November 30, 2006 - Lovers Key

Hope you had a decent Thanksgiving day.  We sure did.  So much to be grateful for........

Left Lake Minden Thousand Trails (CA) park after enjoying son Rick and his family, and 164 miles later pulled into Morgan Hill Thousand Trails for one night to enjoy visiting with Frank and Susie, and next day it was off to the Las Vegas Thousand Trails park, 512 miles away.  Spent two nights there capturing some mail and getting new cell phones.  NV has the lowest taxes/fees for cell phones of any state in the Union.  We like low taxes/fees.

Three more days and 1206 miles later, we were happily parked at Buckhorn Lake Resort, near Kerrville, TX.  And it truly is a resort.  Right up there with Hart Ranch in our opinion.

Friend John was there (and had been for quite a while) taking care of everything that's needed for a great rally.  In this case it was the Datastorm rally.  Datastorm is the outfit that is responsible for us getting online while we're running around.  They re-sell time as a Value Added Reseller of the Hughes satellites, and they build the dishes and associated equipment to capture the signal in the first place.  And the Datastorm users group was getting together to learn and share all about the systems.  John was kind enough to host us for a couple of nights before the rally started so we could chat a bit on our run back to Florida.  He did a  really great job of finding us a spot to park, eh?  Thanks again, John!!  The view of the local critters wasn't hard to take either.

Yeah, the black swan has both legs.  Just wasn't using them.  Barb was quick enough to catch friend John with a new toy, given to him by some people he was kind enough to introduce us to......but, of course, I can't remember their names now. 

That little plane really got its engine revved up in the wind, too!

While we were there we went out to dinner for some catfish.  Probably the best we'd ever had too.  Lakehouse as I recall.  After dinner Barb excused herself to use the ladies room, and when she came back she had this huge grin on her face.  She'd found Dean and Bettye!!  Now, as you may recall, friend John, Dean and Bettye, and Barb and I enjoyed some time together at Grand Teton National Park.  Dean and Bettye live in San Antonio, and Barb and I had agonized over not having enough time to stop and visit them as we hurried back to Florida.  A review of one of Dean's journals (he keeps friends and family up to date with wonderful journals, complete with outstanding photos when they go to WY each summer) relieved a little of our guilt because Dean had written that they'd be at a rally the weekend we were in Kerrville.  And there they were!  Having dinner with a bunch of people from their rally (not the Datastorm rally John was putting on) at the same place we were.  Bettye graciously gave up her craft class the following day, and they came over to Buckhorn where we all had a great time together for a few hours.  No guilt anymore!!  We are truly blessed with some of the best friends in the world.

As we got near Clermont, FL, after spending some time in Nacogdoches, TX, getting some maintenance done on the coach at the Foretravel factory, we got a call from son Doug who wondered where we were.  Turned out he was on his way to Ft. Myers, FL, to deliver a car.  And with neither of us doing much changing of schedules, he arrived at Lovers Key about 2 hours after we did!    1,647 miles after leaving Kerrville.  Yikes!  That's almost a 7900 mile side trip from Clermont, Florida to Lovers Key State Park, Florida.  Got the deed done though, and we're happy we made the effort.

Gave Doug a quick tour of the park, and the manatees were having fun chasing each other around.  Putting on a show just for Doug....as we've never seen that activity before!

Taco Ardiente for dinner, and you'll recognize that other smiling face as belonging to Elmer.  Half of the Elmer and Ann team.  Ann was in SD with her daughters for the weekend, so we felt sorry for Elmer and gave him a ride to the taco joint so he wouldn't starve to death.  And of course, having Doug visit us was enough of an excuse to go to the Royal Scoop for some outathisworld ice cream.

And here's home, sweet home.  At least for the moment. Can it get any better?  For a gal that loves to find neat shells and a guy who loves to catch dinner, I can't see how it can.  Well, maybe fewer no-see-ums when I'm trying to clean a fish or when Barb's out on the beach.  That thing on the other side of the yard that looks like a ramp to a dock is just that.  The Assistant Park Manger moved his dock out a bit further into the canal, and needed to build a longer ramp, and somehow I ran off with the old one.  Not sure exactly how we'll rig it, but that bank is just too steep for us to get down to the canoe and then back up again.  And yes, I had a lot of help from Photoshop Elements 3 for this last shot.

The sunsets here rival those of Arizona....... almost.  We do like beach sand a bit better than desert sand though.

On a morning walk (on a day when we weren't "working" of course) we wandered through the butterfly garden.  This little flower is one of our favorites.  And hard to catch!  They don't seem to last very long, and need to be in sunlight to open.  It is very reminiscent of a passion flower and may be in the same family.  And those berries?  The raccoons love to eat them, but apparently they don't have much nutritional value, as 'coon droppings almost always are full of undigested berries.

And it's off to work we go.  If you can call this work!  Elmer lets me drive the tractor..... or I whine a lot!  And in this case, we're gathering up some dirt/sand to fill some holes left from where we'd removed some dead palm trees earlier.  And that's not a posed picture with Ann gathering up some clippings, Barb shoveling dirt, and Elmer getting some much needed water.  The four of us enjoy working with each other in case you hadn't gathered.

This is great fun.  (Thanks Ann for letting me use your picture of us & the tractor.)  We'd pulled up the benches from a tram stop that's not used any more and transported them to the tram station on the beach.  And then took the smaller benches from the beach to be used elsewhere in the park.  Only we got marooned on an island!  The beach restrooms are in the process of getting flush toilets (whew! - no more stinky stops!) and in the process of putting in a water line across the beach access road, the contractor broke another water line that nobody knew was there, and had to shut the road down until it was fixed.  We goofed off on the beach for a couple of hours and then were "rescued" by a ranger in one of the EZ-Go's, abandoning the truck and tractor.  There is a walking bridge to "home," and the tractor and truck couldn't use it, but the EZ-Go could do it just fine.  Later in the day the road was opened again, and the equipment made it back home just fine.  Thrill a day around here!

The annual sandcastle building contest in full swing.  About 3 or 4 miles up the beach from us (actually on a different island) at the Outrigger and Holiday Inn hotels.  And if you're into sand castles, then click here for a great show of some wonderful art work and talent.  CAUTION:  This may take some time to load, as the show is about six minutes long.  My first attempt at this kind of thing, so be kind with your remarks, OK?

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