Seven Sunny Days

We had another week of amazing weather. We enjoy hearing the hoot of the Barred Owl, the call of the Sandhill Cranes and seeing the Northern Cardinal dart about. Signs of spring are appearing with the azalea's opening their buds and the pine trees shedding their pollen. The camp is a buzz with many campers each weekend whereby we are privleged to enjoy prepared meals.

This week many things got done here at camp. Annette helped with cleaning windows in a couple of cabins, washed down many rocking chairs that are on the motel porches, and scrubbed the ceramic tile floor in the dining hall kitchen and put on grout sealer.

Jim continued all week on his project of building more fluorescent light boxes.

We took a group photo of the volunteers at the Thursday potluck. Of this group of 22 people, 3 couples are from the SOWER's (Servants on wheels ever-ready), the rest are all from Mennonite Churches 3 of which are Canadians. The camp director and his wife joined us for food and fellowship. We have been having this meal in the screened porch at the dining hall. The mosquitoes come out at sunset so this is a good place to be.

On Friday, Jim & I drove to Hillsborough State Park (about an hour from here) to do some hiking. We packed a picnic lunch and had an enjoyable day exploring another part of Florida.

On Saturday we had a more leisurely day, Jim washed the truck and trailer, we cleaned the interior of the RV and I baked some cookies.

Work...RV Show...Strawberries...all in a week

We are a group of 11 couples volunteering here at Lakewood. With this large group of volunteers I think Tony (maintenance) Susan (yardskeeper) and Kim (cleaning) are finding it a bit of a challenge to keep us all busy.

The beginning of the week Jim was assigned by Tony to take out old rug in the hall and stairway of the Hillside Lodge and replace it with new. By Wednesday he was asked to build wooden boxes for fluorescent lamps and he completed eight and only has thirty-two more to go. While Agnes and I got put on the vacuuming bunk beds by Kim and by the end of Wednesday we had cleaned and vacuumed 118 beds. On Wednesday, Agnes, Carol and Annette did more detail cleaning in the Oaks cabin. Then Thursday the day started out cloudy but not raining yet so we trimmed dead palmetto branches along the road to the maintenance area. Other volounteers worked at washing windows, hanging clean shower curtains, pulling vines, trimming trees and many more tasks.

We are living in citrus country and notice the oranges in the groves as we pass by. Here is a load going to a processing plant.
Friday and Saturday was time off and time to do something different. Jim and I went shopping at an outlet mall in Orlando on Friday. Saturday friends invited us to join them to attend the Tampa RV Show where we saw many people, RV's old and new. A highlight at the RV show was the display of 10 vintage trailers and comparing these to the new trailers on display today. They sure have changed.

The luxury of the big units are certainly more than we need.

 

 

This lady displayed her unit with matching 50's station wagon. The model T below was partialy recreated.

 

 

On our way home we stopped at Parkesdale Grove in Plant City, FL for strawberry shortcake which some of our other volunteers were bragging about. The lineups were long but it was worth it.

 

 

What a treat and only $3.49 each.

Our camp here this weekend has been very busy. There have been at least five different groups here.

Return to Florida

We have been reflecting on the subject of travel lately. Much of our travel is goal oriented and destination focused whether we fly or drive. Very little of it is the meandering style as referred to in our blog name which we prefer. We did manage to enjoy some meandering in October as we made our way to Alabama on roads not previously travelled by us. The most enjoyable part was the travels on the Natchez Trace Parkway through parts of Tennesee, Alabama and Mississippi.

Wednesday evening Julie took us into Winnipeg for our "sleepover" at Ajay and Maddox's home. We left on a very nice January morning, just a day of so ahead of a blizzard and arrived here to above normal temperatures.

This beautiful sunrise picture was taken from the departure lounge. We are back at Lakewood Retreat to fulfill our term of service for the next six weeks.

Annette is impressed by the gigantic elephant ears that grow here next to a stream, compared to her summer plantings back home.
Sorry to be late with our post. Blogger made changes which required the help of Matthew, our computer tech to get us going again.