Ocala National Forest

The azalea bushes have been blooming around here for the last few weeks and the best ones that we spotted were in the Melrose cemetery up the road from us.

Pink is the most common but there were several other colors too.

One day I spotted this unusual moth down in the swamp here.

Off to work to move some downed trees to make room for a fence.

This dead tree near our campsite looks like a piece of modern art to me.

On Friday we drove down to the Ocala National Forest to drive on some of their Jeep trails. Janice liked the slogan on this sign.

Much of the National Forest was similar to what we see here at Ordway.

The young long leaf pine trees look like giant bottle brushes.

A gopher tortoise in the road!

He pulls in his head and covers it with his front legs.

We stopped at one last lake and then headed home.

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?