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Published: January 12th 2013
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Happy Birthday daughter Kristine, age 30. Wow, this makes me an old lady, having a 30 year old baby. Kristine and fiancé Lou are celebrating by chartering a sailboat around Maui. Awesome.
Happy Birthday Nanny Shirley. My stepmother is 91 years young today, and she celebrated by going out to dinner with her son, my stepbrother, Cless, and his wife, Jean. I sent her a bunch of MegaMillion$ tickets, and she hasn’t checked the numbers yet!!!!! Shirley still works volunteering at her county library and plays golf during the warm weather. I think she still rides the tractor and cuts her own lawn!!!
I want to thank my loyal readers Gina and Gail, who told me what to do about the missed Florida Toll Road tolls, and I will work on that on Monday. Thanks, Girlies. Gina posted a response to me within 20 minutes of my posting.
I am getting over 50 readers of each blog, very humbling for me, but that does put me under some pressure to keep things fun and fresh. So, here goes:
The One About Dining Out.
Continental breakfast was supplied this morning by the MidLows club and prepared by
hosts Karen and Ken, sausage gravy and biscuits, and it was wonderful. I have been showering in the campground facility, as I don’t have a sewer hookup at my current campsite and showering in the rig fills up the holding take quickly. Time for a shower story. The club leaders were told the mens’ and women’s’ rooms renovations had been completed. NOT. I can only speak about the ladies room, of course, but I hear conditions in the men’s room are similar. 6 toilet stalls, 3 did not work. It looked like the sink area had new countertops. The floor had broken tiles. 4 shower stalls, only 2 worked. That’s the bad news. The good news is the shower had lots of forceful hot water, and I didn’t have to worry about filling up my holding tanks while I enjoyed a long drenching.
This ended up being the backwards way to do things this morning. After I showered I cleaned the inside of the rig getting dirty, requiring a clean shirt. The ground here is sand that for generations has been covered by falling live oak leaves. The decaying leaves have turned the sand black. It sticks to everything, Winston included. His feet are black, as are every other dog’s here. I scrubbed everything in the kitchen and bathroom, and vacuumed every nook and cranny on my hands and knees to get in all the sandy corners, and then I washed the linoleum floors, again on hands and knees. The rig looks wonderful. Worth getting sweaty for.
The group made plans to visit a museum near historic downtown Kissimmee. Road Trip!!! Ginnie opted to stay at home this morning and attempt to catch up on missed sleep. I hopped a ride with Karen and Ken in Ken’s tricked out Gold Jeep with scorpion themed accessories. This is an awesome vehicle, and despite the fact that I slammed my knee on the door jamb while getting into the back seat, I loved every minute of this ride!!! Ken lives in Ocala, FL, and Karen lives in Safety Harbor, FL. They love RVing and between them have been to a number of places on my bucket list. It seems that leaving FL in the summer via RV is just as popular as leaving the northeast in the winter via RV.
First stop the Museum of the county of Osceola is located in the Welcome Center. We were all pleasantly surprised about this splendid brand new facility. Excellent diorama exhibits with good posters on the top for adults to read, while at knee/kid level small stuff for them to look at and touch. I learned about the Spanish inhabitants, the Seminole Indians, slaves, draining the swamp (to drive up the price of the land from $.25 per acre to $10 per acre now that it was suitable for cattle ranching and farming), how oranges got to Florida, and the importance of those oranges to the local economy in the late 1800s.
On to historic downtown Kissimmee, a 3 block long area of cute looking interesting looking statues, shops and restaurants. Ken did one of those man things and took a wrong turn and we got lost trying to get back to that street, so opted for a quick Burger King rather than trying to find our way back to cute downtown.
This BK looked brand new, and by the actions of the staff, it was their first day of work, which it wasn’t. I knew we were in trouble when the order taker clucked her teeth at me when I counted out the $.67 change portion of my ranch chicken wrap order. While my order was being prepared, I took my cup over to pour a soda. A machine as big as a canned soda selling machine greeted me, with a digital display. (PICTURE) I pushed CAFFEINE FREE DIET COKE icon, and the sub menu told me I could order it flavored with orange, lime, vanilla, raspberry, and I am sure at least 5 other flavors. I opted for raspberry, which was dispensed at the same time as the soda, but it was mahogany colored. The cloying amount it added to the soda made it disgusting. When I went back to the counter for my wrap, I waited and waited and waited, and finally flagged the supervisor who was busy scotch taping some piece of paper to seemingly every available surface she could find. She clucked her teeth as well, and grudgingly got my wrap off the shelf where it had been for a while. The order taker was busy making some type of blended drink and the line backed up to about 8 groups waiting. Nasty, cranky people. I gave them a nasty foursquare (iPhone app) rating. The ride back to the campground included a stop at Dollar King for Karen, another wrong turn which my Siri pointed out to us and corrected. I had a lovely afternoon, with a lot of great conversation and many good laughs. Thanks Ken, thanks Karen.
With an hour between events, I walked Winston (who Ginnie told me barked off and on while I was gone, but he was safe in his crate in the air-conditioned rig) and I paid some attention to him before I put him back in the crate while we went to dinner.
20 people in 5 cars caravanned to Fish Camp Restaurant, located in the nearby East Lake Fish Camp RV Resort. Our ride to this restaurant passed a Horse Rescue/Adoption farmette, Cabins for rent near East Lake Tohopekaliga (Toho), airboat ride, boats for rent, you name it, it was here. Entering the restaurant thru the camp store, I noticed the skinned alligator hanging from the wall (PICTURE), We pushed tables together to seat 20, and I spied it was buffet night, in addition to the regular menu. A small buffet consisting of salad, ( I thought it strange they were wrapped in saran wrap….more to follow) several fried fish items, I am assuming catfish from the lake, baked potatoes, New England clam chowder, pie. When I returned to my seat after looking around, I heard the group talking about the water main having been broken for 2 days, which caused some concern about how clean the dishes might be, how the salad items got washed, (they must have made the salads someplace else and shipped them in prepared and wrapped) so we opted to leave. They had to been unhappy to see a group of 20 leave. Siri helped us locate The Catfish Place restaurant about 15 minutes away. Fortunately we called to let them know we were coming, and they started to organize tables for us; when we got there the parking lot was full and people were standing outside waiting for tables, and we walked right in! A wonderful chock full menu with fried or grilled fish as well as meat and Italian items. I opted for a fried fish sampler, oysters, catfish, shrimp, scallops, served with hushpuppies, cold slaw, and cheese grits. The selection of sides was awesome, and I couldn’t decide on 2 – corn on the cob, sweet potato fries, baked/fried/mashed potatoes, black eyed peas, regular grits. The list of deserts was just as awesome, but none of us had room – blackberry or peach cobbler, key lime, pecan, silk pies, sundaes the size of my head.
Back to my rig and spent a lot of time giving Winston some much needed love and he is now passed out on his (dirty from black feet) bed and hasn’t moved in an hour.
I hear there are plans for the flea market tomorrow, and pot luck dinner.
Kat out
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Love it!
Hey Kat! I am enjoying your blog so much! I've never followed one before. It sounds like you are having a great time, as well as working very hard. I'm envious of your freedom to travel as you wish with no one to answer to! Keep posting and safe travels. Enjoy!