Orange Park, Florida

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April 6th 2007

Published: April 6th 2007

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gimli guts

The Orange Park house

We drove to Orange Park, Florida after leaving New Orleans. Due to bad weather and the length of the drive (over 500 miles) we stopped outside of Tallahassee for the night on the way there rather than doing the whole drive in a day. We also lost our dashboard lights a while back, so driving at night requires a flashlight and isn’t too fun... So we made it to Orange Park, where my (Brandi’s) family lives in a beautiful old house, on Monday.
My Great Aunt Aggie and her husband, Uncle Jack, live in the big white house on the property, and their daughter Trish and her husband Matt live in the house off to the side. Up until recently, my Great Aunt Hallijeanne lived there as well, but sadly she passed away last year. I always love visiting Orange Park, and Wes does too now since he got to go there for the first time 2 years ago at our family reunion. They are all such sweet, interesting people, and the house and property are gorgeous!
On Monday, Jack and Aggie took us out to the fairgrounds, where the Clay County Fair was still being set up.

The house and front lawn

this picture is taken from the street, so you can see how huge the front yard is

Jack was a volunteer for a long time doing fair planning and organizing, so he was able to get us into the gates to look around. We ended up going to the fair on opening night (Thursday) and it was really neat to see it before and after it was set up. Trish made us a delicious dinner Monday night as well. On Tuesday, Jack and Aggie took us on a drive out to Fort George Island off the coast of Jacksonville that used to have a plantation and still has the slave quarters set up on display. From there, we drove to Little Talbot Island and barbecued at the beach. I was able to pick up tons of tiny shells to hopefully make jewelry out of at some point. The beaches here are gorgeous, not what we Californians are used to, with white sand and warm, clear water. When we got back, Matt helped us make home-made ice cream with the hand churn, and it was, of course, absolutely delicious.
On Wednesday we went out in search of vegetable oil- luckily it’s been much easier since we’ve been in the south. I guess they eat more fried food

Gimli in the jungle

outside of the house in Orange Park

here? And it’s warmer so the oil is so much thinner and easier to pump. We also spent part of the day trying to fix our bicycles... we ran them over accidentally while leaving the campground on our way to Orange Park. They’re in worse shape than before, but they are again ride-able, which is all we need. Some front brakes would be nice too, but those will have to wait... Wednesday night we fixed dinner for everyone to say thanks for all the food they’d cooked for us. We most hung out at the house on Thursday, and went to the fair Thursday evening for a few hours. Wes loved the fair food, as usual. He wants me to list all the food he ate at the fair, so here goes:

deep fried cheesecake, cherry flavored sno-cone, kettle corn, cotton candy, barbecued pork sandwich, sarsparilla soda (not good at all), and funnel cake.

I won 2 goldfish and decided to bring them back to Orange Park and let them go in the pond. There are two huge carp, a white one and an orange one, already in there, and now there are two tiny goldfish, one

The full moon

reflecting off the St. John's River, which is across the street from the house

white and one orange. The pics of fish in a pond are the fish in the Orange Park house pond. And the pics of the big white house and the gardens are at the house as well. Anyway, we decided to leave Friday morning to head on down to Gainesville to visit our friend Louis, so we said farewell to everyone in Orange Park, but we hope to be able to see them again sometime soon.

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