Horse Riding and Dentist

 6-30-2021 - Wednesday

First, meet the critters:  

Sophia - 3-4 months (she's Catalina's)

Dory - 1 1/2

Izzy - 15 (she's the only one left of the original 4 dogs they had in Texas)

Chewbacca - 4 (Joe's trying to teach her "4 on the floor."  She likes to put her front feet on you on the couch.)

Butterscotch - around 5 (She mostly stays out of the way.)

Today Andrew had a dentist appointment at 8:30 to have a molar removed to make room for his permanent molar.  Not a fun way to start the day, but he wasn't nearly as worried about it as I would have been, so I tried not to influence him.  We were in charge of feeding Catalina and getting her to her horse riding lesson.  We breakfasted at McDonald's, with her trying to hurry us up all morning.  We got to the stables an hour early, and this isn't a great environment to wait in.  This stables is not an elite riding park -- it actually could do with a bit of sprucing up.  But they have horses, that's all that counts.

They had a field trip going out on trail rides this morning.  There were 16 in the first group, and 16 in the second group.  The second group was getting ready to go out just as we finished our session.

Eric gives Catalina, and John, a hard time about Catalina's helmet.  So I checked out some of the ones the other kids were wearing.  I think she is right in fashion.

Catalina

  This might be Scooby Do

We had a long wait, and Kelsey, the trainer, was late for the first time.  Bridgette and Andrew got there right at 10, when her lesson was supposed to start.   Andrew is chilling out with Grandpa.

Nurse Bridgette keeps replacing the gauze, but Andrew is having a hard time keeping his tongue out of the empty space.  And it is still seeping blood.

Finally, Catalina is ready to ride.  The trail riders took Jacob, the horse she rode last week, so they had to find her a different one.  She ended up on Moosey.

She looks awfully little on that big horse!  They made a few laps around the arena, then practiced circling the barrels.

The trail riders got back, so Kelsey put her on Jacob. (Beautiful horse)

But the reins were too short, and Catalina couldn't sit up straight, so Kelsey put her back on Moosey.

Andrew hung in there.  He said he didn't have any pain, but as soon as Catalina was done in the arena, Joe and I took Andrew home while Bridgette waited for the finish.  I got my turn holding our wounded warrior.  

It was hot and humid, and we got a pretty good rain storm in the afternoon.  Andrew got to veg out in front of the TV, a rare event.  Bridgette, Catalina and I went shopping for a little while, then John fixed dinner and we had an evening at home.  We watched the Tampa Bay Lightning Bolts for a while, but couldn't stay up late enough to see them win.  They are 2-0 over the Montreal Canadians in the Stanley Cup Finals.  Meanwhile, back in Arizona, the Phoenix Suns just won the Western Conference and will now advance to the NBA finals.  

On the weather front, John saw on the hurricane watch there there is a tropical storm forming in the Atlantic that could possibly hit Florida early next week (John says now Wednesday).  I don't think it was strong enough yesterday for a name, but this morning it strengthened into a tropical storm and became Elsa, the fifth named storm of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season.  Something else to worry about!

Tomorrow the kids are going in to work with Bridgette, so we just have to take care of John, who is going to work at home.  Joe is still working on installing the electric line for the campers. We are expecting rain again this afternoon.  It's currently 88 (noon on Thursday at this posting), feels like 97 (humidity 66%).  Wish we could send some of this rain to Arizona!

hit 

Donut Day

 6-29-2021 - Tuesday

On the way to dinner last night, we saw two peacocks, but I didn't have the camera ready.  So every time we go someplace now, we are on the lookout for peacocks.  We got Andrew a license plate game so he watches every car to see what state it is from.  The kids like riding in the Jeep.  After dinner, we stopped off at a couple car lots -- Bridgette is wanting a new truck. When we got back home, we played a few hands of an old game Rack-o that I had left from when our kids were young.  John didn't remember playing it as a kid, but he had. 

Today we took the kids to the donut shop -- Joe had fond memories of taking them there the last time we were here, and Catalina was all for it, so that was first on today's agenda.  Andrew had thought about going into work with his mom, but in the end donuts won out.  

Catalina is a bit of a ham -- she likes to have her picture taken, but thinks she has to pose.

Donuts were a hit.

Then we shopped Walmart for a little bit.  The kids had a friend over today (Bridgette is actually going to tutor him this summer), so they were occupied this afternoon.  John spent his entire day in phone meetings, so we only saw him briefly, even though he was in the same house.  Andrew found a sticker book at Walmart he thought we could work together, and we spent a little time on that.  I told him we didn't fit in the chair as good as we did last year, so he was going to have to stop eating so much.

I finally got a good picture of Catalina.  I may have to print this one.  She is such a cutie!

We played a few games this afternoon, it's too hot to be outside (at least for Joe and me).  When John finished his work day, he and his dad made a trip to Home Depot and Lowe's, looking for parts to install a box for us to plug in to electricity here, and for John to be able to plug in his camper.  Bridgette and the kids were waiting for their friend to get here, so I sneaked off and got a nap.  When the guys got back, and the company left, we went out for pizza.  It started raining just before we left, and continued into the night.  The pizza was good, but we all got a little wet.

Joe and I are all set up in our mother-in-law suite.  Very comfortable, and very convenient.  We may stay until they kick us out.  Tomorrow Bridgette has to take Andrew to the dentist, so we are in charge of getting Catalina to her horse-riding lesson.  We will see how that goes, but we do know where to take her.

Before the rain, it was sticky hot, another yukky day weather-wise.  Bridgette  has a water quality grant that she works on, and had taken the kids Monday to take water samples.  She told us they saw lots of dead fish, due to red tide.  We were very sorry to hear this.  We hope to get to the beach sometime, but we may have to go below Tampa Bay to find good water.  Maybe tonight's rain will help move the red tide out.

We Have Arrived!

 6-27-2021 - Sunday

Well, 48 days after leaving home, we have arrived at John and Bridgette's in Brandon, Florida.  It took us 4,107 miles.  Just about 100 miles a day.  We had about 100 miles of Georgia left, which we came across on 441, into Florida, past Lake City, before we finally got on I-75.  Along the Georgia portion, we past tobacco fields and blueberry fields.  Some of the tobacco was blooming, which we didn't even know it bloomed.

We crossed the Florida state line at 10:30 and made our last fuel stop there before Brandon.  Gas was back up a little, $2.899.  We had dreaded I-75 because it had been so busy, with traffic and road construction, ever since Cincinnati, but actually it was good today.  The only real slow-down was 2 miles before our exit in Brandon.  We past the Don Garlitz Drag Race Museum near Ocala, at mile marker 339.  Every time we pass it, Joe always says he wants to stop there sometime, but we never have.  

We found their new house, actually didn't get stopped soon enough because it's right on the corner (which they forgot to mention).  They all came out to greet us and helped us get parked.  They have a place for our RV right in their driveway -- very nice and convenient. We toured their new house (very nice),

 then watched the kids play outside.  It sprinkled a little, which drove us adults onto the screened-in porch, but didn't bother the kids.

We got to the Froeschkes at 3:00, 272 miles today. It was 75 Yuk degrees this morning.  We stepped out of the RV and I said it was 75 degrees, and Joe said yuk, it's yuk out here.  At that point, humidity was 91%.  

The kids are very energetic.  And they have one new dog and one new kitty since our last visit (Dory and Sophia).  So that's 3 dogs and 2 cats, a pond with fish, and 3 aquariums.  We have some busy days ahead.  We aren't quite at the half-way mark of our journey -- Indian River is the final destination, which we will head over to on July 10, with them. Time to post this and play with the kids.

Almost to Florida

 6-26-2021 - Saturday

We took a few minutes to walk down to the river this morning with our coffee.  It was a nice morning. 

 But we were on the road by 8:30, knowing we needed to make miles this morning to get to Atlanta.  It was 69 degrees when we started out, got up to 88, then cooled off a few degrees when we were getting to our campground because we had a little rain shower.  We know Atlanta always has road construction, no matter how you go through it, so we just headed down I-75, hoping for the best.  Actually, it wasn't too bad, we got through in about 30 minutes, with just 2 road closure back-ups and one wreck. But I had plenty of time to take pictures.  Here is our traffic, with downtown Atlanta in the background.

The only other downtown picture I took is of this 123-foot torch obstruction deck built for the 1996 Olympics.  I missed the picture of the baseball stadium.

 Its about 30 miles across Atlanta, from the exit to the bypass to where it comes back in.  After we cleared the city, we exited and had breakfast.  But no sooner did we get back on I-75 that we hit road construction again.  Traffic was backed up 2 miles before construction started, so we got off and headed over to Hwy 41.  This put us back in Joe's old stomping ground from his trucking days, so he was familiar with many of the little towns on this road.  We zigged and zagged across Georgia, staying off I-75.  We missed a turn, made a turn too soon, but managed to keep moving south and east.  Along U.S. 41, we passed the Atlanta Motor Speedway, which is a long ways from Atlanta.  We were surprised to see it out here.

Not too many miles further, we came upon what looked like a motorcross (or quad) track that someone had built.

Joe made a bathroom stop right beside a peach orchard, so I walked over and checked it out.  The peaches were looking good, but were all pretty hard.  I picked up the one on the ground, but it was not ready.

Then we noticed across the road they were cutting and baling hay.  That was cool to see.

Just as we pulled back onto the highway, we saw a peach stand across the road.  Although I had just concluded the peaches were not ready yet, we pulled in to check them out.  We could see they also had cantaloupes.  Well, they did have some ripe peaches, from trees right behind them.  We bought tomatoes, peaches and a cantaloupe.  We ate one of the peaches for dinner and it was good.

Our original plan was to get back on I-75 after we thought we were past the road construction, but we enjoyed driving through the countryside on the regular highways so much more than the interstate that we just stayed with them.  We even marked up my state map with the route we had figured out, and even then missed two turns.  But I had found a campground that was sort of in the right area, so we called and found out they had a spot for us.  It really was out in the boondocks, back a dirt road (Joe's favorite kind), and by then it had started raining just a bit.  No one was around, so I called the guy again and he came right over and showed us where to park.  It was nothing fancy, but adequate for the night.  I think we are about 50-60 miles from the Florida state line.

Under Bridgette's pressure from yesterday, we drove longer and further today than we had been.  312 miles, almost 9 hours driving (with an hour stop for breakfast, then a few other (very brief) stops.  We didn't get off the road until 5:20.  And then I had to cook since we are not close to civilization.

Bridgette called not long after we got set up to see what kind of progress we had made today.  She told Catalina we would be there tomorrow, so Catalina was going to go to bed at 6:00 so we would be there when she got up.  They are supposed to go to the Tampa Bay Rays baseball game tomorrow, so I told them to go to that, and we should be there by the time they got home (it's an afternoon game).  Hopefully we can keep that promise.

The only wildlife we saw today was some geese we spooked right beside the road.  But we saw lots of fields, lots of lakes, ponds and rivers, and lots of traffic. Joe found gas today for $2.769 so he was happy about that.  One more day on the road and we should be at our destination!