November 11, 2005 - Lovers Key S. P.

Well, the pace of life hasn't slowed down any at all.  Matter of fact, if anything, it's increased.  I'm writing this while Barb's in the shower, then a quick breakfast, then a Dr. appt. (routine stuff) then shopping (groceries, fishing gear, nice used long sleeved shirt for my fishing when the no-see-ums are thick) and hopefully we'll be home in time for another beautiful sunset.

We're working Monday & Tuesday each week to satisfy our requirements for the parking & utilities.  This week was supposed to be the first "normal" week for us, as opposed to the hurricane cleanup routine.  So right off the bat on Monday, rather than taking the tractor with the brush hog across the street and mowing the tall grass over there, I got to use the tractor for an hour on some more hurricane clean-up.  Not much of a change in plans, as I then went across the street to mow.  Meantime, Barb was in the office helping sort out paperwork, which she's a whiz at.  About noon Ron, the single guy next door to us, came out in a golf cart to take over the mowing.  After lunch Barb and I headed out to the nature trail on Black Island to clean it up.  Our goal is to have the trail condition so two people can walk side by side for its entire 4 mile length.  The hurricane damage has pretty well been taken care of, and we're just trimming branches, cleaning up the junk on the trail, weed-whacking around the little pavilions and benches along the trail, and generally making it an inviting place to be.  I have a real grudge against things like the nickerbean and cat's claw vines, because they make me bleed, so extra care is taken with those two plants.  Particularly the cat's claw.  Those thorns are so sharp, you don't even know you've been cut until you notice the blood!

It got too hot for Barb on the trail in the afternoon, so we came home, stuck her in the air conditioned Road Abode, and I messed with the bushes behind the coach.  Kind of a kick to be working at home and having it count toward our hours.  Seems that since the RV spaces are part of the park, and that other people will be using them, it's considered working for the park.  Not only did the removal improve our view (and Ron's too), but it makes it easier to fish there now!  Double benefit, eh? 

Tuesday morning we went to the trails, and in the afternoon I did the lawn cutting stuff with a weed whacker, and we expected to have the rest of the week for play.  Only in the afternoon we learned there would be a big burn of trash Wednesday morning left over from last year's Hurricane Charlie, and if we were available could we come watch out for stray sparks and uninvited beach visitors getting too close.  You bet we would!  Got some great pictures to boot!  Afterward we got to goof off and I caught a bunch of fish I didn't know the names of or legal status of either, so I've become a regular catch and release guy, much to Barb's consternation.  She likes fish on the dinner plate as much as I do, but I've got this thing about being legal (and so does Barb).  We'll probably pick up a Florida fish book while shopping today.

Yesterday (Thursday) about 1/2 an hour after I told Barb that there was nothing for us to do with the park and we could do anything we wanted, like catch up on e-mail, website publishing, and the paper pile, here came Heath, the park assistant manager.  Seems the tram driver for the morning had called in sick, and would one or both of us take the morning shift.  You betcha!  I really like driving the tram which takes people from the parking lot out to the south beach.  Great fun to talk to the people who come from all over the world as well as the locals, some of whom have season passes.  Besides, I go over two bridges where there's usually fishermen, and I can get some tips from them.

Now, that's not complaining.  We're volunteers, and after our obligatory hours are over, we can easily decline more work.  It's just that we really like the place, the staff, and what we're doing, and when asked we're quick to say yes.  We know that there's lots of flexibility in when we work our hours, so if we wanted to take a Monday or Tuesday off, we could.  But, when we're working or fishing, there's not much time left for things like updating the website, catching up on e-mail, or reducing the size of the paper pile in here!  And we haven't washed the coach since we got here!  Is this a great lifestyle or what?

This has got to be a serious birders paradise.  And for us casual observers, it's great fun as well.  These pictures were taken as we were going out to watch the sunset again.  First time we'd seen these little shore birds actually in the surf.  Yeah, that's "surf" for the Gulf.  Just one of the reasons we like the Gulf side of the state.  It's often like a mill pond or large lake it's so quiet.

Another fun sunset, and then some brush dumping the next day or so.  This came from behind our Road Abode as well as behind Ron's 5th wheel.

We tried to get some perspective of the amount of brush we'd hauled as a result of the hurricane, but as usual, the pictures don't really do it justice.

This young red-shouldered hawk will occasionally perch on Maria's (our "boss") deck railing as well, and we've seen it around the place every once in a while.  Al and Audrey, the couple who are parked in our "old" space walked within 12' or so of it, and it just watched them go by.

This yellow rat snake had more kinks than we'd ever seen in a live snake.  It obviously wasn't in any hurry to end the portrait session.  When it did leave, it went back to its "normal" form.  Constricts birds and rodents.  And this is the trail we're working on.  Those branches sticking out on the right were all dead and detached from their original tree, but held there by vines.  One of the reasons we like working the trail as much as we do is all the photo ops it provides.

A better shot of those branches, and me in the gas-powered cart.  It's called an EZ-GO and has this little dump-truck bed behind the seat.  We only put tools, cameras, binoculars, and refuse in there.  The stuff we cut stays alongside the trails to keep things as natural as possible.

That vine climbing the palm tree is almost sensual, isn't it?

The trails follow the canals that were cut into Black Island, and while we've not seen them yet, there are bottle-nosed dolphins that will come in here as well as manatees, not to mention all the fish.  One day on our way out here from the shop, we saw a manatee for a brief moment or two as it came up for air.  Great fun.

Barb's standing by a most unusual little flowering bush.  The flowers are made up of several separate little flowers that are pink, orange and yellow.  Didn't get a good up-close shot, so I've got to try again.  Those dead palm fronds in the trail are the kinds of "trash" we'll pick up and pitch off the trail.  Many young families will be pushing baby strollers along this trail, and we try to make it as easy as we can for them without destroying the natural setting.

The osprey on the left has either a sheepshead or a black drum it's enjoying, and the one on the right has either a mullet or a snook.  That's about the limit of my knowledge of all the varieties of fish in these canals.  The picture on the left was taken along the trail where we were working (and it makes me feel a little guilty to use that word "working" when we're in this environment), and the one on the right was taken at the beach.  The same scenes could have been anywhere in the park.  The ospreys are plentiful, and we can hear them calling constantly.  Still makes us grin when we hear them.

Al, Audrey, Barb, and I got to remove the pole barn roof from this RV site, and we had a great time of it.  Al and Audrey are building a home near here and spend a lot of their off time checking out the progress.  Al likes to fish too, so he's been helpful getting rid of the brush behind our coach.

We've managed to take some of the metal roof off, pulled (using Al's truck) the remainder over, and now we're unscrewing more of the roof.

When we consider what this structure weighed, along with the fact that it had anchors holding it down, we're impressed with the power of the wind that came through here.  And I quit complaining about being wimps and leaving so soon.  We really were glad we spent that "extra" time in Clermont.

Back to the trail maintenance.  This vine grows on a fence that is on one side of the butterfly garden.  Several volunteers (locals, not campers like us) have made a very nice garden, complete with irrigation and everything.  It's a very inviting place to linger in, and someday (we tell ourselves) we'll come and sit and relax and enjoy all the different butterflies that visit.  Might even take a picture or two.

Well, since we're already here, might as well catch this interesting looking one, eh?  And then a shot of the pole barns that Wilma messed with.  Originally, there were three of them.  A small one on the left, and then two larger ones.  You can see that the one on the right is missing its roof.  That's what we were taking apart earlier.  Since it took the four of us three hours to remove the whole thing, Heath figured it would take the entire crew only a day to remove all the rest of the material that was left.  And he was pretty close.  Got all but the back of one barn in this one day.

These are just a few close-up shots of what the wind did, and then another look at where we had been before Al and Audrey moved in there.

Driving the tram, taking people to the beach and back, is a prime volunteer job.  Both Barb and I are now "qualified" tram drivers, and enjoy doing it.  That bridge is a favorite fishing spot, and the other evening while I was fishing there, a young man caught a red fish that was huge.  It must have weighed 40 pounds and was nearly 4' in length.  Exact measurements and pictures are not available, as Barb had just left with the camera when he caught it, and after fighting the fish for probably 10 minutes, it broke loose.  Chris was the young man, and Dave his father we later learned.  Nice folks from MN.

That's me back there checking out the fishing after our initial brush clean up.  And then Al comes along and tells me about the one that got away.  Not really.  He was telling me horror stories about the place he'd sold up north, and the hassles he was having with the buyer, but it sure does look like he's showing me how big his fish was.  That picnic table is strewn with most my fishing tackle, as I hauled it all out to select what to use here in this environment.  Never did any still fishing like this in FL before.  Using frozen shrimp, I managed to catch some caravel jack, a sheepshead, a flathead catfish, and a topsail catfish.  Not bad for somebody who hasn't a clue what he's doing, eh?

Since I was running around moving stuff that had been stored, Barb gets credit for these fun shots.  Most the day I was on the tractor.  And the next day I could hardly walk.  Not only did it get to my back, but my left leg, the one that was on-off-on-off with the clutch all day, protested mightily.  Tough to be out of shape.

HA!  Amazingly hard work, eh?  (But notice that left leg with the clutch depressed?)  Dex (another volunteer - his first day on the job) was tossing some smaller broken pieces in the bucket and I would take them over to the dump truck and dump them in.

Al is unbolting one of the uprights that held all three barns together.  That way we can pull them down one at a time.  Then Matt (in a ranger uniform) and Ron are figuring out how to get that canopy out of there without creating any hernias.

That's a piece of steel that's bent up to the left, and a wooden 4X4 that it had been bolted to.  And the whole thing had been lifted up high enough for that garbage can to be blown in there before it settled back down.  Sure glad we weren't here when that happened!  Al is connecting a chain to the bucket, and I'll back up to bring the beam down.  Ron was wisely staying out of the way.

Well, that worked OK.  Lessee what else we can do next, eh?

Removing the legs and tying the chain to the center, I could then take the beam over to the trailer, and Al could disconnect the chain and we'd go find something else to play with.  Like that steel that had been bent up, and the rest of the roof that had blown over the fence.  Al's a brave man, letting me move him around in the bucket.  He didn't know I'd never done this kind of thing before!

YAA HOO!  All kinds of things happened when I put the tractor in reverse.  Talk about noisy!  Then we had to clean up the mess, of course, by dismantling everything.

Every once in a while we'd get some help from one of the rangers, and this time it was Marci, unbolting the base of the wall from its supporting beam so we could pull the wall down and disassemble it.  Marci usually does a lot of the tractor driving, but I beat her to it today because she had some other work someplace else.  She's also in the process of totally gutting out an old mobile home here on the property, and then she'll rebuild it to live in.  Ambitious woman! 

And then I proceeded to push the metal roof back and forth a few times until it ripped off completely, so we could bring the whole thing over on itself and take it apart.

The fun never stops.  In this case, the roof came over onto the tractor and Al had to pull it off, and then we wrapped the chain around another section to get it off.

Section by section, it eventually all went away.  Or at least onto the truck and trailer, and subsequently to the recycle plant.  Al has spent a lot of time in the construction industry, and was pretty much the brains on this project.  Barb and I have torn down buildings in the past and I love to mess with machinery, so got to play tractor driver.  Ron and Dex (and others) were essential to the hauling away process.  Impromptu teamwork always seems to be the best in my world.  If a lot of thought and planning and agreements had gone into this project, it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun, nor would we have accomplished as much in as little time as we did.