Category Archives: Reviews

Buccaneer State Park, Mississippi

02 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by in Campground, Travel

≈ 4 Comments

the van with the ocean behind her

The view is impressive when there are no cars passing by.

I’m not much of a fan of van pictures—I love Serenity, but I’m not enough of a van worshipper to find her particularly photogenic—but this photo so perfectly summed up this park for me that I couldn’t resist.

I am one of two campers on an empty line of grass facing the Gulf of Mexico. There’s a busy road that you can’t really see between me and the water, with cars going by every few minutes, and ugly electric lines overhead, and despite the descriptions in the campground’s online info, it’s definitely not beachfront, because there’s no beach there, just ocean. Lots of ocean.

But this morning I watched the sun start to rise over the water from Serenity’s window, with Zelda snuggled up next to me. Of course she was snuggled because she was trying to tell me that it was time to get moving. When I eventually obliged, we had a lovely walk along the road and water. The water is so much quieter than it was on Dauphin Island, just lapping against the concrete, and beautifully still in places. Still a ton of birds, including a pelican that flew really close overhead, and lots of little darting birds. I should really find a bird app and try to learn what some of these birds are. I’m spending a lot of time watching them.

The bugs here are also quite impressive, although much less appealing. Last night I was sitting in Serenity with the windows open, watching the mosquitoes land on the screen next to me. It was seriously creepy. In a space maybe two feet square, there were probably fifteen mosquitoes clinging to the netting. Walking the dogs this morning, I felt like I was in an ocean of gnats, far too many of which then came inside with me. I’ve been swatting at them every couple of minutes, driving Z bonkers. She does not understand what I’m doing but she does not think it is good. Fortunately, I’m managing to reduce the number, one squashed bug at a time. If they were small enough to get in through the screens, I would be very sad. Well, and probably changing my mind about staying here, despite the incredible ocean view.

Yesterday I stopped at a really nice grocery store, Rouses Market, and wound up with a thoroughly impractically stocked fridge. For dinner, I had celery with crawfish dip, because how could I resist crawfish dip? (Followed by mixed greens, topped with pear, pecan,  & a very delicious blue cheese.) Tonight I will be having cajun-stuffed mushrooms and asparagus. I also have olives, marinated mushrooms, two more cheeses—a goat Gouda and a Scottish cheddar—and gluten-free crackers. Apparently I intend to eat nothing but appetizers and salads for the next couple days.

I also did all my laundry. This campground has four washers, for over 200 campsites. On a Wednesday afternoon in midwinter, people were having to wait their turns to get to the washers. I can’t imagine what it’s like in high season. Fortunately, all of my clothes and sheets are now clean, so I don’t have to worry about it. Or they were clean. I had one night of lovely clean sheets and this morning Z came back from our walk, hopped up on the bed, and shook, getting sand everywhere. There is no winning the keeping-clean game in a camper with dogs, but so it goes.

By the time I’d gotten everything packed up yesterday, checked out of the last campground, headed into Mississippi, hit traffic delays, did my grocery shopping and laundry, walked the dogs, and settled into my new campsite, it was late afternoon. I spent a little while doing a jigsaw puzzle and watching the sunset, then fed the dogs and ate some dinner. Then and only then, did I settle down to try to write my 1000 words.

I knew it was going to go badly. I was tired and so un-inclined to do the work. I didn’t remotely have the energy to even think about what was supposed to happen next in Grace. But two of my writing group friends and I are writing short stories together—writing motivation!—and this week’s assignment, decided on Tuesday, was to write a “romance short story.”  (Last week’s assignment was a horror short story and that was fun: I’ve never even contemplated writing horror, but I think I got it right.) So yeah, yesterday—sitting down to write with no motivation, knowing that it wasn’t going to go well, turned into 1600 words of romantic short story that I think is really fun. I’m definitely working on Grace today—that’s my big goal for the today—but I think I’m going to try to finish this little story first.

Unforgettable Alabama

28 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by in Campground, Randomness, Travel

≈ 4 Comments

Yesterday, while I was driving, I was trying to count the number of states I’ve visited in my life. You’d think that would be easy. It’s basically a yes, no question, after all. Have I been to California? Yes, I have. Have I been to Alaska? No, I haven’t. Nothing complicated about that, right?

But there are states I’m uncertain about. Like, for example, Indiana. Have I been to Indiana? Hmm… I’d definitely driven through it. And after much thought, I started to remember my visits to Indiana. I picked blueberries there with Michelle, her son and R; I saw friends in Bloomington once and I think ate lunch with them; I picked up my brother at college there, I think, on a road trip from Chicago to PA; and maybe, maybe I went on a business trip there once. But I’m not sure about the business trip and without that, I might never have spent the night in Indiana.

And there’s Missouri: once, when I was visiting Michelle in Kentucky, we drove into Missouri to look at fossils. I’m quite sure that afternoon is my only experience of Missouri. Does that count?

Then there’s New Hampshire. I’ve definitely been through it, multiple times on the way to other places. This summer, I got out of the van and tried to get propane in New Hampshire. That counts, doesn’t it? Or Iowa — I distinctly remember thinking that the McDonald’s bathroom in Iowa was the cleanest fast food restaurant bathroom I had ever seen and that the employees were cumulatively the blondest fast food workers I’d ever seen, but I don’t think I did much in Iowa apart from the McDonald’s stop.

And then there’s Delaware. Driven through it, definitely. Gotten out of the car… um, maybe? Ohio, same deal. Mississippi, ditto.

Kansas, I remember vividly. I was on a road trip with my mom, visiting my sister in Nebraska. I was driving, my mom napping in the passenger seat next to me, and when we drove into Kansas I woke her up to say, “Um, Kansas? Is that really on the way to Nebraska?” I’d made a wrong turn about two hours earlier and never realized. Ouch. But  the rest stop where we turned around is the sum total of my experience of Kansas. Does that count?

And if it does, then we get to the airport states: Colorado and Minnesota. It’s hard for me to believe that I haven’t been to Colorado, because I could almost describe the shops in the Denver airport, I’ve spent so much time there. (Long spokes with long moving sidewalks, weird center circle, tiny tucked away shops, good bookstore, nice wine bar, confusing the first few times — very important to get your bearings before you start walking, lest you wind up at the wrong end of the spokes!). But I’ve never set foot in the state outside the airport. I’m less familiar with the Minneapolis airport, but I’ve definitely had a layover or two or three there.

At the end of all that uncertainty, I wound up with three lists. Yes, no, and maybe.

On my yes-list: the entire east coast, except for New Hampshire and Delaware, the west coast, the southwest, the south, and a big weird chunk of the middle.

On my no-list: Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Michigan, and Alaska.

On my maybe-list: Indiana, Delaware, New Hampshire, Colorado, Minnesota, Ohio, Mississippi, Alabama, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri.

Except–and we finally get to the point of this post!–Alabama has now securely moved to my yes-list. And it will never, ever be an Indiana where I have to struggle to remember if and whether I’ve ever visited, because I won’t forget it. Ever.

I’m staying on Dauphin Island, at the Dauphin Island Campground. This morning, I walked Zelda through the Audubon bird sanctuary and down to the beach. It’s cold! Forty-some degrees this morning, so okay, not cold to northerners, but quite cold to me. While we were on the beach, I saw a flash of black in the water, then another, then realized I was watching porpoises feeding. I have about twenty pictures of ocean, some of which show a tiny glimpse of black, enough to prove that there was a black-finned creature under a vast grey expanse of ocean — but instead… the sunrise. It was magical.

Dauphin Island, Alabama sunrise

The campground… isn’t a state park. I would love to understand why the independent campgrounds seem to have so much more of a problem with litter. The first thing I did when I stepped out onto my campsite was pick up some receipts, a bottle cap, and a candy wrapper and throw them into the trash.

But location, location, location. Steps away from Serenity’s door is a path into the bird sanctuary that leads to the beach where Z and I were absolutely alone — apart from the birds and porpoises and whatever fish they were mutually eating — this morning.

Paradise, in other words.

Blackwater River State Park

26 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by in Campground, Florida

≈ 2 Comments

I was walking Z this morning on a boardwalk over black, swampy water, surrounded by tall scrub pine and cedar trees, and the thought occurred to me that this is a place that should be mosquito heaven. The fact that the mosquito population isn’t madly flourishing makes me a little uneasy, in fact, wondering, well, why not? Is the ground absolutely permeated with pesticide? I’m hoping that it’s actually the plethora of birds keeping the mosquito population down.

During the same walk, I was thinking that what I needed to post to represent my current location was not a photo but an audio file, because the birds were a delightful musical cacophony. For most of my life, my interpretations of bird sounds were pretty much the ones I read in books. Like a book will tell you that a pigeon coos, so when I heard the sound of pigeons, I automatically called it a coo. But when I heard the owls back in December in Wildwood (and now several times since–I recognize it now!), it didn’t sound like a “hoot” at all to me. A “whoa-whoa-whoooa,” maybe, but I guess I heard that W sound more than a pure H. Anyway, one of my recent morning walk entertainments is deciding what the birds are saying, and the birds on this morning’s walk were saying a lot. I should try to find out what kind of birds live in this park, because I suspect the tat-tat-tat-ta noises were woodpeckers, but there were at least four or five other types of birds chatting away, too.

So Blackwater River State Park — the campsites are big, gravel lots, with plenty of space between neighbors, but the trees between them are sparser, so it feels more populated than my tucked away little corner at Grayton. There are only about 30 campsites, and the sites are definitely farther away from one another, so it’s not literally more crowded, it’s just that from my windows, I see trucks and campers, instead of trees and plant life. That said, it’s still vastly nicer than lots of campgrounds. I passed one on my way here that was all neat little rows of expensive big RVs and I was so, so glad that I wasn’t stopping there. I’m sure it was a nice place, but it’s not the kind of camping experience that feeds my soul.

Lying in bed last night, I was looking out my window at the tall, tall scrub pine trees — I’m pretty bad at estimating sizes, but fifty feet high maybe? — and the stars in the dark night sky behind them. Zelda was curled up next to me, and it was nice and cold, so I was snuggled under my blankets. I was thinking how incredibly big Florida really is — I’ve been collecting state park stamps in my state park passport, picked up at Lake Louisa, and I’ve got eight, plus two parks that I went to before I got the stamp. So I’ve been to ten different Florida state parks. Only 138 to go! One hundred and thirty-eight left!! And if it took me four months to go to 10 parks, then it’ll take me another four and a half years or so to go to all of them. Four and a half years, just to explore Florida properly. Except that tomorrow I’m headed to Alabama and next week to Mississippi and yeah, more Florida will have to wait. But as I was thinking about how big Florida is, and then how big the United States is, and then how big the world is, I was still looking at the stars and I realized, no, we’re actually incredibly tiny. It was both comforting and somehow… joyous? I don’t know, it made me feel very happy. So I cuddled Z and went back to sleep.

Grayton Beach State Park

25 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Campground, Florida, Food, Serenity, Travel, WIP

≈ 3 Comments

Grayton Beach sunriseBeautiful beyond words.

I used my grill twice, once for a hamburger that I ate with baked white sweet potatoes, and the second time for bacon. Bacon on a grill was… fiery. That feels like the wrong word, but I can’t find a better one. I had to throw some away after it turned into charcoal, and while I didn’t burn myself, I honestly don’t know how I managed not to burn myself. Seriously, the flames were leaping high. So that was an interesting experiment, and I will not be repeating it. I guess bacon is just not a food I get to eat while I live in a camper. But if yesterday was my last bacon, at least it was delicious: I mixed it in with scrambled eggs with cilantro, rice, and hot sauce, and it was very yum.

I met some fellow Travato owners and had a very pleasant hour or so chatting with them and seeing their camper. They’ve got the other model, the G, and they’re about two years ahead of me in traveling. It was so fun to hear their adventures — their favorite ghost town in Arizona, the restaurant parking lot where they spent the night in Malibu, the tram parking lot with the view of the mountains, the Walmarts & the beaches. They love their Travato for the flexibility, for the ability to just stay anywhere, and they’re very forthright about asking if they can park for the night. When they got here last night, the campground was full, but the ranger let them stay in the overflow lot — they were right on the water this morning, with a view that must have been amazing.

The writing is not going well, much to my frustration, and I’m starting to strongly suspect that I’ve caught a cold. But it is wonderful to be on the road again and going places.

Today is six months since I started this journey, an anniversary I very nearly missed until I was about to post, and blinking at the calendar wondering what was significant about January 25th to me. I meant to write about the highs and lows of my first six months when this day rolled around, but… well, I wasn’t thinking about it. And I actually feel like I’m kind of too busy living in one of the highs right now to write about the lows. I don’t even have words to express how beautiful this campground is, how perfect the weather, and how content and serenely happy I am to be here. I’m moving on today, though — the next campground is beckoning to me! — and that makes me serenely happy and also sort of bubbly with adventure excitement. Life is good. I guess that’s pretty my summary of my first six months on the road, too: life is good!

Roadtrippers

19 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by in Reviews, Serenity, Travel

≈ 1 Comment

I’m having so much fun playing with Roadtrippers.com. I haven’t really planned out my previous adventures, except in terms of which family member or friend I was headed to visit next, with stays at Thousand Trails campgrounds or state parks between visits and errands. But I decided I needed to map out my next few weeks of adventure while I had plentiful internet access, so I spent a big chunk of the past few days reading links off roadtrippers and being alternately wistful about the things that just don’t make sense to do with two dogs in tow and excited about the ones that do. In other words, no Mardi Gras, even though I’ll probably be in the right area around the right time. But Dauphin Island might work out and it looks lovely.

I say “might” because I’m not making reservations. Not yet. Serenity is in for service again today and I’m… well, not doubtful, exactly. But I lack faith. I’m not really thrilled with the fact that I’ve gotten so comfortable at the RV dealer’s service facility that I bring my own coffee cup along to help myself to their (really quite decent) coffee rather than making my own coffee on service days, and that the vast multitude of people who work there are starting to become familiar to me. There are three women who work behind the service counter and I have a favorite, the one whose line I prefer to get in. (Short version: the cheerful, helpful one, of course.) That’s not a good sign. But fingers crossed, today might be the day I’m done for a while. This morning I noticed a latch sticking and I just closed my eyes to it. I’ll live with a sticky latch. If it does break, I’ll figure out how to fix it myself.

Serenity did get a nice upgrade this week. My dad and an old family friend installed a shower curtain rail for me in the bathroom. I’m waiting for clips to actually hang the curtain, so I can’t say for sure what it’s going to be like yet, and I’m going to need to get a tie of some sort to keep it bunched in the corner when not in use, but I’m very optimistic that this will make showering in the van seem like less of a project. Previously, every shower required snapping the shower curtain along the ceiling and walls to protect the closet and drawers, and it was kind of a PITA. In the last two months, I haven’t showered in the van once — I’ve learned a lot about campground bathrooms, and never ever forget to bring my flip-flops to wear while I shower anymore! — but it’ll be nice if showering in the van feels easier now.

But back to Roadtrippers. You set a starting point for your trip and pick a destination, and select what you’re interested in discovering along the way. Roadtrippers has data on hotels, restaurants, points of interest, campgrounds, all sorts of places. And links to their sites, of course, so when I find a campground or state park that I like, I can find out more about it by following links. It currently doesn’t have enough reviews — I wish they and TripAdvisor could join forces because Roadtrippers’ mapping software is way more useful than TripAdvisor, but TripAdvisor wins for quantity of reviews — but roadtrippers is very fun to play with and explore. When I’m on real internet, of course, not cell data!

Oscar Scherer State Park

16 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in Campground, Florida, Reviews, Short Stories, Travel, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

I was near Sarasota this weekend, mostly so I could see R, with a side dollop of managing some paperwork with him. Honestly, if the paperwork hadn’t existed, I would still probably have gone to Sarasota because one breakfast was not nearly enough after not having seen him for six months.

Got there on Friday and took him out to an all-you-can-eat sushi place, which was remarkably good, considering how unlikely it is that all-you-can-eat sushi can survive economically. It seems so impractical, especially in a college town.

Afterwards, I drove to the campground and got settled. I think it was my very first arrival after dark — a thing I had been cautioned against doing, even before getting Serenity. (Or the first such arrival at an unfamiliar place where I would want to connect to water and electric, anyway.) It was sort of thrilling, doing a slow drive through the dark wilderness to the campsite and getting myself situated, but of course it was fine. No problems at all.

I’m developing a different relationship with darkness after months of living with a camper. Unfamiliar dark has always been sort of scary, potentially threatening. What villains might lurk in the night? But now I’m out so often after dark, walking dogs around campgrounds and appreciating the night skies, that I’m really starting to take darkness for granted and even enjoy it.

On Saturday, I mostly hung out at the campground. R came over for a while and we worked on the paperwork that needed to get done and then took a walk together. He’s playing Pokemon Go and I really might have to give it a try, although somehow our entire month’s supply of data for our shared phone lines is gone and if that’s all Pokemon Go… Data has become such a precious commodity in my life.

I really liked the park. They’re using controlled burns and it made for such interesting and diverse vegetation and scenery. In the campground, I was surrounded by trees, plenty of barrier between sites to feel like there was a sense of privacy. But right outside the campground, the landscape was blackened, charred tree trunks sticking up out of ashy ground. And then walking around, there were lots of areas of different heights of plants.

On Sunday morning, I went for a long walk with Z and got a little lost. I didn’t mind feeling lost, mostly because the park wasn’t big enough to stay lost for long, so even when I wasn’t sure where I was, I knew I’d find something familiar eventually. But also because it was such an incredibly beautiful morning. I took my first ever panorama photo because I was so awed.  If I’ve managed to display it properly on the site, that little dot of light in the top left corner is the moon, with the sun rising on the right.

Oscar Scherer State Park at sunrise

Oscar Scherer State Park at sunrise

We ran into one person, also walking a dog, and she pointed out a nest containing baby eagles to us. Their little heads were bobbing up, tiny dots against the horizon. I could have stayed lost for much longer and still enjoyed it.

But it was my last day, so I had to head out. I met up with R for brunch/lunch and then made the long drive back to Sanford. Today the van is at the dealer, getting her fan repaired. Tomorrow it’s back to Mount Dora for an oil change, I hope.

And since I have internet at the moment — not on my data plan! — I’m going to spend a good chunk of the day playing with roadtrippers.com and mapping out a route to Galveston. And also, of course, doing some real writing, not just blogging. The story I’m working on right now — which I totally should not be working on, of course — contained these lines yesterday:

She dashed behind me and I looked up to see a rat charging at us.

Not just a rat, though. A big rat. A rat out of nightmares. The kind of rat that you might invoke in a scary story designed to keep children up at night, with glittering red eyes and a hairless tail lashing the air behind it, clawed feet and teeth dripping with poisoned saliva. It leaped at us, flying through the air as if propelled by demons.

I incinerated it, of course.

Without hesitation.

And with none of that fancy drama some elemental talents throw into their work, with pointing hands and mystic gestures, lines of fire extending from their eyes or balls of flame shooting out of their fingers.

No, I just set it on fire. All of it, inside and out.

Yep, having fun writing. Not writing anything I ought to be writing. So it goes!

Unexpected restaurants

09 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in Food, Randomness, Restaurants, Reviews

≈ 1 Comment

My weekend took an unexpected turn, but turned out really quite nice. Because of flight problems, I wound up bringing my brother up to my dad’s place, so that he could fly out of a central Florida airport instead of Fort Lauderdale. Even though he flew out a day later, he probably wound up getting home earlier and he definitely wound up getting home with a lot less hassle than he would have otherwise. And it was really nice to get to spend time with my dad and my brother and — although way too short — my son! Yay! R came home from his adventures and came out to breakfast with us on Sunday and it was so nice to share a meal with my favorite people.

On our last night in Fort Lauderdale, I got my brother to take me to an Argentinian steakhouse, Las Pampas Grill. I had the arugula, endive and blue cheese salad, which was terrific. Not at all the fancy restaurant type salad where you get six leaves of arugula and a sprinkle of blue cheese, it was a solid salad with a scoop of a soft blue cheese, very yummy. And then we shared the meat platter, which included blood sausage and sweetbreads. My brother gave me a look when I suggested it — the look that said, “What have you done with the sister I grew up with, the one who ate nothing but white foods?” — but joined in agreeably. I liked the blood sausage a lot, definitely a different taste, but a good taste and a good texture. And that makes a week with three new foods!

The next evening, up in Mount Dora, I was off doing things — checking my email or turning my laundry — and returned to the kitchen to discover that I had been nominated to figure out dinner for us. I was surprised. I’m by far the most adventurous eater in my family (with the possible exception of my son), and I would have thought dragging my brother to two different restaurants in two days would have had him making sure I wasn’t in control of his food on the third day, but no, he was up for it.

I wound up picking a Japanese hibachi restaurant right near the house that my dad and stepmom had never tried. It was great — I had sushi and they had the rice, noodles, vegetables and meat cooked on the grill — and the cook put on a terrific show. I wanted to ask him if he’d sharpened the edges of his spatula, but then I decided that it was a dumb question, because obviously he had — he could slice an onion without hesitation using it. He could also break an egg, by balancing it on the spatula, tossing it up and catching it on the edge — I was extremely impressed. We needed a kid with us to be more awed, but for a little neighborhood strip mall place, very unprepossessing from the outside, it was a good show. And I should find the name again so I can give them a Trip Advisor review, but I’ll have to do that later, because today is a packed day and I need to get to it.

It’s a busy, busy week for me — I think it’ll be my last full week in Central Florida, so I am definitely trying to pack a lot into it. But I have to keep reminding myself that getting stressed out about my choices is silly. I’ve got plenty of time to do all the things. Starting right now! Happy Monday!!

Fort Lauderdale

06 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by in Campground, Florida, Randomness, Restaurants

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Updated to add: Needless to say (I hope), this happy vacation post was written and posted before people started getting murdered at the Fort Lauderdale airport. I knew something was happening when we were down at the convention center and cars with sirens started appearing out of nowhere, all with sirens blaring. I wish it had been the bad traffic accident I expected it to be. 

I feel some sort of dreadful American normalcy about this, and I really hate feeling this way. My mood definitely soured, but my brain went straight to the practicalities of how long the airport would be closed, how many flights were going to be delayed or cancelled, whether my brother is going to miss his son’s birthday (most likely) and his daughter’s spelling bee (hopefully not). As if a mass shooting was just another weather problem. As if someone wasn’t going to have to be mopping up the blood before anyone can use that airport again. Just another tragedy of the week. But if it had been yesterday, or tomorrow, it might have been my family’s tragedy, too. It makes me sad on so many levels. 

*****

I apologize (symbolic, at best) to all of the campgrounds I have called parking lots in the past. I did not know parking lots until I reached Fort Lauderdale’s Sunshine Holiday Resort.

I am squeezed in between two big trailers in a spot so small and tight that my neighbor came out to help me back in, mostly, I think, because he didn’t want to lose his slide to my incompetence. The water didn’t work — the spigot had “seized,” according to my brother, and I’m writing that down just because I really like the use of the word. Unfortunately, all of our tugging and struggling with the faucet handle weakened the pipe just enough that it fell apart and began spraying water out after dark, so there was a plumber working next to the camper until 11PM. The sewer outlet doesn’t have a cover on it; it’s an open hole in the ground and I keep worrying that a dog is going to step in it and break a leg. Not that I’m letting the dogs out by themselves — it’s just pavement, so it’s not like they can sit in the grass and enjoy the sun. Although there is a tree behind me, fortunately, and possibly I’m parked backwards — the power outlet and the sewer are on opposite sides of the site, instead of on the same side, and apparently you’re just supposed to run either your cord or your hose underneath your camper. The key to the gate didn’t work last night, so we were stuck outside for a while. And I’d feel better about all of this if this wasn’t the most expensive campground I’ve ever stayed at. Ouch.

Still, I’m pretty cheerful about it all. It feels like an adventure. Mostly, I suspect, because the air feels tropical and it is a gorgeous day. It’s a different kind of “too warm” than central Florida. It’s beach warm, and I like it. It feels like vacation in the air.

It sounds like city, though. I can hear traffic constantly, lots of it. And it smells like Mexican food. Refried beans and rice, maybe? Chilis? Or maybe that’s me. Nope, it’s definitely coming in the window on the cool breeze. It’s making me hungry, it smells so good.

We ate at a Salvadoran restaurant last night, the top-rated restaurant in Trip Advisor for this area, El Guanaco. I ate the Salvadoran combo: a chicken tamale, a sweet corn tamale, a loroco  pupusa (like a super-thick quesadilla stuffed with cheese and a Salvadoran flower), fried yuca, Salvadorian cream and cheese, pickled cabbage, red sauce, and spicy salsa verde. It was all delicious and (I really, really hope) didn’t include any gluten. I was pretty wary about the yuca, only took one little nibble, because even though the waitress said it wasn’t battered, it sure looked battered. But I guess I’ll know in a couple of days. It was good enough that I might call it worth it anyway: I particularly liked the sweet corn tamale, topped with cream and green sauce, plus, of course, the joy of eating a food that I’d never heard of, i.e. the loroco  pupusa (which spellcheck adamantly insists are not words.)

In other random news, I’m still struggling with my email. I thought I had downloaded my folders: nope! I’m trying not to worry about losing five years worth of email — how often does one go back and look at old emails, anyway? But I definitely have a churning uneasiness about what important things might have gone poof and whether I’m being rude to anyone who sent me email in the two or three days that seem to have been lost to the ether. So it goes, I guess, and I’m going to try not to dwell on that. Today I get to hang out with my brother and explore some of Fort Lauderdale, so off I go to do just that!

Heading south

05 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by in Campground, Reviews, Zelda

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Today is a movement day. I think the RV term is “relocation” day, although maybe that’s just when you’re making a big, big movement, like heading off to a new state. I’m just leaving this campground and heading to Fort Lauderdale for a couple of nights, and then coming back in this direction, so “relocation” sounds way too dramatic. I’m just… moving.

I am excited about this movement, because I’m meeting my brother and looking forward to it, but last night was one of those nights where I feel like I spent hours floating on the edge of sleep, not quite awake but definitely not soundly resting, so I’m tired and that tiredness is definitely shading my mood. When I was walking the dog this morning, I was counting good things. Yay, it was 63 degrees and felt so comfortable. The mist rising off the water was lovely. Sandhill cranes flew overhead, making their plaintive whirr, which always sounds magical to me. Lots of good things, but somehow I still felt grouchy.

The campground I’m in — the Thousand Trails in Clermont — is one that I picked purely to have a couple cheap days, plugged in, with very low expectations, but it’s been lovely. It’s a “first-come, first-served” place, so when you show up, you just wander around and find a campsite, but it’s big enough that they have guides with golf carts helping you find the right spot. My guide was terrific. She asked me a couple questions to which I didn’t have great answers and then I said that I was really trying to write a book, so quiet would be good. She had just the place.

And it really has been perfect. I’m in the wooded section, and the sites are angled, so my view out the back and out one side window is of peaceful plant life. It’s easy walking distance to a lake that gets the sunrise and a dog park that Zelda has enjoyed sniffing her way around. And the campground is huge, so I’ve easily been able to take long walks with Z without feeling like we’re going over the same territory again and again. There’s even a nature trail that goes through the surrounding scrub pine forest. Z flat-out refused to go on the nature trail this morning and actually ran away from it when I finally grumbled, “Fine, whatever,” and turned back to the road, so maybe there’s even some serious nature back there. I liked imagining that she smelled far-distant bear better than concluding that she prefers pavement, anyway.

But I’ve got a lot to do, so I should get to it. I told myself this morning that it was a new year and I didn’t have to write a Thursday blog post, but I guess 52 weeks of Thursdays has made it feel like… not an obligation. But like brushing my teeth. It’s part of my Thursday morning routine and I just didn’t feel good about not trying to get it done.

But now I must start the packing up routine — stowing all my belongings, sweeping out, unmaking the bed, unplugging, and so on. And maybe quick making a little more coffee, because I am seriously not awake yet. The final stage of my website restructuring (the domain moving to a new host) finally came through this morning and I spent half an hour trying to get my email fixed and finally decided that I was just too tired to figure that out this morning, but I’m going to have to spend some time fighting technology later, too, and that is worthy of extra caffeine, I suppose. I fully expect today to be a nice day, but it might be a nicer day if it included feeling a little more energetic.

Welcome to 2017

02 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in Books, R, Zelda

≈ 2 Comments

I had the loveliest/weirdest New Year’s Eve. It was R’s 21st birthday and I was prepared to be sad about not getting to spend time with him on his birthday. Obviously, now that he is an adult, that’s going to happen less and less often anyway. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that I will never spend his birthday with him again. Although having written that out, it seems very unlikely. I didn’t often spend my birthday with my parents between the ages of 20-30, but after that, I sometimes did, especially the major birthdays. I definitely saw them on my 30th and 40th.

Anyway, it’s a nostalgic day, of course. As always, I remembered details of the day 21 years ago, mostly how madly, head-over-heels, totally joyfully in love I was. I know some moms don’t get that. My midwife told me it was the endorphins from a very long labor. It might also have been some exhaustion delirium—my water broke on Thursday and R was finally born on Sunday morning and there was not a lot of sleep during those three intervening nights—but whatever, I was dazzled and awed and infatuated beyond anything I have ever experienced before or since.

But I was also trying to remember details of the year before that — 22 years ago, the New Year’s Eve when I had no idea, none, of how dramatically and permanently my life would change in the next 12 months. I couldn’t remember a thing. I assume I spent it with the boyfriend that I was coming to realize I ought to be breaking up with and probably that we both drank too much, but no specifics beyond that.

And then my thoughts turned to last New Year’s Eve. It was just a year ago. I had no idea it would be my last new year in my house. If you’d asked me then, I would have predicted this new year’s to be just as the previous seven or so had been: quiet, at home, probably including a nice meal with R…

Instead, he was in Paris. And I was sitting in a friend’s driveway watching the best fireworks display ever. Best, not because the fireworks were out of reason spectacular — Disney has some great fireworks shows with music and fireworks that create designs in the sky, ie Mickey Mouse ears, so I’ve seen some impressive fireworks — but because it went on and on and on, and I could watch it from the cozy comfort of my own bed with the dogs on top of me.

I would love to know what Zelda thought about the whole thing. She’s always hated fireworks, but she’s never figured out that they’re the flashing lights in the sky. She started to get agitated, barking and pacing, when she first smelled the smoke and heard the banging, but then she came and sat on me and watched them with me. Ears up, eyes alert, I really think she paid attention to the whole thing. And they were beautiful, big fireworks, some simple explosions of blue and red and green, others those swishing things like one little explosion after another in white sparkles.

It was a lovely night. Not what I meant to write about this morning, but I’m glad to save the memory.

The other lovely thing that happened was that Andrea Host released a new book in her Touchstone series. I don’t know whether I’ve mentioned the series here before — I know I have elsewhere on social media. But those books somehow became comfort reads for me, such that a few months after reading them for the first time, I got sick and the only thing I wanted to do was reread the series. They’re fantasy/science fiction, but the new book, In Arcadia, is very much a romance: it’s a calm, quiet, slice-of-life story that tells the tale of the main character’s mom from the previous books falling in love. I read it between fireworks and thoroughly enjoyed it. If you haven’t tried her books and you like fantasy/sci-fi/romance, I really do recommend them—she creates worlds that I love escaping into. I’ve reread almost all of them, I think.

In fact, my one regret about In Arcadia is that it makes me want to reread all Andrea’s books, one right after another, and I really shouldn’t. I should be writing my own books!

Resolution for 2017: write lots of words.