Last day at Ho Hum (Sun.)

We had planned on fishing this morning, but it stormed during the night, and we got up to pretty strong winds, white caps on the water, so we decided to do our chores instead.  After a quick trip into town for Joe's morning caffeine (diet Coke), we got the laundry and vacuuming done and settled in to watch the NASCAR race.  I kept an eye on the fishing pier but no one else seemed inclined to fight the wind either.  The one kid (Brian) who was throwing his net last night, and who fished with us yesterday, was out for a while this morning, but he did more casting of his net off the pier than he did fishing.

We continued to learn more about this area.  There's a lot of WWII history here, this is where the troops trained for the Normandy Invasion.  I guess there's a book, Sunshine Beach, about that (it's fiction but would probably be good to read).  The campground host said it's out of print now, though, and only available through Kindle books.  Something to check into.

After the race, we decided to walk out to the pier and check out the weather.  We decided it wasn't quite as windy, so I thought we should try fishing one more time.  So we walked back to the RV and gathered up our poles and tackle, and back to the pier we went.  I had to catch some bait fish first, but Joe started out with our day-old frozen shrimp and got to pretty good hits right away.  It took me a while to get any bait fish, and I dropped the first one I had, but I finally got us some, and I started fishing too. 

So here's Joe and me seriously fishing.  And you can see how far away the RV is from the fishing pier in the second picture.

 Joe decided to live dangerously here and see if he could fall off the rail. 

Here's my bucket of bait fish.  We were trying to fish with live bait, but if the fish died in the bucket, we would cut the head and tail off and use it for "cut bait."  But nothing seemed to work for me.  All I caught was the bait fish.

But for Joe, things got exciting.  He hooked into something that just took his line straight out.  It didn't take long for him to figure out it was another stingray.  He fought it from one end of the fishing pier to the other, going over my line, and then over to the side. He would gain a little line, then the fish would just take straight off again.

Our new friend, Brian, was out in the water with his net, so he yelled for Joe to bring him toward him and he would try to throw his net over him.  Well, Joe really wasn't the one deciding where that fish was going -- it was going exactly where it wanted to go.  But it did go around the end of the fishing pier, and over by the boardwalk.  Brian was on the other side of the boardwalk.  So Joe tried to steer the fish that way, then the fish went under the boardwalk.  Brian waded under the boardwalk and took Joe's pole from him, then tried to reel the fish in.  It did come to the top a couple of times, and we could see it was a really large stingray, probably in the 50-lb range.  Brian wasn't winning the battle with the fish either, so he gave Joe his pole back, I went down the boardwalk and got Brian's net and threw it to him, and he tried to throw the net over the fish.

Brian finally got the net thrown over the stingray and we all headed toward shore.  But when we got in, we discovered that the fish had escaped the net, with the hook, and Joe had an empty pole.  Quite disappointing, but it was exciting for a while.  We had a little audience watching all this.

We fished for another hour or so but didn't have any luck, so we gave it up, came in and had a late dinner, and Joe defrosted the refrigerator.  He was beat after his big battle with "the one that got away."  But we have new fish tales to tell.


We've enjoyed our time here, pretty restful and it's always nice to be around the water.  Tomorrow we head to Georgia.

Fishing on the gulf (Sat.)

Woke up to rain sprinkles this morning, which lasted until into the afternoon.  We drove into town to the tackle shop and got some more bait and tackle, then came back to RV to wait out the rain.  I took a nap, hadn't slept well last night, while Joe worked on our fishing poles.  We finally got our lines in the water about 2:30, and fished till about 6:30.  We had little tiny hooks in the water to catch bait fish, which we did, but that was the only thing I ever caught.  Joe hooked a good-size stingray but it broke his line, and just before we quit fishing he brought in a small black tip shark.  The best part was that his shorts started slipping as he was pulling it in, so we about had an exposure on the pier.  But it was nice sitting out on the pier with a fishing pole in our hands.

This area is known for its Tupelo Honey, made from the blossoms on tupelo trees.  Its claim to fame is that it does not crystallize.  It's a little hard to find, but we did find some at the bait store so I bought a small jar.  It tastes good, it will be interesting to see how it lasts.

We are also in black bear country here, so we are always on the lookout for our favorite wild animal.  Haven't seen any yet, but one guy told us anywhere you see 3 trash cans together you can find a bear.  So now I'm also looking for trash cans!

They do some netting for bait fish here.  We watched a guy throw his net a few times, looked like he was getting some good-sized fish.  Another kid we fished with was also out netting, he said he got about 110 little bait fish this morning in one throw.  But we bought frozen shrimp to catch the little bait fish on a tiny hook (actually we bought this setup that had 6 tiny hooks on it, and we were catching them 2 at a time), then we put the little bait fish on our hook in the hope of catching a bigger fish.  Worked better for the others around us than it did for us.

We had dinner in the RV and spent a relaxing evening looking out the front window at the view.  Even saw part of a rainbow.  Hope to get to go fishing some more tomorrow.

Ho Hum Campground (Friday)

Surprisingly, Joe woke up early this morning (7:30) so we had an early start to what turned out to be a busy day.  And he is my HERO because he found the frog!!!!  He thought it was dead, but when I had him stretch it out for a picture, it seemed to have some life, so he then put it outside.

Then he decided it was probably dehydrated, so he retrieved it and put in the little creek right beside our parking spot (he found a little snake in the same little creek!).  It seemed to be moving a little, so we think he saved it.  But then, when we got ready to leave a few minutes later, there was a big old sea bird of some kind eating something out of the little creek, and I really thought I saw legs go into its mouth, so I'm thinking the frog was breakfast for that sea bird.

We drove into and around Apalachicola, then over to St. George Island, which is 22 miles long (and probably less than a mile wide).  We had camped on this Island way back in 1982, so we checked out the campground, which looked totally different than we remembered.  The campground opened in 1980 (we talked to the ranger) and were told it had always been at the same place, so it has just been developed a lot more since we were here.  As has the entire island.  We remembered it being pretty desolate, few structures of any kind.  Now it has businesses and lots of residences lining the coastline, some huge, but some just tall and skinny.  We walked down to the beach, but it had a lot of seaweed on it (they have had so much bad weather here in the Panhandle that most of the beaches are not very nice right now), so we didn't get in the water.  We had lunch in town, walked through a gift shop, then headed back to the mainland.

 We checked out another gift shop, then decided we should try our hand at fishing so spent the next two hours trying to buy fishing licenses.  We finally found the one place in Carabelle that sells them (at the courthouse annex), 5 minutes before they closed, but the Fish & Wildlife computer was down and they were unable to get them for us.  They sent us back to the next town (about 14 miles) to a sporting goods/baitshop, but they also had been unable to get online to get the licenses.  Joe asked them to check one more time, and lo and behold, the system worked and they were able to get us licensed up!

We finally got back to our campground and fishing pier, armed with fishing licenses and frozen shrimp for bait.  Joe worked on our fishing poles to get what we hoped was the right hooks on, and off we went.  Our shrimp didn't stay on our lines very good, and we ran out of bait after about an hour.  We got a few bites, and I actually caught one little fish.  But it was fun, and we intend to go back tomorrow (we have 3-day licenses).  We went to town for dinner and got more fishing information from the guy at the next table, so of course we have to go back to buy more tackle (I don't even know why we bring a tackle box, you always have to buy something different from local recommendations), and we are supposed to try to catch our own bait (pin fish).  We'll see how that goes.  I'm thinking we better buy some more shrimp in case Plan A doesn't work out.

But I can sleep better tonight because Hero Joe has removed the frog from the motorhome! 

Leaving Tampa (Thurs., July 11)

Today is the day our month-long rent at the Tampa East RV Resort ends, so we are heading out of here.  It's been a busy and exciting month, welcoming the arrival of Andrew Thomas, then helping the kids get moved to their new mini-ranch east of Bradenton.  We made several trips down to see them, and that little baby is filling out. We've enjoyed every precious moment we have gotten to spend with him.  It is hard to leave, knowing he will change so much each day, and will be so much bigger by the time we see him again.  We just learned how to download pictures from our new smart phones, so here's some of our best shots of our baby.

This last one was posted on Facebook by Bridgette's dad, but it is one of my favorite.  It was taken on July 9, just before her parents left.


We didn't to much "touristy" stuff during our days here.  Joe has had a flare-up of his plantar s faciaitis (sp?)  in his left foot, so we have tried to restrict our walking, plus it has rained a lot here so that restricted us some too.   We did make use of the pool at the campground a few times, and we went to the movies twice (The Heat and White House Down, both of which we enjoyed).  When we went to see White House Down, I found a card in the parking lot, which I thought was a credit card but it turned out to be a movie card.  We assumed it was probably empty, but when we checked, it had 2 small popcorns, 1 medium popcorn, and 2 medium sodas still on it, so we redeemed all the points and ate our way through the movie.  A cheap night.

We saw just a small amount of wildlife here -- one deer, two wild hogs, numerous birds of all sizes including sandhill cranes several different times, and Joe saw a raccoon.  And squirrels were plentiful at our campground.

John and Bridgette, and Andrew's, new house is a mini ranch on 5 acres with horse pasture and a horse barn, so they moved their horse Ocean Breeze over last weekend.  They are also boarding a friend's horse so Ocean has a companion.  They love being able to look out their window and watch the horses graze. 

 Of course, having horses comes with some chores.

So as we got ready to head out this morning and brought the slides in, Joe decided to hose off the side of the motorhome because the water on top ran off the side and all the dirty water from the roof (we were parked under trees) made the side of the motorhome a mess.  I pushed the button to put the slide back out, then he hit it with the hose as I brought it back in.  From the corner of my eye, I saw something move inside the RV, I thought something fell off the sofa, but all of a sudden a FROG jumped up right next to me, underneath the driver's seat (where I was operating the button on the slide).  I think it came in on top of the slide to get away from Joe's water hose.   I tried to get Joe's attention to tell him there was a frog inside, and at the same time I was trying to get the driver's side door open.  Joe kept yelling for me to bring the slide in, and was hitting the door with the hose.  Finally, he got done, and I got the door open, and I told him there was a frog inside.  He wasn't overly concerned (I really don't think he believed me), so I got the fly swatter and searched around for the frog but I couldn't find it.  So we take off down the road with a frog hitchhiking along with us.  I kept my eye out all day, and was afraid to put my feet under the dash, but he didn't show up.  I know Joe thought I was hallucinating. 

Joe stopped to fuel the RV and check the air in the tires, and I grabbed breakfast sandwiches at McDonalds and then drove over to Lazy Daze to return some keys we had made.  All that took about an hour, but we still got on the road about 9:00 a.m.  We headed up I-75 to just past Ocala, then headed west/northwest on 441 to Perry, then picked up U.S. 98 to take us over to the Panhandle, south of Tallahassee.  We had picked out a campground in Carabelle, right on the coast (this area is known as the "forgotten coast").  We have a campsite overlooking the water, so close we could almost cast a fishing line from the door.  But it's not the typical "beachy" area of Florida because we are behind the St. George Island, so it's more like a sound.  But the fishing is supposed to be good.  We did see a dolphin swim by.

It should be a nice place to relax for a few days before we head north. We drove 298 miles today (got an early start but stopped for a nap at lunchtime), so it was about 4:00 when we got off the road.  Paid $3.399 for gas today.  It went up about 6 cents the day after the holiday.  It rained intermittently as we headed west, but nothing heavy.