Sunset at Ft. Myers Beach

We decided to spend our last evening this year in southern Florida at the beach.

On the road again.

We will pulling out of Estero in the morning bound for the Tampa-St. Pete area for a couple of days. It’s been quite a battle between Susie and I as to what we take and what we leave here. She has enough planters and decorative rocks to make my tailgate touch the ground. Naturally, I set out to tell her she could not take all that stuff home. I was very firm and I’ll let you know next time around if I was successful. Don’t take any bets on it.   

We hope to visit Ybor City in the Tampa area and do some touristy stuff. We are then headed for St. Augustine for a month at Anastasia State Park. We’re both looking forward to it but we’re also ready to spend some time in Indiana. When we agreed to go in January, it seemed like a really great idea but now that it’s warm up north, it’s not so much a good idea. 

I have no idea what kind of internet access we’re going to have for the next week so there may not be any of my scintillating entries for a while. 

A quandary.

The newspaper where my former blog was posted has removed all access to it and I don’t know how to let people know where to find this one. I guess I’ll just start over.  I do have a gordongrindstaff.com web site that is being worked on. I hope to tie things together enough to make it a little easier to get to this blog from there.

Otherwise, I guess no one will be reading this stuff.

I’m not getting near that thing.

Does ‘hands free’ mean that some little robot arm is going to come flying out of that silver box and give me a hand (so to speak)??? 

Sorry pardner. Us real men can handle this operation by ourselves. 

Springtime at Koreshan

We really didn’t have a winter here in Southwest Florida and I guess we didn’t really have a Spring either. The temperature went from hot in January to hotter today. Still, some of the flora and fauna know that something is different. This pink trumpet tree in the historic site portion of the park just burst forth over a couple of days time and I thought it rated a mention in this weblog. It might dress the place up a little bit, maybe.  Give it a little class, as it were. I was somewhat concerned that people think all this web log featured was urinals. 

 

photo by Susie. 

Who turned down the heat???

               

Yesterday morning dawned bright and clear here in Southwest Florida, except that it was a little bit cool; 60 degrees at daybreak. The weather affects different people in different ways. I snapped this picture shortly after the sun came up.  One of these people is from Florida, one is from Indiana and the other is from Maine.  Can you pick out which is which?

Dream on, Buster.

All this time I’ve been looking for the perfect life and it was right under my nose. But every element?  I don’t think so. For one thing, they don’t have my granddaughter, they don’t have a fine late September morning when the air is crisp and there’s not one car on the road out on the road leading totown. Nor do they have a steaming cup of coffee on that same september morning in the swing on my porch. 

They don’t have wild blackberries growing in the back yard. 

I wonder just what these elements are that make for the perfect life. High taxes, maybe? Or hurricane Insurance that borders on Usury?  

Interestingly enough, this place did not rate a mention in the community of the year contest. of the month contest.

St. Patrick’s day

Our group here at Koreshan State park celebrated St. Paddy’s day on the 19th of this month because our weekend was busy with the antique engine show at the Park.  I know it wasn’t the right date but we still had the spirit of the day. We also had corned beef, cabbage, boiled potatoes, carrots, soda bread and Guiness to wash it all down.  I’ve never been one for carrots but they just seemed to fit. I also crossed some cultural borders by putting wasabi on my corned beef. Is that multicultural or Melting Pot?? 

I also sang ‘Oh, Danny boy’. It made Susie cry.  Maybe I missed my calling.

  

The food was prepared by an Irishman from Nova Scotia.  

Jason’s river trip

My Son Jason came down to visit and spent a day on the river kayaking, fishing and taking pictures. He took a hundred pictures or so. Here are four of them.

 

These are either Egrets or Ibis. I’m not that good at identifying birds and that’s not all.  I also don’t know the plural of Ibis.

I don’t know what kind of tree it is but it’s sure pretty.

A blue Heron.

tri-color ready for flight

Pavlov’s reaction.

I scratched my hand this morning and I thought perhaps I should put a little alcohol on it.  I rummaged around under the bathroom sink for the bottle and I saw it in the corner. I knew it was the alcohol bottle before I even had my hand on it. Now why is that? Do all alcohol bottles have that same plain, efficient look?  Does a french or a russian alcohol bottle look like ours?? If so, who decided that? Is there a committee somewhere making decisions like that?

I think there might be something to this. I closed my eyes and pulled a spray can of Pam vegetable oil out of the cabinet. I knew it was Pam as soon as my hands touched it. Is this weird or what?  Did it’s position in the cabinet have anything to do with it?

While I’m on the subject of spray cans of Pam, has anyone noticed how similar they are to cans of E-Z-off oven cleaner? I hope no one ever gets ‘em mixed up. 

Subsequent tests on my new recognition system revealed about an 80 percent success rate. I missed on the little bottles of Crabtree and Evelyn shampoo and conditioner that we brought home from Disney World.  I expect that’s because I buy my shampoo by the quart.