Anyone for a Hike?

 

May 22, 2021

Today was lazy day.  Got up. Bagels for breakfast, then hiking shoes.  There are a couple trails in the campground.  We took the one less traveled by.

This is the beach reserved for the campers.  No one was there and truly looked serene. The spot looked like a fishing possibility but there appeared no life. The water is called Blackwater River because of the concentration of tannic acid in the water.  No minnows to be seen.  I did see a mayfly drop on the surface to lay eggs, but no fish to slurp it down.

After the hike, we decided to head to Milton for Gas, Post Office, and Supplies.  Good old Walmart.  Got all needed at the local trading post plus a meal at Subway.  For some unknown reason, we forgot a number of items packing the fridge.  Salad dressings, blue cheese and ranch, Hot sauce, Soy sauce, baking powder, corn starch, yellow potatoes, bananas, all the important things. And t-shirts for Con.  Just a couple of things we forgot.  Back to the La Hacienda for a rousing game of Cribbage.  (I came from behind to clinch the win.) 

Evening brought out the hamburgers, chips, applesauce, jello cups and water.  I felt like I was back in the school cafeteria for lunch.  

I spent the day working on the blog and library website updating.  But the connectivity of Verizon is not very consistent.  On again, off again.  It got done.

May 23, 2021

Today is Sunday and services at Calvary are possible via the Internet.  Technology.  Donny had the service and delivered a explanation of Pentecost and the beginning of the church.  But the real highlight was watching the number of kids getting baptized, especially since they were being baptized by their fathers.  Seeing Pastor Warren and Lee Roberts baptizing their kids was a blessing.  

The remainder of the day was lazy.  Read a lot.  Downloaded another book in the Haunting Danielle series.  It's warm.  Glad the trailer has air conditioning.  

Bought a bag of wood at the ranger station.  People here are very helpful.  But, their wood has too much water in it. Typically, I split the sticks down into 1" kindling.  I use the chips created while splitting for tiny kindling.  So, with a paper bed, I can light.  That would be the first problem.  Can you believe it, I forgot to load paper for burning.  OK, I'll just get out the charcoal lighter fluid and dounce.  Woops, second problem.  I forgot to bring the charcoal lighter fluid.  

OK, I've been to Blackwater River campground before multiple times.  The longleaf pines have softball sized pine cones.  When lit, they burn rapidly and squirt out a flammable liquid from each petal.  A literal torch.  Unfortunately, apparently, this is well known, because the ground around the campsite was almost without.  Almost.  So, knowing that lighting must work with limited kindling, I created more tiny kindling and piled on top.  For paper, we found an old handout from church and crunched that up.  With everything setup, I lit the match.  The paper would not catch.  I rationalized that the copy paper is coated with something that is not that flammable.  

OK, paper towels will certainly catch fire.  Especially, the ones used to drain the bacon grease.  Oh yeah, we tossed those in the garbage yesterday and are now in some big green monster.  OK, fresh paper towels.  Shoved them in the front of the pile of kindling.  They lit. The pine cone caught fire.  The kindling started to glow.

Now, you know why I started this thesis with the wet wood complaint.  Yes, it glowed, but did not catch fire.  No amount of blowing on the embers would induce a sustained fire.  So we enjoyed a glowing fire until bedtime and a pan of water.

May 24, 2021

Monday morning and weather is beautiful.  Late rise to coffee and tea.  Pancakes for breakfast.  I love my cast iron skillets.  Perfect pancake makers.  

Checked out the fire from last night.  It smoldered until it was finally out.  The remaining sticks should be dry by now and will be good kindling for tonight.  

Again, a lazy day for reading.  By noon, it was a little hot and we went inside.  Con pulled out the "Thinking Man's Golf" game.  I watched.  I was caught up with the advancement of technology.  The game is circa 1980.  You manipulate your shots with an overlay with holes at different distances and to each side for slices, hooks, pulls, fades, the effects of wind, etc.  After throwing the dice to determine the distance, the direction left or right you use a grease pencil to mark your lie, whether in the pond or rough, under a tree or in the bunker or trap in front of the green.  All the results are determined by the throw of the dice and a table of numbers.  

Those of you that are familiar with coding, probably realize how easy to convert that game to an electronic version.  No grease pencils, no tables, and no counting of strokes.  What technology has done.  And yet, how much does the player miss by not doing the plotting, the table search, the determination if the grease pencil mark touched the pond or not.  Is life better?

Second attempt at a fire.  I gathered a couple more pine cones and all those burnt coals.  Found a stash of charcoal, no fuel, but some charcoal.  So what do I use for paper.  Con to the rescue.  How about a paper towel roll filled with paper towels soaked with vegetable oil.  Beautiful, burns and will burn for a while.  Results?  Fire roll ignited, which ignited the pine cones, which ignited the old burnt coals, which ignited the charcoal, which was hot enough for the remainder of my "kindling" to ignite, and finally ignite the larger logs.  We enjoyed S'Mores under the blanket of star lights.  (Well, we ate marshmellows, without dirtying the firestick forks.)

Part 1 Florida Mini-Trip 2021

Part 2 We're off to the South.

Part 3  Arrived Georgia 

Part 4 Ahhh! Southern Living

Part 5 Onto the 'Real' Florida





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