Lilly's Super Subs and Suds - good eats

We went to Lilly's Super Subs and Suds with friends Ed and Vivian and Lonnie and Betty that are staying in Leesburg. Ed and Lonnie are trying to put a dent in the fish population in the local lakes. We went to visit and they took us to Lilly's.  Have to say it was the BEST Philly cheese steak we had since leaving PA. Most places south of PA, don't really know what a Philly cheese steak is. But Lillys does it right. So check it out, nothing fancy, but great food. It's small, maybe seating for about 20-24 people. They do have take out .

 Beer cans decorate the walls and ceilings.

 Gallon Cans of beer.

From Germany

Just relaxing and planning for a trip West

   Not doing much for the passed two weeks. Just relaxing and playing some games with friends. Getting in a little swimming and working on our tans. We did get out to dinner with friends a few times in the passed weeks. No place new, just the same old. Soon its time to move on. The biggest thing we did this week was install two new 6 volt batteries in our RV. This will boost our battery power quit a bit for when we are off the grid (for non Rver's, no electric hook up).
     One Sunday we went to the Alburdale flea market. Is this a legal "chop shop".

   Then there were alligators.......at the flea market

The little round things on the cement blocks are pices of hot dogs. You can feed the gators, for a fee.

      Then another Sunday we went to visit friends Chris and Tilly in Winter Haven and saw this...

I heard of "crop circles", but this was on water. We were looking out their back windows at the lake when this appeared. The photo was taken thur the window and it is raining very hard, so the photo isn't the best. It was very windy and the water was wavey, except for this circle that appeared. The circle was quit calm and slowly moved across the lake. It looked to be about 15-20  feet across. We watched for a good 5 minutes, then it disappeared. Is this a new phenomena, "water circles".
     We had a visit from friends Dave and Liz from Largo. We got caught up on the passed six months since we saw them last. Then what else, we had to go out to dinner.
      We will be at the Thousand Trails RV Park from the 24th of March to the 7th of April.
We will be attending the National Carriage Rally that is being held there from the 1st to the 7th. When we checked in we saw these guys, a Sand Crane family.  Check out the legs on the baby. We saw two other pairs with babies.

     While at the rally Bob will celebrate the big 70. I thought the kids were getting old, holy smokes, 70. After the rally we are heading to Indiana to have a new independent suspension and disk brakes installed in our RV. It is an expensive upgrade, but all the folks we know that had it done recommend it highly. So we are going to bit the bullet and do it. We have two appointments scheduled in Indiana for late April. Then, if all goes well we will head up to Michigan and then the Upper Peninsula of Michigan .

Strawberry Festival 2013

    Another year, another Strawberry Festival. This is about the 4 or 5th  one we attended. It was a perfect day weather wise.  This year we got to see Janie Fricki and T G Sheppard. The show was ok. Janie seemed to be hitting all her notes just fine. We were a little disappointed with T G, just our opinion. Some of the highlights this year was a great dog show and pig races.  Linda forgot to charge her battries for the camera, so no pictures of the pig races. All the events where standing room only. They need more setting for the all the events.
Dogs come in all sizes. All the dogs in the show were "rescures".

They just couldn't wait to preform. There were some "dock dogs", dogs jumping of a dock to see how far they could jump. One dog jumped about 30 feet. Sorry no pictures.

 This guy jumped off her back and caught the frizzibee she threw.

We also saw the "Chics with axes show", a female lumberjack show.

 Log rolling.

We also saw a mash patoatos/strawberry pie eating contest, yek

     The pig races were really funny. There were 4 different size groups of 4 racers in each race. From I believe the smallest were just 4 weeks old, to a few months old. They even dove into a water hassard and swam about 30 feet. If you never saw pigs race, look for one coming to your neighborhood, its a good laugh. There are 6 different units of this pig racing company touring the country. And who said you can't make money racing pigs! This was a very popular event in that we arrived at the event a least a half hour early, and all seats were taken. So along with a lot of other folks we stood there watching pigs race. Who knows, maybe pigs can fly.

Yalaha Bakery and Mount Dora

   Not much going on this passed week. We did do a road trip to Yalaha to go to the Yalaha Bakery. It is a German bakery in the tiny town of Yalaha, population of about 1200 spread over 15 square miles. So you can see not to much of a town in the area. But that being said the bakery was very busy. We went with friends Lance and Andrea and about 10 other couples from our RV Park. The bakery has a good selection of breads and pastries.

      We did get some pretzel cheese bread, pretzel rolls and cherry and apple strudel. There is also a small deli with great sandwich's. A great setting area outside.

 We had to move 20 to 25 people to get this picture, just kidding, they were all sitting on the sunny side.

    While our group was there another group of about 20 came. Then a few more. It did get a little busy. All the baked goods were very good. Great art work on the building. .

 Lance and Andrea, look close at the refection in the glass, you can see Linda taking the photo and Bob in back of our car. She just can't keep of the picture.

     See www.yalahabakery.com  a very interesting history of the early town and its name can be found there.
   From Yalaha we drove to Mount Dora. A cute little town about 20 miles from Yalaha. We visited the Lakeside Inn. It is the oldest continuously operated hotel in Florida. A very nice well preserved inn. see www.lakeside-inn.com  See the piano way in the back of the room, well Bob couldn't resist.

 A great bar with a neat glass etching.

 The Inn and porch sitting area over looking the lake.

 Check out the sign at the Bavarian Haus

 

While at the lake this guy appeared.

 See the dead branch, that is where he was sitting checking out his domain.

 Checking out the float plane to make sure it is flight worthy, you think he knows what he is looking at.

 

    Also see www.mountdora.com    for more information and history on this cute town. Front of book store, check out the detail cement work on the front of the store.

 A close up of the cement work.

 Some really great movies playing.

Pet sitting. just think they are saying, "what are you looking at" or mom, "he's looking at me".

Ridge Live Steamers-Garden trains

    I was reluctant to go, but an I glad I went. What a great adventure on the outskirts of the town of Dundee. The event was the Florida Live Steam Winter Meet. There is a mile and a half of track and many style of trains. This is a model railroad and live steam enthusiasts super bowl. After signing a wavier you can ride the trains. I was amazed at the power of these little engines. There were many steam engines with super details. Many were coal fired. There were also electric engines. Many of the electric engines had two 12 volt batteries. The gauge is 7.5, which I believe is 7.5 inches between track rails. Also the term "live steam" means steam under pressure. They have a great website, see www.ridgelivesteams.org . The most amazing thing was there was no charge for anything except food.
Check out the size of the train

Check out the details.

 

 

The train yard

 

See the power and the lenght of this train

 

Linda and Sharon ready for a ride, Ed and I join them for a neat ride.

 

 

Our ride, through a tunnel and over and under the trussel.

 

 

 

 

Even a trolly

The long long train

 

How they unload the trains and move them to the veiwing stands and work area. The ''crane" is rolled to the unloading area and then raised.

 

The 1 guage layout.

 

These 2 guage 1's are steam fired, that is a water tank behind the engins