At Camp

And the first thing I did was look for the lady slipper orchids, finding about a dozen of them in our woods.

A New Jersey Farewell

We are finally leaving for camp on Saturday.  So today we headed for the beach to say goodbye to New Jersey for a while.  And to escape the heat and humidity further inland.  We drove to Point Pleasant Beach and walked on the boardwalk

ate Kohr's orange and vanilla twist ice cream, played miniature golf,

walked on the beach,

and ate crab cakes and boardwalk fries for dinner.

Inaugural Paddle

With the new knee, that is.  And not in the Adirondacks.  We are still in NJ.  We did not make the Memorial Day paddle and picnic.

Yesterday I tried getting into and out of the boat while it was sitting on the lawn.  Piece of cake.  But the true test is getting out once I've been paddling for a while.  For that test we drove to Princeton to the put-in on the Delaware and Raritan Canal off Alexander Street.  We paddled south for about 45 minutes then turned around.

I figured 1 1/2 hours of sitting in the boat was a pretty good test.

And sure enough, I could not get out by myself.  So no solo paddling for a while.

Current Status

The final house repairs were completed yesterday.  That is such a relief.

We hope to head for the Adirondacks for Memorial Day.  We aren't going sooner because my knee is still healing and I'm not up to hiking or paddling.  I sure hope I can do the Memorial Day paddle.  The healing is going well except that I cannot straighten the leg completely.  The PT is working on a knot behind the knee where the tendon is attached to the ham string, but I may end up in a splint to help with the straightening.

Move Complete

We have finally moved everything into the downstairs.  We have even hung the quilts.

Happenings

A lot has happened since we left Florida in a hurry last month.  We are lucky that the only thing we lost in the flood was the hardwood floors.  They also took out the sheetrock around the bottom foot of the walls, so the reconstruction has included repainting the entire downstairs.  We are hoping construction will mostly be done in the next couple of weeks.  We have been living upstairs, with sporadic access to the kitchen, and occasionally going to motels when needed.  We will be in a motel again at the beginning of next week while they are putting down the hardwood floors, since the mastic they have to use on our damp slab is really stinky.

While all that has been going on, I had my right knee replaced two weeks ago.  That surgery was scheduled long ago and I decided to go ahead and have it done.  The condition of my knee before surgery meant I couldn't help carry all the things we moved upstairs in preparation for construction, and I won't be healed enough to help move things back either.  Fortunately, we have family members who can help.

I'll try to post again once our life has finally returned to normal, whatever that is.

Vacation Aborted

After we got home from the Sanibel farmer's market, we got word that our house in NJ was flooded.  Turns out it was a frozen then burst pipe.  We quickly loaded up the car and started the 2 1/2 day drive home.  I never even got to walk on the beach at Sanibel.

Florida Day 13 - Sanibel Farmers Market

A very popular place - with good reason.  We got there just a little after 8:00 AM and the close parking spots were already full.

Florida Day 12 - On our way to Sanibel

We had an interesting day today.  We had to check out of our place in Everglades City and check into the one in Sanibel - we are staying at Sandy Bend again - with several hours to spend in between.  We discovered that Corkscrew Swamp is roughly along the way to Sanibel and remembered enjoying walking there last year.  But before going there, we needed a place to eat lunch.  According to Google, the little town of Ave Maria has some good-looking restaurants and we would be nearby at lunch time.  What a strange place.  It is brand new - founded in 2007 - and is the current home of Ave Maria University, founded originally as Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti, Michigan by the founder of Domino's Pizza.  The college only lasted from 1998 to 2007 and then somehow was reincarnated as Ave Maria University in the namesake town in Florida.  The centerpiece of the town is the Catholic church.


It is very modern inside and I didn't care for it.


We did have a very nice lunch at the Pub and Grill in Ave Maria.  Then on to walk the boardwalk at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.  I walked with my cane and managed to make the whole 2 1/4 mile circuit.  We can no longer complain about the cool temperatures - it was about 80 degrees while we were walking.






This is one of the huge bald cypress trees the area is famous for.


And a great example of a strangler fig.

Florida Day 11

We are still in Everglades City.  This afternoon we took a National Park boat tour out into the area we paddled yesterday, and beyond.  As luck would have it the winds were much less today.


But the boat trip was very worthwhile.  We saw LOTS of dolphins and W got great videos of their playing in the wake of the boat.  I gave up trying to get a photo since you never knew where they would pop up, but it was great fun watching them.

Then we headed for a huge flock of while pelicans.   We have seen them before, including at Sanibel, but never in these numbers.  There was a small group on a sandbar.


And a much larger group nearby.