Up at dawn

It's been a while since I posted here. Consuelo and I have been very busy over the past few weeks, knitting and working on the campground wifi respectively.

Mahlon's Photography. I'm moving more towards creating a way to sell some of my photographs. The one at the top is a sample of what's going on over at Photoshelter, where I'm setting up my outlet. I haven't done much to drive traffic towards that site yet, so I haven't sold anything there. If you have a minute, stop over there and offer me a comment on a photo or two.

I did have a few prints for sale at the campground craft fair, and sold about 1/2 of them. Not enough to buy a new lens, never mind a camera, but it was a rewarding experience. I got a lot of nice comments on my work.

Next up is a juried show at the Art Center here on Jekyll Island. If I can get my act together to get the prints and get them mounted, I'll put in a few entries.

Consuelo's Slippers. Consuelo has been knitting and felting slippers at a breakneck pace. She had about a dozen made up for the craft fair, and sold a dozen there, but half of those need to be knitted yet as she didn't have all the right sizes and colors. So, she just keeps knitting away, even while she's traveling to Naples this weekend.

She is also going to enter slippers in the craft show at the Art Center, which means even more pairs to make and have inventory on hand. Busy, busy, busy.

Campground wifi. I started pressing the campground to get their wifi working back in December when we first arrived here. It was the main complaint from the campers, since many of us have come to depend on the internet for banking and other important things. I suspected that reconfiguring the settings would be a cure for most of the problems. Turns out I was right.

Once I got the powers to be to understand that I might be able to help, I rewrote the configuration file for the Ciscco router which connects to the internet. That improved throughput considerably for the users who worked in the community room. Then I went to work on the access points throughout the campground, and have reconfigured all of them, as well. It is by no means perfect, but it's a whole world better than what was there to begin with. Next they will be raising the antennas for better line of sight, and I expect a bit more reconfiguration. But the campground manager is pleased, and we have a lot more happy campers.

Wildlife on the Island

I've been spending a few minutes every few days to see if I can capture some of the wildlife on Jekyll with my camera. This has been marginally successful. Squirrels abound here in the campground, and you'd think that they would be an easy mark. But they seem to be somewhat camera shy, and my longest lens (450 mm) is just barely long enough. Plus, then tend to hang around int eh shadows and move a lot, making exposure difficult. I got a lot of pictures of squirrel tails leaving the scene. And they absolutely refuse to smile. But I managed to get this one.

Seagulls abound on the island, too, but not in the campground. I caught these two sea rats waiting in a parking lot for a handout. I'm not sure why a seagull would prefer soaking his webbed feet in a puddle, rather than dry grounds, and he's not talking. Unfortunately, for me, seagulls have their pictures taken way too often, so unless I capture one with a fishing pole, or using a laptop, it will be a fairly ordinary picture. Still, it's practice.



Raccoons are also plentiful here, not as plentiful as squirrels or seagulls, but they are regular daily visitors. This one didn't realize that Thumper was lurking under our motorhome and got a little too close. When he was alarmed by the barking and snarling teeth chasing him into the road (cut short by Thumper's leash reaching it's full extension) he scrambled up a tree. Six feet up a tree seemed pretty safe, until I showed up with my camera and blinding light to further confound a quiet night of carousing in the campground. Funny, the more pictures I took, the farther up the tree he scrambled.

There's a lot of cardinals in the campground. There's a "bird sanctuary", a portion of the campground where feeders have been hung for the birds. They tend to be skittish, and the mirror flop on my camera tends to keep them alert. But if I stay far enough away, I can get a few images of them hopping on the ground.

There's other wildlife here besides us. I'll keep trying to sneak up on them and get a few snapshots.

Through the Holidays

Lunch in the RV

The holidays are long over. As Craig Ferguson would say, "I know!" But I've either been having too much fun or too busy to write to my blog readers. So, here we go again.

On December 19th we drove from Jekyll to Naples, FL, about 450 miles, all in one hop. We stopped for a long lunch, and I got a short nap, but it was still over 8 hours on the road. We had a reservation at a pricey campground there, a first for us as we have driveway camped until now. But I think it worked better for us and everybody else.

One of the first tasks we had to attend to was getting our dog Thumper to the vet. She was dragging her right rear leg, and the vet diagnosed this as a disc problem. She go steroids and muscle relaxants, and now she is using the leg, but dragging her claws some. I have to help her into the motorhome, and she's nowhere as active, but still likes lots of petting and dog treats.

Naples is the home of Consuelo's sisters and their families. We invited all of them out to see our newer motorhome, and one day we hosted lunch.

Flo playing cards

Of course, we had a couple visits with my aunt Flo, who snowbirds with friends from Wilbraham, Massachusetts, my old stomping grounds. No matter how hard we try, she always beats us at the card game. It's a little depressing.

We had Christmas dinner at Jen and Gabe's town house, which represents a generational shift. There was too much illness going on at Consuelo's sisters homes to do the event. We had to bring our own food (I baked a turkey), chairs and tables, but we had a wonderful time. Jen and Gabe will be getting married in April, and we'll return down there for the wedding.

Titi's 85th Birthday Cake

After Christmas, we convoyed across Florida to Delray Beach, and celebrated Consuelo's Aunt Titi's 85th birthday. Consuelo got to see some of her family who live in the Miami area, which she doesn't get to do very often. She got caught up with Titi and Lolo, as well as their kids and grandkids, and he uncle and cousins. She also got a chance to see her stepmother Sara. I was there, but focused on the football games, which turned out to be a big disappointment.

Consuelo, Uncle Nono, Maria, Carmen

We stayed overnight in Delray Beach, then headed out the next morning to head back to Jekyll. Driving to Delray cut about 80 miles out of the trip back, so it was more manageable.

And we got back to the Jekyll Campground 3 days ahead of our reservation, once again upsetting the campground manager. It's our favorite trick, because we like it here so much.

We've now been back here over 2 weeks. We're getting rain today, which means indoor activities, like blogging.

Back to Jekyll

Jekyll Bike Path

We're back on Jekyll Island for a week. Since the entire island is a state park, the local beauty is promoted and maintained. The residual beauty of the shores and the historic district are wonderful. We like those things.

Private homes, hotels, a water park, a little shopping center, golf courses, and of course a campground take up some space, but by law 65% of the land must remain undeveloped. A couple of the hotels are old and ready for replacement, and such decision are always controversial, and the controlling board decided one recently.

The campground offers monthly rates which we find favorable. Some campers thing the campground should be improved. The roads are dirt, and dusty when there's been no rain. There's no community room, so gatherings are difficult. The campground installed a large tent to serve this purpose, and it seems to work OK for potlucks and dinners, but other typical campground activities are thwarted. The Christmas dinner was held in a room at the golf course restaurant. The restrooms and showers are aging and impossible to look pristine, but we don't use them so it's no big deal for us.

What we do like is camping among the live oaks and yellow pines, with all the squirrels and birds flitting about. November is acorn season, and every now and then we hear a CLUNK-ponk-rattl-rattle as one bounces off our roof.

Entrance road

December is the season when Jekyll lights itself up for Christmas. This is the 3rd time we've been here in December, and in general, the lights seem more subdues this year. I like them better, especially in the historic district.

Last night, I spent a couple hours with my camera trying to capture the Christmas lights. I had intended to experiment with High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, so I took my tripod anc captured several shots of each scene, each one with a different shutter speed. When I got home, I assembled each set of images in HDR software, but the results were less than pleasing. What you see here are just selected exposures from each set. Pretty nice, but neither spectacular nor unusual. But I like them.


Du Bignon Cottage

This cottage was one of the prettier ones, I though. Simply yet clearly lit, festooned with evergreens, it remined me of my New England Christmas roots. The building is one of the museum pieces that the Historic District has restored with period pieces and is open for tours.


The tree on the green and Goodyear Cottage

The green area was on that was much less flashy that I remeber from our visit in 2004. The live oaks had their arches all lit up along the main road, but there were no flashing wire sculpture lights to take away from the simple beauty of the cottages and their lights.


Jekyll Island Club Hotel

The hotel was once the clubhouse for the richa nad famous folks who had their winter homes here in the late 19th century. The Christmas lights offered a cheeriness which brightened the classic victorian style if the buildings.


Our pre-Christmas visit will end here tomorrow, when we leave for Naples and 10 days with Consuelo's family. Just before New Year's, we'll return here for 3 months. I'll have more pictures of the rest of the island then.

700 miles, 8 states, SN*W!

We're out of Maine, on our way south, and we're at the second night on the road. We got underway at 9:40 on Friday morning, December 5th, only 10 minutes behind our plan. We made a quick stop in Peabody, MA, so Consuelo could check the fit of a garment she's making for our daughter-in-law, Maria. While they did that, I took Thumper for a walk. After that, had soup and a sandwich and headed on down the road, landing in Southington, CT. We thought we could stay at the Wal-Mart there, but the signs said "NO RV OVERNIGHT PARKING", so we found another big empty parking lot at Bob's Furniture. Bob's people said "We don't own the lot, but it should be OK, as long as the cops don't kick you out." They didn't, in fact they parked in the lot with us for some of the night.

On the first day, we traversed Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, into Connecticut. Diesel is a bit more in New England, so we bought $75 in Massachusetts. That lasted into New York, where it was no cheaper, so we bought $100 worth there at around $3/gal.

We've spent over 4 years doing this RV thing, but we're discovering things that we've forgotten, or perhaps mis-remembered, about what we're supposed to do. For example, I found some bake-em-up crescent rolls and wanted to bake-em for breakfast on Saturday. I searched all over for a lighter or matches to light the pilot on the over, not finding any. Then I remembered that we have a convection-microwave oven, and we had the generator running to charge the batteries. 12 minutes later, we had nice warm crescent rolls.

We got onto the road about 8:30 this morning. It was about 18 degrees F when we left, and warmed a bit as we travelled. We crossed into New York, bought fuel, then went through Pennsylvania, a few miles of Maryland, a few more miles of West Virginia, and landed at a Flying J truck stop at the first exit in Virginia. We filled our LP tank so we could stay warm, and parked for the night at around 5:00 PM.

We have a history of Pennsylvania and treacherous weather. We had a couple trips from Rochester, MN, where we lived, to Western Massachusetts, where my family lived, travelling through PA on I81 and I80, facing snow and ice along the way. Today, we encountered snow flurries as we arrived in the Harrisburg area. Not enough to slow us down too much, We almost stopped in Harrisburg, but pressed on. At 6:00, the cashier at the Flying J reported that traffic was moving at 20 mph in the areas we had just come through, so we got by it just in time. More snow is in the forecast. We'll take it a day at a time, but we'd prefer to miss all of it.

Thumper finally seemed to realize at around 2:00 PM today that we weren't just out for an overnight trip, and that she had to resign herself that there would be no free runs anytime soon. My signal for this was when she gave up hoping that we'd park back at the Maine house, watching for the door to the motorhome to open onto the back lawn, and she climbed up on the sofa and went to sleep for the first time since we left.

It's 33 degrees here in northernmost Virginia. We are looking forward to cavorting on the beach in our shorts in Georgia in another week. OK, we'll settle for in a sweater. But MUCH, MUCH WARMER than 33 degrees!

Thanks... last one out, turn off the lights.

Thanksgiving Day

The final event for the Maine house was to host the kids and grand kids for Thanksgiving. The weather was OK, not perfect, and everybody reported having a good time. We cooked fairly traditionally, turkey on the grill, mashed potatoes, butternut squash. The kids had their own idea of food, and we had the alternates for them, like macaroni and fruit juice. They'll have whole new set of traditions when they grow up.

Amelia & Luna with the Clauses
On Friday, all the moms tripped to the stores to shop Black Friday. The results were mixed to disappointing, specific deals were sold out when they got there. While the moms were shopping, the dads took the kids to see Santa in Rockland, in the rain. Everyvbody except Amelia got on Sants's knee and tried hard to remeber everything they had thought about asking Santa for earlier in the day, but the excitement forced temporary amnesia.

We then travelled but a few miles out to the Transportation Museum in Owl's head, and the kids had a blast building styrofoam airplanes and flying them in a huge empty display hall. The Dad's had fun making airplanes, too, and Grandpa had fun looking around the museum.

On Saturday, we drove down to Pemaquid Point to see the lighthouse, frolic on the rocks, and look for shells. The ocean was a bit angry after the storms that passed through earlier in the week. After dinner on Saturday night everybody (except us) packed up and left for home.

Pemaquid Point Light

We're now left with collecting everything we'll need to take with us for the next 18 months as we cpend the winter in Georgia, travel to Alaska, then winter again in the Southwest US. Plus, we're leaving the house in a condition to be able to rent it next summer, which means packing all our personal stuff away in one bedroom. And finally, setting the house on low to survive the winter.

Consuelo and I have really enjoyed spending time in Maine. We're developing compassion for the local folks who scrape out a living up here, and suffering some of the same injustices that they do, like high fuel oil prices. And the locals are welcoming us to the community, like asking to use one of my photos on their community calendar.

We're almost ready to hit the road again. On to the next leg of travel around the US. We're excited about it.

Turning the Temperature Corner

The last leaf

It's getting colder in Maine. It does this every year, I'm told. This is the latest that we've stayed in the north since we started our motorhome adventure 4 years ago. It's good to know that we can do it, but it does have a few complications.

We had the motorhome out in August, going up to Acadia for a long weekend. Most everything in it is ready to go. We didn't drain the water, in fact, I believe we have a full tank. Since the temperatures are now routinely below freezing at night, we're keeping the heat on to keep the pipes from freezing. That's burning LP, and since we haven't found anybody to deliver LP at our house, we'll have to take the motorhome up to Waldoboro to get the LP tank filled.


Maine fuel

We've been doing a lot more work on our house over the last few weeks. We stripped the remaining wallpaper in our bedroom, patched and painted the walls and the ceiling. We got the interior knotty pine put up on the new porch, and trimmed out the windows. We bought some bookcases in Massachusetts, and used one as a TV cabinet, one on the porch, and one in the hallway. The hallway downstairs has been scraped, patched, and painted. The stairwell and upstairs hall has been patched and painted.

We tried to do the ceiling over th stairs, but that was a disaster, the new paint peeled off all the remaining paint after it was scraped, patched and painted. We are having the sheet rock folks in to quote doing that job before we leave.

A fallen leaf

We've been pleased with the warmth that stays in the porch when the sun shines. We expected it to be a sunroom, and it is insulated throughout. But we've used it for several days without heat in November, which is better than I expected. The again, I understand we've been having some unseasonably warm temps over the past few weeks.

But today when we woke up, the chill of winter was around, with the overnight low around freezing. Today will be sunny, but not above 45 we're promised. We're slipping down that slippery slope of winter... you know, the one that some people ski on!