Makinson Island Paddle

How much fun could my first weekend of retirement be? We paddled out to Makinson Island, with a tailwind, no less. I actually cruised for a while, with my paddle held up as a sail. The island is remote, open, the grass cut, and a nice pavilion for rain cover, picnic tables, and porta potties. Perfect.

The group planned a mixture of group and individual meals, and as we all unpacked our kayaks it was very obvious that there would be too much food, and way too much alcohol. The women outnumbered the men, so this was a very "girl focused" weekend.

After dinner the table was littered with mainly full bottles, brownies, liquer filled chocolates, etc. Did someone say girls weekend out? I have no idea when the guys disappeared for the night, but us girls had a blast. A little adult beverage to loosen us, some body and muscle sculpting exercise sessions, followed by massages to relax us again. Needless to say, a good, but very responsible, time was had by all.

Whatever the magic of the night was, it appears to have worked on me anyway!

In the morning Rodney cooked pancakes for breakfast, which we ate with leftover steak from last night.

It was an awesome relaxing weekend. Right up until we got back in the kayaks, into the water, and faced the paddle back, into a 25 mph headwind. Exhilirating!

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Tubing the Rainbow

As many times as I've kayaked this river, I've never just floated down it on a tube. Until today.

Had a great lazy day out on the river. Nice and hot and sunny, and a great group of Florida Trail'ers, led by Rodney.

The river was as clear as always, and even easier to enjoy from the comfort of a rubber tube. It was warm enough to want to be in the water a couple of times an hour, and lay out in the sun the remainder. We saw the usual wildlife, birds, fish, and a couple of otters, one of which swam by us for a while while he worked on cracking open an oyster on his belly. Of course, I didn't have the camera becasue I'd been concerned about keeping it dry. That figures.

I'll have to remember to add this to the list of things to do with out of town guests in the summer.

Little Econ Flood

When it rains, it pours.

The central florida area has received some torrential rainfall in the past couple of weeks, and the rivers are all in high flood. Ian called on Thursday with an invite to join the gang on an impromptu kayak tripon the very flooded Little Big Econ River. Usually the river is about a foot or so deep and you have to worry about sandbars, so the idea of paddling high water seemed like fun.

It was. The water was high and swift. We were up in the trees at the tops of the banks, and in a couple of places the banks were breached with water flowing both into and out of the river. All the beaches we usually pull up on for breaks were non existant. We actually ended up stopping for lunch at the Florida Trail bridge, which was impassable by water or land. By water it was a mere inch or two from the bottom of the bridge, but only in the humped center of the span. That inch or so was pulling swift and hard, and straining debris that was sucked into the flow. The trail at the ends of the bridge were several feet under water. After lunch in our boats anchored to the bridge we had to paddle quite far inland and through the old railroad bridge posts to get around and downstream.

Had a bit of excitement with a friend of Rodnay's on her first kayak trip. For some reason she wasn't wearing her life vest, but had it snapped to her boat. She flipped once, whihc for me would be more than enough incentive to put the jacket on, but still it stayed on the boat. On her second flip we were in very deep and fast water on a bend in the river with lots of overhanging branches straining the water. It was quite an effort by the entire group to get her, and her boat, out of the water,the right way up, and back on the river. Amazingly, she still didn't put the jacket on! We werealmost to the takeout point by then, so I just figured the best idea was to pull ahead and get off the water. If she had no concern or respect for the water,I no longer wanted any part of it.

As a result of grounding my boat and wading round in the high brush on the last rescue I must have upset some displaced ants. Shortly after putting back in the water I realised my boat was full of them. The first sign waswhen they swarmed around my legs and ass and started biting. Ants in the pants, and in a kayak in deep, swift water too. That was fun!

Gores Landing

This weekend was supposed to either be a kayaking weekend, or the weekend I bought my RV. Neither happened.

I did at least get a deposit down on my RV, and I did drive up to Ocala National Forest with my kayak and camped out with the gang.

The RV process is obviously going to take a lot longer than I expected. I have researched the options pretty thouroughly, but assumed I could just walk onto the dealer's lot with money in hand and drive out in my new purchase. Not so. My research identified the RV model I'm interested in. I don't want anything too long, so preferred the models below 25', but I'd like to live in the RV eventually so I wanted a model with a cabover bed, which will eventually become my storage closet. I was surprised to find how many of the privately owned used models have entertainment centers, not beds, over the cab. The other two "must haves" for my RV are a seperate bed and eating area, and a bathroom with a shower. If I am going to be living in it, I don't want to have to collapse a table every night to go to bed, or pack up the bed to have breakfast. The bathroom, well I could probably make do with washcloth baths and a cassette style potty, but for full time I'd like the luxuries of flushing and a shower.

The purpose of living in the RV is to be able to travel a bit more and see some of the States. Travel means miles, so I wanted to get a used RV with reasonable existing mileage, and had pretty much established that I wouldn't likely find that in a private sale for a reasonable cost. So I started looking at used ex rental units, though doubting that I'd find anything in as good a condition as I wanted, at the low mileage I wanted, but at a reasonable price.

To my surprise, while looking at Cruise America's website I found an online inventory for their Orlando location that showed an RV the perfect length, layout, mileage and price! I didn't expected it to be in great condition, but figured it would be worth a look. Unfortunately, after scouring Cruise America's sales lot, we determined that my RV is lost.

Actually, lost is a little strong. Mislaid is more accurate, and it appears that this may work in my favor. After some creative computer searching, the missing RV was tracked down to a small garage/storage facility somewhere in Georgia. It appears that back in 2005 when all the hurricanes kept coming through Orlando, this particular unit, only a year old and with 34k miles on it, was rented out. When a hurricane was due to hit Orlando and the unit was due to be returned, the renters called for advice on whether it was safe or sensible to drive back to Orlando and into the path of the storm. They were told to drop it at the nearest Cruise America affiliate, in a small town in GA. They did so. I'm sure similar situations have happened before. In this case, the affiliate it was dropped at don't actually do much RV rental business, and for some reason the "available for rent" at the location did not get updated. The upshot is that it has been sitting unused on the lot in GA since 2005. Low mileage, little use, but a 2004 model that needs to be de-inventoried as Cruise America doesn't rent out vehicles older than a couple of years.

It seemed like serendipity, or a match made in heaven. For a $500 fully refundable deposit Cruise America would pay to have the RV returned back to Orlando for me to inspect and decide if I wished to continue with the purchase. I have to say, having created quite a bit of panic when I pointed out (with inventory printouts in hand) that they were missing an RV,the staff were actually quite pleased at the idea of recovering the vehicle. I was a little cautious about paying the deposit, sight unseen, but they manager assured me that if I decide not to persue the purchase he would have no hesitation returning my deposit as he would not have any problem selling this RV with such low mileage.

So I kind of have an RV, but I still have to see it. I did at least test drive another RV of the same model and year. It actually didn't feel as big to drive as I had expected. Rather like a UHaul truck, but with the added advantage of beig able to see out of the back window. It was a much smoother drive than I expected.

After all that, I set out to meet up with the gang at Gores Landing in Ocala NF. They kayaked today and will again tomorrow, and are camping overnight. I got there just before dark, and the rain, which poured down when we were about half way through cooking dinner. It was one of Charles' masterpieces, pork loin in some exotic sauce, delicious. We rigged up a tarp to eat under, enjoyed a pleasant eveing and headed for the tents in the rain. Hmmmm, it would have been nice to be able to retreat to a nice dry RV in such a storm!

The storm kept me up a good long while into the morning hours, and I slept fitfully the remainder of the night. Something about being in a tent under trees in a storm just makes me nervous I guess. To cut a long story short, I decided not to kayak this morning. I helped the guys shuttle their cars to the take out and just spent the remainder of the day wandering around in Ocala NF, took a couple of short hikes, etc.

So. Not a whole lot achieved this weekend, but it felt like a lot.