Kissimmee "Prairie" State Park, FL. A hidden gem

This is a large state park, in central Florida. There is no lake, no beach, no golf course. Yes!

Not only that, but when we arrived, we scoped it the more vacant equestrian campground, and upon asking if we could stay there instead of in the regular campground with more amenities, were told we could.

We like this kind of flexibility, and had one of the best stays we have had anywhere.

Miles of hiking trails, more than we could have had time for in the two nights we were staying. We chose one that was recommended, and were rewarded with terrain and wildlife unlike anything we had ever seen.

Including something very special and exciting that I'm saving for the end of this blog post.

The hike went through miles of open areas. I wouldn't classify it as prairie, but it was flat. The plant life didn't consist of grasses as much as it did succulent plants, small trees, etc. It was different from anything we had seen, and was lovely.

Along the way we saw many large birds--some were turkey vultures and some were turkeys.

In the areas where there were trees were strung hundreds of spider nests. The spiders were huge--about four inches. All competing for food. Just glad it wasn't us.

Then, along a road through a wetland, we spotted, lying about 10 feet off of the trail, a humongous dinosaur--a 10-12 foot alligator (Actually, calling it a dinosaur is a bit insulting. Alligators are 180 million years old, and preceded many dinosaurs that became extinct 65 million years ago).

Well, if you live in Florida, apparently seeing an alligator is more common than seeing a deer in Washington. But it was exciting to us to see our first alligator that was not in a zoo.

 

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State of Florida’s SunPass Turnpike System in a word: GOTCHA!!!!

In planning our route to the Everglades and Key West, we noticed that several of the roads are “Turnpikes.” Haven’t run into that before, so we checked it out to see how much change we should acquire to put into the little bins.

HA HA HA HA HA!

Gone are the days of dumping coins into a bin, or getting a little piece of cardboard at a booth and then paying at another booth when you exit. NOPE. We find you need to buy something called a SunPass, (odd name since we haven’t had sun in any of the four days we have been in Florida). Otherwise, we will get bills sent to our home in Washington, and since we won’t be home for a long time to get them, we didn’t want that.

First question: Why toll roads? Doesn’t Florida get enough money from tourists to afford real highways? Seems like an obvious attempt to gig tourists.

Of course, you can always use the state highways instead of the turnpikes if you wish. That is, if you like stoplights and strip malls.

So, for $4.99 (plus tax) we buy a Sunpass at a grocery store.

We activate it, set up an on-line account, put money into our account, put the sticker on our windshield and off we go!

Oh wait a minute......something isn't working.

We go through a couple of toll “ booths” and a sign lights up that says that we are not registered. Will part of our road trip include the Florida State Prison?

So, while I’m driving, and watching the rear view mirrors for State Patrol cars who are obviously on to me, and looking overhead for helicopters that are directing their manhunt, Vicky calls the 800 number.

I listen as she enters our Sunpass number and “PIN” over and over and over, finally getting a live body (because our call is important to the State of Florida), only to find out that we made a HORRIBLE mistake! An UNFORGIVEABLE error!. I hope we can dash across the state line to Alabama before we get caught.
Know what our sin is? We moved our sticker 18 inches on our windshield.

I had put it on the lower left part of the windshield, following the instructions on the packaging and sticker as closely as I could, although it seemed weird because the sticker side was toward the outside and was totally gray. To make sure I had attached it correctly, I walked around the parking lot to check out other cars, and observed that most people put them below the rear view window. So, I figure, I’ll do what they do, after all they live here and must know something I don’t know, and moved it from the left top corner to below the rear view window.

Well, Katherine Harris, come get me. If you can make all of those voters disappear, I hate to think what you can do to us.

Come to find out, when I moved it, I INVALIDATED IT.

..........I WHAT? YES, you are reading that correctly.

So what do we do? Which lane do we go through on these toll roads? After all we are already on one. So we call again to ask, and Vicky enters our numbers again, and again and again. Takes a long time to get a live body again, even though our call is important to the State of Florida
.
Vicky asks: How are we supposed to know something as obscure as that we shouldn’t move the sticker from one part of our windshield to another?

Answer: It’s on our instruction sheet.

OK.

Here is the packaging for the Sunpass. There is nothing indicating that you have one chance to attach it and one chance only. C’mon. Who would ever assume something like this? SAY IT IN BIG LETTERS RIGHT ON THE PASS ITSELF OR ON THE PACKAGE.

Here is the instruction sheet we were supposed to read. I'm serious. This really is it. And this is not in several different languages--this side of the sheet is the complete English version. It is about 8 inches by 30 inches, and folds up to be about 2x2.

If we had read it before we left the parking lot of the grocery store we’d still be there.

Yes, it is there. See it? NO? OK. Let me blow it up for you. I highlighted it. The woman who took our call because our call was important to the State of Florida was spot on--right there in black and white, as clear as a bell, as plain as the nose on your face.

Here we are, trying to reach a destination, and we need to carry with us our own personal attorney to read the fine print just to lawfully drive on a highway. This key instruction is not anywhere on the actual card we purchased, or on the packaging, or in the instructions for mounting. Instead, it is buried in a mountain of verbiage on a small insert that one would need a magnifying glass to read.


“Can we get credit for the price of the card that now does us no good?”

Answer: NO.

But, cheerfully: “You can buy another one!”

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Hmmm. What's that plant we are seeing so often on the Palmetto Trail?

We left Soren and Sebastian (I mean, Atlanta) in the cold of winter and drove 350 miles south and east to the Atlantic coast and summer. What a change in a short period of time! But, that’s the fun of things.

The campground here at Crooked River State Park is exceptionally nice (except for our neighbors who have this yappy little ankle biter that they allow to bark—jeesh do I dislike dog owners).

Vicky (our trip planner) found this place and chose it because there were hikes here—our usual criteria for whether we go to a campground.

[I noticed today that in our 2 ½ years of marriage, Vicky and I have now stayed at 80 DIFFERENT campgrounds (some, of course multiple times, but I didn’t count multiple stays). 80? Holy Entrance Fees, Batman!]

The hike today was 5.5 miles with no elevation gain. More of a walk than a hike. But oh we'll--we are in Florida after all, not in New Mexico.

So, we aren’t knocking it by any means. Like most places we visit, somebody had pride in this place, and designed hikes to show off the beauty of the park. We appreciate that. The trails were well marked, and the hike showed us a different part of our glorious country than we had seen before.

 

All along the trails we saw a plant that looked like a palm frond. One of the trails was named the “Palmetto” trail. As we walked along, we asked each other: “I wonder what this plant is called?” While on the PALMETTO trail. “We’ll have to look it up on the internet when we get back home,” we said to each other as we were walking along on the PALMETTO trail

Finally! We had an aha moment! I’ll bet that plant is a ………are you ready……..a PALMETTO! See! Even though we are old our minds are like steel………..uh……….uh….Oh yeah!.....Steel traps! We figured it out that these as Palmetto plants. Don't even think of trying to get anything past us.

At that moment we made another commitment to our marriage. Clearly we cannot function effectively on our own, and can only hang on with our fingernails when we are together.

Along the way we saw a baby raccoon.

And, the first of these I had ever seen (except at Disneyworld in the “It’s a Bug’s Life” show) a gung beatle:

 

I wanted to tell him that I was getting roast beef tonight, but I was afraid he’d feel bad that all he was getting was dung. So, I exhibited an unusual amount of restraint and merely took his picture.

 

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Grandchildren

Friday, November 22, 2013

 

We left Stone Mountain yesterday morning. We were excited to be going to Florida, but our hearts were a bit heavy leaving our family. The reason we planned our trip to be able to stay in Georgia for 2-3 weeks was because of our grandsons Soren and Sebastian. Our other grandchildren live close to us in Washington, and we feel like we to experience them growing up, and get to enjoy them regularly. But when grandchildren live across the continent, it is wholly a different thing.

And we got to do that—spend a lot of time with Soren and Sebastian. Being grandparents is the most important part of our lives. Children cannot have too many people who are crazy about them and everything that they do.

I know how important grandparents are partly because it was something I missed out on. My grandparents were very old by the time I came along, and were used up by the Depression and the hard lives they had. I don’t blame them at all. I know some people have it rough these days, but I gotta say: there’s rough and then there’s the Depression.

My one vivid memory of fun time with a grandparent was with my mother’s father. When we would go to visit him and my grandma during the winter on their farm in Oskaloosa, Iowa, he would sometimes get me up early in the morning, warm my clothes on the coal stove, and take me out with him to do morning chores. The mornings were cold—I remember that well. But I loved doing it, even though I was only three or four at the time. He died shortly after that. I never got to tell him how important those few mornings were to me.

How many times I have wished I could have had an adult conversation with my grandparents, to find out who they were and what they thought. I’d like to hear their experiences with my parents. I got none of that. I want to know them, and never had a chance to.

When I taught at ISU typically once or twice a semester I would have a student approach me to tell me he or she would be missing class because his “grandpa” or “grandma” died. There was usually such sadness in their eyes. To try to make this a bit easier for them I would frequently tell them my story--that I didn’t have grandparents and really missed that, and I was sorry for their loss but glad for them that they had theirs. They listened, and often thanked me.

So Soren and Sebastian live 3000 miles away. We all do the best we can. Parents have to have jobs, and so sometimes living far away from family is just a fact of modern life. But we wish they lived closer.

We had planned on spending 2 ½ weeks at the campground at Stone Mountain Georgia (more on this place in a later blog entry), and then were going to Disneyworld. However, when my mother broke her wrist and I wanted and needed to go back to Colorado to help her and my sister and family, these plans got dumped. Instead we stayed at Stone Mountain a few extra days, or actually Vicky did, since I went to Colorado.

Although all of our plans didn’t work out, that was OK because we got to spend a lot of time with Emily and Sean and with the boys, and that was great. And Soren got to spend another night camping with us (and having Vicky’s pancakes in the morning—yum), and Sebastian also got to go “camping” (which for him meant coming out to the camper to play). We (or just Vicky when I was in Colorado) frequently picked Soren up from school and spent some after school time with him. And we got to spend the entire day with Sebastian a few times.

Our three weeks with the boys:

We arrived at Stone Mountain to find that one of our jacks was not functional. This necessitated driving across town to purchase another one so we could remove the camper from the pickup. After we installed the new jack, I dismantled the old one and got it working again. Ta-da!! We decided we would just carry it with us in the pickup as a backup. We got a great deal on the one we purchased, so everything actually turned out great even though it looked like it could be a real problem.

Our second night there we got to go Trick or Treating with Soren and Sebastian. They shared their candy with us. Can you imagine? I never would have done that.

A day later we drove to eastern Georgia to do the Tour de Tugaloo with Sean. It was nice to be able to do a ride with him on his turf.

I also did some repairs to the top rack of the camper while we were there. One of the brackets got busted off—not sure how that happened. The Lance company gave good customer service—in order to replace that one part they had to tear open a package that had the entire set-up in it, and just charged me a reasonable price for the part. They easily could have justified having me have to buy the entire rack. Two thumbs up there.

Soren eating Vicky’s pancakes.

Soren making cookies in the camper:

Sebastian’s a techy.

What are grandmas for if not to buy grandchildren ice cream behind their parents’ backs?

Rainy day fun:

Our final day here. Fall is ending, and Winter will be here soon. Time to head south.

These boys mean so much to us, just as all of our grandchildren do. We feel that grandparents have something to offer that can round out what parents can give to children. We want to take our children out into nature with us, often, and in many different places. We can afford a camper and have the time to find places to take them—something that is more difficult for parents who are holding down two jobs and dealing with all of life’s pressures in having a family. When we travel we send them postcards and little goodies along the way to help them understand the different places we go, and to let them know that we are always thinking about them.

We hope they will continue to want to camp with us for many years. That is one of the reasons we got the new Dually—it has more room in the back seat for larger children. We have these fantasies of taking longer and more distant trips with them as they get older. That would be so wonderful. And who knows, maybe we will.

We know that when they are young adolescents that their grandparents will be yucky and gross and embarrassments to them, and we are looking forward to that. But it passes. And maybe instead of embarrassments we will just be seen as their goofy grandparents—driving all around the country acting like a couple of kids. That will be OK. They will see in us, as well as in other people in their lives, that growing old is not something to be afraid of, but is something that happens if you are lucky and that has its own special joys.

In no time we will be flying back to Seattle, to see family, and to spend time with our grandchildren there. We think about them a lot, and miss them so much.

My father used to say, at the end of our visits with him and my mother: “I wish you guys had never come.” Of course what he meant was that saying good by was so difficult. That’s how we feel today about Soren and Sebastian—we wish we had never gone there.

 

Helping Grandma Vicky knit.

The boys loed the pickup bed, so of course we had to all pile in.

 

 

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We interrupt this road trip...........

My mother fell, broke her wrist.

Not a lot of time to plan, but what we decided was that Vicky would stay in Atlanta with the camper, Emily, Sean, and the boys, and I would fly out to Fort Collins to help out.  Means we cancel our camping trip at Disneyworld, which we were looking forward to because it seemed so funky (camping?  At Disneyworld?).

But it wasn't that big of a deal to miss Disneyworld, and we both wanted me to be here with my mother.  Being away from Vicky is very difficult, and something we will never do unless it is an emergency.  That's our plan. 

In this week that I have been in Fort Collins we have gotten a lot done--mostly in finding rehabilitation services for my mother and a new place for her to live.  It may not sound like a lot, but everything requires a lot of trips, forms, decisions, new apparatuses (did you know that the plural of apparatus isn't apparati?  Neither did I) , and so on. 

She fell on her 91st birthday.  What a gift to give to yourself, huh?

Since I needed to return to Fort Collins, I used it as an opportunity to get a couple of shots in my knees.  The cartilage is thin in places in both knees, and totally absent in other places in both knees. This means that if I exert effort with my knees (riding up hills or walking up hills) I have bone rubbing against bone.  I don't need to tell you that this hurts.

There is an amazing discovery though called Synvisc-One.  Most people just call them chicken shots, because the material for them is extracted from the combs on the back of chickens' heads.  Can you believe that?  I mean, who ever thought to try this?  "Hey, I have an idea!  Let's grind up chicken parts and inject them into knees!!!"

Age is only the friend of the very young.  My mother's body is very strong for 91 years, her only real problem being balance.  The Physical Therapist says she can improve on this a lot with exercise.

I was lucky with the roll of the dice regarding my body.  My only real problem is arthritis.  It is everywhere, and I am usually in some kind of pain.  That's the problem with my knees.

I know that within a few years I will need more foot surgery, and probably another rotator cuff surgery.  Eventually probably need both knees will have to be replaced, and bones in my wrist fused.  I have arthritis in my neck and back.  I take anti-inflammatory medications at high doses and steroid shots occasionally.  I use a lot of ice.  That's just my life.

My belief is that the best treatment for arthritis is to continue to move a lot despite it.  I have no data to back that up.  It just seems that once you stop moving, then the body will freeze up more, and make movement even that much more difficult. 

I also think that drinking red wine is good for arthritis.  I have no data to back that up either, but I don't need any, and don't bother trying to tell me otherwise.

My mother exercised regularly all of her life, stretching, walking, and swimming.  She was tap dancing until she was 83.  If I can keep doing what she has always done, then I can get to 91 too, with a little luck, and enjoy my life along the way.

She's my role model. 

Tour de Tugaloo

On Saturday, Vicky, Sean and I got up very early and drove to Tugaloo, Georgia, for their annual bike ride ("early" = 4:30 a.m.) 

Sean had done the ride once before, but on his mountain bike--leading several other riders to ask him if he was crazy.  (it wasn't exactly phrased that way, but it is a family blog so we will leave it at that).

The ride is for a non-profit group that is attempting to purchase and restore some of the original countryside.  One of the things we like about organized rides is that it is a fun way of donating to worthwhile charities and causes.

The ride is beautiful.

Pretty cold in the morning, so we were bundled in layers.

We each got TWO shirts.  Included with registration (plus a package of chamois butt'r, trail mix, first aid kit, etc.)  You get a lot for the price here.

 

The first rest stop was at an historic stage-coach inn.  Fanciest rest stop we have ever had.

 Over the course of the ride, layers were removed.

 Beautiful fall colors.  Best weekend of the year, I'm sure.  Mile after mile of reds, oranges, yellows, and greens. 

 One of many interesting structures along the way.  One sees the full range of homes.

We crossed the river into South Carolina.  This is the first state that Vicky and I have both visited for the first time.  Frankly, it looked a lot like Georgia.

 When we entered South Carolina I serenaded Vicky with "Nothing could be fine-a than to be in (South) Carolina in the m-o-o-o-orning."  I was sure the other riders were so pleased that when we re-entered Georgia I serenaded her again--this time with "Georgia, Georgia......just an old sweet song."

Second rest stop.

 

After the second rest stop, the ride is a 6 mile out and back on a beautiful road (if by "beautiful" one means "hilly").  We have not done hills for about two months, and unfortunately for us, when we don't ride we can lose our conditioning quickly.

On the map it appears as if you can ride out on the 6 miles, and then just cross the dam and be back at the starting point.  That would have made about 30 miles for the day, and we thought that was sufficient to have enjoyed the ride and do something for our legs.

However, no such luck.  It was a dead end.  You could throw a rock across the river and see the road leading to the starting point, but I had forgotten to pack my Speedo so we couldn't swim it.

Turns out it was good luck, not bad.  We enjoyed the ride back, despite its hills, and were glad we had done the 40 miles.  Our original plan was to do the metric century (62 miles), but we would have needed more time (we needed to get back because Sean and Emily had an evening engagement).

After the ride:

Loading the bikes for the ride home.  The Yakima brackets work as designed.  We needed brackets and extra gear because, of course, when we travel, we don't bring along the tailgate.

Here is a comparison of the elevation profil that was published by the sponsors, and the one we obtained.

 

This looks pretty mild, doesn't it? 

Here is ours:

What can be seen is that the profile on the website is "smoother," omitting a lot of the smaller hills. The ride was actually comparable to a Whidbey Island one for the same distance.  A great, short workout.  I hope we can come back some day and do the metric century, assuming we don't have a long lay-off before we get here like we did this time.

We wanted to do a ride in Sean's home state, and do a ride with him.  It is a very well organized ride, with friendly staff and several SAG vehicles.  Although there are no shoulders (anywhere, not even a single mile with them), there isn't much traffic and drivers were very considerate.  It felt like a safe route.

We are so glad we did it.  We can now say we have ridden on both coasts!