Trip to Lake Okeechobee

The edges of Lake Okeechobee are swampy, with lots of floating plants and wildlife, but it is pretty in a different way.

We walked out on the dock in the background. The area between is the really swampy area!

These are pelicans, just skimming the water. They were really pretty.

We were standing out on the dock area (about 1/4 mile out into the Lake.) There is a channel just in front of the dock, then more vegetation the lake as far as you can see.

A few miles north of the town of Okeechobee, we passed cattle and dairy farms/ranches! Not the scenery we associate with Florida! It was really open (Florida is FLAT) with trees way back on the horizon.

These are dairy cows that we passed. This was taken right across the road from the last picture.

Cattle and palm trees. . . What else is there to say? Not what we expected. We decided Florida is a land of contrasts. In this part of the state from the east coast you have beaches, islands, the intercoastal waterway, commercial and shopping, houses, the interstate, orange groves, and finally the large cattle and diary ranches in the interior. It's fun to go on drives, because we never quite know what to expect! On Tuesday, we're going to go south to the everglades to go on a swamp buggy ride and see some alligator shows. We'll go with Koby & Dean & Di & Rick so it should be fun!

Christmas at the Prescott's

As we celebrated the birth of our Savior, we enjoyed the joy of children at Christmas. It's been four years since we got to spend Christmas with the Prescott's so this was an extra special day getting to see their family traditions and the boys joy and ENERGY on Christmas day. We missed seeing Grayson, Karson, Kate, Claire and our three other children, but we did get to call and talk to them on the telephone. Rick's checking out Koby's tool belt while Di and Dean watch Grandpa open his "Florida" shirts.

Wow, I got a horse AND a cap gun!!! He had lots of fun with both toys all day Christmas day. Koby has lots of energy and he was SO excited he was just fun to watch!!

Got a new tool belt with real, minature tools. Now he can really help Daddy in his shop. Koby also had lots of fun with the tools all day.

Ride 'em horsey! Dean liked his horse, but his feet didn't quite reach the floor, so he didn't move as good as Koby's horse did. He was just cute and two all day!

Trying to get on his horse again and just looking cute. We had a great day. The boys couldn't go outside in the morning because it was raining, but the skys cleared by afternoon so the boys could tear around outside and help Daddy and Grandpa barbarque dinner. Rick marinated and barbarqued shrimp, steak, chicken, vegetable kabobs, and corn on the cob while we fixed potatoes and salads. We had lots of great food and lots of fun. We went home exhausted and very content. It was a great day!

Civil War Reenactment

For our anniversary today we went to a Civil War Reenactment in Fort Pierce. It was pretty cool and very loud. (The Confederate Army won, after all this is Florida!) This is the Union Army.

This is the Confederate Army formed and ready for battle.

This was taken in the middle of the battle.

This is smoke from all the gun powder. The cannons really spread the smoke.

After the reenactment, all the players fired to salute the audience. I was taking a picture just as the announcer said "aim," but with my camera delay I got the shot just as they fired so I got flair from the end of the muzzle loaders. It was a cool experience. After this was over we went out to dinner in Port Saint Lucie. What a fun day!

A good day for pictures

We went to the manatee observation tower again today because it was another cold day (only got up to 65 today). We were told there was a mama manatee and two babies in the water just below the tower. We think the was the mama. If you look really close there is a smaller shadow just below and a bit behind her. Just after she went down the baby came up.

The baby manatee. They are 10 feet long and over 1000 pounds. They are very slow moving and really facinating to watch.

When I went to take this crane's picture, it decided to fly off.

There is a jetty between the river and the ocean in the distance. There were pelicans gliding in the wind all over this area. After watching a few minutes we discovered they were fishing.

Getting ready to dive . . . We're having a great time discovering this area. When we go west of our campsite, we get into farm land. We drove out yesterday and picked strawberries! They are so much better right off the vine. The tomatoes aren't quite ready yet, but the orange harvest is in full swing all around us.

Pelican Dive

Forgot the camera!!

New rule for the Gossage Duo: No matter what we're going to do, we WILL take the camera!

We left the RV this morning to run to WalMart. Decided to go to a fresh produce stand on our way. When we left the produce stand, we decided to check out where the Farmer's Market is every Saturday morning. We found it and we also found the visitor's center and manatee observation tower. We decided that since the visitor's center was closed, we would check out the tower. We're not sure how many manatee we saw in the 15 - 20 minutes we watched! It was pretty neat though. They were really close (about 25 - 30 feet away) and came up every minute or so for air. That was cool! After leaving there, we saw a bridge over the intercoastal so we decided to see where that took us. We drove several miles on the island until we came to a Y in the road. One end was a dead end, but we had to see where it went! It went to a spot where a river flows into the Atlantic. We were walking out to the end of the breaks and as we passed a fish cleaning station, we passed three big pelicans so close we could almost reach out and touch them! (We soon discovered they were all along the breaks.)

So now we've seen 1 cardinal, 2 aligators, 2 turtles, 2 live armadillos, 1 bald eagle, ? manatee and 6-7 pelicans with no camera!!!!!! New rule ALWAYS TAKE YOUR CAMERA!

Kennedy Space Center

When Di and Rick offered to take us to the Kennedy Space Center for a tour, we jumped at the chance. We are still experiencing some of the high that you get when you watch a launch. Kennedy Space Center is only about an hour north of where we're parked. Going through the exhibits with an engineer who works on rockets makes it really interesting.

The big grey things on the side of the building are doors! This is the building where things going to space are assembled. Then they open the grey doors and move them out. They are then put on these HUGE crawlers and moved to the launch site (they get 42 feet per gallon and it takes 6-8 hours to reach a launch site).

We think this is the launch site where we saw the shuttle launched from last Friday night. It's hard to tell from where we were standing whether it was Pad A or Pad B.

This is a capsule the Apolo astronauts sat in. It's really small, but the Saturn rocket that launches it is the length of a football field (hard to get a picture of!)

The boys had fun with this fountain. The ball floats on water and the boys could push it around. They had fun and got a bit wet.

We got to see movies of the actual Apolo 11 launch and walking on the moon (in 3D) and we got to go on a shuttle simulator and play on a neat playground and walk through a shuttle and go to a kids play about going to Mars. What a fun day!!!

Shuttle Launch!!!

This is what we were looking at prior to the launch. Pretty dark, lots of people.

1955 hours (7:55 p.m.) lift off lit up the sky!!

Here she goes. It really didn't look like it was moving very fast AND we still couldn't hear the blast off.

Getting up there. Still quiet.

This is about where we heard the roar of the lift off! We could see the shuttle for quite awhile! Here's the story: We were camped in Pensacola and told Di that we'd camp in Cocoa on Thursday, then see them on Friday. She said she thought there was a shuttle launch scheduled for Friday night so we should check to see if we could stay 2 nights. We did and the lady who checked us in was very helpful. Her husband works for the Kennedy Space Center and she got out a map, showed us where to go and where to park and how early to get there. We actually arrived at the Shuttle park at about 4:30 p.m. to watch the launch at 7:55 p.m. It was a long wait and we met some really nice people from Connecticut, Florida, and Colorado! What a neat experience!

Driving through Louisiana was interesting. We went over a 14 mile bridge that went over swamp, a river, and some bayous. Pretty country though.

The USS Alabama in Mobile Bay was a real treat to see! We got to walk all over the destroyer and into the small cabins, etc. Then we went through a submarine. Talk about small compartments! The caption's office was about 6 feet square -- the biggest one on the sub! It was really neat to see.

What a day! We were picked up at 0830 this morning. We went to the Japanese Gardens that were built in a limestone rock quary. We went on a boat trip through the River Walk area downtown, it's built one level down from street level and it is really cool! We toured the Alamo and learned a lot of history about the mission and the area. We visited two other missions, both were really cool. This area was settled before the Revolutionary War, WOW, that's old. Our last stop was to visit a Mexican Marketplace. They had a lot of really cool stuff and it was really interesting to see the difference in styles. We got dropped off at the RV Park at 5:00 p.m. this evening VERY TIRED! It was a really good day.

Texas is a BIG state!

This picture was taken about 50 miles outside San Antonio, Texas. It is in the southern part of the hill country. It is very hilly and very pretty with lots of trees and brush and canyons and mesas.


This is another picture of the hill country north and west of San Antonio.

This picture was taken in west Texas, close to El Paso at Sierra Blanca Pass on I-10. We left Phoenix on 1 November arrived Texas late 2 November (stayed in El Paso) and this afternoon we arrived in San Antonio (we still have 300 miles until Louisiana!) We will be here a few days so we can visit this city. We're going on an all day tour tomorrow so I should have pictures (if I remember my camera.) What a beautiful state, we even had 3 deer in our campground this morning. This is a really cool adventure and I would recommend it to anyone!! The only problems I've had are 1. forgetting my camera and 2. not a good enough connection to post my blog.

We are South!!

No pictures yet, but we made it to Phoenix. It was 86 today with a forcasted low of 45. We can handle this! We got to go over to Brian's house tonight. He has several projects he wants his Dad to do while we're here. We took 3 days to drive down from Burley. That gave us time to stop several times: like Camping World in Henderson, NV (our favorite store), and Grocery shopping in St. George to restock our refridgerator and pantry. Hopefully I'll have pictures soon. Tomorrow we're going to try to get to the Flea Market in Mesa, its supposed to be the largest in the world. I'll take my camera!!

She has a name!

She has a name: Claire Marie Jones. She gets her name from my Dad's middle name (Clair) and her paternal Great-Grandmother's middle name and her Aunt Loriann's middle name.
Karson thinks she's pretty cool. I think he likes being a big brother, he's really cute with her. He thinks she make cool, funny noises somethimes.
Kate's favorite sentences: "Hold the baby?!" "Change her diaper?!" She's really cute with Claire, she's always been baby crazy and she just loves this new baby.

Yes, Grandma and Grandpa have gotten to hold her too! We'll miss these three TONS!!! We're pulling out tomorrow and heading toward Phoenix. It will be hard to be away and not see these grandchildren for a long time!!!

New Baby!!!!!

She arrived about 6:45 last night and we took these pictures about 7:30! Kate and Karson were so excited, Kate kept wanting to hold the baby. She's so little and so cute. Mom and baby are doing fine. We get to take big brother and sister up to see Mommy and baby again today. She weighed 6 pounds 15 ounces. Name? They're not sure yet.

Slow Snowbirds!!!!!!!

Yes, we're late moving south AND snow came early to Burley!!!!! We are staying warm and comfy inside, but "Baby its cold outside!" The baby hasn't come yet and it's supposed to warm up to the 50s next week so we'll just weather this through. We decided we understand "cabin
fever" better now, our RV isn't much bigger than a cabin would have been for the pioneers. They were definitely of sterner stock than we are! At least we have hot water and a good furnace and insulation in the walls and floors. We're praying this baby comes SOON. . . . . . (By the way, we think the accumulation is about 6-8 inches, but it's still snowing and blowing here.)

Waiting in Burley

We're in Burley waiting for our new granddaughter. We went to their fun park with Jenn, Karson, and Kate. It's been fun being able to spend time with the kids. On Sunday they came to our RV to watch conference and eat lunch. The RV is much smaller with 4 adults and a 2 and 4 year old, but it was fun. They went to their other grandparents house for afternoon so the kids could nap. We're hoping the baby comes soon -- cold weather is coming!!!!!! Howard is getting to help Jason with the house so we're staying busy. We miss everyone in Moscow. It's fun to travel and visit, but we miss friends.