In at the Beginning of the Cycle of Life

Ranger Dan carries the bucket of two baby turtles to the edge of the Gulf of Mexico.

After completing our bathroom cleaning duties on Monday morning, Jo and I drove our electric car over to enjoy a few minutes of the beach. We parked beside a Ranger truck and walked north, up the sandy beach, watching the terns doing their helicopter business of hovering over the water, heads pointed straight down, and then plummeting into the salt water to grab an unsuspecting fish. We noticed, in the distance, a coven of people, kneeling in the sand, bowed down as though in prayer.

This is where we found Ranger Dan and Ranger Kyle, a new ranger to us, digging into the sand at the last of the turtle nests on Honeymoon Island. They were surrounded by three old folks who were out for a walk on the beach. Dan had already uncovered 36 loggerhead turtle eggs that had already released their baby turtles.

Another 42 turtle eggs, round and white, were either perfect, still waiting to hatch, or they had drowned embryos inside after being in the sand through Hurricane Isaac.

The rangers also had uncovered two newborn turtles which had broken through their shells that very morning. The rangers had carefully lifted them out of the egg pit and placed them in a bucket that had a layer of sand.  These two little guys would be kept until late evening and Dan would release them into their brave new world.

The rangers photographed the new hatchlings and recorded the count of eggs. Then Dan carefully replaced the round eggs in the nest on the chance they still held viable turtles that were just not ready to make their break for freedom. He also replaced the egg shells of the hatched turtles. He covered them back with the soft sand.

He told us he’d visited the nest last Friday and had noticed a crater effect which told him some of the babies had hatched and had burrowed out and made their journey to the Gulf of Mexico. He’d determined to give the remaining eggs another few days to hatch.

The rangers knocked on the door of our motor home at 9 in the evening. It was time to release the two turtle babies. We drove over in the complete darkness of a moonless night and joined a group of diehard turtle enthusiasts for the release. The little turtles didn’t seem to have much sprawl to them in the bottom of the bucket. I know it would have been foolhardy to release them in the morning sunshine. The hundreds of seagulls, terns, pelicans, man-o-war birds, as well as crabs and assorted sea life would have seen them as breakfast – or at least an appetizer had they been launched into the surf in the sun. But I wondered about the little creatures waiting 12 hours before being released. They had no food or water, just a quiet, warm pail.

Dan lifted them out and placed them on the beach. The high tide had just turned. It was hard to see the little guys as they stood on the beach, listening to the sound of the surf. They didn’t make a run for it. But a wave rolled in and grabbed them, pulling them out into the Gulf, but then pushed them back up on the shore. They moved a little. But there was not much energy. Jo had a flashlight that she’d fashioned with a red cover so we could keep an eye on them without confusing them with bright lights.

The next wave sucked one of them out into surf and he was on his way for better or worse. Dan reached down and picked up the other turtle and launched it as well.

If all goes well – and this is a big “if” – these two turtles will make it through the surf and will find some food. If they are not eaten by crabs or other predatory fish, they will not return to these shores for about 30 years. They will go off on an incredible journey, wandering out of the Gulf of Mexico, feeding in the Sargasso Sea, getting caught up in the Gulf Stream, that great river of water that runs up the east coast of the U.S. This current loops across the Atlantic Ocean to the northwest coast of Scotland. They will swim onward, south to Spain, then along the west coast of Africa. They’ll cross the South Atlantic and catch a current that’ll bring them up past Uruguay, Brazil, and into the Caribbean Sea.

It is part of their coding that they will, in the fullness of time, mate out there in the ocean and the females will slowly locate their native beach, here on Honeymoon Island. On a full and rising tide in June or July in 2042, she will laboriously pull herself out of the water and flipper her way up the beach. Her coding knows she must get well above the high-water mark before she begins to dig her hole in the sand.

She will lay close to 100 eggs and then cover them with the sand before waddling back to the sea before the dawn breaks. Fifty-three to 55 days later, if the raccoons and seabirds don’t uncover the nest and gobble the eggs, the first flight of turtles will break through their shells, eat the remains of their yolk sac to provide them the strength to climb through the sand and head for the open sea so the cycle can begin again.

The U.S. Federal government has listed the loggerhead as endangered worldwide. In the U.S., the loggerhead's nesting areas are divided among four states:
Florida (91%)
South Carolina (6.5%)
Georgia (1.5%)
North Carolina (1%)

Florida beaches account for one third of the world's total population of loggerheads.

The loggerhead is the most common sea turtle in Florida.

It is named for its large head

Powerful jaws crush mollusks, crabs and encrusting animals attached to reefs and rocks
An estimated 14,000 females nest in the southeastern U.S, each year

Adults weigh 200 to 350 pounds and measure about 3 feet in length
Hatchlings: 2 inches long

Nest in Florida from late April to September.

Dan estimates that 90-95 percent don’t make it. They either won’t hatch or will be eaten by predators.

We both were excited to see this cycle begin on a dark beach on the west coast of Florida on Oct. 8, 2012

What's It All About?

Welcome to the beach at Honeymoon Island State Park in Dunedin, on the Gulf of Mexico.

We're back at our favorite park in Florida: Honeymoon Island. We rolled in on Oct. 1 and set up house among the sable palms. Our first evening, we wandered over to the beach where the surf was up because of the brisk wind coming in from the southwest. No bugs because of the breeze! But we had a blazing firestorm of a sunset.

I've been poking around the Internet of late, looking into the blogs of RV people who are doing what we do... but who do it differently.

I met up with George and his RV named Tioga. George drives and lives mostly in Mexico because life if less expensive and less restrictive, he says, south of the border. He also says the fear factor of lawlessness in that country is exaggerated greatly. Most of the problem is 40 miles from the border. After that, it is good living, he says.

I liked a little blog he wrote recently about our world and thought you might enjoy it:

A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

 "Not very long," answered the Mexican.

 "But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.

 The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.

 The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

 "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs. I have a full life."

 The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat."

 "And after that?" asked the Mexican.

 "With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers . Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to  Mexico City ,  Los Angeles , or even  New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise."

 "How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.

 "Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.

 "And after that?"

 "Afterwards? Well my friend, that's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start buying and selling stocks and make millions!"

 "Millions? Really? And after that?" asked the Mexican.

 "After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."

And the moral of this story is . . ..
Know where you're going in life . . . you may already be there.

The Event and the Episode

Unlike Garrison Keillor’s mythical Lake Woebegone, it has not been a quiet week in Hillsborough River State Park, just east of Tampa, Florida. We had to deal with what I now call “the event”. This was followed by “the episode”.  And then, just to round out the week, we have had to deal with the park being closed and we were required to evacuate because of Tropical Storm Isaac.

But let us start with “the event”. Wednesday morning, 8 o’clock, I awoke to a crushing pressure in my chest. The classic elephant’s foot, pressing down on me. In addition, there was a pain radiating from my heart and down my left arm. You don’t have to be a board-certified cardiologist to know this is not good.

Jo gave me two aspirin and then she called 911. Within 20 minutes, a fire engine and an ambulance were at our motorhome and men and women were clambering round, trying to figure how to get me onto the gurney outside the door. They refused to allow me to walk out on my own. That would have been so much easier on me and everyone else. Four men picked me up and tried to pass me down the narrow entrance way to our rig. They pretty much made life hell but managed to man-handle me out to the gurney. There they strapped probes on me and got me into the ambulance. One technician popped a nitro-glycerin pill under my tongue and we were off to the hospital, Jo following behind with a friend from the campground.

Florida Hospital in Tampa is a sprawling, multiple-block-long series of buildings. The emergency staff sprang into action and repeated what the EMT people had done in the ambulance. They stuck another nitro tablet under my tongue. That opens up the blood vessels. But the price is a raging headache. Their heart monitor tracked everything going on in my ticker and, after a few hours, a doctor appeared. He said they could find no damage to my heart but they wanted to move me to a room where I could be monitored constantly.

I didn’t see a cardiologist until 5 p.m. which was disconcerting. I was pretty grumpy by this time because I had not been able to eat anything for 22 hours. My elephant foot was still on my chest and I was not being treated. The cardiologist, Dr. Mohammadreza Tabesh, was a quiet young man, exuding a peaceful confidence. He said there would be four EKGs made during the first 24 hours and I’d had two already which showed nothing.  He said a nurse would be monitoring me every hour.

Another patient was brought into the room and he seemed to be in much worse condition than I. He seemed to be drowning in his own fluids. He’d lie in his bed, out of sight, and gurgle when he breathed. About once every hour, he’d press his panic button to summon a nurse, screaming that he was drowning.

My nurse came in and woke me at 1 a.m. on Thursday to take another EKG. She disappeared. My elephant was still in the room. Things changed in 20 minutes. She was back with a team of nurses and technicians. “The EKG showed you were having a heart attack while we were taking the EKG,” she said. We have called the cardiologist and a senior nurse. We’re moving you to the catheterization lab and will prep you for the doctor.” This involved shaving my pubic area. This was done by Jukie, a cute young South Korean nurse. She worried aloud that she was shaving too much. But another RN, a guy, said to keep going.

I phoned Jo at 1:45 a.m. to alert her to the change. She can’t drive at night because of cataracts in her eyes that cause extreme flaring of light. But I wanted her to know that something was up.

The cardiologist, looking a little rumpled, was all business. He inserted a catheter in my groin took a look at what was happening to my arteries. I was able to watch as he came to the first blockage. It was like a dam: blood here, then a blank spot, then blood on the other side. He said I needed four stents. But he was worried about two of them because of an intersection in the artery which would have required two stents to be very close together. He saw very little damage to my heart muscle.

He said he’d like to consult with a cardiac surgeon to help determine if I should have stents or if the surgeon should split my breastbone, open me up and do four bypass surgeries. That was not an appealing option from my point of view, All I could visualize was a chicken breast being split apart with a cleaver.

I was moved into the cardio intensive care section, where I was assigned a nurse whose only job was to look after me and one other patient during her 12-hour shift. Mary was her name and she was my new best friend.

Mary was all business, but she had a great sense of humor. She hooked me up to more monitors than I thought possible. As best I could see (all of the monitors were behind me) there were more than 20 readouts occurring simultaneously.

I was being drip-fed nitro now. And this didn’t cause a severe headache. I also was being drip fed loads of other fluids.

The surgeon stopped by on Thursday morning to lay out the options from his point of view. He said I could go either way: stents or bypass surgery. He liked bypass surgery because he thought it would last longer than the stents. But he also was aware of the impact of the surgery in terms of being able to function and work. He praised Dr. Tabesh, my cardiologist, saying he was quite conservative and was an excellent cardiologist.

He said he would be unable to operate for one week, however, because Dr. Tabesh had given me a specific drug that must be out of my system before he could cut.

That pretty much made my decision easier for me. I was not willing to sit in hospital for a week, waiting for my system to cleanse itself. I chatted with Dr. Tabesh and asked him about the drug he had introduced. He explained that it is necessary to use it for one year in conjunction with inserting the stents because it makes the blood more slippery, thus reducing the possibility of clotting at the stents.
I told the cardiologist I wanted to move ahead with the stents. He said he could do two the next morning but I would have to wait until Monday for the second set because it would require too much of a chemical in my bloodstream so he could see the blood flow on the monitors were he to do all four in one sitting. He said my kidneys would have too hard a time processing the chemical. Arrrgggghhhh. Nothing is easy.

I was prepped on Friday morning and carted off to the catheter lab again. Jo kissed me at the entrance to the lab. She leaned in and whispered, “I’m not done with you yet. See you soon. I love you.”
The lab hummed with life and energy. The full team was waiting. Dr. Tabesh came in, shook my hand and it was cameras, action, roll ‘em.

He opened up my groin, slid the catheter in and up my femoral artery, across my chest and there was my messy artery. In went the first stent, inflate. In went the second stent, inflate. And there went the blood. It was like a dam had been cracked open. Now the blood flowed through that river of life. I was able to watch all this action on the hi-res monitors.

Dr. Tabesh sat quietly watching the action. I could feel his mind working. He told me he thought he would like to run a stress test on the location of the final two stents to see the state of that artery. I said, “Go for it, doc.” He injected a chemical that sent a great rush of warmth through me. He studied the picture on the screen for two minutes and turned to me. “I think we do not need to stent this area,” he said. “The stress test shows you are getting adequate blood flow there. I suggest we leave that alone and revisit it if needed at a later time.”

I was wheeled back upstairs to intensive care and this sets the scene for “the episode.”
Mary hovered around, constantly checking where the catheter entered my groin. She said she worries about blood clots forming there. After about three hours, Dr. Tabesh stopped by to check on me. He said if all went well, I might be able to leave the next day, Saturday.

He then left the building. Mary removed the catheter from my femoral artery and placed a heavy donut over my groin. She returned a number of times to check my groin to be sure there was no leakage.
I asked her about the catheter, how it worked, where it went, etc.

And, as she explained it to me, I noticed I began to yawn involuntarily. I then noticed I was beginning to feel very hot. I told her that and the moment I did, I had the sensation of falling backwards and going down, down, down. There was no fear but I knew I was dying. I may have said, “I’m not going to make it” because I could hear Mary going into overdrive, calling out for assistance and calling for specific drugs and fluids. There was great urgency in her voice. But it really didn’t matter because I had fallen so far backward that I knew I would not be back. I could hear her tell me to hold on. “You’re going to come back. You’re going to come back.” But I didn’t think so.

And then I stopped falling. I was hovering now. No worries. No fears. Nothing. No bright light. But I felt myself rising. I heard her say, “He’s coming back.” I thought of Jo and was relieved that I would see her again, that it wasn’t over.

I remember Mary asking a nurse to stand by my bed and keep an eye on me because she had to go pee. I thought that was kind of funny. I looked at the nurse, whom I didn’t recognize, and began chatting with her. I was curious, I said about whether the monitors would have all this data recorded, or do they just give moment-by-moment information. She smiled at me and said it was all recorded but she was there the whole time and had seen everything.

I asked her about my blood pressure. “That dropped to 32 over 22,” she said. “And your pulse went as low as 24.”

Mary was back now and I asked her about what happened. She said she believed she had affected the vena nerve, a major nerve that crosses our groin area and curves around to the anus. If it is traumatized, she said, it is possible to produce these results. She said this is why people straining over a bowel movement can pass out. (I could have this wrong, because all this is being reconstructed from memory, of course.)

She said she had ordered two one-liter bags of saline solution to be pumped simultaneously into each arm without any restriction. So I had been given two liters of fluid in an incredibly short time. She told me I would need to begin eliminating this fairly soon. Otherwise she would have to insert a catheter. I told her there would be no more catheters. And I set about to pass a couple of quarts of pee.

She remained ever vigilant, wanting to know how that was working. And she threatened to catheterize me but I said “no way”.  I began flowing on my own and that solved that problem.

Dr. Tabesh came in to visit me in the early evening. He wanted to hear about the episode and said I would not be leaving on Saturday. Maybe Sunday if all went well on Saturday.

And all went well. I was moved out of the intensive care unit on Saturday afternoon and moved to the first floor to a private room where my night nurse was Marina, a very sharp Russian RN. There was a whiteboard on the wall, giving me the Day, Date, Names of my nurse and my technician. There was a slot for “Goal of the Day” and I asked the nurse to write “To leave tomorrow.” They liked that and chuckled because no one bothered to fill that line in.

I woke up on Sunday morning and walked over to my whiteboard to change the goal to “Leave Hospital Today!”

And so it was. But, just to keep life interesting, the park where we are volunteers phoned just before I was released to say the park was closing because of the tropical storm and we were required to evacuate the rig from the park immediately. We told them we would be back in about an hour or two, after getting our prescriptions filled. We planned to eat a light lunch and then we would be ready to move.

While I was unable to drive the rig or the car, I was able to show Jo all the things I normally do when we disconnect our umbilicals and leave our site. But Jo did it all. Then she drove to a commercial park nearby where we had already called to be sure we could stay. They gave us a handicapped site which is easier to back into. Jo finished the journey by backing the rig into our new slot. We plugged in the umbilicals and set up house.

Cat Tales

I'm Fiona at the front. My brother, Ian, sits behind me on the sofa. We are pretty good pals.

Ian: This past month has been huge for Fiona and me. One change after another. Very high stress for the two of us. First, the parental units (PUs) drove us half way across the country and moved us into another home.

Fiona: Then the PUs moved us halfway back across the country. The whole world changed. The engine is at the back of this new house.  That’s nice for us because we enjoy being up front when we travel and it is quieter.

Ian: So we made it back home to this park we seem to be living in. No big problem for us. We are adaptable animals if we are anything. We both like the new home, although I did have the scare of my life – and even used up one of my nine lives – when Robert opened this huge sliding wall that creates a bigger room. I was on top of the sliding room and no one knew that. Trouble was, I tried to escape by sliding my lithe body (that’s a joke, folks. I’m a little tubby!) I tried to slip between the solid part of the wall and the sliding room and managed to get trapped. Boy, that hurt. I yowled long and hard. Robert stopped the sliding wall from moving and then reversed it. I yowled again. I was caught half in and half out and the space was tiny. But I managed to slide my hind quarters through and jumped to the floor. It was scary and I learned I should not ever be up there. Now, when we move, I slip under the sofa and I stay there while the sofa and the room moves in and out.

Fiona: It was scary to hear my brother scream. But he wasn’t hurt. He likes to talk back to the PUs when he does something bad and they scold him. I never do anything bad, by the way.

Ian: This past weekend, the humans were complaining that I have grown so large I can’t seem to fit into the litter box. My problem is that I seem to hang my rear over the end of the box and that really annoys the folks. They bought a deeper box. Depth isn’t the problem. Anyone could see that. I needed a bigger box, not a deeper box. They went off out in the car and back they came with some cheesy new box with a completely new system. They talked about how it was a two-layer system, with a pad on the bottom to collect our pee, and a weird yellow chip system. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all. Those yellow chips are hard and hurt my paws.

Fiona: I agree. I went into the box first because, generally speaking, I am more daring than my big brother. I pee-d and jumped out. I really didn’t like the feel of the yellow chips.

Ian: I said to my sister I wasn’t going to accept this new concept. I’m flexible. Lord, I am the most flexible cat in the universe of cats. But no cat should have to stand and squat on these damned yellow chips. I pee-d and said,  “That’s it. I’m going to hold it in from this moment onward.”

Fiona: Boy, the PUs tried everything to coax us into that damned box. They even sprinkled our old litter on top of the yellow chips. I went in and checked it out. I was holding onto my poop. Twenty-four hours in and I needed to go. But I was not going to go on that yellow stuff. I felt the old litter was better but I still could feel the yellow chips under it and, when I dug into the litter that brought the yellow bits back to the top. So I walked away.

Ian: We went through the night, not using the box. In the morning, Jo was getting concerned about our innards.

Fiona: Robert brought in the old box, filled with litter. Oooooh. What a relief. I was in that box in two minutes and aaaaah. That felt so good. My brother got in right after me and we both felt the relief. We felt even better when we saw the new system being put back in its cardboard box. They got the receipt out and off they went to get a refund.  Now, all we have to do is train my brother how not to hang his rear end over the end of the box. That is embarrassing.

Snake, Rattle and Roll

The diamond back rattlesnake lay low in the grass, nudging up against a sable palm tree. He was flat, had an almost collapsed look. I wondered if he had died. There wasn’t any movement visible. I picked up a palm frond and gave a nudge. Oh-oh! This boy was wide awake now.

He reared up, hissing. His rattler tail uncoiled and it, too, stood straight up. He did his thing…. Rattling like the killer he is.

I retreated. And I eyed him cautiously. I was in the midst of clearing my five acre patch of grass for cutting. We’d had a storm in the night and a huge number of palm fronds had fallen. All these have to be picked up and carted off before I mount my massive Gravely grass-cutter to mow.

The snake maintained his belligerent rattling and I moved away from him. After I took my load of fronds to the dump, I stopped by our motor home to pick up my camera before returning to the snake. But he had slipped away in my absence. So I finished picking up my debris field and returned in another hour with the Gravely.

I love how it is possible to pivot the Gravely around a palm tree. With the right touch, you nudge the front wheel up against the tree trunk, and then you spin your rear wheels and move forward. The tractor rotates close to the tree trunk. Nice and clean. I did that about 50 times before I came across the rattlesnake again. He had found another tree to lean up against. But he could feel the vibrations of my massive machine so his tail was already up and rattling when I reached his tree.

I veered off so as not to hurt him but he had no sense of humor about this annoying human. So he reared up again and again to tell me to stay away from his patch of grass.

So, should you come to Honeymoon Island State Park in the next week, and you head down to the grassy picnic area, you’ll enjoy the rather nice lawn I have prepared for you. But there is one little patch beside a Sable Palm where the grass grows tall and I won’t be able to get to it before we leave this wonderful park at the end of our three months here on Tuesday. And I never did get a picture of him. Sorry about that.

Here's some information about the diamond rattlesnake:

Eastern diamondbacks are primarily terrestrial (living on the surface of the ground), rarely climbing into trees and infrequently going underground during the summer. During winter, movements decrease; rattlesnakes in the northern part of the range often stay below ground, but those further south still remain on the surface much of the time.

Rattles probably evolved as a warning device to protect the snake from being accidentally crushed by large, hoofed mammals. The rattle is composed of hollow, interlocking segments that click against each other when the tail is vibrated. Rattlesnakes gain a new segment to the rattle every time they shed their skin. Since they may shed from one to three times per year, one cannot accurately estimate the age of the snake simply by counting segments. Segments also break off as the snake grows older.

Like all vipers, rattlesnakes have a pair of long, movable hypodermic, needle-like fangs that fold against the roof of the mouth when not in use. These fangs are connected to venom glands on each side of the rattlesnake's head. Rattlesnake heads are large to accommodate these venom glands. During a strike, venom is pumped by muscles surrounding the venom glands, through the fangs into prey. Rattlesnakes are also known as pit-vipers and possess two heat-sensitive pits on either side of their face. These pits are sense organs and detect radiant heat, and aid rattlesnakes in locating prey and increase striking accuracy. These pits are extremely sensitive and can distinguish differences in temperature of less than 0.2 C. These advanced systems evolved in pit-vipers as a means of obtaining food. It is the most advanced system that snakes have for capturing prey, and reduces the chances of injury to the snake.

The venom of rattlesnakes is actually a digestive enzyme and is a complex mixture of proteins. The primary purpose of venom is to kill and digest prey. Venom is used in defense only as a last resort. Some venoms attack the nervous system (neurotoxic) while others attack the blood and tissue (hemotoxic). The eastern diamondback, like most rattlesnakes, has a combination of both types, but unlike most vipers, it has more neurotoxic properties.

Our New Home

Here's an exterior view of our new Alfa. There's an additional slide on the other side at the rear.

Well, we’ve done it! We took the plunge to help the U.S. economy by purchasing a new rig. New to us, that is. It is actually a 2004 model with 36,000 miles on it. Beautiful inside. Lots of space, including two slideouts. The outside needs work, though. It has peeling decals and is chalky so lots of elbow grease is in our future.

We have been lurking around RV dealerships since January, looking for deals. We even put a bid in on three different rigs but we ended up either rejecting them or being rejected by the financing agency we dealt with. Even though we have an extraordinary credit score (835 on Experian, which is better than 98 percent of the U.S. population, we were told), they were nervous about us because we simply have too little debt! That was a new piece of madness. Anyhow, we kept on triangulating and got very friendly with Ricky, our finance guy who works in California.

When I found an Alfa 36 motorhome on eBay, I wrote the dealer to see how we could work a trade for our Holiday Rambler. We came together on the price and we chewed it over for days. The problem was the motor home was in Missouri, 1,100 miles northwest of us. I wanted to find someone trustworthy who would do an appraisal for us. After a few hours on Google, I located an RV repair shop in St. Louis. I called the owner and explained my needs. I wanted him to be my eyes and ears and brain and go over the rig with critical eyes. We agreed on the price for his services and a few days later he came back with a pretty honest report, as it turned out.

So why would a person drive 1,100 miles each way to buy a different vehicle, you might ask? What we found was pricing of similar motor homes in Florida are about $25,000 higher than in the Midwest. Go where the bargains are!

We decided to go for the financing and our friend Ricky said he thought it would go through this time. It did at a very conservative 4.49 per cent rate. Now we had to arrange to drive our rig north to the Midwest. Tropical Storm Debby said “Not so fast, buster.” She dumped 12.25 inches of rain on us at Honeymoon Island State Park in Florida. And then she couldn’t get her act together and move out of the area.

We left and drove through the feeder bands all the way north to Macon, Georgia, where we parked for the night in a Walmart lot. That was 400 miles of the trip. We were up at dawn and pushed on through Georgia, coming into Tennessee and finally stopping exhausted for the night in Kentucky.

The next day we passed through Illinois and crossed the mighty Mississippi at St. Louis, passing the iconic arch alongside the river. We promptly took a wrong turn in the city and had a fearful job of maneuvering our way back onto the Interstate and eventually being squirted out on the northwest side of the city. The dealership was in Moscow Mills, Missouri and we arrived on the third day in searing heat – 108 degrees, breaking all records.

We spent the next two and a half days, in the same blistering heat, transferring all of our stuff from our old Holiday Rambler into the new Alfa. At some point, the generator on our old rig died and we were left with no air conditioning! We asked the guys at the dealership if we could take up residence in the Alfa since the alternative would be two dehydrated bodies and two cats lying in the dust. They were very nice about it and we moved in.

The dealer, however, was nervous about the generator dying. I, however, found some problems with the new rig’s four-door refrigerator-freezer. The freezer seemed to be working, but the fridge was useless. We agreed to call it even. I would fix the fridge. He’d fix the generator.

All the time we were carting stuff between the two rigs, I was on the internet or the phone with Ricky in California. The check was late in being sent out via FedEx. It arrived on Friday morning, however, and we transferred ownership and keys.

We headed out to make the return trip at a slightly more leisurely pace. Now we have a very powerful diesel motor at the rear of the coach, instead of our Chevy truck engine up front. We are able to talk and listen to the radio as we travel. Because of the severe heat, we are travelling along with the heavy-duty diesel generator running. This allows us to cool the coach better than with only the dash a/c units.

As I write this, we have just crossed the Illinois-Kentucky state line. Jo is at the helm, the cats are prowling around, sitting atop the big slide in the living room area. When it is retracted for travel there is a high shelf available to them which they think is the cat’s pajamas.

If all goes well, we will be back in our slot at Honeymoon Island State Park by July 3 in the afternoon.

Looking aft from the entryway. 

New Life at the Beach

The killdeer is just to the left of the single orange cone.

A nervous killdeer hovers near her nest of three eggs in the parking lot at Honeymoon Island State Park.

Two delightful things happened during this week: a loggerhead turtle swam ashore, made her way up the beach to the high water line, scooped a hole in the sugar-fine sand, and dropped a clutch of eggs into the nest. She covered up the eggs and made her way back to the Gulf of Mexico… all before the dawn broke.

A ranger discovered the distinctive marks of her flippers in the sand, the first time this has occurred in Honeymoon Island State Park in two years. After consulting with the park botanist, it was decided the eggs needed to be moved farther inland by 25 yards so they would have a better chance to hatch in the next 57 days.

In the process, the rangers have installed a protective mesh enclosure so raccoons can’t invade the nest and steal the eggs. The tiny hatchlings will have a hard enough time surviving when they break into this world in just under two months.

And the very same week, a killdeer (that’s a small bird with a couple of stripes around its head) decided that the Oasis parking lot was the “perfect” place to lay her eggs. She picked a high spot in the grassy verge. She scraped a slight indentation in the rocky soil and plunked down three eggs with black and white spots on them.

The rangers have put orange cones up in the parking lot to provide a tiny amount of protection for this momma. When I drive through the parking lot, I stop to watch her spreading her wings as she sits on the eggs, protecting them from the heartless beating down of the brutal sun. She also has to worry about marauding gulls which might see the three eggs as a delightful appetizer.

Last night, Jo came with me on my final rounds of the night and we photographed the killdeer as she hopped off her nest and trotted round the nearby parking lot. We sat very still. In a minute, her mate arrived on the scene. He danced around for a few seconds. She darted over to him. He mounted her and had a quicky coitus and then flew off. Mmmm. Interesting behavior, old boy.

Late last week, we had a wicked storm pound the park and the neighborhood. Much rain fell and the angry Gulf of Mexico was roiling with the wind, casting up destructive waves on the shore. I had stopped on my morning rounds to enjoy this angry version of Mother Nature at her best… and worst.
I was carrying our iPad and, while I sat there on the shore, I was moved to write these words:

Be still, my heart, and listen to the surging sea.
She pushes forward, surging and sucking, surging and sucking.
She knows just how far she can come. Up and onto the land. Wave one, then two, three and four. A small retreat. But waves five, six and seven push in, inexorably, and here comes the eighth wave, pounding and spreading  its foaming richness. Now retreat for nine and ten. A pause for eleven, twelve and thirteen. A small retreat, just a moment, then with a great heaving and sighing, in comes the fourteenth wave, pushed ever onward by a bustling and almost angry fifteenth. A sigh. A moment to catch its pounding breath. And now the cycle begins again.
Be still my heart and listen to the insistent roar. Does it come for me? No. It is unthinking, unfeeling, uncaring. It is the never-ending sea.