Still in Florida, or are we
Bob scrapping snow, what's with that? Borrowed a scrapper from son Mark. This was just a minor snow storm while we were in PA
The picture
certainly doesn’t look like Florida.
Well it happens to be Pennsylvania. This blog is coming to you after all
these events took place, including our time in Florida and PA. We had to make an
emergency trip back to Pennsylvania because
Linda’s brother was in the hospital and having some major problems. We took the
auto-train from Sanford FL to Lorton VA. We will get back to the train trip
later. Linda’s brother was released from the hospital and back at his assisted
living facility. We got him settled and made plans to head back to Florida. We
had the car packed and were ready to leave the following morning when we got a call at 5:30 AM that
he was back in the hospital. He got back out of the hospital and settled in his assisted living facility. We left the following morning to beat the snow storm that was heading for PA.
We were in PA about 3 weeks.
It has been quite a while since our last
blog. We have been busy doing things around our new home making it own. The
house was move in ready but we wanted to do some painting and planting. But in the mean time we have been busy. One
day we took a 45 minute ride to Daytona race track to donate blood. We were
given a meal, a tee shirt and a ticket for a tour of the race track.
Thru the tunnel under the tract
There were about 10 Red Buses there taking blood from donors.
There were a lot of people there, but it went fast with all the buses ready to collect blood.
On the way home we took a detour. We went
to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. We stopped at the Haulover
Canal area to a viewing area to look some manatees. There were about 6 or 7 in
the canal.
Next we took the Black Point Wildlife
Drive, a gravel road looking for some wildlife. It was too early in the year to
see migrating birds and ducks. We did see a few different type birds and ducks.
All mostly off in a distance. It is amazing that just a few miles from this
tranquil place is the Kennedy Space Center were so many rocket launch have
taken place.
We also viewed two rocket launches from our
deck. Sorry no pictures
One day we were watching Animal Planet
channel on TV. Dirty Jobs was on and they were at Rocky Reach dam in Wenatchee
Washington. We had toured this dam in 2009. It is neat seeing some of the
things not so common that we toured.
One day we traveled to Kissimmee, about a
45 minute drive to attend the Statewide Ranch Rodeo and Cowboy Heritage
Festival. There were about 15 different
heritage displays and demonstrations. One of the big events was whip cracking. The original Florida cattlemen were called
“crackers”. They got this name from cracking their whip above the heads of
their cattle to get them moving. There
were cooking, weaving and basket making demonstrations. There was also a BBQ
cook off. There were 16 stations where for just $6 you could sample of beef
brisket, then vote for the one you liked the best. They were also cooking up
samples of “swamp cabbage”. We passed on this as we had tasted this in the past
and didn’t like it. Linda did try a swamp cabbage fritter and just manage to
swallow it.
Then it was inside for the ranch
rodeo. This is a non professional rodeo.
It is a rodeo pitting cowboys and cowgirls from 16 ranches in Florida. The stadium
is called the Silvers Spurs Arena. It is
a super venue for watching a rodeo. It was about 90 outside so the air
conditioning was very welcoming. The
rodeo consisted of bronc riding, calf branding, stampede race, team doctoring,
double mugging, colt riding and wild cow milking. These are all things that are common to
regular ranch work. These events were all explained to us by a rancher sitting
behind us.
All the range teams. Sorry for the bleary pictures
I'm no expert on rodeo events, but I don't think this is how it suppose to be done
What the heck is going on here
I got his tail
The dogs doing a good job of keeping the cattle in a circle
We also saw
a couple of good movies, “Gone Girl” and “The Judge”.
I'm going to have to write another blog, as this one is getting a little long. Thanks for following along.
