Day 5 at Indian River

 7-14-2021 - Wednesday

I made a mistake about the Jungle Trail, it's 7.8 miles instead of 14.5.  I guess it extends the other direction as well.  So I went back and changed that in my blog. I hate to give out bad information.

After the prediction yesterday of rain all day today, that didn't happen at all.  They finally took rain out of the forecast.  But we hadn't planned on an early start because of the forecast, so John built a early fire.

Not sure if the kids are harassing Grandpa, or the other way around while they wait for John's campfire to take off.  Grandpa likes to create chaos, so it could be either way.

Who says you can't have roasted marshmallows for breakfast???

The guys decided to drive over to the inlet and fish off the jetty.  I chose to stay at the camper.  Joe still hadn't caught any fish here, so I thought I would give him a chance to catch up with me (and my one fish).  I read for a while, got sleepy, and took a nap.  Meanwhile, Bridgette is looking all over for me, called me, Catalina knocked on the door, texted me, called John (who didnt't answer).  She finally decided I must have gone fishing with the guys.  When I woke up, I texted her back and she was surprised to find me still at the camper.  The guys got back with the fishing report, Joe had caught 3, Andrew 1, John none.  I guess they fished off the catwalk by the jetty (I couldn't figure out exactly where Joe was telling me.)

Anyhow, I decided to make a banana cake with the bananas that were getting too ripe on the counter.  Well, that was a disaster, and the kids were standing by to help (I created all my own disasters though).  While looking in an overhead cabinet for my mixer, I knocked a jar out of the cabinet, which hit my mixing bowl with some of the ingredients already in it, knocked it over into the sink.  Then I had to guess how much stuff I had lost.  I could see one egg had fallen into the sink.  So I made the adjustments I guessed at.  My next disaster was trying to get the sugar into my measuring cup, which had a small opening.  I didn't have a small cup so I thought I could just pour it in from my canister.  Well, it had clumped up, so a big clump came out over the table, including on my computer keyboard, and the floor.  I'm still dealing with some keys sticking on my keyboard, even though I thought I had got them cleaned off with a little bbq brush I had in the drawer.  I didn't have the right size cakepan so I used a different one and had to keep adding time to the oven to get it done.  Then I knocked over a glass of soda that went all over the table and the chair cushions at the table.  The kids thought this was hilarious -- me, not so much.

Finally, I got the cake baking, and we played Mexican Train.  Then John came over and suggested we go fishing for a while, so when the cake got done, we loaded up and headed out into the Lagoon.  It's 5:00 by now, and we are hoping it will begin to cool off soon, but that didn't work either.  He took us to the area we had fished before, right in the mangroves, and there was no breeze.  He anchored the boat into a corner of the mangroves, and Joe and the kids were fishing off the back.  Bridgette was helping Catalina, and they were all bringing them in one after another -- small ones, but they were kept busy.  Andrew caught a catfish, they all caught mangrove snappers and pinfish.  Then Andrew caught a stingray.  We also caught a few tree limbs, in and out of the water.

Meanwhile, John and I were fishing off the front of the boat.  We were catching a few small ones too, but not at the rate they were in the back.   Of course, John doesn't get to fish too long at a time, between taking fish off the hook, re-tying the kids' lines, getting lines off the trees, etc.  Bridgette was doing her share too, especially with the ones Catalina was catching.  And Joe was helping Andrew.  (Ijust try to stay out of the way and not cause any problems.)  Finally, it just got too hot there, and the bugs were biting, so we moved back over to the island by the inlet where we fished yesterday.  We all waded out into the water to cool off.  I was the only one fishing to start with, and I caught a catfish right away.  Then I caught another one.  And suddenly Andrew has a pole in the water, so does John and Joe.  Bridgette and Catalina are catching the Sea Stars again (Andrew had been finding them too, but he gave that up after I caught 2 fish).  They learned, when they went to the aquarium yesterday, that the ones they had found were not "brittle sea stars" but instead were called "9 armed sea stars."  And they found several of them again.  Andrew caught a catfish, and John had a couple good hits, but he never got one in.  We fished until almost dark (8:00) then made our way back to the campground.  It was definitely cooler now, especially since all of us were wet.

We all got showers, had a bite to eat, then called it a day.  Another day in the books!