Chapter 16: Working Our Way Back Home (Mar. 7-12)

We got on the road Wednesday shortly after 9:00 and drove straight up I75 with only short stops to Atlanta, arriving in mid-afternoon. Along the way Rachel called to take us up on our offer to bring dinner to their house. So after setting up the camper at the Marietta RV Park (where we stayed last year, too), we went on-line to find some take-out food. I had a hankering for Middle Eastern so that’s what I searched for and amazingly there was an Iranian/Persian place right across the street from the RV park. We ordered what sounded good, picked it up and got to Rachel and Michael’s around six. Michael’s mom, Kelly, was there for the week to help out with the baby. We spent a nice evening chatting and admiring little Michael Louis Savage Bednarz while we ate the yummy food. It turned out that the owner is a patient of Michael’s, who knew the place well and told us that that owner was a scientist in Iran who had escaped the Ayatollah after the Shah of Iran was taken down. He couldn’t work in the US as a scientist so he opened the Falafel Café in Atlanta. Interesting story! We headed back to the camper soon after 10:00.

Thursday morning it was easy to take down the camper since we had done such a minimal set-up for just one night. We made good time but as we got into Tennessee we got into a large system of rain that would plague us the rest of the day, as we drove through the mountains. We had found an RV Park online called Oh, Kentucky! that was in Berea, KY and looked pretty good—until we got there. We parked in a puddle covered spot and dropped the camper so we could try to find something to do in Berea. First we went to the very nice Cultural and Craft Center at the next exit up I75. From there we headed into town, which has an artsy, folk craft, historical part of town, but pretty much everything was closed as we arrived around 5:00. We went on to Berea College and learned more about this historic institution, begun in 1855 and offering a balanced student body of blacks & whites, male & female. This is what their website says: “Berea College, founded by ardent abolitionists and radical reformers, continues today as an educational institution still firmly rooted in its historic purpose "to promote the cause of Christ." Adherence to the College's scriptural foundation, "God has made of one blood all peoples of the earth," shapes the College's culture and programs so that students and staff alike can work toward both personal goals and a vision of a world shaped by Christian values, such as the power of love over hate, human dignity and equality, and peace with justice.” They are committed to offering free programs to the most needy and promising students, primarily from the Appalachians. We walked through historic Boone Tavern and then went to a coffee shop to try and wait out the rain. There was a walking tour with cell phone audio guide that we might have done in better weather. Checking the weather online we saw that the rain wasn’t going anywhere for a long while so we gave up and returned to set-up the camper in the rain, securing it as quickly as possible but not even setting up the jacks.

The rain finally stopped during the night but the temperature got down into the thirties and I saw sheets of ice fall from the top of a slide-out on a nearby RV when they were closing up Friday morning. We dried things off enough to close-up and drained the waterlines and added anti-freeze to the traps so we wouldn’t have to worry about them as we continued north. Even with the extra steps we took, we arrived in Cincinnati in time to take niece Karen Weese and their daughter Julia out for lunch. We got a “tour” of their new house in their suburb of Montgomery and then played Wii with them until Jeremy got home from school. We quickly greeted him and then hit the road about 4:15 to drive to Carmel, IN. We grabbed a quick bite to eat for dinner and arrived in time to see the grandkids before they went to bed.

Jordan’s party was Saturday. Linda Nuttall and AJ had come down on Thursday and the boys were pretty wound up after two days together. Linda worked on a veggie tray while I made 4 batches of playdough. As the boys arrived they started playing with toys and getting together as a group. After a bit they gathered around the table to snack on the veggies, juice boxes, and sliced fruit. Jordan had presents from the family to open while the boys watched and then we had his Captain America birthday cake, thanks to Cessa Andrews-McMullan, cake decorator extraordinaire. The time ended with the boys playing with the playdough I had made. Amazingly everyone got the color they wanted and they got to take it home, along with a set of cookie cutters that Sarah had tied together with ribbon as a favor. It was a very nice 4-year-old birthday party! Craig’s parents and sister, Angie, Ken & Jen, Linda & AJ, the two of us and the 5 Penquites had bean soup for dinner and then the boys and Analyn went to bed and the others hit the road, Connie, Bill & Angie to a nearby motel and the rest to drive home. By the time we got to bed Marv and I were both really tired and it would be a short night because of the time change.

Sunday Craig took the three kids to Mass with his parents and Angie while Sarah, Marv & I went to St. Peter’s UCC to sing with the choir. There were only three other singers so they were pretty happy to have us, I think. Craig dropped the boys off for Sunday school and took Analyn home with him. It was a nice day with lots of sun and temperatures in the sixties so we all spent a lot of time outside playing and riding bikes. Sarah & Craig went to Lowes for some things while Marv raked sweet gum pods in the backyard and I played with the boys. We all watched MSU beat OSU in the final game of the Big Ten Tournament (Craig was disappointed) and then found out that MSU would be a #1 seed in the NCAA Tourney and OSU would be a #2 seed. We got Jordan’s choice (Chinese take-out) for dinner and watched the DVD of Pete’s Dragon that we gave him for his birthday. It was a nice end to a very nice weekend with our kids and grandkids.

We stayed with Analyn while Sarah took the boys to school on Monday morning. When she returned we packed up the truck one final time and drove over to Sam’s with Sarah in her car so she could buy some things she needed and fill her car with the gas that was $3.72 there instead of the $3.98 most places. As we drove north we realized that we would be in Auburn around lunchtime so we had Ken meet us at Subway. We got back to East Lansing without any problems, following rain in many places but never driving in it. During the almost seven weeks we had been gone we had hiked at least 44 miles, as tracked on my Phone, and that doesn’t include all the incidental walking we did around campgrounds and in towns. We biked around 154 miles. At the end of our trip we had driven 5125 miles and used 315 gallons of gas. The gas prices ranged from $3.17 (we saw it soon after for $3.06) to $3.79, making this the most expensive year yet. We were gone 52 days. We had seen much more of Florida and found some places we hope to see again someday. Best of all, we had great weather and returned to mid-March temperature of 60s and 70s in Michigan! The winter that wasn’t continued.

Chapter 15: Stephen Foster Cultural State Park (Mar. 4-7)

Here is the difference between Florida and Michigan—at 8:00 on Monday it was 36°. By 11:00, it was in the mid-seventies. That doesn’t happen in Michigan! After very hearty whole wheat pancakes for breakfast we got on our bikes and explored this large, campus-like park. The roads are all paved and led us first to the Carillion Tower in the center of a green which chimes the quarter hours from 8:00 until 6:00 with Westminster Chimes, and plays a fifteen minute medley of Stephen Foster melodies at 10:00, 12:00, 2:00, & 4:00. We can hear it clearly at our campsite. It’s very pleasant. There is a bit of a museum at the base of the tower, which was installed in the fifties. The museum shows all about the vertical bells and the paper rolls which play them. There are also some dioramas there illustrating some of Stephen Foster’s more famous songs. We learned that he was from Philadelphia and never actually saw the Suwannee River—he was looking for a more romantic sounding name than the “Pedie River” about which he originally wrote the song. His brother found the Suwannee in an atlas and Stephen shortened it to “Swannee” to make the meter fit the melody better. “Way Down Upon the Swannee River” is the state song for Florida, and Foster’s “My Old Kentucky Home” is Kentucky’s state song. We spent some time chatting with a couple from Virginia (now) and Long Island (previously). He was wearing a shirt from the Auburn-Cord-Duisenberg Museum and I mentioned it. They are old car Nuts (and collectors) and they told us about two museums in Michigan that we should visit. When we left the Tower we rode on to the craft village, a collection of 6 or 7 little cabins in which they have artisans demonstrating their local crafts such as pottery, blacksmithing, jewelry making, weaving, cane syrup making, etc. There was only a jewelry maker on duty today but she seemed surprised to find herself alone and thought there would be more people on Tuesday. We visited the Gift Shop and picked up a few things before riding on to a river overlook and then to the Ranger Station, which was closed when we arrived. The woods are full of azaleas and dogwood which are in full bloom and quite lovely. The area is having their annual Azalea Festival in two weeks and we’re wondering if the beautiful blooms will last that long. After checking in at the Ranger Station we went to the Stephen Foster Museum where we watched a video on his life and saw some artifacts and more dioramas. I also saw a collage of pictures from Elderhostel 2008 which included Rick & Jan Bernsten so I took a picture of it to send them. By the time we got back to the campsite we had ridden 3-4 miles, all on paved roads. We shared a sandwich and then drove to “Historic White Springs”. It is really just outside the gates of the park and we could have ridden our bikes there but we wanted to do a little grocery shopping while we were in town. White Springs was thriving in the late 1800s-early 1900s because of the 4-tiered bathhouse that was built surrounding a sulfur spring that people visited, coming from far away to “take the waters”. The foundation and upper tier are still there but the spring was wiped out by flooding in 1978. The town is pretty much wiped out as well, with only one of the original 12 fancy hotels remaining and, as we found out, there is no grocery store. We got a couple of things at a gas station store and decided we could make it through on what we had. Marv did find some corn bread mix that he made up when we got back to the camper and we enjoyed with our dinner. The temperature took a dive and it ended up getting down to 39° overnight, but we stayed toasty.

Tuesday turned out better than we could have planned. We were going to ride the 7.5 mile bike trail that the Suwannee River Bike Association had established just last October. We had read that it was an intermediate trail and the Ranger on Monday had told us he had just talked with a biker who said it had given him a good workout. Since we had a map that showed several short cuts and cut-offs we thought we could take the day and not push ourselves and manage. We could even pick it up right next to our campsite! But we were surprised to find an orange cone there in the morning with a sign saying the trails were all closed because of a prescribed burn. Marv hopped on his bike to ride up to the Ranger Station to get more information, and found out that they never know when the trails will close; they just got word that a burn planned in another location had been canceled because of the high winds so they moved it to here. Marv voiced his displeasure, since we would have done the trail on Monday if we had known. He came back to the campsite and we decided to go to Big Shoals Natural Area and try biking or hiking there. It was only 3 miles away, but the county road that took us there had no shoulder so it was just as well that we drive the bikes in the truck, rather than biking there. When we got there we went in the Little Shoals entrance and found that there was a 3.4 mile paved trail through the hammock to Big Shoals. It is apparently not a rail-to-trail because it winds through the area and has some elevation changes and shade. Marv would like more challenge, I think, but I loved it because I could look around and enjoy the scenery rather than worrying about watching the trail so carefully. At Big Shoals there were several trails off of a large picnic area so we locked the bikes and hiked the Big Shoals trail along the Suwannee River to…Big Shoals, of course. When the river is high the water running over the limestone formation there forms Florida’s only Class 3 rapids. It is very picturesque and we enjoyed eating our lunch sitting on a bench overlooking the shoals. We saw a volunteer hiking the path on our way back and met one other couple but otherwise had the place entirely to ourselves. When we got back to our bikes we had hiked 2.6 miles. We tried to take two more bike trails at that end but found they were not maintained and therefore were impassable. Instead we biked back to the truck and loaded the bikes up before driving two two-track roads to the Little Shoals hiking trail. It was a shorter trail into the Little Shoals but the path through an old growth hardwood hammock was very interesting—there was more elevation change and sometimes the forest floor was clear and you could see a long ways, and sometimes it was totally full of palmettos. At the shoals we saw a large turtle and a Great Blue Heron. It was a 1.26 mile hike bringing our total to almost 4 miles hiking for the day with 8.1 miles biking. We relaxed at the campsite before we both showered and then enjoyed the vegetarian chili I had left cooking in the Crockpot and the rest of Marv’s corn bread. In many ways, this felt like the last day of our Winter Trip because most of our time now will be spent either on the road or in homes with family, even though we’ll spend two more nights sleeping in the Camper.

Chapter 14: Redington Beach (Feb. 29-Mar. 3)

When we began this trip we were planning on ending it with a week at a Habitat for Humanity Build someplace in Georgia or Alabama. As things developed, we could only see John and Brenda Sternberg this weekend because all their days last week were full. I also couldn’t find any place in those areas that was part of the “Care-A-Vanners” program through which we worked last year. So a few weeks ago we came to the realization that it just wasn’t going to work out this year. But we were also too late to make reservations to guarantee camping anyplace. John was quick to offer their “Beach House” to us in Redington Beach, where we had visited them last year. So we didn’t rush breaking camp on Thursday morning, even taking time to defrost the refrigerator in the camper and packing up everything we would need for three nights in a house. We did pretty well, too. When we got to the house, about an hour and a half from Lithia Springs, we only had to pop the front half of the camper one time; that was to get out our phone chargers. We ate a quick, late lunch and then went over to the Gulf beach, a short three block walk from the house. There we walked down to where the tall condominium buildings start and then back to the access, where we sat on the sand and enjoyed the sun and waves for a while. I went in to paddle around a bit in the water that we were told was only in the high sixties but felt warmer to me than the 72° springs we have been in here in Florida. John had assured us that no self-respecting Floridian would go in the water at those temps but I thought it felt great. We returned to the beach that evening for a nice sunset. After Spanish Rice and salad for dinner we ran over to the Winn-Dixie for some groceries and then read for the rest of the evening because we couldn’t get the TV to come on. We also had a call from Ann & Shelby telling us that Marv’s mom was in the hospital for unspecified heart problems and awaiting tests tonight and tomorrow.

Friday when Marv made coffee he figured out that the ground fault outlet for the coffee maker had popped at some point and that all the kitchen outlets as well as the outlets on the other side of the wall, including the TV, were out. He pushed the reset and we were in business, although we never did watch any TV while we were there. After breakfast we drove the truck, with the bikes in it, to Seminole Park in nearby Pinellas Park to ride on the Pinellas Park Rail-to-Trail. It is a paved, linear park extending from St. Petersburg to Tarpon Springs (43mi). We took it to the south first, going over three steep bridges over the busiest roads and across the low, half mile Cross Bayou Bridge over Boca Ciega Bay. After that it was getting more industrial so we turned around and went north, past our starting point. It became more residential, there was more shade and it was less busy in general and therefore more pleasant. It was also after noon by then and since there were fewer people on the path I figured we were seeing the proof of “Only mad dogs and northerners go out in the mid-day sun”! But it was a lovely day and we really enjoyed the ride. We had one more bridge over a busy road that direction. Those bridges are pretty satisfying because they have a steep, steep grade, which requires one to shift way down to make it to the top. But then they level off before there is an equally steep descent, where we would coast at speeds up to 21 or 22 miles an hour. There was usually a long way before the next one to give us time to recover. By the time we turned around to head back we were headed into a pretty stiff breeze and our average dropped from 11 or 12 mph to 9 or 10 mph. But our time was our own and we weren’t trying to win any races so it didn’t matter. We found a place along the way where Marv got ice cream and I got a scoop of Italian Ice and then made our way back to the truck, by which time we had ridden 15½ miles. We were pretty hot and tuckered out when we got back so we rested a while and just had a light snack for lunch before taking chairs and books to the beach for an hour or so. I went in the water again but Marv didn’t; he doesn’t like the salt coating from the water. After getting cleaned up we drove about half an hour away to Clearwater to Dan and Jill Land Baker’s house for a visit. Jill is the daughter of Maxine and Harold Land from Kokomo, IN and they have known Marv’s mom since Harold and Marv’s birth father, Ken, were in flight school together in WWII. Marv’s mom wanted us to take them out for Jill’s upcoming birthday so they took us to a favorite local Greek restaurant where I had grape leaves and everyone else had gyros. Then we went back to their house to play cards and while we were there Jill had a call from Ann and then Marv called his mom so we got caught up on how she was doing (better). It was a really nice evening!

Saturday we drove to John and Brenda’s house in Tampa and we all went downtown to walk around a big outdoor Art Fair. It was sunny, hot, and windy and it was nice to just be strolling and talking. On our way back to the car John took us by the University of Tampa’s very impressive administration building which is housed in the 1891 Tampa Hotel, which looks like a Russian Orthodox Cathedral. We sat on the porch in the breeze and cooled off and then drove to a neighborhood strip of restaurants and shops, where we had a nice lunch. They had evening plans so we left them to relax for a while before they got ready and we stopped by Sam’s to get gas and get a few things. On our return we went down to the beach but the wind was a bit oppressive and very humid so everything was feeling clammy. The waves were rolling and crashing, looking very different than our other trips to the beach. I wasn’t even tempted to go into the water for the last chance I would have to swim. We didn’t even stay for sunset, but instead went back to the house to make salads with grilled chicken breasts for dinner, do two loads of laundry, and begin getting ready to leave on Sunday.

We finished packing everything into the truck except the refrigerator contents on Sunday morning and then prepared the lunch we were serving to John & Brenda and Pat & Ross Mack. We made our favorite “Cool Cucumber Couscous” and a tropical fruit salad. We had it all ready but waited for Pat & Ross to arrive from their RV Park in Kissimmee to grill the chicken. It was a nice lunch with lots of talking and catching up on a cooler day (mid 60s) than we had seen in several weeks. After ice cream and cookies for dessert Marv & I got on the road by 3:30 to go to Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park, just north of where I75 and I10 cross in northern Florida. It took us nearly 4 hours to drive there and we arrived after dark, but had called them to get the gate combination. On our way we listened to MSU give up a 15 point lead over OSU to lose the final regular game of the season by 2 points. With the loss to Indiana earlier in the week, it was a very disappointing last two games and means that we have to share the Big Ten Championship with OSU and u/m. Sigh… We got set up in the dark and turned on the heaters as the temperature dipped into the forties and continued to drop. Hot soup made a good, light supper as we settled in for our 3 night stay.