Anastasia State Park

We stayed for two nights at Anastasia State Park in St. Augustine. This is Hopey staying cool, although I have no idea why she needed to stay cool because it was downright freezing. Actually, this picture may have been taken at Jetty Park in Port Canaveral. No, wait. I know where it was that she embarrassed the hell out of me by digging holes: Fort Wilderness in Disney. It was cold there, too, so I still don't see why she had to dig a hole to stay cool.

This is a grove of trees just outside the beach. I thought that the intricate flow of branches was interesting. That and the fact that the beach side of the trees were naked of leaves.

Now for some interesting facts.  This is the conquina quarry on the outskirts of Anastasia State Park. Coquina is rock that is made of tiny shells. It is light enough to float, easily cut when wet, but nearly indestructible when completely dry. The Castillo De San Marcos was made of coquina stone. The fort was attacked four times and was never overtaken due to the coquina stone's impenetrable strength.

The Castillo de San Marcos was built nearly 350 years ago. Here you can still see the cut marks in the stone in the quarry's floor.

Kennedy Space Center

Another "been there, done that" deal. This time, though, I had a better camera, so I was able to get a good picture of the shuttle on the launch pad. I also played with my zoom and got a couple of good pictures of birds hanging around the bus terminal at the shuttle observatory tower.

Satellite launch pad

Cowbird

We were told that this is a male cowbird, as the above picture is a female. I think, though, that this is a grackle.

Disney

I've been procrastinating for 24 hours now and need to get my butt in gear and update my blog. I've been gone from home over a month now. You'd think I would have a lot to blog about, but I don't, really. I went to a rally for a week. I've been to many rallies, so how many pictures can you take of Roadtrek after Roadtrek after Roadtrek. How many pictures can be posted of people most of my friends and family don't know? So instead of boring you, I just don't take pictures at rallies. 


Next was Disney World. I've been to Disney at least six times. How many pictures of Disney World can I take? OK, I confess. I gave in this time and took a ton of pictures of the parade at Animal Kingdom. Why? Because I thought their construction and artistry was ingenious. So here I will bore you with a few pictures of the parade at Animal Kingdom, but first, a few miscellaneous pictures:

First, a picture of Peggy. This is a rare treat because Peggy will not allow anyone to take a picture of her with her glasses on -- yet, she allowed me to take a picture of her with her 3-D glasses on. Go figure:

Entering the 3-D Muppet Show. Is anyone taller than this marker? (Remember that you can click on each picture to zoom in, then hit your browser's back button to return here).

Muppet Characters up in the balcony. I so LOVE the Muppets.

And this is a picture of a 3-D movie taken with a 2-D camera. I wanted to see what it came out like. Not impressed much, are you? Neither am I.

Macaws

Ivy on a tree. Can you see the face? This was a woman cloaked completely in ivy and walking on stilts. She wrapped herself around the tree and would move very slowy every five minutes or so. Can you imagine having this job on a daily basis?

The Lion King show

The Safari Ride

And, as promised, pictures of the parade

Riding Out the Storm in PA

I wanted to make it to Hagerstown, MD yesterday, but didn't quite get there. I am about 100 miles short. Decided to ride out the impending ice storm. I probably could have packed up and moved out this afternoon, but I stupidly paid for two night's stay and you can't get your money back at a KOA if you decide to leave early. I should have done one night and then, if I needed it, stay two nights. Oh well. It is already 5:30 and the sun is setting, so I guess I was able to fill in my day.

Here are a couple of winter scenes from around the campground:

The KOA I am at is in Pine Grove, PA. This has got to be the largest campground I have ever stayed at. They've got your typical swimming pool, outdoor pavilion, picnic tables, cabins, and play yards that are at many campgrounds. They even have an amphitheater

and miniature golf course that are typical of the more upscale campgrounds. But this one goes way beyond typical. They have:

                A Ferris Wheel                                               and               a                                                               Carousel

And what adventure of Diane's wouldn't be an adventure without something going wrong. Part of my trip is to transport two prairie dogs from New York to Alabama. One destructive little cretin chewed right through my bestest and favoritest cat carrier. Bad, bad, bad, bad puppy:

Van of Discovery

With all the traveling I've done, I've never really posted pictures of the Van of Discovery (Vof D). If it weren't for the Vof D, I would not have been able to see as much of the U.S. as I have, so it is only fitting that I pay tribute to the machine that has made my life-long dreams come true.

Before the Roadtrek, I had a 1982 Volkswagen Westfalia Vanagon, also known as a Westy. I LOVED that van, but after taking the infamous trip to Lubbuck, TX in 2005, we (me and Hope) decided that the Vanagon, loving named the Van of Disgust, just wasn't going to do it for us for any future long-range trips. I needed something that had air conditioning.
 

When deciding on what I was going to get next, I knew that I wanted to keep the acronym Vof D, so I decided that the next generation of conversion vans for me was going to be named The Van of Discovery (Vof D II, referred to from now on simply as Vof D).

I first started looking at the next generation of Westfalias, called the Eurovan. After looking for about six months, I realized that, although I would be vastly upgrading, the Eurovan still wouldn't solve the problem of keeping Hope cool while I played tourist. I needed something that had a generator and "house" air conditioning.

I don't even know how I decided on a Roadtrek. I remember seeing one near the CT/MA border and thought it was much too dark inside. Well, yeah, considering the fact that the Vanagon was all windows, anything else would be dark. After I purchased the new Vof D, I found out that there were many more Class-B conversion vans: Pleasure Way, Leisure Van, Sportsmobile, Coachman, and Great West, just to name a few. Luckily, it ended up being the Roadtrek that I liked the best.

The new Vof D is a 2000 Roadtrek 170 Popular. It is a converted 1999 Dodge B2500 Ram Van with the conversion being done by Home & Park, Roadtrek, in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.

Below is a "tour" of the inside. The bed converts to a u-shaped dinette, but I don't have pictures of it set up. For the most part, I leave the bed made up:

The "house" section:

Looking forward at the cab:

The shower and toilet. Can't see the shower? It's in the middle of the isle, outside of the toilet closet.

A couple of improvements I made for better storage:

The other improvement I made was a screen room for the awning. Unfortunately, I cannot find the pictures anywhere.

So concludes the story and tour of the Van of Discovery

Blizzard 2010

The blizzard of 2010. I was scheduled to go to Frann's sometime after Christmas and decided to beat the storm by getting to her place before it hit. Norwalk's official snowfall was 6.5 inches. Here is a picture of an evergreen just a few hours into the storm. We still had the whole night ahead of us. Notice the streaks of snow coming down in the beam of the floodlight. (You can click on each picture to make it larger. Make sure you hit your browser's back button to get back here) :

After the storm, we had to shovel out "Red Truck" and "Smokey" and Lane's Explorer, too.

Frann and I built a fire to keep warm outside, then went in the house and made hot chocolate to warm up inside:

Then ... I went home and the fun began. I couldn't even get in the front door:

The snow was two feet deep in my driveway, at least three feet deep at the edge of the road, and NOTHING -- absolutely NOTHING -- in my side and back yards. I have a Toro power shovel that was useless in this stuff. It was powdery, not snowman making snow, but heavy anyway. And they plowed right up onto my front lawn. WHY? Well, I was to find out soon enough.

I started what I thought was going to be an impossible task. What the hell; I had all week.

And then my savior showed up. My knight in shining armor. It was Jeff, the guy who plows for the mobile park I live in. He said that he felt bad for me because he plowed me in. I offered him $20, telling him that I could never do this on my own, but he wouldn't take it. What a sweetheart! THANK YOU, JEFF!

And here is my front yard after all the work was done: