Gnats and Whatnot

Pine Island RV Park

This week we're on the Gulf side of Florida.

From Miami, we crossed Gator Alley to the Ft. Myers area and stayed for four days at an RV park on Pine Island, a little west of Cape Coral. Cape Coral is, for all intents and purposes, a giant marina-- a place where you can purchase a home with a dock, pretty much anywhere. It's set up with canals that resemble city streets, all of which connect in a sort of grid to the open water. St. James City, at the south end of Pine Island, is much the same. Our RV park, however, was situated in a rather dismal spot near the center of the island, with no access whatsoever to the water, and no public beaches anywhere to be found. Its only redeeming feature was a large saltwater swimming pool that we made use of a couple times. And they did put us in a fairly spacious site.

On our final day at Pine Island, we took the bikes out for a ride into St. James City, at the southern end of the island (looking for a beach, of course)-- a six mile round trip. It was good exercise, but that's about it.

If nothing else, we're discovering, for our next trip to Florida, which RV parks we don't want to stay at.

Did you know that gnats bite? Well, I didn't until recently. While Mark was loading the bikes back onto the rack and hooking up the trailer, he was bitten by gnats. "Gnats don't bite," I informed him--"It must have been something that looked like a gnat...couldn't have been a gnat."

However, after looking up biting gnats on the trusty internet, I found that indeed, some gnats DO bite! Live and learn.

So, Mark pulled out the essential oil bug-bite salve that I keep on hand, which works wonderfully well on mosquito bites, and rubbed it into his bites. It wasn't helping. We did some more research and learned that apple cider vinegar, coupled with thyme essential oil, is helpful. A few minutes later I had whipped up a vial of "gnat bite" solution. He rubbed it into his bites...again...and again. And again.

Mark's "gnat bites"...posted with permission.

Curiously, those half a dozen or so original gnat bites had turned into dozens of "gnat bites" all over his body-- legs, arms, neck. How, I asked him, is he getting more and more gnat bites, in the house, where neither of us have actually seen any gnats whatsoever?...and they are bothering only him? I have zero gnat bites. (It reminded me of the time, decades ago, where my young son found himself covered with "mosquito bites"... that turned out to be chicken pox.)

Now, I don't know everything...obviously; I didn't know that gnats bite. But one thing I'm fairly certain of is that gnat bites don't spread. He might have encountered a few biting gnats in the weeds behind the coach, but I suspect he encountered something else as well...perhaps a patch of poison ivy or poison oak? Whatever it was, my poor husband is currently in itch-hell-- a misery we've probably all encountered in one form or another sometime in our lives. We're treating with calamine lotion, and in three weeks or so he should be back to normal...we're praying that it heals up sooner than that!

This week we're in Palmetto, just south of Tampa. Yesterday we drove about forty-five minutes looking for a public beach that actually had parking near it. The water was chilly, but Mark ventured in anyway. I was content to bury my feet in the soft sand. If the weather holds out (we have three days of rain in the forecast), we'll try to return at least once before heading back to Gainesville.

I've been noticing a particular evergreen tree since we've been in Florida that I've been trying to identify, almost to the point of obsession. There was a tall beautiful tree of this variety in Pine Island. Arborday.org has a sort-of-useful site that helps you identify what kind of tree something is by its leaves. I say "sort of useful" because it wasn't useful at all in this case. Determined to solve the riddle I continued to google "evergreen leaf images" with no success. Finally I gave up. Then, as if Nature was egging me on, when we pulled into our site here in Palmetto, lo and behold, planted in the site right next to ours was another smaller version of this same tree! Back I went to the internet, hunting through images...and finally today I found it!

Norfolk Pine

Satisfaction is such a good feeling!

Driving the Florida Keys

Anticipation often results in a sort of romanticizing of reality, leaving behind a hint of disappointment when all is said and done. Such was the case with our drive across the Keys. Don't misunderstand-- it was a very enjoyable day, but, well, not the tropical paradise I had envisioned in my mind's eye.

One of the corrections that experience provided to me was the long, long bridge, or bridges I expected. The Keys are less like islands and more like a long thin tail of land. Many of the Keys are the size of a city park; one or two look to be privately owned, as they contained only one house, or altogether empty. The longest bridge was called The Seven Mile Bridge, but it didn't seem at all like seven miles, and there was no long, long bridge over open water with no land in sight, such as I had imagined. There probably never has been. For most of the drive, the road went through towns or was bordered by trees, and there was no view at all of the ocean.

Our adventure began with our arrival at the Miami Everglade Resort, an Encore park. This is a fairly nice park and we would certainly stay here again. It's situated in a rural area west of Miami, and nowhere near the Everglades, but I won't quibble over such minor details. The lots are spacious enough and they have a nice swimming pool (an important feature in a hot climate). This was the closest RV park to the Keys that we could find, giving us about a four hour drive each way to Key West. We considered getting a motel in Key West and staying overnight, but the cost was out of the ballpark for our stingy budget, so we decided to brave the drive in one day.

We got an early start in the morning and stopped for breakfast at Mrs. Mac's Kitchen in Key Largo (which I highly recommend) where it seemed necessary to bring up the name of Humphrey Bogart . Yes, that's fish and grits on my plate. (Yum!)

There is an Encore RV park on Fiesta Key, about half-way to Key West, that we checked out on the way. They had no openings this year, but we hope to be able to secure a spot next year for a couple weeks. Every site in this park is within spitting distance of the sea.

Taking the bicycles along was a very good decision. They allowed us to get around Key West much easier than a car. The streets are narrow and very congested. We parked and rode the bikes a short distance to the Harbor Walk, where we strolled past restaurants until Mark's stomach began to remind him about lunch. I wasn't hungry yet, so he ate and I drank. Later on we stopped again where I ate and he drank. In between, we hopped on the bikes and rode down the main street to the "Furthest Point" marker. We were hoping that making the trip on a Thursday would find the city a bit less crowded, but there were two cruise ships docked that day and the place was very busy...there's probably no "good day" in a tourist town. Once we got on the bikes, however, we became so focused on getting down the road, so to speak, that we forgot to get off once in a while and enjoy the things we came to see. What's up with that? After an hour or so of riding around, hot and tired, we returned to the car, loaded up the bikes, and looked for our second lunch stop. By 3:30 or so, we were homeward bound.

Last year's hurricane left two noticeable remains-- lots of dead trees and foliage, and an unpleasant rotten-egg stench. Not everywhere, but in many areas we noticed it. I expect the two are related.

The other thing I noticed about the Keys was the color of the water. In the Caribbean, the water very often is a blue-green or aquamarine color. Here in the Keys, the color is like a jade green. I couldn't capture the true color on my camera, but it was quite lovely.

The Florida Keys was one of the big "bucket list" items on our travel agenda. And now it's done. I'm very glad we took the time to see it. I'm a bit sorry we had to do it in such a rush, though. We didn't see any of the museums or special points of interest. Doreen, if you're reading this, I think the hurricane blew away the Butterfly House. I didn't see it on the map of the town anywhere. Too bad the woman who always goes the wrong way first lead the search for this place when you and I were there last. ;-)  ...for those of you who don't know the story, that would be me.

Perhaps next year we'll be able to spend enough time in the Keys to do them justice. And maybe they'll reestablish the butterfly house by then...you never know. One thing's for sure...despite my "hint of disappointment," I'm eager to return -- God willing, and the proverbial "creek" don't rise!

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...)

Space Shuttle Atlantis

Saturn 5 Rocket

Capsule (no idea which one)

Rocket Garden

Rocket Garden

Daytona Beach from the pier