Finne's Follies: April in Florida

Did I mention we found our warm air? Today will be hot and humid, with thunderstorms in the afternoon ...warm rain that will leave the air just as hot as it found it, and probably a little more humid. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. We can, after all, leave just as soon as we wish, which is the beauty of our new nomadic lifestyle.

We are in Florida the entire month of April. Our previous two stops, after Orlando, were the Cape Canaveral area and Daytona Beach, where we camped for a week with the Hoffmans-- Mark's daughter and her family.

We had two objectives at Cape Canaveral -- to visit the Kennedy Space Center, and to check on storage options for our motorhome and car while we're on our two-week cruise this coming January.

The Space Center was very interesting, although we landed there during a "spring break" week, and it was packed. We weren't able to get any special tours because they were already sold out at 9:30 in the morning, but the standard bus tour included with our entry fee was interesting. It took us to one of the launch sites and to a building that housed the Saturn 5 rocket and some memorabilia of the moon landing. At their Imax theater, they showed two 45-minute 3-D films of video taken from the International Space Station. Then there was the "Rocket Garden," home to several of the rockets that have been part of the space program over the years. Also we saw the Atlantis space shuttle, which is housed there, suspended from the ceiling. It looks much bigger in person. If only the space program's purpose was to honor and glorify the God of creation! That would make it worth the bazillions of dollars they spend on it.

As far as the storage is concerned, we still have a bit of a problem. We were hoping to take advantage of Thousand Trails' storage lot at their Space Coast RV Park (where we stayed), but it was not available. Something about all their spaces being already reserved. Bummer. More research will be required.

After Canaveral, we headed north again for Daytona Beach to meet up with the kids. It was a challenge finding availability anywhere. The campground we ended up in was dismal (in my opinion, anyway). Daytona Beach RV Park and Tropical Gardens, it was called. Talk about a pretentious name! It was nothing more than a big lawn with hookups situated off a main street behind some warehouse buildings. There were no picnic tables. There were no fire pits. There were no outdoor grills. No pool. Just grass. And a few stunted palm bushes. And one or two flowering shrubs, which I assumed to be the "tropical garden." And for all of that, we paid over three hundred dollars for the week! (Absolutely no refunds allowed, either. That should have been our first clue.) My guess is, the RV park was nothing more than an easy money-maker for the owners of the buildings between it and the street. Needless to say, this park is going on our "do not (ever) revisit" list.

Asher & Asa

But, nevertheless, we had a wonderful time visiting with the Hoffmans. They decided to take the kids to the Kennedy Space Center, which from Daytona Beach is about an hour away. And of course, Mark was up for going again. I opted out on the grounds that I'd just been there a few days before, which seemed like a reasonable excuse to me. In the end, they bought multi-day tickets, and so I ended up with two "quiet days" instead of one-- an introvert's delight. On the days we were all together, I played a card game and some board games with the kids and grandkids, and Mark happily looked after baby Olive, who to everyone's surprise warmed up to Grandpa practically on the first day.

Our last evening together, we all went out to Crabby Joe's diner, on the pier, and had some fabulous seafood. The place is so popular, our wait time was nearly an hour. People coming in after us were quoted up to an hour and forty-five minute wait times. Yikes.

On Saturday, we said our goodbyes and parted ways-- they for home and us for Fort Lauderdale.

When we booked our Florida stops, the Encore Park network was allowing four-day park to park camping with no "out of network" requirement. This was perfect, because it allowed us to camp throughout the state with minimal costs. Without the Thousand Trails/Encore membership, we could never have afforded it. Regular campground costs here are what I would call exorbitant. But for every pro, there's usually a con, and the con in this case is that four days is never enough time to actually see the area--particularly when you're old and slow and busy with normal things like planning your next six weeks and getting eye exams. This is our last day in Fort Lauderdale, and we've seen precisely nothing. Not even the beach. We had talked about taking the Hop-On-Hop-Off gondola tour today, but Mark's last minute eye exam in the late morning and thunderstorms in the early afternoon have put that idea to rest. Maybe next time.

If nothing else, at least we're discovering which RV parks we like and which ones we don't, which will help us immensely in planning our next visit to Florida.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention our recent drama with Sweetie Pie, the cat. Shortly after arriving to Daytona Beach, Sweetie began to get sick. After peeing on the bed and puking every few hours, for almost two days she stopped eating and drinking. We thought she was dying. She is, after all, 17 years old. Then she began to recover and started nibbling her food and drinking water again, but found herself constipated. No stools for over four days!

After deciding she wasn't dying after all, I opened up my online encyclopedia and looked up cat constipation. It turns out this is very common in older cats. One naturalist-leaning vet recommended psyllium to solve the problem. So I headed to the health food store, found a brand of powdered psyllium, free of additives of course, and wondered how the heck I was going to get my cat to eat powdered psyllium. It was a bit unsettling to read that, while psyllium is a great solution for constipation, if too much was consumed, it could also lead to worse constipation. How do I determine how much is enough and how much is too much?

What I finally ended up doing, on a trial basis, was mixing one teaspoon of the powder into two cups of her dry cat food, shaking it up well so that the psyllium coated the bits of food. This way, the psyllium would be rationed according to the amount of food she eats. I poured some in her dish, and by morning she'd left us a little present in her litter box. She's been regular ever since. Fortunately, the psyllium doesn't alter the taste of her food -- she is incredibly picky about her food, you know.

Next adventure -- Miami and the Keys!

(More pics...)