and boisterous birdsong (or maybe ‘birdsquawk’?) filled the air.  The trees were so thick, I couldn’t spot many of the birds.  Wish I could; the songs are mostly unfamiliar and quite foreign-sounding!

There were brown pelicans swimming on the water; they are such powerful swimmers, it didn’t seem to make much difference to their speed whether they were going with the current, or against it.

It was in the mid-60s most of that day, and we kept sweaters handy.  Funny thing was, it was in the mid-60s in Nebraska when we left – and it will be in the mid-60s again when we get home.  However, Kurt told Victoria a couple of days ago that they were working in a 17° wind chill.  

Victoria was watching the Sunday service, streaming live on her iPad, as we drove northwest that morning.  She saw something funny:  As the congregation sang the line about ‘Jacob’s sons and daughters’ in Come Ye Thankful, Raise the Strain, the camera was zoomed in on Jeremy and Lydia and the three little boys – and when Jacob heard those words, his face registered, Huh?!! and his head swiveled around to the book, and he started singing.  hee hee

At 1:30 p.m., it had gotten up to 70°.  We were heading for Carrabelle, Florida, which is southwest of a town called – get this – Sopchoppy.  Sopchoppy??!

Okay, I had to look that up.  And I found this:

The town’s name is a corruption of “Lockchoppe”, derived from the Muskogee lokchapi (lokcha (acorn) / api (stem)), which was the old name of the nearby river.

Sopchoppy came into existence in 1894.  After the CT&G Railroad Company had built a railway through the area, it platted the town on property it already owned in the area, across the river from Greenough.  To encourage people to settle there, the railroad engaged in a significant advertising campaign, exaggerating the quality of the soil and climate.

​How ’bout that.

The pine trees were soooo tall, so close to the road... the roads so flat... sometimes they went on for three or four miles perfectly straight.  It was like we were driving in a looong, open-topped tunnel.  Now and then we could see water off to the south – the Gulf of Mexico.  We went over the Big Bend Scenic Byway Coastal Trail Bridge (puff puff gasp, long name) and drove down to the water, and I took pictures of some big old fishing boats.  Most of the houses along the shore are on stilts!!!

Late that afternoon, I sent a note to Dorcas:

“Aaaccckkk!!!  We almost ran over your chicken!  Right in the middle of Panama City.”

A rooster had indeed run across the road right in front of us, and we had to slam on the breaks to keep from hitting it.  It was a beautiful bird, colored just like the rooster Dorcas and Todd recently got.

That evening, we ate at a Waffle House on Panama City Beach.  Why do Waffle Houses, one and all, extract their drinking water from the nearest swamp?!  Bleccchh, gag, yecchhh.  They make their tea and coffee with it, too.  And the orange juice is dreadful.  I got some orange juice at an iHop just after leaving the quilt show, and it was soooo good, I let Larry and Victoria have sips of it, and then they ordered some, too.  It tasted like they’d squeezed the oranges mere seconds before serving the juice.

We checked into the very nice Candlewood Suites in Miramar Beach, just west of Panama Beach in the Florida Panhandle, that night.  It had a regular kitchen, including a full-sized refrigerator, a glass stovetop, and a dishwasher, of all things.  I’ve never seen a dishwasher in a motel room before.  The cupboards were stocked with *matching* dishes, too.  Furthermore, it cost $1 less than the tilted little cottage we’d stayed in the previous night. 

I have to admit, though, I liked the location of the little cottage better.  The motel room was really lovely, and the cabin was pretty shabby; but I’ll tell you one thing the cabin had that the motel will never have:  a five-foot-tall Great Blue heron standing immediately outside the screen door, right on the edge of the Homosassa River, over which the early-morning mist is just rising.

However, Victoria is a whole lot more agreeable with a pretty room than with a dumpy little cottage with saggy couches, chairs, and questionable cleanliness in various spots here and there.  Oh, well.  The bedding and linens were nice and clean, and we survived just fine, and the birds were singing like anything in the morning.  

I like a variety of experiences.  Tilted cabins and crooked streams of water don’t really faze me, much.  ;-)

This morning I was happily showering and washing my hair, when I detected the unmistakable odor of...  popcorn.  Oh my goodness... someone had popped the complimentary packet of popcorn in the microwave.  Does popcorn for breakfast sound good to you??!  

Nobody wanted the popcorn right then, so we brought the bag along, unopened.  As of this writing, it has not yet been opened.

We headed west toward New Orleans and Baton Rouge this morning.  As we went over the bridge to Okaloosa Island on the Emerald Coast Parkway, just east of Santa Rosa Island, there were 14 water towers in our immediate view.  Fourteen!

We’re in Mississississississississippi tonight.  ♫ ♪ Pas - ♫ ♪ ca - ♫ ♪ gou - ♫ ♪ la!!!  ♫ ♪ 

And Victoria has the flu.  Back home, Kurt first had bronchitis, and it has since turned into pneumonia.  Teensy had another fight with the nasty stray tomcat, got a bad gash on his neck, and Robin, Victoria’s friend, took him to the vet, where he stayed overnight.  Our poor kitty!  He’s doubtless traumatized, especially with us gone.

Kurt is traumatized, with Victoria gone.  Victoria is traumatized, with Kurt having pneumonia.  Twubbles an’ twials!  

Meanwhile, we’ve been traveling through pretty country... and today we stopped to look at the Pensacola lighthouse (we couldn’t go up inside it, because they were doing renovations -- those everlastin' renovations!) and the National Naval Aviation Museum, which is right by the National Flight Academy.  We saw a number of planes practicing maneuvers (in the sky, not in the museum).

Hopefully, Victoria will be all right in the morning.  We still have a long ways to go – over 1,000 miles.

Larry and I ate at Cornerstone Restaurant – sort of a small hole in the wall (but with good coleslaw).  Very bad water – I think they used bayou mud to make my iced tea.

Now to hit the feathers and sleep fast!  We have two long days ahead of us.

,,,>^..^<,,,     Sarah Lynn     ,,,>^..^<,,,     

(As previously noted, this journal was written a couple of days ago, on Monday.  We just crossed the state line into Nebraska a little after 7:00 p.m.  We'll be home soon!)