Taking a Winter Break in Florida

We spent a delightful three weeks in Florida -- two weeks at Fort DeSoto Park near St. Petersburg and a week in Leesburg north of Orlando. The weather was cool on the water with most days very windy, but we still did a lot of bike riding and walking, bird-watching, and shelling along the beach. We found a dozen intact sand dollars which we've NEVER found at the Outer Banks except in the shops. We also found two little starfish and a wide variety of other shells: scallop, clam, oyster, little conchs, and tiny cats paws, etc. If I could find my shell book I could identify them, but alas it's not where I thought it would be. Maybe I gave it away in a purge. I tend to do that.

We had a Great White Egret in our campsite almost every morning and could look out on the boat channel at the White Pelicans and the Great Blue Herons. One morning a Snowy Egret graced us with his "golden slipper" feet giving me a smile.

Our Latest Travel Adventure: O Canada, Here We Come

Last year we had plans to take a camping vacation to Nova Scotia, but it was a bad years for our bees and we ended up staying home to feed them so they would have a chance of getting through the winter. Both our hives made it and we were blessed with a great season this year that let us expand to four hives. And so...our delayed trip was back on the calendar and we left yesterday on the first leg driving from Woodstock to Stafford Springs, CT which is close to...get ready...Woodstock. Today we spent the late morning and afternoon exploring.

Fun at the Pittsburgh Zoo!

We just returned from a short visit to Zelienople, PA where one of our daughters lives. (Don't you love that name? Zelienople is near Mars and Cranberry. And Mars actually has a flying saucer in the middle of town.

But I digress. The Pittsburgh zoo is wonderful. We spent the afternoon visiting most of the exhibits, riding the tram, playing (or sitting) at the playground, and enjoying all the antics of the animals. I describe some of them here.

But the best part of the day was the company. What a delightful group of little girls (and their mom).

Escape from Winter

Goodness this has been a hard winter. And so we decided to escape for just a little while and drove down to Florida to camp on St. Edward Island near Apalachicola. What a glorious place! The state park on the east end offers large campsites and decent bathhouse facilities. We spent the week biking, hiking, shelling, and eating. Did I mention eating? My favorite places were Cafe con Leche in Apalachicola for their fabulous coffee. ( I think she said it was Muddy Creek.) Omigosh, best coffee I ever drank. We had to go back a second day just for the coffee although the breakfast sandwiches (arepas) made on a cornmeal version of an english muffin were also good.

My favorite dinner place was Caroline's River Inn on the water. We went the day before Valentine's Day since we'd be traveling home the next day. Larry was tired of seafood after a week so he ordered steak, but I ordered stuffed scallops which was an arrangement of large scallops top and bottom with a crabcake between them all in a flaky pastry with a delicious cream sauce. I could have ordered that every day for a week. I traded some with Larry for a little steak, but I definitely had the better dinner. I can't wait to go back next year. And the waitress said their breakfasts are wonderful so that will definitely be on the menu as well. Good place to go after Mass! Although the little church in town, St. Patrick's only had a daily Mass on Monday and Tuesday. Next closest Masses were in Panama City and Tallahassee both an hour and half away. That was the only big drawback to the location since we like to go to daily Mass.

Well, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words so here are some of our pictures from our winter escape. I have more on my phone but haven't figured out to get them off yet. I'm too dumb for the smart phone. LOL!

The beach in the early morning. We're off to collect shells.

This doesn't do justice to the beautiful sunset!

A sidewalk in Apalachicola. What a charming little town!

Love those pine trees. Here I am on Carabelle Beach.

Everywhere we went we saw mountains of oyster shells. 

We also saw the oystermen out in the Bay with their long tongs.

Carabelle lighthouse: passed up the chance to climb to the top. 

Went on a hike instead.

When Camp Kreitzer is in Session even Rainy Days are Fun!

Camp Kreitzer is in session and it's hard to blog at Les Femmes with five pretty princesses calling for attention. So I haven't been  Instead, we've been doing all sorts of things. Yesterday morning we went to Mass, then the Cracker Barrel for breakfast. After we got home it was clean up time, then into the pool about the time the two little cousins arrived.

After swimming and cousins left we decided to do a secret something related to their mom's birthday which is next week. (I'm not telling her age, but I'll just say it's a prime number which means it's REALLY SPECIAL!) Everybody contributed, but you'll have to wait until Saturday to see what it was in case mom is watching. Shhhhh!

But other things aren't a secret -- like going to the potato chip factory and the  library on Tuesday which was a rainy day and required some inside activities. The parking lot was jammed because the River Bandits Baseball Team was reading to kids in the library lecture room and giving away free tickets. I don't know if we'll make one of their games, but the girls enjoyed the cozy kids' room and almost everybody came home with a few books for quiet time. Even Gramma found a some craft books to give her some good ideas for Camp Kreitzer activities.

Route 11 Potato Chips are the best! (Try the Dill flavored.)

Just ask the potato who makes the best chips. He never lies!

The library was lots of fun too.

It's always great to make a new friend!

 

Free books? All right!

The Chihauhau Living Desert

One of the two bobcats

Our last adventure in Carlsbad was to visit the Living Desert Museum and Zoo. It was fascinating. While the desert looks so arid with little life, it actually has many more life forms than greener pastures. 

For example, the Chihuahua desert has hundreds of types of grasses, many more than in wetter areas. Fascinating! We enjoyed meandering around the Living Desert and enjoyed our first sight of a roadrunner. We didn't see the cougar, but saw two handsome babcats and some gray wolves. Most of the animals are there because they were rescued. 

One of my favorite displays was the small botanical garden filled with beautiful flowers, cacti, etc. I was amazed at the wide variety of cactus and the wonderful names!

organ pipe cactus - very fitting name I think

This looks like a type of hibiscus. I don't recall its name.

barrel cactus - love the pink spines!

These wild pigs are the same type in a child's story, The Lion's Bed. But I can't remember what they're called. 

This photo was a miracle. The roadrunner never stands still and I had a heck of a time catching him! 

The Scenic Carlsbad Loop

After our visit down under, we took the scenic loop on top. It was fascinating to think that below us another world existed. I'd rather live on top, though. The nine-mile loop was on a rough road, but it was worth the hour it took to travel around. We ended our day with a delicious dinner at Yellow Brix in Carlsbad which is about fifteen miles north of the caverns.

Carlsbad Caverns - Wow!

We're used to Virginia's caverns which, compared to Carlsbad, are little mole tunnels. The "big room" in Carlsbad could hold 14 football fields. It was huge, but also very lightly lit. I didn't get many good photos. The real adventure was walking down unaccompanied into the cavern. It's about a mile down to the main level and then a one and half mile loop around the big room. Walking into the black hole reminded me of the old movie, Journey to the Center of the Earth, parts of which were filmed in Carlsbad. The rock formations are a lot less colorful than Luray Caverns because the rock is mostly calcite which is grayish white. They don't have the orange and blues from iron and copper. Using the "night scene" setting on the cameral added color that wasn't really there. We spent an enjoyable four hours in the caverns but were glad to come out again into the light. I don't think I'd enjoy being a bat.

Journey to the Center of the earth begins here.

Beautiful formations all the color of the gray rock in the foreground.

The underground rest area reminded me of an airport concourse with souvenir kiosks and food vendors. 

This picture shows a ladder used by the cowboy who discovered the caverns to go into one of the lower rooms. 

Hot Springs, Arkansas - what a great small town!

Sunday in Hot Springs a week ago was delightful. We went to Mass at historic St. Mary's, a lovely little church. We were pleased to find another faithful Mass with no liturgical nonsense. The Church had a beautiful stained glass window in the back in lovely pastel colors. I particularly liked a statue of St. Ann with Mary who was holding a scroll. St. Ann appears to be instructing her -- perhaps reading a hard word or explaining a doctrine from the Torah. It seemed like the perfect statue for home schooling moms who are  teaching their young ones to read.

It was pouring rain and thundering when we arrived, but, by the time Mass was over, it was just drizzling. We drove to the main street to find a place for breakfast and ended up at a little cafe Southern Living says has "the best breakfast." It was sweet with wooden walls and a decor I'll call country eclectic. We ate a leisurely breakfast and then went off exploring the town.

We visited a small antique shop and met a man who was transplanted from the D.C. area (McClean, VA). He used to manage the theatrical productions at Carter Barron and, when their funding went south he took a job at a theatre in Memphis with a more generous budget. After he retired he moved to Hot Springs where his dad was living and running the shop and took over. He had two statues of the archangels Michael and Raphael that I took a fancy to. (See here.) I especially liked Raphael's fish. The dealer said most people don't know who he is.

We had a delightful conversation and I marveled, once again, at how small the world is. We once met a friend of Larry's cousin from high school in Wheeling waiting tables at a restaurant in Ponchatoula, LA. I'm serious!

After visiting the Hot Springs visitor center (It used to be a bath house and operates as a museum now.) we decided to take a dip in the public pools ourselves. There were four pools, each at a different temperature 92, 98, 102, and 104. The hottest was too hot for me! I got in and lasted about thirty seconds. We spent a pleasant hour and half there before heading to Lowes to get some items for Larry to repair the cable that connects the trailer lights to the car. Two hundred miles of dragging on the asphalt is not much good for rubber-wrapped wires.


And now a few random pictures from our enjoyable days at Lake Catherine and Hot Springs.

Only one of the old buildings on bath house row still operates as a bath house. This had shops on the first floor. 

This building houses and art gallery.

This is one of the old showers. But it looks like a torture chamber!

How would you like to be closed up in this steam cabinet?

One of the wall sculptures decorating the buildings

This sea god reminded me of my dad in his later life. Very distinguished!

On the Way to Denver: Pagosa Springs and the Monument of the Gods

Monday-Tuesday, October 10-11

I've mentioned before that travel days are great adventures. We left Mesa Verde on Monday after attending Mass to pray for our safety over the mountain passes on US 160. What a lovely little parish (St. Margaret Mary in Cortez). They were saying the rosary when we got there fifteen minutes early and at the end of Mass they did morning prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours. We felt well prepared for the challenges of the drive. One of the ladies told us they'd had 40 inches of snow in the mountain a few days ago and the ski resorts were open. She also said they clear the snow really fast and we shouldn't have any problems.

Before we left the campground, Mesa Verde RV Resort (One of the nicest we've stayed at with tiled bathrooms!),  I had to take a photo of the birdman decorating the front. It reminded me of a trip we took to Mexico ten years ago when we saw men decorated in feathers attached by ropes to a pole and "flying" around it.

The weather was chilly (started at 29, but with expectation of the 50s at the lower elevations) but sunny and lovely driving weather. We stopped in Pagosa Springs for a pit stop and wished we had our bathing suits in the car. What a great resort town with natural hot springs! The town offers a large outdoor pool and several smaller pools that have different temperatures. Take your pick according to your heat index. We walked along the river where there were several spots with hot springs bubbling out of the hillside. One had to be about 150 degrees, too hot to bathe in for sure! You could see all the mineral deposits on the stone. It was a great short stop and a place to put on the list for a future trip.

The drive over the mountain actually was less nervewracking than our trip over the Big Horn: fewer switch backs and the up and down was more gradual. We saw plenty of snow, but all on the side of the road and on the mountainside, thank God. At one ski resort we noticed ski tracks that must have been from cross country skiers.

About an hour before we reached our destination we saw a turnoff to go to the Stations of the Cross Shrine in San Luis, but we didn't have enough daylight to make the detour and get over the last mountain pass before it got dark. That was disappointing, but we opted for safety.

We spent the night at Lathrop State Park outside Walsenburg, lovely place with a lake and some interesting big rocks with depressions where water collected. Many of the rocks out here are soft sandstone that seem to develop unusual cracks, crevices, and depressions. Our rocks back east must be harder because we've never seen this before. We met a lovely young family with three children camping next to us -- very Christian and very concerned about the way the culture is going. After dark we could hear the dad playing his guitar and singing Christian songs. Anybody we've had an extended conversation with on this trip has been conservative and Christian -- gives me a lot of hope. We watched the moon rising over the campground -- beautiful.

The second day of our trip to Denver we had one stop planned -- at The Garden of the Gods. A city park, it only covers several square miles, but there are dozens of huge rock formations, sort of a mini Monument Valley. We took a three mile hike on a dual use trail and had to get out of the way at one point for two cowgirls on horseback. I was wishing I could join them. We also saw a couple on Segways. We thought about doing that but after a day and a half in the car we felt like we needed the walk. The park was deeded to the state of Colorado with the proviso that it would always be free and open to the public.

We arrived at Cherry Creek State Park, a city campground, around 4:00 p.m. and are settled in for several days while we explore Denver and spend some time with my cousin and our niece and her family.