Micanopy

Saturday, we drove down to Micanopy (pronounced Mick-ah-no-pee).

 It is a small town about a half an hour from here with a lot of antique, art, flea market type shops on the main street. They said that the film Doc Hollywood was filmed there. We hadn't been there before and we really enjoyed our day. We got there at lunch time so we had lunch at an outside table at The Old Florida Cafe.

They had a really good musician playing guitar, harmonica, and singing while we ate.

And of course no classy outdoor restaurant is complete without a large flamingo.

Flamingos seem to be common there.

I had to include a picture of this sign.

As usual, we were a couple of angels.

For many year, I have admired this tool box built by Gerstner & Sons in Dayton, Ohio, but at $1,895 for a new one it is a little out of my price range. (Actually a long way out of my price range.}

What does this have to do with Micanopy you might be asking. Well, sitting in front of one of the flea market type shops was this little gem. Older model, made by the same company and waiting for me to come along and snap it up.

With some new felt lining and some finish restoration, it should be as good as new.

Usually about once a week on one of my days off from Ordway-Swisher here, I go back over to the property where I was working before we moved over to here and do some more tree clearing with the backhoe. It starts out looking like this picture.

And ends up looking like this.

This is how we refuel the backhoe there when it needs it. Hand pumping it out of the barrel.

St Augustine Beach

Bob, (the other volunteer here), and I spent a couple of days last week repairing fence here. It is one of my favourite jobs here and as usual we had some friends on the fence posts. The first one is very common on the fence posts and is called a fence lizard. They are harmless and love to climb on to your back when you are not looking and ride in the pickup on the back of the seat or on the window ledge.

This critter is not so friendly, but they like to come out of the cracks in the posts and look like they are going to sting you. Scorpions.

On Monday we went to the beach in St Augustine. You can drive 4 wheel drive vehicles on the beach there so we drove down the beach and stopped to walk for a couple of times along the way. We were going to visit a few historical places downtown but it was way too crowded for us there. We might try again someday and go earlier in the morning.

 Janice was collecting shells in the surf and was tickled to find this barnacle that was purple!

We stopped in Polatka on the way home and had a delicious fish supper at Corky Bell's. It is a little restaurant on the shore of the St. Johns River.

Collection of Pictures

I have been collecting a file of pictures from here that are kind of random and don't really have a theme to tie them together, so I am going to just throw them on here. First of all, you might see this one a lot. One of our granddaughters won't read the rest of the blog unless the first picture has either one of us or the motorhome in it.

One of the tractors that I use here where we are volunteering.

This is one of the lakes here. We stopped work for lunch and ate here with this view in front of us.

I liked this tree with the hole clear through it.

This little lizard hangs out on our gate keypad here some days.

 Out riding around Sunday afternoon with the doors off. One of the many lakes here.

We hadn't seen a sign like this before.

Janice finally got to see one of the gopher tortoises that live here.

Kind of hard to see his head, but their feet can do some serious digging.

How many frogs can you see down in this pipe?

Busy at Ordway

It's hard to believe that we have been here for 3 weeks already. The other volunteer couple, another Bob and his wife Pam moved in the same day that we did. They are fun people and I enjoy working with Bob. Ordway is still a great place to be with deer and turkeys all along the roads.

There are also many smaller creatures here too like the little fence lizards. We even had one in the motorhome the other day.

Last time we were here I had to work 4 days a week. This time they changed it to 3 days a week, so I usually go back over to the other place across the road and run the backhoe 1 or 2 days a week.

One afternoon this week our job was to check out 4 canoes that hadn't been used for a few years by paddling them around the lake. The weather was calm and about 70 degrees so it was an enjoyable task. 

Last Saturday we went to a nearby get together of vintage camper owners. They had them open for display so we wandered around them for awhile. I forgot my camera so I had to use the phone for pictures.

Yesterday we went to a state park near here for a Yesterdays Festival. Vintage military displays, old cars and tractors, historical items, cannon firing and tram rides. The weather was great and we enjoyed it.

On the way, we stopped at a farmer's market and Janice was feeding a goat wrapped in a sweatshirt in her arms.

Christmas and More

One morning we spotted this guy outside the motorhome. It was a coral snake, one of the most poisonous snakes around here. Very pretty but with the neighbor kids running around here, we decided it was best to kill it.

There was a fence in front of the motorhome, so we decorated it with rope lights and ornaments and added a christmas tree. It still seems a little strange to have christmas decorations and green grass

Christmas day was spent at home with just the two of us.

Santa was nice to me and brought me a drone.

There are quite a few things to learn about operating this drone and I am still working on it.

It seems to take pretty good pictures and video.

On January 3, we moved over here to Ordway-Swisher where we will be for three months. We have the same campsite as last time.  The weather has been cold this week with overnight lows below freezing. This is white sand in the picture though, not snow.

This is the view behind the motorhome.

Our work trucks parked in front of the motorhome

They are in the process of setting up a laundry/storage building across from our motorhome. It will be nice to have a laundry here, but I don't know if it will be done before we leave.