Bezabor: Florida trip planning (posted from home)
Sunday, February 26-
We continued trip prep today. I’m still planning where to go and Labashi is repacking the ‘pantry’ storage crates in Mocha Joe. I signed onto seakayakermag.com to get some kayaking trip info and learned I had screwed up— this very weekend is the Gulf Coast Sea Kayaking Symposium in Tampa Bay. If I had known that, we’d have been there! Ah, well, maybe next year. Labashi decided to look for storytelling festivals since we’ve in the past said we’d like to attend one some day. And she found one! The Suwannee Storytelling Festival will be going on the weekend of 17-18 March. That happens to be a weekend we will be attending a Florida Trail event in Ocala National Forest so we’re trying to decide whether we can do one day at each event. But that one might also turn into a next-year event.
Saturday, February 25-
During my trip prep yesterday I started running onto information about sea kayaking in Florida. I hadn’t intended to take the kayaks and in fact was looking forward to having extra storage space for this trip. I told Labashi we could rent a canoe or kayak down there but then looked up some rental prices. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed silly not to take the kayaks. There are problems with renting--- you have to have to be able to find a rental shop, they have to have a kayak (and one you’re willing to take) available for you, and you have to bring them back on the shop’s schedule (and almost none of them are open around the golden hours of dawn and dusk). If you go into a campground on a river, lake, or ocean, for instance, the chances that you’re going to be able to kayak there aren’t good at all if you don’t already have your kayaks with you.
But the bad news is you have to get everything ready. So I spent the afternoon putting on the racks, taking the kayaks out of winter storage and cleaning them up, digging up all the gear and stowing it for the trip.
Friday, February 24-
I continued prep for our Florida trip, trying to determine what camping will cost, whether there’s dispersed camping available, and what things we might want to go see. I did some searching for a good guide book on Amazon,com but didn’t see anything that seems worth buying, i.e., something with lots of good user reviews. I spent a good bit of time on the Florida State Parks website and they’ve done a very good job so I printed off quite a lot of info from there.
By afternoon, I had to get out so even though it was a cold and very windy day I rode the motorcycle over to Pinchot for a walk. The park was nearly empty. I wanted to follow the Lakeside Trail from the east-side parking lot to the dam but shortly after leaving the lot I realized that the strong northwest wind was unimpeded as it crossed the lake and I’d be smarter to turn into the woods for some protection from it. I took a little-used side trail south of Mooring Area Six and then went off trail into an area I’ve only been in once before—and that during an orienteering event. But today was a good day in there--- the briar growth was down and the swampy areas were partially frozen over so it was a lot easier to get through than is the case the rest of the year. It was a remote-feeling area and I had the great privilege of almost being run over by two bucks! I was easing my way along and had just come down from a hill covered with large boulders I hadn’t seen before. When I say ‘large’, I mean ‘large’. They are bigger than my van (several larger than TWO vans put together) and have the characteristic splitting and checking of the ironstone boulders of Pinchot. I had just finished examining an old foundation and was moving off when I heard a noise coming through the woods. Two bucks were moving toward me, heads down and moving along pretty quickly. Surprisingly, they had no idea I was there. The front one, an eight-point, came within ten yards of me before I waved him off— those horns were getting big! That turned him off to my right and they both threw the flag and took off. The second one was a nice, sleek six-point. Very cool!
Thursday, February 23-
I set the taxes aside and started working on preparation for our Florida trip in earnest today. Up to this point I’ve only had a general idea of what we want to do and it’s time to start figuring things out in more detail. I also ordered some refill minutes for Labashi’s pre-paid cell phone. So far our prepaid cell phones have worked out pretty well. It’s costing a little less than $10 per month for each of the two phones but I have to be careful to do the renewals before the deadline in order to not lose any minutes. Labashi doesn’t use her phone very much and in fact didn’t really want one. She probably would not have accepted one if we hadn’t decided there might be situations where we would want to separate (for shopping or laundromat chores, for example) during our Maine trip. She had accumulated several hundred minutes and I was wondering how that was going to play out. But during her recent ten-day visit to her brother, the phone worked out beautifully; the excess minutes allowed her to keep everyone updated with what was going on.
That afternoon I rode the Concours down to Rudy Park to walk. It was a sunny but windy and colder afternoon so there were few people around. I got lucky and the winds started dying off about a half-hour after I arrived and the afternoon turned out great. I even did some jogging.
That evening we watched ‘Dust to Glory’, an excellent documentary about the Baja 1000 race.
Wednesday, February 22-
I worked on taxes again this morning, then we went to visit my Mom before we go away. We took her for a drive out in the country and visited for a couple of hours before having supper with Labashi’s high-school buddy, the one we visited in Maine last Fall (she’s back in PA for the winter).
I also did a bit of prep for the upcoming Florida trip. I bought an eBook listing the Wal-Marts which do not allow overnight parking in their parking lots. We had neglected to order this document before going to Maine and regretted it. It took us a while to learn that the Wal-Marts in touristy areas tend not to allow overnight stays and having this document would have saved us some frustration. We’ve heard that the Wal-Marts in Florida and California don’t allow overnight parking because so many people started camping there long-term but I’ve found evidence to the contrary on the internet, i.e., people who say they’ve stayed at some Florida Wal-marts. We’ll see. I’m just hoping to hit a few of them in order to help with the average cost of overnight stays.
Tuesday, February 21-
We are starting to get ready for a trip to Florida next week and I realized last night that I’d like to have some DVDs for the long evenings. A friend at my former workplace had told me 24 is very addictive…so long as you can suspend disbelief on some of the completely impractical things that happen. After having enjoyed Sex in the City, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Alias, and Lost, we’re completely familiar with suspension of disbelief and happy to try another series. But when I checked for it on Netflix, I realized that I have a problem when traveling- Netflix issues the discs one at a time and sends them to my home address. So the best I could do would be to get three discs. Then I remembered that my friend had the entire set of Season 1 discs and had offered them to me to borrow. So I contacted him via email yesterday and he called this morning to say that he could pass them on to me if I could meet for lunch today. No problem!
I rode the motorcycle up to Camp Hill for lunch and caught up with my friend a bit and ran into another former work buddy there. Afterwards I stopped in at the nearby Starbucks for a shot (of caffeine) before heading home to get back to taxes. That evening we watched the last disc of Alias, Season Four. We’re still going strong with Alias. I’m surprised it still keeps us interested but we like the twists and turns to the plot.
Sunday, February 26-
We continued trip prep today. I’m still planning where to go and Labashi is repacking the ‘pantry’ storage crates in Mocha Joe. I signed onto seakayakermag.com to get some kayaking trip info and learned I had screwed up— this very weekend is the Gulf Coast Sea Kayaking Symposium in Tampa Bay. If I had known that, we’d have been there! Ah, well, maybe next year. Labashi decided to look for storytelling festivals since we’ve in the past said we’d like to attend one some day. And she found one! The Suwannee Storytelling Festival will be going on the weekend of 17-18 March. That happens to be a weekend we will be attending a Florida Trail event in Ocala National Forest so we’re trying to decide whether we can do one day at each event. But that one might also turn into a next-year event.
Saturday, February 25-
During my trip prep yesterday I started running onto information about sea kayaking in Florida. I hadn’t intended to take the kayaks and in fact was looking forward to having extra storage space for this trip. I told Labashi we could rent a canoe or kayak down there but then looked up some rental prices. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed silly not to take the kayaks. There are problems with renting--- you have to have to be able to find a rental shop, they have to have a kayak (and one you’re willing to take) available for you, and you have to bring them back on the shop’s schedule (and almost none of them are open around the golden hours of dawn and dusk). If you go into a campground on a river, lake, or ocean, for instance, the chances that you’re going to be able to kayak there aren’t good at all if you don’t already have your kayaks with you.
But the bad news is you have to get everything ready. So I spent the afternoon putting on the racks, taking the kayaks out of winter storage and cleaning them up, digging up all the gear and stowing it for the trip.
Friday, February 24-
I continued prep for our Florida trip, trying to determine what camping will cost, whether there’s dispersed camping available, and what things we might want to go see. I did some searching for a good guide book on Amazon,com but didn’t see anything that seems worth buying, i.e., something with lots of good user reviews. I spent a good bit of time on the Florida State Parks website and they’ve done a very good job so I printed off quite a lot of info from there.
By afternoon, I had to get out so even though it was a cold and very windy day I rode the motorcycle over to Pinchot for a walk. The park was nearly empty. I wanted to follow the Lakeside Trail from the east-side parking lot to the dam but shortly after leaving the lot I realized that the strong northwest wind was unimpeded as it crossed the lake and I’d be smarter to turn into the woods for some protection from it. I took a little-used side trail south of Mooring Area Six and then went off trail into an area I’ve only been in once before—and that during an orienteering event. But today was a good day in there--- the briar growth was down and the swampy areas were partially frozen over so it was a lot easier to get through than is the case the rest of the year. It was a remote-feeling area and I had the great privilege of almost being run over by two bucks! I was easing my way along and had just come down from a hill covered with large boulders I hadn’t seen before. When I say ‘large’, I mean ‘large’. They are bigger than my van (several larger than TWO vans put together) and have the characteristic splitting and checking of the ironstone boulders of Pinchot. I had just finished examining an old foundation and was moving off when I heard a noise coming through the woods. Two bucks were moving toward me, heads down and moving along pretty quickly. Surprisingly, they had no idea I was there. The front one, an eight-point, came within ten yards of me before I waved him off— those horns were getting big! That turned him off to my right and they both threw the flag and took off. The second one was a nice, sleek six-point. Very cool!
Thursday, February 23-
I set the taxes aside and started working on preparation for our Florida trip in earnest today. Up to this point I’ve only had a general idea of what we want to do and it’s time to start figuring things out in more detail. I also ordered some refill minutes for Labashi’s pre-paid cell phone. So far our prepaid cell phones have worked out pretty well. It’s costing a little less than $10 per month for each of the two phones but I have to be careful to do the renewals before the deadline in order to not lose any minutes. Labashi doesn’t use her phone very much and in fact didn’t really want one. She probably would not have accepted one if we hadn’t decided there might be situations where we would want to separate (for shopping or laundromat chores, for example) during our Maine trip. She had accumulated several hundred minutes and I was wondering how that was going to play out. But during her recent ten-day visit to her brother, the phone worked out beautifully; the excess minutes allowed her to keep everyone updated with what was going on.
That afternoon I rode the Concours down to Rudy Park to walk. It was a sunny but windy and colder afternoon so there were few people around. I got lucky and the winds started dying off about a half-hour after I arrived and the afternoon turned out great. I even did some jogging.
That evening we watched ‘Dust to Glory’, an excellent documentary about the Baja 1000 race.
Wednesday, February 22-
I worked on taxes again this morning, then we went to visit my Mom before we go away. We took her for a drive out in the country and visited for a couple of hours before having supper with Labashi’s high-school buddy, the one we visited in Maine last Fall (she’s back in PA for the winter).
I also did a bit of prep for the upcoming Florida trip. I bought an eBook listing the Wal-Marts which do not allow overnight parking in their parking lots. We had neglected to order this document before going to Maine and regretted it. It took us a while to learn that the Wal-Marts in touristy areas tend not to allow overnight stays and having this document would have saved us some frustration. We’ve heard that the Wal-Marts in Florida and California don’t allow overnight parking because so many people started camping there long-term but I’ve found evidence to the contrary on the internet, i.e., people who say they’ve stayed at some Florida Wal-marts. We’ll see. I’m just hoping to hit a few of them in order to help with the average cost of overnight stays.
Tuesday, February 21-
We are starting to get ready for a trip to Florida next week and I realized last night that I’d like to have some DVDs for the long evenings. A friend at my former workplace had told me 24 is very addictive…so long as you can suspend disbelief on some of the completely impractical things that happen. After having enjoyed Sex in the City, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Alias, and Lost, we’re completely familiar with suspension of disbelief and happy to try another series. But when I checked for it on Netflix, I realized that I have a problem when traveling- Netflix issues the discs one at a time and sends them to my home address. So the best I could do would be to get three discs. Then I remembered that my friend had the entire set of Season 1 discs and had offered them to me to borrow. So I contacted him via email yesterday and he called this morning to say that he could pass them on to me if I could meet for lunch today. No problem!
I rode the motorcycle up to Camp Hill for lunch and caught up with my friend a bit and ran into another former work buddy there. Afterwards I stopped in at the nearby Starbucks for a shot (of caffeine) before heading home to get back to taxes. That evening we watched the last disc of Alias, Season Four. We’re still going strong with Alias. I’m surprised it still keeps us interested but we like the twists and turns to the plot.
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 19:20
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