April

Naples Wedding

It's April, and we've left Jekyll Island. The first thing we needed to do was go to a wedding in Naples, FL. Consuelo's nephew Gabe was getting married. Consuelo made origami boxes as favors, and little hand fans with the program info on them. That was a very smart thing to do, since it was an outdoor wedding in 85 degree heat.

My job was to take pictures for a digital guest book. I set up in front of a hedge at one side of the pavilion, and captured folks before they sat down. At least, that was the plan. Because of the heat, everybody stayed indoors until the time for the wedding, so I missed a few in the rush. But it turned out pretty well.

Sand Hill Crane

To avoid the cost of driving the RV to Naples, I parked it at the Escapees park in Bushnell, FL, about 40 miles south of Ocala. The park has a pair of sand hill cranes that wander around looking for food. They are beautiful creatures.

After the wedding, we returned to Bushnell and stayed for a few days since our friends the Lohrmanns were staying there. Otherwise, this park is pretty deserted at this time of year. Most of the winter guests have moved north already.

I managed to get our Internet satellite up and running, though it took me a while. I'm so out of practice after 5 static months in Maine, and never setting it up on Jekyll.

And I finally got our solar panels mounted on the roof, with Wayne Lohrmann's help. I have yet to find the wire that Alfa supposedly ran to connect them into the system, but they're out of the storage compartment, anyway.

We also filed our taxes while we were here.

Florida Butterfly

For diversion, we went to a wildlife area about 10 miles from the campground to hike and for Consuelo and Mary Jo to pick up long leaf pine needles to make baskets from. I expected to see some wildlife, but the small lake in the middle of the park was virtually dry, even though we had received an inch of rain a couple days before. The Southeast remains very dry, at least south of Georgia.

Today we pack up and begin our long journey toward Alaska. It's going to take a while.